The Religious Quest of India : Indian Theism Volume Series : 2 [Hardcover]

About The Book : India has always been recognized as so determinedly pan theistic in its religious thought that ‘Indian Theism’ will seem to many an unnatural collocation of words. There are some, no doubt, who will maintain that whatever can be so described is really foreign to the Indian spirit and must be credited to Christian or Muhammadan influences. Theism, no doubt, assumes various aspects in various environments and as it passes through various minds. For that reason it will be found in India always to bear certain characteristic marks that determine it as Indian. We shall accordingly find at all periods of the Indian religious development certain elements in it which, far off as they often are from what we understand by the Theism of Western theologians and philosophers, yet can justly claim to share with them that designation. Those cults and systems, often embryonic, often fragmentary, appear sometimes as efforts of revolt from the cere-mnonialism or the intellectualism of the official religion. When Muhammadanism invaded the country, and still more when Christianity appeared at a later date, supported by all the authority and prestige of Western civilization, the Indian spirit, however deeply rooted in its own soil, and however tenacious of its own peculiar characteristics, could not but be greatly influenced.