Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, Volume 2

The Hindu Doctrines

Everything said thus far could serve, in an entirely general way, as an introduction to the study of all Eastern doctrines; what we shall now say will concern Hindu doctrines more particularly. These are specially adapted to modes of thought that share the characteristics common to Eastern thought as a whole while also displaying certain distinctive features, to which differences of form correspond even where the substance is strictly identical with that of other traditions. For the reasons we have indicated, this identity is always present where pure metaphysics is concerned. In this part of our exposition, it is important before all else to establish the exact meaning of the word ‘Hindu,’ whose more or less vague use frequently gives rise to misunderstandings in the West.

To determine clearly what is Hindu and what is not, we must briefly recall some of the considerations we have already developed: this word cannot designate a race, since it applies equally to elements belonging to different races, still less a nationality, since nothing of the sort exists in the East. Considered as a whole, India would be more comparable to Europe as a whole than to any particular European state, not only in its extent or the size of its population but also in the ethnic variety of that population; from north to south in India, the differences in this respect are at least as great as those from one end of Europe to the other. Moreover, there is no governmental or administrative bond among the various regions apart from the wholly artificial one recently established there by Europeans. It is true that the Mughal emperors had already achieved this administrative unity before them, and perhaps others had done so even earlier, but its existence was always transitory compared with the permanence of Hindu civilization. It should also be noted that this unity was almost always due to the domination of foreign or at any rate non-Hindu elements; furthermore, it never went so far as to suppress the autonomy of the individual states completely, but rather sought to bring them into a federal organization. On the other hand, nothing in India is comparable to the kind of unity achieved elsewhere through the recognition of a common religious authority, whether represented by a single individual, as in Catholicism, or by a plurality of distinct functions, as in Islam. Although Hindu tradition is in no way religious in nature, it might nevertheless involve a more or less analogous organization. Yet it does not, despite the gratuitous assumptions some have made on this subject because they could not understand how unity could be effectively achieved solely through the power inherent in traditional doctrine itself. This is indeed very different from anything that exists in the West, yet so it is: as we have already stressed, Hindu unity is of a purely and exclusively traditional order and requires neither any more or less external form of organization nor the support of any authority other than that of the doctrine itself to maintain it.