As the [=A]ryas preach a return to the pure original Hinduism of the Vedas, the first Mahomedan movement inculcates a return to the pure original Mahomedanism of the Koran. In particular, it urges a casting off of the Hindu customs and superstitions that the Indian converts to Mahomedanism have frequently retained,--the offerings to the dead, for example. In the first instance, the movement came from a seventeenth century Arabian sect, the Wahabbis, but the movement reached India only about the year 1820, and therefore is a feature of the period we are surveying. The movement belongs specially to Bengal and the United Provinces north-west of Bengal, and is known by a variety of local names, Wahabbi and other. Significant, as supporting what has been said regarding the absence of anti-British feeling among present-day Mahomedans, is the fact that in the first stages of the Wahabbi movement, both in Eastern and Western Bengal, the duty of war upon infidels--on the British and the Hindus in this case--was a prominent doctrine of the crusade. In Mahomedan language, India was _Daru-l-harb_ or a Mansion of War. In these later years, on the contrary, it is generally recognised by Mahomedans that India under the British rule is not _Daru-l-harb_, but _Daru-l-Islam_, or a Mansion of Islamism, in which war on infidels is not incumbent.[60] It may be noted that the decree, recently issued from Mecca, that British territory is Daru-l-Islam, can only refer to India. [Sidenote: The Aligarh movement analogous to Brahmaism.] Exactly like the Brahmas, the other new Mahomedan sect, in the modern rational spirit, have refined away their faith to a theism or deism purged of the supernatural. Mahomed's inspiration and miracles are rejected. These represent the modern rationalising spirit in religion; reason is their standard, and "reason alone is a sufficient guide." According to Sir Syed Ahmad, founder of the movement, "Islam is Nature, and Nature Islam." Hence the sect is sometimes called the Naturis,[61] or followers of _Natural_ Religion, the adoption of the English word identifying them again with the Br[=a]hmas, who are essentially the outcome of English education and Christian influence among Hindus. The Naturis, the modernised Mahomedans, have as their headquarters the Mahomedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in the United Provinces. It ought to be said that they also claim to be going back to pure original Mahomedanism before it was corrupted by the "Fathers" of Islam. CHAPTER XIII HINDU DOCTRINES--HOW THEY CHANGE "As men's minds receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete, the world advances. Society rests upon them; mighty revolutions spring from them; institutions crumble before their onward march." --_Extract from Mr. Kiddle, an American writer, which occurs in a letter "received" by Madame Blavatsky from Koot Humi in Thibet_. [Sidenote: Will the new religious organisations survive?]