and most eloquent speakers, and his influence was felt by vast audiences in this country, in England and in the United States of America. His delivery was slow, but dignified and impressive. He used the choicest words and the aptest figures and imagery, and all that he said was suffused with the glow of his deep emotions and spiritual experience.

AS A JOURNALIST

In or about 1872, Mr. Mazumdar began to edit and publish a yearly record of religious thought and missionary activity under the name of the Theistic Annual. This was followed by the Theistic Quarterly Review, and much later by the Interpreter, a monthly and, for sometime, a fortnightly journal. He also wrote for the Dharmatattva, the Bengali organ of the Brahma Samaj of India. When the Indian Mirror passed out of the hands of the Brahma leaders, and the Liberal and New Dispensation was started as the organ of Kesav's church, Mr. Mazumdar also wrote for it occasionally. He also contributed occasional articles on the principles of the Brahma Samaj to AngloIndian, English and American journals. Until 1882, when his first work, or at any rate his first important work, came out, his literary activity was confined to writing for the periodicals..

PART IN THE SECOND BRAHMA SCHISM

In 1878 the schism in the Brahma Samaj that followed the marriage of Kesavchandra Sen's eldest daughter with the then young Maharajah of Kuch Behar, took place, and the Sadharan Brahma Samaj, the third great section of the Brahma community, was established. Pandit Vijaykrishna Goswami, one of Kesavchandra's closest followers, with many others who had followed him more or less closely, joined the new organisation. Mr. Mazumdar might have done the same and for a time it seemed he might do so. Though deeply attached to Kesav and indebted to him for much of what was valuable in his own life, it was very widely known that he was an independent thinker and had never blindly fol

lowed his leader. He did not also quite approve of the marriage that formed the bone of contention. But nevertheless he clung to Kesav and condemned the schism.

EXPOSITION OF BRAHMAISM

In 1882 appeared the first book, at any rate the first important book, written by Mr. Mazumdar. It consisted mostly of his public addresses and contributions to periodical literature, recast and partly re-written, and was named The Faith and Progress of the Brahma Samaj. It was in three parts; (1) Speculative and Doctrinal; (2) Devotional and Practical; and (3) The New Dispensation. It thus professed to be a defence of the religion of the Brahma Samaj and an account of its missionary and other activities. But it was so only partly and rather imperfectly. On its speculative side it contained no reasoned and systematic exposition of Brahmaism, such as would convince, or even be fully intelligible to, a non-Brahma wishing to know what Brahmaism is. The writer simply stated, with his usual wealth and elegance of language, what he believed Brahmaism to be.

VISITS TO THE WEST

Barrows, "and

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Mr. Mazumdar paid his first visit to England in 1874. In 1883 he re-visited England and extended his journey to America. "The memory of his visit," we quote from Dr. the inspiration and enthusiasm it awakened, will still be fresh in the minds of many who read this book (Mr. Mazumdar's Heart-beats). He returned to India by way of San Francisco, stopping in Japan and lecturing in the University." The experiences of these two visits to the West are recorded in his interesting Sketches of a Tour Round the World. On returning from his second visit to the West, Mr. Mazumdar found that his great friend and leader, Kesavchandra Sen, had gone to a better world. The period following this event was the most troubled period of his life. But we shall speak of these troubles later on. In 1893, Mr. Mazumdar paid his third visit to the

FEBRUARY 19191

West. He attended the meeting of the Parliament of Religions at Chicago, where he read a paper on the "World's Religious Debt to Asia." In Boston," we again quote from Dr. Barrows, "he was invited to deliver four lectures on India before the Lowell Institute. So great was the interest in these lectures, that he was induced to repeat them afternoons, under the same auspices, to a crowded hall. These lectures were reported and published in the Christian Register" (a Unitarian weekly). They have since been published in a book form under the name of the Lowell Lectures. 66 THE ORIENTAL CHRIST."

