34 BENGALI LITERATURE could not be expected to leave untouched the shores of the newly-acquired empire in India. One of the chief causes why the evils of caste system could not be eradicated in a day was the protective spirit of the Hindu religion in social matters. Notwithstanding that historians of civilisation like Protective influence Buckle! deny to religion any influence of religion in social : রি চন at all, Hindu religion has always governed Hindu society, and it is through the institution of caste that this influence has been remarkably felt. However much Hinduism has been marked by intellectual toleration and adaptability to its environment, its sway, in social matters at least, has always been despotic. Not only the individual but also the social life of the people has beex moulded by their religion for evil or for good. The entire existence of a Hindu may be said without exaggeration to be a round of religious duties; and in social matters, hedged in by minute rules and restrictions, the various classes of the community have had little room for expansion and progress beyond a certain stage. But this domination of religion over soci2ty became more and more stringent with the decay of Hindu eivilisation during the later Pauranik and the Mohammedan periods. Hence arose some of the Its effect under the Mohammedan rule. absurd restrictions and retrogressive customs which the efforts of a succession of religious reformers from Kabir and Chaitanya down to Ram Mohan Ray have not been able completely to remove. That the Hinduism of the 18th and the early 19th century had been a strange compound of the sublime and the ridiculous is thus easily
1 History of Civilisation in England, Vol. I, Ch. V.
