Page:An Essay On Hinduism.pdf/94

universal expansion; it was intended to be so. According to Hindu ideas, it is perfectly proper, or even necessary for a Christian to follow his tribal customs, provided he follows mānava-dharma, his duties as a man.

Let us now see how those principles which have united the various races, their cults and traditions under Hinduism have operated in the land of the rising sun, and helped to unify the various peoples and the beliefs in the land and have prepared them for the unification of the world's culture.

Leaving the influence of the Western civilization aside, Japan had been subjected mainly to two influences. The primitive beliefs and cults in Japan were influenced first by the Chinese culture and secondly by the Indian culture, through the medium of the Chinese and Korean teachers. A careful study of these influences will give us the principles of the unification of cultures and we shall see that those principles were the same which led to the formation of Hinduism and were given by India to Japan.

We have no definite knowledge as to where the Japanese come from. We do not know also what different strains have produced the modern Japanese; still the fact that a variety of strains and tribes have produced the modern Japanese is something well proved. Their earliest conception of God was "something superior," and it is in this sense that their word "Kami " is to be interpreted in the earliest records. The objects of worship, then, were the marvels of nature, its processes, its powers, its fertility, its ways of reproduction, its awe-inspiring mountains and seas and heavenly bodies and sky, trees, beasts, birds, great fishes, reptiles, and the reproductive powers of man, all of which were mysterious, wonderful, connected with our weal or woe. They expected to please these superiors with prayers for