In 1883 was published Mr. Mazumdar's Oriental Christ. "This remarkable volume," says Dr. Barrows," was at once recognised as the product of a devout mind, active intellect and a glowing imagination. It was essentially a new contribution to Christology." In Mr. Mazumdar's Christology, however, there is no appeal either to the philosophic intellect or to the historical sense of the reader. The author neither draws upon Metaphysics to show that the Logas or Universal Christ incarnates himself in, and lighteth, every man coming into the world, nor upon the newly founded science of Higher Biblical Criticism to reconstruct the real historical Christ out of the semi-mythological records of the New Testament. He simply explains, in the light of his spiritual experiences, the sayings and doings of Jesus as they are narrated in the gospels. As such, it is a very valuable book and will be read with great pleasure and profit by all devout persons. As to Mr. Mazumdar's exact position in regard to Jesus Christ, it will be found expressed in a brief but very clear form in another work of his, The Spirit of God. Jesus, to him, is neither the Trinitarian Christian's third person in the Godhead nor the ordinary Theist's religious teacher, one among many. To him he is the embodiment of all human excellences, the human image of God's moral perfections and the very type of perfected huma

nity. "He is the type of humanity. Humanity broken up before and after is bound up in him, so that he is the human centre and bond of union in the religious organisations of mankind. He taught us to be the sons of God. In all things did Jesus, so far as the times permitted, conform himself to the mind of God; that is to be the son of God." This is the typical Unitarian Christianity of men like Channing and Martineau, and neither ordinary Brahmaism nor ordinary Hinduism. For holding this view Mr. Mazumdar has often been accused of being a disguised Christian. But though such a view is rare among Brahmas and Hindus, we do not see that it is anyway opposed to the fundamental principles of either Brahmaism or liberal Hinduism,

DIFFERENCE WITH FELLOW-DISCIPLES

After the death of Kesavchandra Sen, serious differences about doctrinal and ecclesiastical matters broke out among his disciples and divided them into several opposed parties. The chief questions that divided them were succession to the office of the chief minister, the mode of conducting public service, the trust-deed of the Mandir, and the authority of the Apostolic Darbar or Missionary Conference. Mr. Mazumdar found himself, most unwillingly perhaps, at the head of one of these parties. As the ablest of his fellow-disciples, he might perhaps expect, and the public seemed clearly to expect, that he would be recognised as the rightful successor to the leadership of his church, but the party chiefly opposed to him, 'the Darbar party,' not only did not give him the expected recognition, but actually resolved to keep the Brahma Mandir pulpit vacant as a mark of their perpetual relation with their departed master. Mr. Mazumdar regarded and publicly represented this as the setting up of a fetish in a theistic temple, and long refused to preach there. We need not however enter into the details of these divisions, as the general public are not likely to feel any interest in them.

Suffice it to say that Mr. Mazumdar felt himself misunderstood, unappreciated, distrusted and persecuted by his colleagues, more or less, during the whole time that intervened between Kesav's death and his own, and that his usefulness suffered much from these causes. He however had a number of faithful followers with whom he prayed while he stopped in Calcutta, and who helped him in carrying on his work according to his own ideas. It may be added that he at last felt the need of some sort of constitution for his church and tried to secure it. But he was not successful in his attempts, and up to this time the more thoughtful among his followers are trying, with very indifferent success, to bring some order out the chaos and anarchy into which the affairs of the New Dispensation body have fallen. The seeds of autocracy have been too long and too thickly sown by the leaders to allow of a constitutional and representative form of church government being established without long-continued, persevering and perhaps violent efforts on the part of those who wish it.

OTHER WRITINGS

Soon after Kesav's death, Mr. Mazumdar wrote an excellent biography of him. It did not quite please his fellow-disciples, some of whom wrote, in collaboration, a lengthy life of their leader in Bengali. But the general public will find in Mr. Mazumdar's book a faithful account of the great Brahma leader's life and teachings. One great merit of the book is its impartiality and absence of strong bias, a merit which could hardly be expected in a biography written by an ardent follower and admirer. Mr. Mazumdar also wrote in the years following Aids to Moral Character for young people, and Stri-Charitra-Sangathan in Bengali for women. While in America during his third visit to the West, Mr. Mazumdar published his Heart-beats, which has already been referred to, and shortly after came his Spirit of God. The former is a collection of short para

graphs containing reflections on religious and other matters and embodying spiritual experiences. "To me," says Dr. Barrows, "the book seems the most remarkable devotional book since that of Thomas a Kempis."

