Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 1

7. The Râshṭrakûṭas collapsed before a revival of the Câlukya dynasty which reappears from 993 to 1190 as the Câlukyas of Kalyani (in the Nizam's dominions). The end of this dynasty was partly due to the usurpation of a Jain named Bijjala in whose reign the sect of the Lingâyats arose.

We must now turn to an event of great historical importance although its details are not relevant to the subject of this book, namely the Mohammedan conquest. Three periods in it may be recognized. First, the conquest of Sind in 712 A.D. by the Arabs, who held it till the eleventh century but without disturbing or influencing India beyond their immediate neighbourhood. Secondly, the period of invasions and dynasties which are commonly called Turki (c. 1000-1526 A.D.). The progress of Islam in Central Asia coincided with the advance to the west and south of vigorous tribes known as Turks or Mongols, and by giving them a religious and legal discipline admirably suited to their stage of civilization, it greatly increased their political efficiency. The Moslim invaders of India started from principalities founded by these tribes near the north-western frontier with a military population of mixed blood and a veneer of Perso-Arabic civilization, and apart from the greater invasions, there were incursions and settlements of Turkis, Afghans and Mongols. The whole period was troublous and distracted. The third period was more significant and relatively stable. Baber, a Turkish prince of Fergana, captured Delhi in 1526 and founded the power of the Mughals, which during the seventeenth century deserved the name of the Indian Empire.

The first serious Moslim incursions were those of Mahmud of Ghazni, who between 997 and 1030 made many raids in which he sacked Kanauj, Muttra, Somnath and many other places but without acquiring them as permanent possessions. Only the Panjab became a Moslim province. In 1150 the rulers of Ghor, a vassal principality near Herat, revolted against Ghazni and occupied its territory, whence the chieftain commonly called Muhammad of Ghor descended on India and subdued Hindustan as well as the Panjab (1175-1206). One of his slaves named Kutb-ud-Din Ibak became his general and viceroy and, when Muhammad died, founded at Delhi the dynasty known as Slave Sultans. They were succeeded by the Khilji Sultans (1290-1318) the most celebrated of whom was the capable but ferocious Ala-ud-Din and these again by the Tughlak dynasty. Muhammad Adil, the second of this line, attempted to move the capital from Delhi to Daulatabad in the Deccan. In 1398 northern India was convulsed by the invasion of Timur who only remained a few months but sacked Delhi with terrible carnage. Many years of confusion followed, and a dynasty known as the Saiyids ruled in greatly diminished territories. But in 1451 arose the Lodi or Afghan dynasty which held the Panjab, Hindustan and Bundelkhand until the advent of the Mughals. These five royal houses do not represent successive invasions from the west. Their founders, though of diverse origin, were all leaders engaged in the troubled politics of northern India, and they all reigned at Delhi, round which a tradition of Empire thus grew up. But the succession was disputed in almost every case; out of thirty-four kings twelve came to a violent end and not one deserved to be called Emperor of India. They were confronted by a double array of rivals, firstly Hindu states which were at no period all reduced to subjection, and, secondly, independent Mohammedan states, for the governors in the more distant provinces threw off their allegiance and proclaimed themselves sovereigns. Thus Bengal from the time of its first conquest by Muhammad Bakhtyar had only a nominal connection with Delhi and declared itself independent in 1338. When Timur upset the Tughlak dynasty, the states of Jaunpur, Gujarat, Malwa and Khandesh became separate kingdoms and remained so until the time of Akbar. In the south one of Muhammad Adil's generals founded the Bahmani dynasty which for about a century (1374-1482) ruled the Deccan from sea to sea. It then split up into five sultanates with capitals at Bidar, Bijapur, Golkonda, Ahmadnagar and Elichpur.

In the twelfth century, the Hindu states were not quite the same as those noticed for the previous period. Kanauj and Gujarat were the most important. The Palas and Senas ruled in Bengal, the Tomaras at Delhi, the Chohans in Ajmer and subsequently in Delhi too. The Mohammedans conquered all these states at the end of the twelfth century. Their advance was naturally less rapid towards the south. In the Deccan the old Hindu dynasties had been replaced by the Hoysalas (c. 1117-1310 A.D.) and the Yadavas (1180-1309 A.D.) with capitals at Halebid and Daulatabad respectively. Both were destroyed by Malik Kafur, the slave general of Sultan Ala-ud-Din, but the spirit of the Deccan was not broken and within a few years the brothers Bukka and Harihara founded the state of Vijayanagar, "the never-to-be-forgotten Empire" as a native scholar has aptly termed it, which for more than two centuries was the centre of Hindu political power. The imposing ruins of its capital may still be seen at Hampi on the Tungabhadra and its possessions comprised everything to the south of this, and, at times, also territory to the north, for throughout its existence it was engaged in warfare with the Bahmani dynasty or the five sultanates. Among its rulers the most notable was Krishnadeva (1509-1529) but the arrogance and weakness of his successors provoked the five Moslim Sultans to form a coalition. They collected an immense army, defeated the troops of Vijayanagar at the battle of Talikota and sacked the city (1565).

