CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA.

Again: u In the happy religious organisation of Hindu -village-life
there is no man happier than the hereditary potter." ** The village
-communities teave been the stronghold of the traditionary arts of
India; and where these arts have passed out of the villages into the
wide world beyond, the caste system of the Code of Manu has stall
foeen their best defence."*

I take an even more serious example of very special
pleading, from a more widely-read volume i Lux Ciiristi '"f",
published for the Central Committee of the United Study
-of Missions. This book in 1903, the date of my copy, and
the year after first publication, had already been reprinted
?seven times; I do not know how often since. Here we
Tead(p. 211):

It should be borne in mind that the mighty systems of paganism
in India., whether Hindu, Buddhist, or Muhammadan, are alike
destitute of all those fruits of Christianity which we term charitable,
philanthropic, benevolent. Where are the hospitals, dispensaries,
.orphanages, asylums for the leper, the blind, the deaf and the mute ?
.They have no place in the heathen economy.

Such a statement hardly needs refutation; but since
^there must be persons able to believe it, let me answer it by
quotations from a single volume, the Sinhalese Mahavamsa.J
King Duttha Gamani (161-137, B. C.) on his death-bed
•could say:

I have daily maintained at eighteen different places, (hospitals)
provided wifch suitable diet, and medicines, prepared by medical
practitioners for the infirm.

Buddhadasa (A. D. 339) was not only himself a
physician, but " out of benevolence towards the inhabitants
of the island, the sovereign provided hospitals for all vil-
lages, and appointed physicians to them. The Kaja, having
composed the work Sarattha-sangraJia, containing the sub-
.stance of all medical science, ordained that there should be

*Birdwood, ^ Industrial Arts of India,' I. 137 and II. 146 ~
t;Lux Christi, An Outline Sbudy of India, A Twilight Land^?

"by Caroline Atwater Wilson, Maemillan.

i This particular lie has been more fully dealt with in the * Dawn

Magazine,' July and August, 1909.