LAST DAYS AND LAST WORK

In the last years of his life, Mr. Mazumdar put his hand to a very useful work,-the foundation, with the help of others, of an Institution for the Higher Training of young men. It is now called the University Institute and is housed in a fine building in College Square, Calcutta, which would have been a great joy to him if he had lived to see it. He was for several years a President of the Institution and delivered several addresses in connection with its Moral Section. During his very last days, one of his fondest cares was to carry through the press a volume of reflections, prayers and autobiographical sketches in Bengali under the name of Ashish (blessings). It is said that when this book, just out of the press, was brought to him only a few days before his death, he silently and devoutly placed it upon his head We also may place it on our heads as the last legacy of our revered countryman to us. The book is of great value, as embodying the last thoughts and experiences of the great thinker and devotee.

Mr. Mazumdar died on the 27th May, 1905, of Diabetes, from which he had long been suffering. His body was followed to the crematorium by a large number of his friends and admirers, including some leaders of the Sadharan Brahma Samaj. The procession made a halt once before the Brahma Mandir of India and again before the Sadharan Brahma Samaj Mandir. At the latter place several ladies came out from the adjoining Brahma houses and paid their respects to the last remains of the great leader and preacher. Mr. Mazumdar was childless and has left only a bereaved widow. But his admirers are many and they meet every year on the anniversary of his death to honour his memory.

nature of the 60 principles making up the system. A question is raised whether the Shastitantra is a mere name for the Sankhya or the name of an independent work of the Sankhya school. A Chinese tradition is referred to, that sage Pancha Sikha was the author of a Shashtitantra, of 60,000 slokas. This no doubt contradicts the story of the authorship of Vaishaganya. Pancha Sikha is traditionally the 3rd of the Samkhyan founders, the prior ones being Kapila, and Asuri, and therefore there is nothing improbable in the early Shastitantra being a work of Pancha Sikha and of a voluminous kind, fit to be called a Smriti, as the Vedanta Sutras style it. Dr. Keith draws the important conclusion that the Shastitantra was not atheistic like the later Samkhya from the Karikas downwards, but was a theistic system. Though such a theistic Samkhya System is unknown to later literature, it is curious that later writers speak always of the Samkhya known to them as "Nirisvara Samkhya" or a theistic Samkhya, a qualification which would seem to be purposeless if there was no "Seshvara Samkhya." The analogy may be mentioned that the Mimamsa which is now practically atheistic, not recognising the existence of a supreme deity nor in fact any deities other than Mantric, had a precursor, "The Seshvara Samkhya," in which

God-head

was not disregarded. The references to the Sankhya in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad-gita especially clearly assume that system to be Seshvara, as there is no refutation of their supposed god-less tendency. The attitude of the Brahma Sutras is therefore to be explained by the fact that the system having developed into an atheistic, the Vedanta retained its physics, and asserted its falsity in so far as the immanence of God was denied. This is the theme of the Vedantic references to Samkhya, by Badarayana, and his solicitude to explain away Vedic texts which seem to assert Samkhyan ideas or imply them in various

places, (I. 1. 5, I. 4, 1,) as for example the same Chandogya and Katha Valli texts, and also his elaborate refutation of the Samkhya Smriti in II. 1, 1, etc. All the above may be called a sort of defensive warfare of the Vedantin. Dr. Keith does not discuss the relationship to the Samkhya of the Brahma Sutras. Dr. Keith however indicates his views when he says (at p. 7): "just like the Vedanta of Sankara, or the Vedanta of Badarayana, the Samkhya is a system built on the Upanishads: from both of these it differs in that it goes radically and essentially beyond the teaching of the Upanishads." Dr. Keith also rightly criticises the Samkhyan views (at p. 87) on the ground that " no reason is given for the belief of spirit that is bound" by matter. Again, "the denial of the Samkhya of any connection between spirit and matter as in the Adwaita or Visishtad waita forms of the Vedanta shuts off the Samkhya from any possibility of logical explanation of its main principles." These criticisms of the Samkhya, elaborated already by the Brahma Sutras, and the prevalence of the theistic Vedantic doctrines in India must have led to the decline of Samkhya in the country; and merely spasmodic life was given to it by Iswara Krishna (third century A.D.) and by other writers up to the fourteenth century, the date of the Samkhya Sutras. If writers like Ramanuja (eleventh century) elaborately refuted the Samkhya, it was in deference to the Sutras which they were commenting upon, and not because the System had much life in it as a philosophy in their days.

Among other chapters of interest, we would draw attention to chapter VI, Greek Philosophy and the Samkhya, where Dr. Keith discusses the probability of Greece having borrowed from the Samkhya, and comes to the conclusion that the Samkhyan influence on Greek philosophy is practically nil or at best negligible.