In two other districts the Hindus were able to retain political independence until the time of Akbar, namely Orissa and Rajputana. In the former the best known name is Anantavarman Colaganga (1076-1147) who built the temple of Jagannath at Puri, established the Eastern Ganga dynasty and ruled from the Godaveri to the Ganges. The Mohammedans never occupied Rajputana, and though they captured the principal fortresses, they did not retain them. The State of Mewar can even boast that it never made any but a nominal and honourable submission to the Sultans of Delhi. Akbar incorporated the Rajputs in his Empire and by his considerate treatment secured their support.

The history of the Mughals may be divided into three periods. In the first Baber acquired (1526 A.D.) the dominions of the Lodi dynasty as well as Jaunpur, but his death was followed by a troubled interval and it was not till the second period (1556-1707) comprising the reigns of Akbar, Jehangir, Shah Jehan and Aurungzeb that the Empire was securely established. Akbar made himself master of practically all India north of the Godaveri and his liberal policy did much to conciliate his Hindu subjects. He abolished the poll tax levied from non-Moslims and the tax on pilgrimages. The reform of revenue administration was entrusted to an orthodox Hindu, Todar Mall. Among the Emperor's personal friends were Brahmans and Rajputs, and the principal Hindu states (except Mewar) sent daughters to his harem. In religion he was eclectic and loved to hear theological argument. Towards the end of his life he adopted many Hindu usages and founded a new religion which held as one of its principal tenets that Akbar was God's Viceregent. His successors, Jehangir and Shah Jehan, were also tolerant of Hinduism, but Aurungzeb was a fanatical Moslim and though he extended his rule over all India except the extreme south, he alienated the affection of his Hindu subjects by reimposing the poll tax and destroying many temples. The Rajputs, Sikhs and Marathas all rebelled and after his death the Empire entered into the third period in which it rapidly disintegrated. Hindu states, like the Maratha confederacy and Rajputana, asserted themselves. Mohammedan governors declared their independence in Oudh, Bengal, the Nizam's dominions and elsewhere: Persians and Afghans raided the Panjab: French and English contended for the possession of southern India.

It would be outside the purpose of this book even to outline the establishment of British authority, but I may mention that direct European influence began to be felt in the sixteenth century, for Vasco da Gama arrived in Calicut in 1498 and Goa was a Portuguese possession from 1510 onwards. Nor can we linger over the fortunes of the Marathas who took the place of Vijayanagar as the Hindu opposition to Mohammedanism. They are, however, important for us in so far as they show that even in matters political the long Moslim domination had not broken the spirit of the Hindus. About 1660 a chieftain named Sivaji, who was not merely a successful soldier but something of a fanatic with a belief in his divine mission, founded a kingdom in the western Ghats and, like the Sikh leaders, almost created a nation, for it does not appear that before his time the word Maratha (Mahârâshṭra) had any special ethnic significance. After half a century the power of his successors passed into the hands of their Brahman ministers, known as Peshwas, who became the heads of a confederacy of Maratha chiefs, including the Rajas of Gwalior, Berar and Orissa, Indore and Baroda. About 1760 the Marathas were practically masters of India and though the Mughal Emperor nominally ruled at Delhi, he was under their tutelage. They had a chance of reviving the glories of Asoka and the Guptas, but, even apart from the intervention of Europeans, they were distracted by jealousy and quarrels.

CHAPTER III

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF INDIAN RELIGION

1

In the first chapter we enquired whether there are any religious ideas common to Eastern Asia as a whole and found that they amount to little more than a background of nature worship and ancestor worship almost universally present behind the official creeds. Also the conception of a religious system and its relation to beliefs which do not fall within it are not quite the same in these countries as in Europe, so that the inhabitants sometimes follow more than one religion.

Let us now examine the characteristics common to Indian creeds. They are numerous and striking. A prolonged study of the multitudinous sects in which Indian religion manifests itself makes the enquirer feel the truth of its own thesis that plurality is an illusion and only the one substratum real. Still there are divergent lines of thought, the most important of which are Hinduism and Buddhism. Though decadent Buddhism differed little from the sects which surrounded it, early Buddhism did offer a decided contrast to the Brahmanic schools in its theories as to human nature as well as in ignoring tradition and sacerdotalism. We may argue that Buddhism is merely Vaishnavism or Śaivism in travelling dress, but its rejection of Brahmanic authority is of capital importance. It is one of the reasons for its success outside India and its disappearance in India meant that it could not maintain this attitude. Yet many features of Buddhism are due to the fact that Hinduism, and not Islam or Christianity, was the national expression of religion in India and also many features of Hinduism may be explained by the existence of this once vigorous antagonist.

