To-day Brahmanism is so expansive in character that it takes in every form and peculiarity of religious sentiment. The more earnest and spiritual have grand and magnificent theories of God that supply ample food for the imagination; the tender have laws that reach down almost to vegetable life; the ignorant and vulgar have attractive festivals and endless ceremonials suited to engage their attention; the vicious and degraded have the loves and frivolities of the gods and heroes, whose lives encourage pursuit of sensual gratifications; the devotee who abandons all that is sensual for spiritual insight has text upon text and example upon example, taken from the Puranas[54] and from the actual lives of saints, to support him in the effort of finding God at last. The self-sacrificing only quits an illusion for a reality, and the idolater who bows down before wood and stone believes that he sees before him only the form of a divine life hidden everywhere in matter. Thus highest religious thought and life and lowest sensual indulgence meet together in the theology of the Brahmans. FOOTNOTES: [45] A new school of the Brahmanic order--"Brahmo-Somaj," meaning an assembly in the name of God. This Church has connected itself with every progressive movement in India. The originator of this social and religious movement was Rajah Rammahun Roy, a very learned man. In 1818 he published, for the benefit of his own countrymen, selections from the teachings of Jesus, taken from the Gospels, in Sanskrit and Bengali, calling the book "The Precepts of Jesus, the Guide to Peace and Happiness." He died and was buried in England in 1833. Rammahun Roy built a church in Calcutta, where the Brahmo-Somaj still hold their worship. The members belonging to this new school of religious thought are estimated at ten thousand. The women have a separate prayer-meeting from the men. Their form of worship is very simple--singing of hymns adapted from the Vèdas or from the Brahmanasu, or Brahman Aspirations, the Christian Bible, and extempore prayer, followed by an exhortation on morality and purity of thought and character. The late Mr. Keshub Chunder Sen was everywhere recognized as their chief leader. [46] "Rama, Rama, the god Rama, bless you!" [47] The value of a rupee is about forty-five American cents. [48] Their names vary with the language. I have heard them called "Khoo mattees" in parts of Guzerat; also "Dhayahtees" in the Deccan, and Bhaladhya in parts of Western India, from Sanskrit "bala," youth, and "dhya," tenderness. [49] Ocymum or sweet basil. This plant has a very dark-blue flower, and hence, like the large bluish-black bees of India, is held sacred to Krishna and his amours. A fable, however, is told in the Purânas concerning the metamorphosis of the nymph Toolasi (by Krishna) into the shrub which has since borne her name, because he could not return her love. [50] This word is generally pronounced _Mohgul_ by the natives of India.