Chapter (অধ্যায়): REPLY TO THE MADRAS ADDRESS PAGE-344Page: 344 of 516
temple, in the image, or in the temple of their own bodies. First know for certain what they are doing-which more than ninety per cent of the revilers are thoroughly ignorant of-and then it will explain itself in the light of the Vedantic philosophy.
Still these Karmas are not compulsory. On the other hand, open your Manu and see where it orders every old man to embrace the fourth Ashrama, and whether he embraces it or not, he must give up all Karma. It is reiterated everywhere that all these Karmas {Sanskrit}-"finally end in Jnana".
As to the matter of that, a Hindu peasant has more religious education than many a gentleman in other countries. A friend criticised the use of European terms of philosophy and religion in my addresses. I would have been very glad to use Sanskrit terms; it would have been much more easy, as being the only perfect vehicle of religious thought. But the friend forgot that I was addressing an audience of Western people; and although a certain Indian missionary declared that the Hindus had forgotten the meaning of their Sanskrit books, and that it was the missionaries who unearthed the meaning, I could not find one in that large concourse of missionaries who could understand a line in Sanskrit-and yet some of them read learned papers criticising the Vedas, and all the sacred sources of the Hindu religion!
It is not true that I am against any religion. It is equally untrue that I am hostile to the Christian missionaries in India. But I protest against certain of their methods of raising money in America. What is meant by those pictures in the school-books for children where the Hindu mother is painted as throwing her children to the crocodiles in the Ganga? The mother is black, but the baby is painted white, to arouse more sympathy and get more money. What is meant by those pictures which paint a man burning his wife at a stake with his own