Hinduism[123 - 2Hinduism is often used as a name for the mediaeval and modern religion of India, and Brahmanism for the older pre-Buddhist religion. But one word is needed as a general designation for Indian religion and Hinduism seems the better of the two for this purpose.] has striking peculiarities which distinguish it from Christianity, Islam and even from Buddhism. It recognizes no one master and all unifying principles known to other creeds seem here to be absent. Yet its unity and vitality are clear and depend chiefly on its association with the Brahman caste. We cannot here consider the complex details of the modern caste system but this seems the place to examine the position of the Brahmans, for, from the dawn of Sanskrit literature until now, they have claimed to be the guides of India in all matters intellectual and religious and this persistent claim, though often disputed, has had a great measure of success.

The institution of caste is social rather than religious and has grown gradually: we know for instance that in the time of the Buddha it had not attained to anything like its present complexity and rigidity. Its origin is explicable if we imagine that the Indo-Aryans were an invading people with an unusual interest in religion. The Kshatriyas and Vaiśyas mark the distinction between the warriors or nobles and the plebs which is found in other Aryan communities, and the natives whom the Aryans conquered formed a separate class, recognized as inferior to all the conquerors. This might have happened in any country. The special feature of India is the numerical, social and intellectual strength of the priestly caste. It is true that in reading Sanskrit literature we must remember that most of it is the work of Brahmans and discount their proclivity to glorify the priesthood, but still it is clear that in India the sacerdotal families acquired a position without parallel elsewhere and influenced its whole social and political history. In most countries powerful priesthoods are closely connected with the Government under which they flourish and support the secular authority. As a result of this alliance, kings and the upper classes generally profess and protect orthodoxy, and revolutionary movements in religion generally come from below. But in ancient India though the priests were glad enough to side with the kings, the nobles during many centuries were not ready to give up thinking for themselves. The Hindu's capacity for veneration and the small inclination of the Brahmans to exercise direct government prevented revolts against sacerdotal tyranny from assuming the proportions we should expect, but whereas in many countries history records the attempts of priests to become kings, the position is here reversed. The national proclivity towards all that is religious, metaphysical, intellectual and speculative made all agree in regarding the man of knowledge who has the secret of intercourse with the other world as the highest type. The priests tended to become a hereditary guild possessed of a secret professional knowledge. The warrior caste disputed this monopoly and sought with less learning but not inferior vigour to obtain the same powers. They had some success during a considerable period, for Buddhism, Jainism and other sects all had their origin in the military aristocracy and had it remained purely Hindu, it would perhaps have continued the contest. But it was partly destroyed by Turanian invaders and partly amalgamated with them, so that in 500 A.D. whereas the Brahmans were in race and temperament very much what they were in 500 B.C. the Kshatriyas were different. It is interesting to see how this continuity of race brought triumph to the Brahmans in the theological sphere. At one time the Buddhists and even the Jains seemed to be competitors for the first place, but there are now hardly any Indian Buddhists in India[124 - 2Excluding Burma the last Census gives over 300,000. These are partly inhabitants of frontier districts, which are Indian only in the political sense, and partly foreigners residing in India.] and less than a million and a half of Jains, whereas Hinduism has more than 217 million adherents. The power of persistence and resistance displayed by the priestly caste is largely due to the fact that they were householders not collected in temples or monasteries but distributed over the country in villages, intensely occupied with the things of the mind and soul, but living a simple family life. The long succession of invasions which swept over northern India destroyed temples, broke up monasteries and annihilated dynasties, but their destructive force had less effect on these communities of theologians whose influence depended not on institutions or organization but on their hereditary aptitudes. Though the modern Brahmans are not pure in race, still the continuity of blood and tradition is greater among them than in the royal families of India. Many of these belong to districts which were formerly without the pale of Hinduism: many more are the descendants of the northern hordes who century after century invaded India: few can bring forward any good evidence of Kshatriya descent. Hence in India kings have never attained a national and representative position like the Emperors of China and Japan or even the Sultans of Turkey. They were never considered as the high priests of the land or a quasi-divine epitome of the national qualities: the people tended to regard them as powerful and almost superhuman beings, but somewhat divorced from the moral standard and ideals of their subjects. In early times there was indeed the idea of a universal Emperor, the Cakravartin, analogous to the Messiah but, by a characteristic turn of thought, he was thought of less as a deliverer than as a type of superman, recurring at intervals. But monarchs who even approximated to this type were rare, and some of the greatest of them were in early ages Buddhists and in later Mohammedans, so that they had not the support of the priesthood and as time went on it became less and less possible to imagine all India rendering sympathetic homage to one sovereign.

