Page:An Essay On Hinduism.pdf/61

 according to the Hindu standpoint, he leaves his own caste and joins that of the Christians.

What is then the distinction between a Hindu and a nonHindu. To answer this question, one must pay attention to history. The word Hindu itself is a foreign one. The Hindus never used it in any Sanskrit writing, that is those which were written before the Mohamedan invasion. In fact there was no need for calling themselves by any particular name. People in India were as a rule ignorant, or at least indifferent towards the existence of other countries and peoples in the world. They became acquainted with foreigners only when those foreigners visited the country, either in the capacity of merchants, travellers or invaders. But such a foreigner always belonged to a certain tribe, and passed among Hindus as a member of that tribe. In the early days when the foreigners came, the difference between the people of India and the foreigners was not very great. Those foreigners would take up Hindu usages and customs and thus became Hinduized unconsciously and without any objection by the Hindus. They in fact did not feel that the foreigners who came to India were people different from themselves any more than other tribes and castes in their own land. Thus the people of India did not feel the necessity for considering themselves socially separate from the rest of the world.

In India itself there were distinctions. The most important of them was the distinction of Varna. Those who belonged to one of the Varņas considered themselves socially separate from those of the other. Whether there was any formal exclusion from a varna is doubtful, but there certainly was an exclusion from a caste; there was also exclusion from the twice-born circle; there were even