India Past and Present

CHAPTER XI HINDUISM Difficulty of accurately defining Hinduism 119 The Rig-Veda the work of transcendent auttioriti on th'e belie& and practices which constitute it. tao The Vedi religion the first phase of the polytheistic idea sor the universe still dominatint the minds of the great majority of the people of India. '1 20SUMMARY XV The gods of the Vedas personifications of physical force [...] It is the country of the five rivers (fhlinj db): thee`coufitry watered by the coftuttitsstNams of the Sutlej the Beas the Ravi the Ctignab and the Jheelum. [...] From the Western Ghats issue the three great rivers of the Madras Presidency the Godavery the Kistna and the Cauvery which flow eastward across the central plain of the Deccan into the Indian Ocean. [...] occupy very much the same position as the Indus the Sutlej' as the Thpti and the Godaveri as the Brahmaputrt All have their rise high up on their respective tablelands ; some branches of the Godaveri rise close to the sources of the Narbada just as the Indus and the Brahm!putra have their origin somewhere about Lake Mfina'sarowar and yet the former rivers fall into the sea one opposite sides of [...] But ttese have largely diappeared before the axe of the charcoal-burner "2 2 THE DECCAN and the fires of the dliya cultivator whose method in husbandry is to clear a portion of the jungle to set fire to the logs and brushwgod when Pried by the sun and to scatter among the ashes after the first rainfall a handful of grain.