In the midst of a perturbed flux of dynasties, usually short lived, often alien, only occasionally commanding the affection and respect of the population, the Brahmans have maintained for at least two millenniums and a half their predominant position as an intellectual aristocracy. They are an aristocracy, for they boldly profess to be by birth better than other men. Although it is probable that many clans have entered the privileged order without genealogical warrant, yet in all cases birth is claimed[125 - 2Only tradition preserves the memory of an older and freer system, when warriors like Viśvâmitra were able by their religious austerities to become Brahmans. See Muir's Sanskrit texts, vol. I. pp. 296-479 on the early contests between Warriors and Brahmans. We hear of Kings like Janaka of Videha and Ajâtaśatru of Kâśi who were admitted to be more learned than Brahmans but also of Kings like Vena and Nahusha who withstood the priesthood "and perished through want of submissiveness." The legend of Paraśurâma, an incarnation of Vishnu as a Brahman who destroyed the Kshatriya race, must surely have some historical foundation, though no other evidence is forthcoming of the events which it relates.]. And though the Brahmans have aristocratic faults, such as unreasonable pride of birth, still throughout their long history they have produced in every age men of intelligence, learning and true piety, in numbers sufficient to make their claims to superiority seem reasonable. In all ages they have been sensual, ambitious and avaricious, but in all ages penetrated by the conviction that desire is a plague and gratification unsatisfying. It is the intelligent sensualist and politician who are bound to learn that passion and office are vanity.

A Brahman is not necessarily a priest. Although they have continually and on the whole successfully claimed a monopoly of sacred science, yet at the present day many follow secular callings and probably this was so in early periods. And though many rites can be performed by Brahmans only, yet by a distinction which it is difficult for Europeans to grasp, the priests of temples are not necessarily and, in many places, not usually Brahmans. The reason perhaps is that the easy and superstitious worship offered in temples is considered trivial and almost degrading in comparison with the elaborate ceremonial and subtle speculation which ought to occupy a Brahman's life.

In Europe we are accustomed to associate the ideas of sacerdotalism, hierarchy and dogma, mainly because they are united in the greatest religious organization familiar to us, the Roman Catholic Church. But the combination is not necessary. Hinduism is intensely sacerdotal but neither hierarchical nor dogmatic: Mohammedanism is dogmatic but neither sacerdotal nor hierarchical: Buddhism is dogmatic and also somewhat hierarchical, since it has to deal with bodies of men collected in monasteries where discipline is necessary, but except in its most corrupt forms it is not sacerdotal. The absence of the hierarchical idea in Hinduism is striking. Not only is there no Pope, but there is hardly any office comparable with a Bishopric[126 - 2In southern India and in Assam the superiors of monasteries sometimes exercise a quasi-episcopal authority.]. The relationships recognized in the priesthood are those springing from birth and the equally sacred ties uniting teacher and pupil. Hence there is little to remind us of the organization of Christian Churches. We have simply teachers expounding their sacred books to their scholars, with such combination of tradition and originality as their idiosyncrasies may suggest, somewhat after the theory of congregational churches. But that resemblance is almost destroyed by the fact that both teachers and pupils belong to clans, connected by descent and accepted by the people as a superior order of mankind. Even in the most modern sects the descendants of the founder often receive special reverence.

Though the Brahmans have no ecclesiastical discipline, they do not tolerate the interference of kings. Buddhist sovereigns have summoned councils, but not so Hindu monarchs. They have built temples, paid priests to perform sacrifices and often been jealous of them but for the last two thousand years they have not attempted to control them within their own sphere or to create a State Church. And the Brahmans on their side have kept within their own province. It is true that they have succeeded in imposing—or in identifying themselves with—a most exacting code of social, legal and religious prescriptions, but they have rarely aimed at temporal power or attempted to be more than viziers. They have of course supported pious kings and received support—especially donations—from them, and they have enjoyed political influence as domestic chaplains to royal families, but they have not consented to any such relations between religion and the state as exist (or existed) in England, Russia, Mohammedan countries or China. At the ancient coronation ceremony the priest who presented the new ruler to his subjects said, "This is your King, O people: The King of us Brahmans is Soma[127 - 2Śat. Brâhm. v. 3. 3. 12 and v. 4. 2. 3.]."

