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India the Land of Religions
a friendly refuge for themselves and the religion
of Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) in the West of India.
Aside from that there is no record of permanent
outside influence on a larger scale, until, in the last
century, the above-mentioned Brāhma Samāj, a kind
of religious Volapük, or Esperanto, undertakes, in
the most praiseworthy spirit, upon a universal theis-
tic platform, to blend and harmonise the best in
Hindu religious thought, with the best that may be
found in other religions. In this way Hindu re-
ligion is more strictly native than any of the great
religions of mankind. This is no doubt due mainly
to India's geographical isolation, and to her insular
secular history. It has had the merit of keeping
her religious development continuous and organic.
Every important idea has a traceable past history;
every important idea is certain to develop in the
future. We may say that a body of 3500 years
of organic religious growth lies more or less
open before the eyes of the student of India's
religions, to dissect, to study, and to philosophise
upon.
II
This great period of time has of late become
definite in a rather important sense. Within recent
years there were discovered at Tel-el-Amarna, in
Upper Egypt, numerous cuneiform tablets contain-
ing letters from tributary kings of Babylonia,