Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/558

 520 Correspondence.

which is rather important as evidence of the position they really hold in the 'caste' system. The Raja, not the Brahman, is the supreme source of authority in matters of social discipline, a fact for which there are parallels from elsewhere in India. I have expressed as strongly as I knew how the view that the Manipuri reverences the cow, which is almost the only point where practice and theory are in accord in Manipur. I admit the acceptance by the Meitheis of Hindu practices in regard to food {pp. cit., p. 47), and I agree with the dictum that the Manipuris readily adhere to these food rules because they "desire to mark the difference between themselves and the Hill Tribes whom they despise." Quite so. Hinduism is respectable.

Colonel Shakespear and I are not likely to agree because our point of view is naturally different. He came to Manipur from the Lushai Hills, but I came comparatively fresh from the plains. What struck us both was the diff'erence between the religions of the people with whom we were familiar. Colonel Shakespear attributes the difference to Hinduism, and he is of course perfectly right. I attribute it equally to the prevalence and persistence of animism, and I think that I no less certainly am right. Another factor is that the social polity of the Manipuris is well advanced, and is reflected in the superior organisation of their divinities. But I am not going to run away from the difficulty of defining the essentials of Hinduism. I have read the actual census reports, which discuss the question. A passage from Dr. Barnett's sug- gestive little book on Hinduism is quoted, but Colonel Shakespear does not quote Dr. Barnett's assertion which follows on the same page, that "The kernel of Hinduism consists of two groups of ideas. The first of these is the conception of a social order or caste system, at the head of which stand the Brahmans as com- pletest incarnation of the Godhead and authoritative exponents of its revelation. Secondly, we have a series of ideas which may be summed up in three words — 'Works' {karma)^ wandering (samsara) and release (moks/ia)." Sir Herbert Risley's famous epigram that " Hinduism is animism more or less transformed by philosophy or magic tempered by metaphysics," ^ is also quoted by Dr. Barnett, only a page further on. If philosophy and metaphysics are of the i/.C.A'./. (1901), p. 357.