2

These facts go far to explain some peculiar features of Hinduism. Compared with Islam or Christianity its doctrines are extraordinarily fluid, multiform and even inconsistent: its practice, though rarely lax, is also very various in different castes and districts. The strangeness of the phenomenon is diminished if one considers that the uniformity and rigidity of western creeds are due to their political more than to their religious character. Like the wind, the spirit bloweth where it listeth: it is governed by no laws but those which its own reverence imposes: it lives in changing speculation. But in Europe it has been in double bondage to the logic of Greece and the law of Rome. India deals in images and metaphor: Greece in dialectic. The original thought of Christianity had something of this Indian quality, though more sober and less fantastic, with more limitation and less imagination. On this substratum the Greeks reared their edifices of dialectic and when the quarrels of theologians began to disturb politics, the state treated the whole question from a legal point of view. It was assumed that there must be a right doctrine which the state should protect or even enforce, and a wrong doctrine which it should discourage or even forbid. Hence councils, creeds and persecutions. The whole position is logical and legal. The truth has been defined: those who do not accept it harm not only themselves but others: therefore they should be restrained and punished.

But in religious matters Hindus have not proceeded in this way as a rule. They have adopted the attitude not of a judge who decides, but of the humane observer who sees that neither side is completely right or completely wrong and avoids expressing his opinion in a legal form. Hindu teachers have never hesitated to proclaim their views as the whole and perfect truth. In that indeed they do not yield to Christian theologians but their pronouncements are professorial rather than judicial and so diverse and yet all so influential that the state, though bound to protect sound doctrine, dare not champion one more than the other. Religious persecution is rare. It is not absent but the student has to search for instances, whereas in Christian Europe they are among the most conspicuous facts of history.

Restless, subtle and argumentative as Hindu thought is, it is less prone than European theology to the vice of distorting transcendental ideas by too stringent definition. It adumbrates the indescribable by metaphors and figures. It is not afraid of inconsistencies which may illustrate different aspects of the infinite, but it rarely tries to cramp the divine within the limits of a logical phrase. Attempts to explain how the divine and human nature were combined in Christ convulsed the Byzantine Empire and have fettered succeeding generations with their stiff formulae. It would be rash to say that the ocean of Hindu theological literature contains no speculations about the incarnations of Vishnu similar to the views of the Nestorians, Monophysites and Catholics, but if such exist they have never attracted much interest or been embodied in well-known phrases[128 - 2The Mârkaṇḍeya Purâṇa discusses the question how Kṛishṇa could become a man.]. The process by which a god can be born as a man, while continuing to exist as a god, is not described in quasi-legal language. Similarly the Soma offered in sacrifices is a god as well as a drink. But though the ritual of this sacrifice has produced an infinity of discussion and exegesis, no doctrine like transubstantiation or consubstantiation has assumed any prominence.

The Hindu has an extraordinary power of combining dogma and free thought, uniformity and variety. For instance it is held that the Vedas are a self-existent, eternal revelation made manifest to ancient sages and that their correct recitation ensures superhuman results. Yet each Veda exists in several recensions handed down by oral tradition in separate schools, and though the exact text and pronunciation are matters of the utmost importance, diversities of opinion respecting them are tolerated and honoured. Further, though the early scriptures were preserved with scrupulous care the canon was never closed. It is impossible to say how many Upanishads there are, nor does a Hindu think the less of an Upanishad because it is not found in a certain list. And in mediaeval and modern times these ancient sacred books have been replaced for all except Brahmans by more recent Sanskrit works, or by a vernacular literature which, though having no particular imprimatur, claims the same authority as the Vedas[129 - 3See for instance The Holy Lives of the Azhvars by Alkondavilli Govindâcârya. Mysore, 1902, pp. 215-216. "The Dravida Vedas have thus as high a sanction and authority as the Girvana (i.e. Sanskrit) Vedas."].

The only essential tenets of Hinduism are recognition of the Brahman caste and divine authority of the Vedas. Those who publicly deny these doctrines as the Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs have done, put themselves outside the pale, but the recognition required to ensure orthodoxy or at least to avoid excommunication must not be compared with that implied by such phrases as recognizing the authority of the Bible, or the supremacy of the Pope. The utmost latitude of interpretation is allowed and the supposed followers of the Veda comprise sects whose beliefs seem to have no relation to one another or to the Veda, philosophic atheists and demonolaters whose religious ideas hardly rise above those of African savages.

