[Footnote 114:  The theistic tendency in the Hindu mind is so exaggerated that even now it is with the greatest difficulty that the vulgar can be restrained from new idolatry.  Not only priests, but even poets are regarded as gods.  Jn[=a]ndev and Tuk[=a]r[=a]m, the hymn-makers of the Mahratta Vi[t.]h[t.]hals, are demi-gods to-day (IA. xi. 56. 149).  A few striking examples are almost requisite to make an Occidental reader understand against what odds the deism of India has to contend.  In 1830 an impudent boy, who could train snakes, announced that he could also work miracles.  The boy was soon accepted as Vishnu’s last avatar; hymns, abhangs, were sung to him, and he was worshipped as a god even after his early demise (from a snake-bite).  A weaver came soon after to the temple, where stood the boy’s now vacant shrine, and fell asleep there at night.  In the morning he was perplexed to find himself a god.  The people had accepted him as their snake-conquering god in a new form.  The poor weaver denied his divinity, but that made no difference.  In 1834 the dead boy-god was still receiving flowers and prayers.  Another case:  In the eighties some Englishmen on entering a temple were amazed to see revered as an avatar of Vishnu the brass castings of the arms of the old India Co.  This god was washed and anointed daily.  Even a statue of Buddha (with the inscription still upon it) was revered as Vishnu.  In 1880 a meteorite fell in Beh[=a]r.  In 1882 its cult was fully established, and it was worshipped as the ‘miraculous god.’  A Mohammedan inscription has also been found deified and regularly worshipped as a god, JRAS. 1842, p. 109; 1884, pt.  III, pp.  I, LIX.]

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CHAPTER XVIII.

RELIGIOUS TRAITS OF THE WILD TRIBES.

Besides the phases of pure Aryan and modified Aryan religions which have already been examined, there are represented in India several other aspects of civilized religion; for, apart from Brahmanic and sectarian worships, and apart from Tamil (southern) imitations of these, there are at present in the country believers of the Jewish religion to the number of seventeen thousand; of Zoroastrianism, eighty-seven thousand; of Christianity, two and a quarter millions; of Mohammedanism, more than fifty-seven millions.  But none of these faiths, however popular, comes into an historical account of India’s religions in a greater extent than we have brought them into it already, that is, as factors of minor influence in the development of native faiths till, within the last few centuries, Mohammedanism, which has been the most important of them all in transfiguring the native theistic sects, draws a broad line across the progress of India’s religious thought.