The Cultural Heritage of India: The Religions (Volume IV)

The Present Volume bears ample testimony to the great hospitality of the Indian mind in encouraging and inviting different points of view and different lines of approach to the great quest for the Ultimate Reality. It sketches the more important sects and living religions which India accepts as diverse expressions of religion itself. Hinduism in its various ramifications derived from a common stock is an exceedingly interesting and instructive subject to pursue. It is not at all a single religion with a creed to which everybody must subscribe, although each individual cult offers its allegiance to the Vedas and the Upanisads as the source and origin of Indian religion and religious experience. Hinduism is thus a federation of different kinds of approach to the Reality behind life. That is the unique character of Hinduism, and that character is unfolded in the pages of this volume