[Sidenote: Polytheism receding before Monotheism.]

In some measure, then, we understand how Hindu polytheism, theism, and
pantheism are related to each other; we realise in some measure the
openness of the Indian mind, and we now ask ourselves how far the
Christian doctrine of God has impressed itself upon that open mind. Of
the polytheistic masses it has already been pointed out that intelligent
individuals will now readily acknowledge that there is truly one God
only. Further, that the polytheistic idolatry which is now associated
with the masses once extended far higher up the scale, is evident to
anyone reading the observations made early in the nineteenth century.
Early travellers in India, like the French traveller Tavernier of the
seventeenth century, speak of the Indians without distinction as
idolaters, contrasting them with the Mahomedans of India. In the
_Calcutta Gazette_ of 1816, Raja Rammohan Roy, the learned opponent of
Hindu idolatry, the Erasmus of the new era, is called the _discoverer_
of theism in the sacred books of the Hindus. Rammohan Roy himself
disclaimed the title, but writing in 1817, he speaks of "the system of
idolatry into which Hindus are now completely sunk."[71] Many learned
brahmans, he says in the same pamphlet, are perfectly aware of the
absurdity of idol worship, indicating that the knowledge belonged only
to the scholars. His own object, he said, was to declare _the unity_ of
God as the real thought of the Hindu Scriptures. Across India, on the
Bombay side, we find clear evidence of the state of opinion among the
middle class in 1830, from the report of a public debate on the
Christian and Hindu religions. The antagonists were, on the one side,
the Scottish missionary Dr. John Wilson and others, and on the other
side two leading officials of the highest Government Appellate Court,
men who would now rank as eminent representatives of the educated class.
One of these demanded proof that there was only one God.[72]