The Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employed in a collective sense, to designate a faith and worship of an almost endlessly diversified description: to trace some of its varieties is the object of the present enquiry. An early division of the Hindu system, and one conformable to the genius of all Polytheism, separated the practical and popular belief, from the speculative or philosophical doctrines. Whilst the common people addressed their hopes and fears to stocks and stones, and multiplied by their credulity and superstition the grotesque objects of their veneration, some few, of deeper thought and wider contemplation, plunged into the mysteries of man and nature, and endeavoured assiduously, if not successfully, to obtain just notions of the cause, the character and consequence of existence. This distinction prevails even in the Vedas, which have their Karma Kanda and Jayana Kanda, or Ritual and Theology. The worship of the populace being addressed to different divinities, he followers of the several gods, naturally separated into different associations, and the adorers of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, or other phantoms of their faith, became distinct and insulated bodies, in the general aggregate: the conflict of opinion on subjects, on which human reason has never yet agreed, led to similar differences in the philosophical class, and resolved itself into the several Dersanas, or schools of philosophy. The varieties of opinion kept pace with those of practice, and six heretical schools of philosophy disputed the pre-eminence with their orthodox brethren: we have little or no knowledge of these systems, and even their names are not satisfactorily stated: they seem, however, to be the Saugata or Bauddha, Arhata, or Jain, and Vdrhaspatya, or Atheistical, with their several subdivisions.
Horace Hayman Wilson (1786 – 1860) was an English orientalist. He became deeply interested in the ancient language and literature of India, and was the first person to translate the Rigveda into English. In 1813 he published the Sanskrit text with a free translation in English rhymed verse of Kalidasa's lyrical poem, the Meghaduuta, or Cloud-Messenger. He prepared the first Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1819) from materials compiled by native scholars, supplemented by his own researches. This work was only superseded by the Sanskritwörterbuch (1853–1876) of Rudolf Roth and Otto von Böhtlingk, who expressed their obligations to Wilson in the preface to their great work. He was interested in Ayurveda and traditional Indian medical and surgical practices. He compiled the local practices observed for cholera and leprosy in his publications in the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta. Lieutenant-colonel Ernest Reinhold Rost (1872 – 1930) O.B.E. was an English physician and Buddhist writer. He converted to Buddhism during his medical service in Burma. In Rangoon, he co-founded the International Buddhist Society known as Buddhasāsana Samāgama with Ananda Metteyya. He was Honorary Secretary of the Society. The first meeting was held on March 15, 1903. In 1907, he and his friend Col. J. R. Pain opened a Buddhist book shop on Bury Street near the British Museum.
