The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c7.65

c7.65

You may remember how skilfully Kingsley’s novel, *Hypatia* pictures Greek religion when it confronts in final struggle, already in the throes of death, the growing belief of the future, as still the Homeric theology; that is, crude anthropomorphism, dashed with occasional but troubled visions of better things. The real rivals of Christianity in the centuries after Christ were Persian forms of religion: Mithraism and Manicheism. Of Mithraism Ernest Renan once said that if the world had not been Christianised it would have been Mithraised; and Manicheism, dualistic, exhaustively Gnostic, with its superb colouring and its appealing asceticism, proved for a time an even more dangerous rival of Christianity.