One explanation may be, that every nation insists on liberty at the expense of logic in the matters which interest it most. We do this in politics. It might be difficult to make an untravelled oriental understand how parliamentary institutions can continue for a day, how socialists and republicans can take part in the government of a monarchical country, and why the majority do not muzzle the opposition. Yet Englishmen prefer to let this curious illogical muddle continue rather than tolerate some symmetrical and authoritative system which would check free speech and individuality. It is the same in Indian religion. In all ages the Hindu has been passionately devoted to speculation. He will bear heavy burdens in the way of priestly exaction, social restrictions, and elaborate ceremonies, but he will not allow secular or even ecclesiastical authority to cramp and school his religious fancy, nor will he be deterred from sampling an attractive form of speculation merely because it is pronounced unorthodox by the priesthood, and the priesthood, being themselves Hindus, are discreet in the use of anathemas. They insist not so much on particular doctrines and rites as on the principle that whatever the doctrine, whatever the rite, they must be the teachers and officiants. In critical and revolutionary times the Brahmans have often assured their pre-eminence by the judicious recognition of heresies. In all ages there has been a conservative clique which restricted religion to ceremonial observances. Again and again some intellectual or emotional outburst has swept away such narrow limits and proclaimed doctrines which seemed subversive of the orthodoxy of the day. But they have simply become the orthodoxy of the morrow, under the protection of the same Brahman caste. The assailants are turned into champions, and in time the bold reformers stiffen into antiquated saints.

Hinduism has not been made but has grown. It is a jungle not a building. It is a living example of a great national paganism such as might have existed in Europe if Christianity had not become the state religion of the Roman Empire, if there had remained an incongruous jumble of old local superstitions, Greek philosophy and oriental cults such as the worship of Mithra or Serapis. Yet the parallel is not exact, for in Rome many of the discordant religious elements remained exotic, whereas in India they all, whatever their origin, became Indian and smack of the soil. There was wanting in European paganism the bond of union supplied by the Brahmans who by sometimes originating, sometimes tolerating and adapting, have managed to set their seal upon all Indian beliefs.

3

Thus the dominance of the Brahmans and their readiness to countenance every cult and doctrine which can attract worshippers explains the diversity of Indian religion, but are there no general characteristics which mark all its multiple forms? There are, and they apply to Buddhism as well as Hinduism, but in attempting to formulate them it is well to say that Indian religion is as wilful and unexpected in its variations as human nature itself and that all generalizations about it are subject to exceptions. If we say that it preaches asceticism and the subjection of the flesh, we may be confronted with the Vallabhâcâryas who inculcate self-indulgence; if we say that it teaches reincarnation and successive lives, we may be told that the Lingâyats[130 - 3I am inclined to believe that the Lingâyat doctrine really is that Lingâyats dying in the true faith do not transmigrate any more.] do not hold that doctrine. And though we might logically maintain that these sects are unorthodox, yet it does not appear that Hindus excommunicate them. Still, it is just to say that the doctrines mentioned are characteristic of Hinduism and are repudiated only by eccentric sects.

Perhaps the idea which has had the widest and most penetrating influence on Indian thought is that conception of the Universe which is known as Saṃsâra, the world of change and transmigration. The idea of rebirth and the wandering of souls from one body to another exists in a fragmentary form among savage tribes in many countries, but in India it makes its appearance as a product of ripening metaphysics rather than as a survival. It plays no part in the Vedic hymns: it first acquires importance in the older Upanishads but more as a mystery to be communicated to the elect than as a popular belief and to some extent as the special doctrine of the military class rather than of the Brahmans. At the time of the Buddha, however, it had passed beyond this stage and was as integral a part of popular theology as is the immortality of the soul in Europe.

Such expressions as the transmigration of souls or metempsychosis imperfectly represent Indian ideas. They are incorrect as descriptions of Buddhist dogmas, which start by denying the existence of a soul, and they are not entirely suitable to those Vedantic schools which regard transmigration as part of the illusory phenomenal world. The thought underlying the doctrine is rather that as a child grows into youth and age, so the soul passes from life to life in continuity if not in identity. Whatever the origin of the idea may have been, its root in post-Vedic times is a sense of the transitoriness but continuity of everything. Nothing is eternal or even permanent: not even the gods, for they must die, not even death, for it must turn into new life.

This view of life is ingrained in Indian nature. It is not merely a scientific or philosophical speculation, but it summarizes the outlook of ordinary humanity. In Europe the average religious man thanks or at least remembers his Creator. But in India the Creator has less place in popular thought. There is a disinclination to make him responsible for the sufferings of the world, and speculation, though continually occupied with the origins of things, rarely adopts the idea familiar to Christians and Mohammedans alike, that something was produced out of nothing by the divine fiat. Hindu cosmogonies are various and discordant in details, but usually start with the evolution or emanation of living beings from the Divinity and often a reproductive act forms part of the process, such as the hatching of an egg or the division of a Divinity into male and female halves. In many accounts the Deity brings into being personages who continue the work of world-making and such entities as mind, time and desire are produced before the material world. But everything in these creation stories is figurative. The faithful are not perplexed by the discrepancies in the inspired narratives, and one can hardly imagine an Indian sect agitated by the question whether God made the world in six literal days.

