New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments by John Morrison
page 40 of 233 (17%)
page 40 of 233 (17%)
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are as ignorant of English as the great reformers are the reverse. We
may cite, in illustration: 1. Dyanand Saraswati, founder of the new sect of [=A]ryas in the United Provinces and Punjab. Their chief doctrine, the infallibility of the Vedas or earliest Hindu scriptures, is reactionary, although a number of reforms are inculcated in the name of a return to the Vedas. 2. The late Ramkrishna Paramhansa, a famous Bengali ascetic of high spiritual tone, but of the old type. 3. The gentleman already referred to, who as University lecturer on Hindu Philosophy in Calcutta insisted that none but Hindus be admitted to the exposition of the sacred texts, shutting out the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, and many Fellows of the University. 4. Sanscrit pundits, very conservative as a class, and generally unfamiliar with English. New Hinduism in contact with the modern educational influences was most interestingly manifest in the person of Swami Vivekananda (_Reverend Rational-bliss_ we may render his adopted name), representative of Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. The representative Hindu was not even a member of the priestly caste, as we have already told. It were tedious to analyse his Hinduism, as set forth at Chicago and elsewhere, into what was Christianity or modern thought, and what, on the other hand, was Hinduism. Suffice it to say that as Narendra Nath Dutt, B.A., he figures on the roll of graduates of the Church of Scotland's College in Calcutta. While a student there, he sat at the feet of two teachers representing the new and the old, the West |
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