An introduction to the study of some living religions of the East
This book has been written in the hope that it may serve as a beginner's guide to the study of the more significant of the Living Religions of the East. If it fulfils its purpose, it will have its value as much from what it omits as from what it includes.
Thus the student of Hinduism may ignore, for time, many phases of its history. However, he needs to understand and appreciate books, like the Upani- shads and the Bhagavadgltd, which still have creative power, and detailed references are given to such books hi the hope that the reader may learn, from the first, to base his study on their classic passages.
The writer lived for some years in intimate association with Hindus and saw enough of Islam and Buddhism to make it impossible for him ever to forget that these are living religions, which are still able to retain the allegiance of many modern men, and he has sought to deal with them, not as subjects for antiquarian research, but as spiritual forces still operative in the world ^to-day. By some familiar with the East, the complaint may well be made that more prominence should have been given to the fear of evil spirits which forms so conspicuous a part of popular religion.
But understanding is impossible without sympathy, and it seems better than the beginner should first be taught to appreciate the nobler elements of non-Christian religions. Besides, the contact of Eastern with Western culture has made the task of relating Christianity to non-Christian religions urgent and imperative, and, if such a task is to end in more than profitless recrimination,
it must be the ideal alone that is considered. Elsewhere the writer has ventured to try to relate one of these re- legions to Christianity. 1 Here no such attempt is made, but he trusts that this book, which was prepared in the first instance for theological students, may serve to inspire some of its readers to explore Christianity anew, and to rediscover in it elements which we in the West readily ignore, but without which Christianity is inadequate to the spiritual aspirations expressed in some phases of non- Christian religions.
In the transliteration of Eastern words, it has seemed best not to use diacritical marks in an elementary manual of this kind, but to render the consonants by their nearest English equivalents. Names of places are given in their familiar form. In other foreign words, the long vowel is indicated, except in the case of e and o in Sanskrit and Pali words where these vowels are invariably long. The writer has to express his thanks to one of his students, the Rev. D. E. Jarvis, B.A., now of Gravesend, for his help in revising the manuscript for the press, and to Mr F. W. Buckler, M.A., of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, for his suggestive criticisms of the chapters dealing with Islam.
Download An Introduction to the Study of Religions of the East - 12 MB