All religious doctrines, especially theories about the soul, are matters of temperament. A race with more power of will and more delight in life might have held that the soul is the one agent that can stand firm and unshaken midst the flux of circumstance. The intelligent but passive Hindu sees clearly that whatever illusions the soul may have, it really passes on like everything else and continueth not in one stay. He is disposed to think of it not as created with the birth of the body, but as a drop drawn from some ocean to which it is destined to return. As a rule he considers it to be immortal but he does not emphasize or value personality in our sense. In previous births he has already been a great many persons and he will be a great many more. Whatever may be the thread between these existences it is not individuality. And what he craves is not eternal personal activity, but unbroken rest in which personality, even if supposed to continue, can have little meaning.

The character of the successive appearances or tenements of the soul is determined by the law of Karma, which even more than metempsychosis is the basis of Indian ideas about the universe. Karma is best known as a term of the Buddhists, who are largely responsible both for the definition and wide diffusion of the doctrine. But the idea is Brahmanic as well as Buddhist and occurs in well-known passages of the Upanishads, where it is laid down that as a man acts so shall he be in the next life[131 - 3E.g. Brih.-Âr. III. 2. 13 and IV. 4. 2-6.]. The word (which means simply deed) is the accepted abbreviation for the doctrine that all deeds bring upon the doer an accurately proportionate consequence either in this existence, or, more often, in a future birth. At the end of a man's life his character or personality is practically the sum of his acts, and when extraneous circumstances such as worldly position disappear, the soul is left with nothing but these acts and the character they have formed as, in Indian language, the fruit of life and it is these acts and this character which determine its next tenement. That tenement is simply the home which it is able to occupy in virtue of the configuration and qualities which it has induced in itself. It cannot complain.

One aspect of the theory of Saṃsâra which is important for the whole history of Indian thought is its tendency towards pessimism. This tendency is specially definite and dogmatic in Buddhism, but it is a marked characteristic of the Indian temperament and appears in almost every form of devotion and speculation. What salvation or the desire to be saved is to the ordinary Protestant, Mukti or Moksha, deliverance, is to the ordinary Hindu. In Buddhism this desire is given a dogmatic basis for it is declared that all existence in all possible worlds necessarily involves dukkha or suffering[132 - 3This is the accepted translation of dukkha but perhaps it is too strong, and uneasiness, though inconvenient for literary reasons, gives the meaning better.] and this view seems to have met with popular as well as philosophic assent. But the desire for release and deliverance is based less on a contemplation of the woes of life than on a profound sense of its impermanence and instability[133 - 3The old Scandinavian literature with its gods who must die is equally full of this sense of impermanence, but the Viking temperament bade a man fight and face his fate.]. Life is not the preface to eternity, as religious Europeans think: the Hindu justly rejects the notion that the conduct of the soul during a few score years can fix its everlasting destiny. Every action is important for it helps to determine the character of the next life, but this next life, even if it should be passed in some temporary heaven, will not be essentially different from the present. Before and behind there stretches a vista of lives, past, present and to come, impermanent and unsatisfying, so that future existences are spoken of not as immortality but as repeated death.

4

This sense of weary reiteration is increased by two other doctrines, which are prevalent in Hinduism, though not universal or uncontested. The first of them identifies the human soul with the supreme and only Being. The doctrine of Saṃsâra holds that different forms of existence may be phases of the same soul and thus prepares the way for the doctrine that all forms of existence are the same and all souls parts of, or even identical with the Âtman or Self, the divine soul which not only pervades the world but is the world. Connected with this doctrine is another, namely, that the whole world of phenomena is Mâyâ or illusion. Nothing really exists except the supreme Âtman: all perception of plurality and difference is illusion and error: the reality is unity, identity and rest. The development of these ideas leads to some of the principal systems of philosophy and will claim our attention later. At present I merely give their outlines as indicative of Hindu thought and temperament. The Indian thinks of this world as a circular and unending journey, an ocean without shore, a shadow play without even a plot. He feels more strongly than the European that change is in itself an evil and he finds small satisfaction in action for its own sake. All his higher aspirations bid him extricate himself from this labyrinth of repeated births, this phantasmagoria of fleeting, unsubstantial visions and he has generally the conviction that this can be done by knowledge, for since the whole Saṃsâra is illusion, it collapses and ceases so soon as the soul knows its own real nature and its independence of phenomena. This conviction that the soul in itself is capable of happiness and in order to enjoy needs only the courage to know itself and be itself goes far to correct the apathy which is the great danger of Indian thought. It is also just to point out that from the Upanishads down to the writings of Rabindranath Tagore in the present day Indian literature from time to time enunciates the idea that the whole universe is the manifestation of some exuberant force giving expression to itself in joyous movement. Thus the Taittirîya Upanishad (III. 6) says: "Bliss is Brahman, for from bliss all these beings are born, by bliss when born they live, into bliss they enter at their death."

