independent of act. The familiar figure of Buddha in meditation, seated
cross-legged and motionless, with vacant introspective eyes, oblivious
of the outer world, is a type of the separation of thought from act that
seems natural to India or to the Indian mind, type also of the
independence of each thinker. The thinker secludes himself; "the mind is
its own place." To become a thinker signifies to become an ascetic
recluse; even modern enlightenment often removes an Indian from
fellow-feeling with his kind.

[Sidenote: No Theological Faculties.]

How is it so? I say nothing of the climate of tropical India as a
contributory cause. The way in which Hindu learning was and is
transmitted, is itself almost sufficient explanation of the independence
and the fluidity of religious doctrine. Hinduism has no recognised
Theological Faculties as training schools for the priesthood. _Buddhist_
monasteries of the early Christian centuries we do read of, institutions
corresponding to our universities, to which crowds of students resorted,
and where many subjects were taught; but the _Hindu_ lore is transmitted
otherwise. Beside or in his humble dwelling, the learned Hindu pandit
receives and teaches and shares his poverty with his four, five, or it
may be twenty disciples, who are to be the depositaries of his lore, and
in their turn its transmitters. Such an institution is a Sanscrit tol,
where ten to twenty years of the formative period of a young pandit's
life may be spent. Without printed books and libraries and intercourse
with kindred minds, there may be as many schools of thought as there are
teachers. And all this study, be it remembered, has no necessary
connection with the priesthood. Tols have no necessary connection with
temples, or temples with tols. Hereditary priests are independent of
Theological Schools. Recently, indeed, in Bengal these tols have been