A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

532 THE RELIGION WE ARE BORN IN.sight we undeniably find various differences? amongour sects. Some are Advaitists, some are VisisKtadvaitists,and \others are Dvaitists. Some believe inIncarnations or\ God, some in Image-worship, whileothers are upholder^ of the doctrine of the Formless. Thenas to customs also, various differences are known toexist.The Jats are not outcasted, even if they marry amon^ th^Mahommr dans and Christians. They can enter into anyHindu temple without hindrance. In many villages in thePunjab, one who does not eat swine will hardly be considered a Hindu. In Nepal, a Brdhman can marry in thefour Varnas ;while in Bengal, a Brahman cannot marryeven among the sub-divisions of his own caste. So on andso forth. But in the midst of all these differences we* hoteone point of unity among all Hindus, and it is this, thatno Hindu eats beef. In the same way, there is a greatcommon ground of unity underlying the various forms andsects of our religion.Fhvst, in discussing the Scriptures, one fact stands outprominently,that only those religions which had one ormany Scriptures of their own as their basis, advanced byleaps and bounds, and survive to the present day notwithstanding all the persecution and repression hurled againstthem. The Greek religion, with all its beauty, died out inthe absence of any Scripture to support it ;but the religion of the Jews stands undiminished in its power, beingbased upon the authority of the Old Testament. Thesame is the case with the Hindu religion, with its Scripture the Vedas, the oldest in the world. The Vedas aredivided into the Karma-kanda and the Jnana-kanda.Whether for good or for evil, the Karma-kanda has falleninto disuse in India, though there are some Brahmans inthe Deccan, who stillperform Yajnas now and then with