Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXII. Heathenism and Christianity—The Religion of the Hindoos—Caste—The Brahmins—Their Tyranny—Superstition—The Influence of Christianity—Keshub-Chunder-Sen, the Indian Reformer—His faith and Influence
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IS 217.2 Story of an Emigrant.
as independent, individual deities. Many of these gods are
represented by images and pictures, which originally the
whole people, but at present only the learned, regard merely
as representations of certain divine principals and attributes.
Later on these were put in the place of the things which
they represented, so that the stone image, the river, the
tree, or the animal is regarded as the god himself by the
ignorant multitude.
"According to the Hindoo doctrine of creation the earth
rests on the back of a tortoise, and the human race was
originally created members of four different classes or castes.
Thus the class or caste distinction of India is closely
incorporated with its religion, and shows that the priests have
been very shrewd in founding a religious system which
secured for themselves not only salvation after death, but,
above all, an abundance of the good things of this world.
Brahma was from the beginning, and from him emanated
Vishnu and Shiva. Thereafter Brahma created first water,
then the earth, then from out of his head a man who was
the Brahmin, and became the chief of the caste of priests, or
the highest class. After this he let a Kshairiva issue from
out of his arms, a Vaisya from his loins, and a Sudra from
his feet, and which became respectively the progenitors of
the three other castes, the warriors, the craftsmen and
merchants, and the common laborers. These castes have
gradually been divided into many subdivisions, but the four
principal ones still remain with all their rigid distinctions.
Through certain misdemeanors, which may be very
insignificant, a person belonging to a higher may be degraged to
a lower caste, but one of a lower caste can never rise to
a higher, not even by the most meritorious achievements.
" Of all the cruel chains by which tyrants have fettered men,
none has been a more formidable enemy of liberty or a
greater impediment to human progress than this dreadful
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