THE MORALS OF THE HOUSE 335
is nothing wrong in going to Manu Smriti to ascertain the moral standards and religious notions of the Hindus.
That Manu Smriti is a book of Religion may not be quite obvious. That is because Hinduism is a very illusive term. Different writers have defined it in various ways.
Sir D. Ibbetson [1] defines Hinduism as :
“A hereditary sacerdotalism with Brahmins for its devices, the vitality of which is preserved by the social institution of caste and which include all shades and diversities of religion native to India, as distinct from foreign importations of Christianity and islam, and from the later outgrowths of Buddhism, more doubtfully of Sikhism and still more doubtfully of Jainism”.
Sir J. A. Baines [2] defined Hinduism as :—
“The large residium that is not Sikh, or Jain, or Buddhist or professedly Animistic, or included in one of the foreign religions such as Islam. Mazdaism. Christianity, or Hebraism.”
To Sir Edward Gait [3] Hinduism :—
“ is a complex congenies of creeds and doctrines. It shelters within its portals monotheists, polytheists. and pantheists; Worshippers of the great God Siva and Vishnu, or of their female counterparts, as well as worshippers of the divine mothers, of the spirits of trees, rocks and streams and of the tutelary village deities; persons who propitate their deity by all matter of bloody sacrifices, and persons who will not only kill no living creature, but who must not even use the word “cut”; those whose ritual consists mainly of prayers and hymns, and those who indulge in unspeakable orgies in the name of religion”.
This discription of complexity is full but is still incomplete. To the list must be added those who revere the cow and those who eat it, those who worship natural forces, and those who worship a single God; those who are worshippers of idols, demons, ghosts, ancestors, saints and heroes.
Such are the answers given by the three Census Commissioners to the simple question what is Hinduism. Others have not found it less difficult to answer the question. Consider how Sir A. Lyall has fared in answering the question. In his “ Rede Lecture ” delivered at Cambridge in 1891 he said [4] :
“And if I were asked for a definition of Hinduism I could give no precise answer, I could not define it concisely by giving its central
1 Punjab Census Report 1881. para 214.
2 Census of India. Report 1881. p. 158.
3 Census of India. Report 1911 p. 114.
4 Asiatic Studies Vol. II pp. 287-88.