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THE FOLK SONGS OF

school. Vishnu and Siva are, according to books, members of a triad of equal Gods, but in popular theology the worshipper of either scorns the others. One of tho songs that follow condemns as utterly foolish the man who honors Siva when his professed God is Vishnu. In social life and act the worshipper of Vishnu acknowledges but one god. Be speaks of Vishnu as if there were no other god. So with the devotee of Siva, even in a greater degree. He transposes the name into the neuter, Sivam; and expresses thus his belief that his deity is the one great essence, without sex or corporeal shape.

This distinction has been abundantly and accurately explained by many great writers. Yet the truth has never come home to the European mind, because, as such works went through the press, they were accompanied, and much more than out-numbered, by other books on India—chiefly written by missionaries. The latter dilated upon the enormities of vulgar Hinduism, its millions of deities, the obscenities, quarrels, defeats, and victories of the gods themselves. Clubbing these together under the shade of the old proverb—"as are their gods so are the people"—these authors have ascribed utter abominations to the mass of the people, until it has become the general idea that all under the ranks of the higher Brahmans is one seething mass of impurity, polytheism, and the grossest superstition. Far be it from me to reflect upon the self-denying and able men who have done so much to renovate India. The greater the earnestness with which such men as

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