wider and more catholic religion called Hinduism, that we should have preferred to give up the latter name altogether, as one that was for the most part idle, and in some degree misleading.  Feeling, however, that a mere manual should not take the initiative in coining titles, we have admitted this unsatisfactory word ‘Hinduism’ as the title of a chapter which undertakes to give a comprehensive view of the religions endorsed by the many-centuried epic, and to explain their mutual relations.  As in the case of the ‘Popular Faith,’ we have had here no models to go upon, and the mass of matter which it was necessary to handle—­the great epic is about eight times as long as the Iliad and Odyssey put together—­must be our excuse for many imperfections of treatment in this part of the work.  The reader will gain at least a view of the religious development as it is exhibited in the literature, and therefore, as, far as possible, in chronological order.  The modern sects and the religions of the hill tribes of India form almost a necessary supplement to these nobler religions of the classical literature; the former because they are the logical as well as historical continuation of the great Hindu sectarian schisms, the latter because they give the solution of some problems connected with Civaism, and, on the other hand, offer useful un-Aryan parallels to a few traits which have been preserved in the earliest period of the Aryans.[28]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES: 

     [Footnote 1:  Megasthenes, Fr. XLI, ed.  Schwanbeck.]

[Footnote 2:  Epic literature springs from lower castes than that of the priest, but it has been worked over by sacerdotal revisers till there is more theology than epic poetry in it.]

[Footnote 3:  See Weber, Sanskrit Literature, p. 224; Windisch, Greek Influence on Indian Drama; and Levi, Le theatre indien.  The date of the Renaissance is given as “from the first century B.C. to at least the third century A.D.” (India, p. 281).  Extant Hindu drama dates only from the fifth century A.D.  We exclude, of course, from “real literature” all technical hand-books and commentaries.]

[Footnote 4:  Jacobi, in Roth’s Festgruss, pp. 72, 73 (1893); Whitney, Proceed.  A.O.S., 1894, p. lxxii; Perry, P[=u]shan, in the Drisler Memorial; Weber, Vedische Beitraege.]

     [Footnote 5:  Westergaard, Ueber Buddha’s Todesjahr.  The
     prevalent opinion is that Buddha died in 477 or 480 B.C.]