Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎541r] (206/238)

Reviews and Notices.
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and incited them to combat some of the grossest abuses of idolatry, but
which could not be a seminary of enthusiam or create any radical reform.
A further step was necessary, and it was taken by Keshab Chander Sen, a
man unlike his predecessor in everything except his openness to impres
sions from outside the circle of his ancestral creed. Keshab Chander Sen
was a born enthusiast, not always consistent, it is true, but always eloquent,
ardent, devoted, and emotional, and able to inspire the society which he
founded with like feelings to himself. No wonder that he has prospered
where the other failed. Mr. Lillingston’s criticism of this new creed is
just. He points out its subjective character, he says with truth that it sets
up individual feeling and intuition as the sole test of objective truth, and
he dwells on its want of a historical basis. All this is true and excellently
put. Unfortunately, the very points he selects for condemnation are the
points which commend it to the Hindoo mind. The dreamy character of
Hindoo speculation is always subjective, and the Hindoo mind has rarely,
if ever, felt the need of historical truth. Moreover, although Hindoo
speculation has always been receptive of external influences, it never
abandons its fundamental tenets ; it adopts, it syncretises, it assimilates,
but it does not radically change. And, above all, a faith which hopes to
make converts must flatter the national vanity, it must assume a national
basis, and it must exalt the Indian sages, with their aureole of traditional
wisdom, to a level with any that the West can boast, if not to a pinnacle
above them. This feeling, inherent in every religious movement of the
Hindoo mind, is most apparent in Dayanandan Sarasvate’s Arya Samaj,
whose monotheism is tempered with pronounced hostility to Christianity.
At the bottom of the feeling there is a germ of good which must be care
fully preserved, if the Hindoo mind is to retain its self-respect; but politics
have been the bane of religion in the East, not only of the pagan faiths,
but of Muhammadanism and of Christianity itself. How to preserve the
good and eradicate the evil is the problem which faces administrator and
missionary alike. And for the solution of the problem the first and truest
key is sympathy, and of that sympathy this little work shows a generous
and abundant proof. K.
n. Kim, by Rudyard Kipling. A remarkably interesting and instruc
tive story of a certain phase of Indian life, its habits and peculiarities. It
is interspersed with graphic descriptions of Indian towns and modes of
travelling. It is beautifully illustrated. The author, from his intimate
knowledge of Indian ways, has elucidated with accuracy the peculiar trait
of Oriental thought and action. Kim is introduced as “ white—a poor
white of the very poorest.” The half-caste woman who looked after him
(she smoked opium, and pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop
by the square where the cheap cabs wait) told the missionaries that she
was Kim’s mother’s sister; but his mother had been nursemaid in a
Colonel’s family and had married Kimball O’Hara, a young colour-sergeant
of the Manericks, an Irish regiment. He afterwards took a post on the
Sind, Punjab, and Delhi Railway. Kim’s mother died, and the father took
to drink and loafed about the line with the keen-eyed three-year-old baby.
The child became the object of solicitude on the part of societies and
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