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BRAILE in the application of water and Bilva leaves to the stone symbol. The interior walls of these, and of Vishnu temples as well, are covered with shocking representations of sexual passion. And yet, strange to say, these forms of religion, while giving a sanction to the indulgence of the lowest passions, at the same time inspire other devotees to the practice of the severest asceticism. They wander about in lonely silence, naked and filthy, their hair matted from long neglect, their bodies reduced to mere skin and bones by dint of incredible fasts. They will stand motionless for hours under the blazing sun, with their emaciated arms uplifted towards heaven. Some go about with face ever turned upwards. Some are known to have kept their fists tightly clenched until their growing nails protruded through the backs of their hands.

—Enlightened Hindus of modern times have made attempts to institute a reform in Hinduism by rejecting all idolatrous and immoral rites, and by setting up a purely monotheis- tic form of worship. Of these the earliest and the most noted was the so-called Brahma Samaj (Congre- gation of Brahmā), founded in Calcutta in 1828, by the learned Rammohun Roy. He tried to combine a Unitarian form of Christianity with the Brahmin conception of the supreme personal God. After his death, in 1833, differences of view as to the nature of God, the authority of the Vedas, and the obligation of caste-customs caused the society to split up into a number of small congregations. At present there are more than a hundred independent theistic congregations in India. Some, like the Arya Samaj, rest on the sole authority of the Vedas. Others are eclectic, even to the extent of choosing for devotional reading in their public services passages from the Avesta, Koran, and Bible. Few of them are altogether free from the taint of pantheism, and, being more like clubs for intellectual and moral improvement than for ritualistic forms of worship, they make but little progress in the way of conversion.

In short, Brahminism cannot succeed in reforming itself. Its earlier sacred books are steeped in the polytheism out of which it grew. And the pantheistic view of the world, to which it was afterwards committed, has been like a dead weight dragging it hopelessly into the stagnant pool of superstition, pessimism, and immorality. In virtue of its pantheistic attitude, there is no form of religion, high or low, that cannot be tolerated and incorporated into its capacious system. The indifference of Brahminism to the gross abuses of Hinduism is, after all, but a reflex of the indifference of its supreme god. Sin loses most of its hideousness when it can be traced ultimately to the great impersonal Brahmă. There is but one form of religion which has any prospect of reforming the religious life of India, and that is the Roman Catholic. For the shadowy pantheistic deity it can set forth the One, Eternal, Personal Spirit and Creator; for the crude Tri-murti, the sublime Trinity; and for the coarse and degrading avatars of Vishnu, the Incarnation of the Son of God. It can replace the idolatrous and immoral Hindu rites with its own imposing liturgy, and substitute the Cross for the abominable linga.

Brahminism, being a national religion and a privilege of Hindu birth, has never made any concerted attempt at proselytizing in foreign lands. But some years ago steps were taken by a few individuals of England to foist upon English-speaking people a new religious system embodying the pantheistic belief and magical superstition of the Vedanta school of Brahminism. This new system, known as Theosophy, was to embrace within its fold members of every form of religion, reconciling all differences of creed in the pantheistic view that all deities, high and low, are but transitory emanations of the supreme, incomprehensible Reality, devotion to which was the highest religion. This quasi-cult, which also made pretensions to the exercise of magical powers, soon met the ridicule and obloquy it deserved. It is practically obsolete at the present day.

TEXTS. MUIR, Original Sanskrit Texts, 5 vols. (London, XXXII; OLDENBERG, Vedic Hymns, op. cit.. XLVI; BLOOM- 1868-70); MULLER, Vedic Hymns in Sacred Books of the East. FIELD, The Atharva Veda, op. cit., XLII; EGGELING, The Sata- patha Brahmana, op. cit., XII, XXVI, XLI; MÜLLER, The Upanishads, op. cit., XV: OLDENBERG AND MULLER, The Grihya-Sutras, op. cit., XXIX, XXX; BUHLER, The Sacred Laws of the Aryas, op. cit., II, XIV; IDEM, The Laws of Manu, op. cit.. XXV; THIBAUT, The Vedanta-Sutras, op. cit. XXXIV, XXXVIII; TELANG, The Bhagavad-gita, op. cit., VIII; BUR- NOUF-ROUSSEL, Le Bhagavata Purana, 5 vols. (Paris, 1898). GENERAL TREATISES. BARTH, The Religions of India (Lon- don, 1882); MONIER-WILLIAMS, Brahmanism and Hinduism, Hinduism (London, 1897): IDEM, Indian Wisdom (London, or Religious Thought and Life in India (London, 1891); IDEM, 1876); HOPKINS, The Religions of India (Boston, 1895); Du- BOIS, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies (Oxford, 1897); GOUGH, The Philosophy of the Upanishads and Ancient Indian danta (Leipzig, 1883); IDEM, Die Philosophie der Upanishads Metaphysics (London, 1882); DEUSSEN, Das System des Ve- (Leipzig, 1899); KEGI, The Rig-Veda (Boston, 1886); OLDEN- BERG, Die Religion des Veda (Berlin, 1894); COLEBROOKE, History of Indian Literature (London, 1892); DAHLMANN, Das Miscellaneous Essays, (2 vols., London, 1873); WEBER, The Mahabharata (Berlin, 1895); SCHOEBEL, La Ramayana in Annales du musée Guimet (Paris, 1888), XIII; DE LA SAUS- SAYE, Lehrb. der Religionsgesch. (Freiburg, 1905), II.

CHARLES F. AIKEN.

Braille, LOUIS, a French educator and inventor, b. 4 January, 1809, at Coupvray, Seine-et-Marne, France; d. 6 January, 1852. He became blind when three years of age, and at the age of thirteen was sent to the Institution for the Blind at Paris. There he showed a talent for intellectual studies and for music; and when his instruction had been completed he was appointed professor in that institution. It was then that he invented his system of writing in raised or relief points for the blind. Before him, Valentin Hauy, the founder of the Institution for the Blind, had invented the method of printing in raised letters which allowed the blind to read by touch; Charles Barbier had invented a sonographic point system as distinguished from Hauy's line or letter system, and had devised a simple instrument by which the blind could emboss the words or print them in relief. But this system of writing, based on the sounds of the French language, was too conventional and did not furnish the signs necessary for punctuation and ciphers. Braille, keeping to Barbier's point system and the principle of relief writing, found the means of representing, by the various combinations of six dots, not the sounds, but the alphabetical letters and all the signs of punctuation, and even of music. This invention, being alphabetic instead of sono-graphic, was a great advance in the education of the blind, and though it has been modified, at times, as to the combinations of dots (American, English, and English revised systems), the system is still, in most countries, the basis of methods for the education of the blind. The inventor set forth the principles of his system in his work: "Procédé pour écrire les paroles, la musique, et la plein-chant, à l'usage des aveugles", printed in raised letters in 1829. Though this system cannot be said to be the definitive method of education and writing for the blind, the name of Braille will always remain associated with one of the greatest and most beneficent devices ever invented.

GAUDET, L'institut des jeunes aveugles de Paris, son histoire et ses procédés d'enseignement; BUISSON in Dictionnaire de pedagogie, s. v. Aveugles; MELL, Wandbuch des Blindenwesens.

G. M. SAUVAGE.

Bralion, NICOLAS DE, a French Oratorian and ecclesiastical writer, b. at Chars-en-Vexin, France, c. 1600; d. at Paris, 11 May, 1672. He joined the Paris Oratory in 1619, and, in 1625, went to Rome, where he remained fifteen years at San Luigi dei Francesi, then an Oratorian establishment, devoting his time