Local Government in Ancient India c15.27

c15.27

Examples of these benefactions help to modify the impression that religious charities in India have always flowed in one particular channel and assumed one stereotyped form, viz. the direct furtherance of the worship of the gods. The type of charities we have just considered shows conclusively how the religious sense of the people in these ancient times was quite sound and even ‘modern’ in its tendencies, by endowing not simply the temples of gods but also the hardly less sacred temples of learning, with institutions aiming at the relief of human suffering, thereby recognizing that the service of man was not the least important mode of serving and worshipping God.