ABSTRACT
In the beginning of the last chapter of The Religion of India Weber observes that, for Asia, China played somewhat the role general observations about the Asiatic religions as a whole, including those of China which he studied earlier in detail in a separate volume under the title The Religion of China (Confucianism and Taoism). He also studied the main features of these religions vis-à-vis other world religions in comparative perspective in his work Economy and Society under the head ‘The Sociology of Religion’. As we are mainly concerned with Weber’s observations on Indian society we shall confine ourselves here to his views on the general characteristics of Indian religion as expressed in the above cited works and where necessary we shall also refer to his views on the general character of Asiatic religion as a whole. In the last chapter of his work The Religion of India he also mentions certain other basic features of Indian society which are indirectly related to Indian religious teachings, such as the caste system, the mysterious and secretive character of Indian intellectuals, the lack of national feeling etc., and these we shall also discuss here.
