Page:An Essay On Hinduism.pdf/44

 The word "religion" has acquired a complex meaning, as given above; at the same time in non-European languages there is not a word which can convey the same number of correlated ideas. Such a condition of affairs is not merely an accident. It is due to the fact that the course of events in Europe has been different from the course of events in India. Those different courses of events have created a vocabulary expressive of ideas peculiar to the civilization itself. Thus the word religion would be of use to delineate the development of occidental civilization and ideas. To undertake the task of explaining this development would be out of place here ; still one phase of it may be noted.

Let us state the preceding analysis and synthesis of religion in a different manner. We may first class systems like Christianity among the theophratries, that is, among the brotherhoods based on worships or on some theological doctrines. Thus religions would be akin to what pantha or sampradaya is in India. But "religion” is something more than a theophratry (sampradāya). "Sampradāya " is not quite so strong a word in India as “religion" is in Europe. No sampradāya played such an important part in shaping the moral and intellectual history of India as the sampradāya (of Christ) did in Europe. The theophratry of Christ and its traditions gave to Europe a code of morals, theology, laws, superstitions and a great number of ideas regarding production of the world, and so forth. No theophratry in India accomplished such a task. As a result of this, "sampradāya" does not convey so many ideas as religion does and has not become so strong a word, meaning everything essential for life, as religion has become. For the same reason the Hindu mind (until it was vitiated by European conceptions) was spared the confusion which