[Sidenote: Indian beliefs about God--Polytheists; Theists; Pantheists.]

A rough classification of the theological belief of the Hindus of the
present day would be--the multitude are polytheists; the new-educated
are monotheists; the brahmanically educated are professed pantheists.
Rough as it is, we must keep the classification before us in trying to
estimate the influence upon the Indian mind of the Christian idea of
God. From that fundamental classification let us try to understand the
Hindu position more fully.

[Sidenote: No one doctrine is distinctive of Hinduism.]

Let it be realised, in the first place, how _undefined_ is the Hindu's
religious position. From the rudest polytheism up to pantheism, and even
to an atheistic philosophy, all is within the Hindu pale, like fantastic
cloud shapes and vague mist and empty ether, all within the same sky. To
the student of Hinduism, then, the first fact that emerges is that there
are no distinctive Hindu doctrines. No one doctrine is distinctive of
Hinduism. There is no canonical book, nowhere any stated body of
doctrine that might be called the Hindu creed. The only common measure
of Hindus is that they employ brahmans in their religious ceremonies,
and even that does not hold universally. A saying of their own is, "On
two main points all sects agree--the sanctity of the cow and the
depravity of women." In contrast to Hindus in this respect of the
absence of a standard creed, Mahomedans call themselves _kitabi_ or
possessing a book, since in the Koran they do possess such a canon. In
the words of Mahomed, Christians and Jews likewise are "the peoples of
the book," and have a defined theological position. But regarding
Hindus, again, we note there is no doctrinal pale, no orthodoxy or