encouragement from a handful of British members of Parliament and other
sympathizers in Europe and America, so this Hindu revival has been
largely stimulated and to some extent prompted by Europeans and
Americans. Not only the writings of English and German scholars, like
Max Müller and Deutsch, helped enormously to revive the interest of
educated Hindus in their ancient literature and earlier forms of
religion, but it was in the polemical tracts of European writers that
the first protagonists of Hindu reaction against Christian influences
found their readiest weapons of attack. The campaign was started in 1887
by the Hindu Tract Society of Madras, which set itself first to inflame
popular fanaticism against the missionaries, who, especially in the
south of India, had been the pioneers of Western education. Bradlaugh's
text-books and the pamphlets of many lesser writers belonging to the
same school of thought were eagerly translated into the vernacular, and
those that achieved the greatest popularity were books like "The Evil of
Continence," in which not only Christian theology, but Christian
morality was held up to scorn and ridicule. The advent of the
theosophists, heralded by Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, gave a
fresh impetus to the revival, and certainly no Hindu has done so much to
organize and consolidate the movement as Mrs. Annie Besant, who, in her
Central Hindu College at Benares and her Theosophical Institution at
Adyar, near Madras, has openly proclaimed her faith in the superiority
of the whole Hindu system to the vaunted civilization of the West. Is it
surprising that Hindus should turn their backs upon our civilization[2]
when a European of highly-trained intellectual power and with an
extraordinary gift of eloquence comes and tells them that it is they who
possess and have from all times possessed the key to supreme wisdom;
that their gods, their philosophy, their morality are on a higher plane
of thought than the West has ever reached? Is it surprising that with
such encouragement Hinduism should no longer remain on the defensive,