Page:An Essay On Hinduism.pdf/69

 slaughter of cows by them, their disregard for Hindu gods, carried to the extent of breaking the temples and idols, their disrespect towards Brāhmaṇas, sharply differentiated them from the people in India. The people in India accepted the name Hindus and applied it to such as were not Mohamedans. To a Mohamedan, the word Hindu meant infidel, and to all the Hindus a Mohamedan was an individual of the impure species. As the Hindus began to think that all the people who did not belong to the Mohamedan religion were Hindus, the seed of Hindu consciousness was sown.

The Christians came later on the stage. Leaving aside the Nestorian Christians, whose influence on the early Indian society has not been studied, the Christian people who first landed in India and made their presence felt were the Portuguese. The attitude which the Portuguese adopted towards the Hindus was not very dissimilar from that adopted by the Mohamedans. And thus the Hindus sharply differentiated themselves from the Christians. When Hindus wanted to designate the Christians and the Mohamedans, they used the old classical terms like Hūņa, and Yavana, expressive of cruelty, immorality and barbarism.

There are Parsis in India. There are some Jews also. But they were not sharply differentiated from the Hindus, Had the Parsis been disconnected from Persia, and had the Jews been cut off from the Jews in Europe, these two tribes would have become Hindu castes. They were, in fact, greatly Hinduized. Prior to the overthrow of the Maratha rule by the British, the Parsis used the Hindu ceremonies in their marriages, and even called the Brāhmanas to officiate. They abstained from killing cow and from the use of beef. Even the Jews had abstained from