Hindoo

As he wrote about the 1777 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, it contained "within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohametan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."

Evelyn Waugh called Hindoo Holiday “radiantly delightful” and its accuracy of human perception “intoxicating”.

Enthusiasts proposed a dozen groups as the ancestral stock: Phoenicians, Basques, Chinese, Scythians, Romans, Africans, “Hindoos,” ancient Greeks, ancient Assyrians, ancient Egyptians, the inhabitants of Atlantis, even straying bands of Welsh.

He wrote very explicitly that his intention was that the law held “within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohametan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”

In reaction to British diatribes about "Hindoo immorality" a new generation of British-educated Hindu reformers began critically to re-examine their own traditions.