Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/243

Rh therein or thereon ; and that in conducting the said worship or adoration, no object, animate or inanimate, that has been, or is, or shall hereafter become or be recognized as an object of worship by any man or set of men, shall be reviled or slightingly or contemptuously spoken of or alluded to, either in preaching or in the hymns or other mode of worship that may be delivered or used in the said messuage or building ; and that no sermon, preaching, discourse, prayer, or hymns be delivered, made, or used in such worship, but such as have a tendency to the contemplation of the Author and Preserver of the universe, or to the pro motion of charity, morality, piety, benevolence, virtue, and the strengthening of the bonds of union between men of all religious persuasions and creeds.&quot; The new faith at this period held to the Vedas as its basis. Ram Mohan Rai soon after left India for England, and took up his residence in Bristol, where he died in 1835. The Brahma Samaj maintained a bare existence till 1841, when Babu Debendra Nath Tagore, of the Tagore family of Calcutta, devoted himself to it. He gave a printing-press to the Samaj, and established a monthly journal called the Tattwabodliini Patrikd to which the Bengali language now owes much for its strength and elegance. About the year 1850 some of the followers of the new religion discovered that the greater part of the Vedas is polytheistic, and a schism took place, the advanced party holding that nature and intuition form the basis of faith. Between the years 1847 and 1858 branch societies were formed in different parts of India, especially in Bengal, and the new church made rapid progress, for which it was largely indebted to the spread of English education and the, labours of the Christian missionaries.

The Brahma creed was definitively formulated as follows. (1.) The book of nature and intuition supplies the basis of religious faith. (2.) Although the Brahmas do not consider any book written by man the basis of their religion, yet they do accept with respect and pleasure any religious truth contained in any book. (3.) The Brahmas believe that the religious condition of man is progressive, like the other departments of his condition in this world. (4.) They believe that the fundamental doctrines of their religion are also the basis of every true religion. (5.) They believe in the existence of one Supreme God a God endowed with a distinct personality, moral attributes worthy of His nature, and an intelligence befitting the Governor of the universe, and they worship Him alone. They do not believe in any of his incarnations. (G.) They believe in the immortality and progressive state of the soul, and declare that there is a state of conscious existence suc ceeding life in this world and supplementary to it as respects the action of the universal moral government. (7.) They believe that repentance is the only way to salvation. They do not recognize any other mode of reconcilement to the offended but loving father. (8.) They pray for spiritual welfare, and believe in the efficacy of such prayers. (9.) They believe in the providential care of the divine Father. (10.) They avow that love towards Him, and the per formances of the works which He loves, constitute His worship. (1 1.) Thay recognize the necessity of public worship, buc do not believe that communion with the Father depends upon meeting in any fixed place at any fixed time. They maintain that they can adore Him at any time and at any place, provided that the time and the place ate calculated to compose and direct the mind towards Him. (12.) They do not believe in pilgrimages, and declare that holiness can only be attained by elevating and purifying the mind. (13.) They put no faith in rites or ceremonies, nor do they believe in penances, as instrumental in obtaining the grace of God. They declare that moral righteousness, the gaining of wisdom, divine contemplation, charity, and the cultivation of devotional feelings are their rites and ceremonies. They further say, Govern and regulate your feelings, discharge your duties to God and to man, and you will gain everlasting blessedness ; purify your heart, cultivate devotional feelings, and you will see Him who is unseen. (14.) Theoretically there is no distinction of caste among the Bnihmas. They declare that we are all the children of God, and therefore nmst consider ourselves as brothers and sisters. For long the Bn dimas did not attempt any social reforms. But about 18GO the younger Brahmas, headed by Babu Kesab Chandra Sen, tried to carry their religious theories into practice by excluding all idolatrous rites from their social and domestic ceremonies, and by rejecting the distinction of caste altogether. This, however, the older members opposed, declaring such innovations to be premature. The theoretical schism now widened into a visible separation, and henceforth the two parties of the Brahmas were known as the Conservatives and the Progressives. The progressive Brahmas, or, as they call their church, the &quot; Brahma Samaj of India,&quot; have made considerable progress. They have built a chapel in Calcutta, which is crowded every Sunday evening ; and they encourage the establishment of branch Samaj es in different parts of the country. The number of avowed Brahmas probably does not exceed 3000, but the greater part of the educated natives of Bengal sympathize more or less with the movement.  BRAHMANISM is a term commonly used to denote a system of religious institutions originated and elaborated by the Brāhmans, the sacerdotal and, from an early period, the dominant caste of the Hindu community. In lika manner, as the language of the Aryan Hindus has under gone continual processes of modification and dialectic divi sion, so their religious belief has passed through various stages of development broadly distinguished from one another by certain prominent features. The earliest phases of religious thought in India of which a clear idea can now be formed are exhibited in a body of writings, looked upon by later generations in the light of sacred writ, under the col lective name of Veda (&quot;knowledge&quot;) ortfruti (&quot;revelation&quot;). The Hindu scriptures consist of four separate collections, or Sanhitds, of sacred texts, or Mantras, including hymns, incantations, and sacrificial forms of prayer, viz., the Hick (nom. sing, rik) or Itigveda, the Sdman or Sdmaveda, the Yajush or Yajurveda, and the Atharvan or Atharvaveda. Each of these four text-books has attached to it a body of prose writings, called Brdhmanas, which presuppose the Sanhitas, purporting as they do to explain chielly the ceremonial application of the texts and the origin and import of the sacrificial rites for which these were supposed to have been composed. Besides the Brdhmanas proper, these theological works, and in a few isolated cases some of the Sanhitas, include two kinds of appendages, the Aranyakas and Upanishads, both of which, and especially the latter, by their language and contents, generally betray a more modern origin than the works to which they are annexed. The subject of the former class of these treatises is on the whole similar to that of the Brdhmanas, which they supplement, giving at the same time somewhat more prominence to the mystical sense of the rites of worship. The Upanishads, on the other hand, are taken up to a great extent with speculations on the problems of the universe and the religious aims of man, subjects often touched upon in the earlier v/ritings, but here dealt with in a more mature and systematic way. Two of the Sanhitds, the Sdman and the Yajush, owing their existence to purely ritual purposes, and being, besides, the one almost entirely, the other parti}, composed of verses taken from the Rinvcila are only of secondary importance for our pre sent inquiry. The hymns of the lliyveda constitute the 