It is remarkable that Indian thought, restless and speculative as it is, hardly ever concerns itself with the design, object or end of the world. The notion of [Greek: Telos plays little part in its cosmogony or ethics[134 - 3But see Rabindrannath Tagore: Sadhana, especially the Chapter on Realization.]. The Universe is often regarded as a sport, a passing whim of the divine Being, almost a mistake. Those legends which describe it as the outcome of a creative act, generally represent the creator as moved by some impulse to multiply himself rather than as executing some deliberate if mysterious plan. Legends about the end of the world and the establishment of a better order are rare. Hindu chronology revels in periods, whose enormous length though expressed in figures leaves no real impression on the mind, days and nights of Brahma, Kalpas, Manvantaras and Yugas, in which gods and worlds are absorbed into the supreme essence and born again. But there is no finality about these catastrophes: the destruction of the whole universe is as certain as the death of a mouse and to the philosopher not more important[135 - 3Cf. Shelley's lines in Hellas:—"Worlds on worlds are rolling everFrom creation to decay,Like the bubbles on a riverSparkling, bursting, borne away."]. Everything is periodic: Buddhas, Jinas and incarnations of all sorts are all members of a series. They all deserve great respect and are of great importance in their own day, but they are none of them final, still less are they able to create a new heaven and earth or to rise above the perpetual flux of Saṃsâra. The Buddhists look forward to the advent of Maitreya, the future Buddha, and the Hindus to the reappearance of Vishnu as Kalkî, who, sword in hand and mounted on a white horse, will purge India of barbarians, but these future apparitions excite only a feeble interest in the popular conscience and cannot be compared in intensity with such ideas as the Jewish Messiah.

It may seem that Indian religion is dreamy, hopeless, and unpractical, but another point of view will show that all Indian systems are intensely practical and hopeful. They promise happiness and point out the way. A mode of life is always prescribed, not merely by works on law and ceremony but by theological and metaphysical treatises. These are not analogous to the writings of Kant or Schopenhauer and to study them as if they were, is like trying to learn riding or cricket by reading handbooks. The aphorisms of the Sânkhya and Vednâta are meant to be read under the direction of a teacher who will see that the pupil's mind is duly prepared not only by explanation but by abstinence and other physical training. Hindu religions are unpractical only in so far that they decline to subordinate themselves to human life. It is assumed that the religious man who is striving towards a goal beyond this world is ready to sacrifice the world without regret and in India the assumption is justified surprisingly often.

As mentioned already the word god has more than one meaning. In India we have at least two different classes of divinities, distinguished in the native languages. First there is Brahman the one self-existent, omnipresent, superpersonal spirit from whom all things emanate and to whom all things return. The elaboration of this conception is the most original feature of Indian theology, which tends to regard Brahman as not merely immanent in all things, but as being all things, so that the soul liberated from illusion can see that it is one with him and that nothing else exists. Very different is the meaning of Deva: this signifies a god (which is not the same as God, though our language insufficiently distinguishes the two) roughly comparable with the gods of classical mythology[136 - 3Nevertheless deva is sometimes used in the Upanishads as a designation of the supreme spirit.]. How little sense of divinity it carries with it is seen by the fact that it became the common form of address to kings and simply equivalent to Your Majesty. In later times, though Siva is styled Mahâdeva, it was felt that the great sectarian gods, who are for their respective worshippers the personal manifestations in which Brahman makes himself intelligible, required some name distinguishing them from the hosts of minor deities. They are commonly spoken of by some title signifying the Lord: thus Siva is Îśvara, Vishnu and his incarnations are more often styled Bhagavad.

From the Vedic hymns onwards the gods of India have been polymorphic figures not restricted by the limitations of human personality. If a Jew or a Moslim hears new views about God, he is disposed to condemn them as wrong. The Hindu's inclination is to appropriate them and ascribe to his own deity the novel attributes, whether they are consistent with the existing figure or not. All Indian gods are really everything. As the thought of the worshipper wanders among them they turn into one another. Even so sturdy a personality as Indra is declared to be the same as Agni and as Varuna, and probably every deity in the Vedic pantheon is at some time identified with another deity. But though in one way the gods seem vague and impersonal, in another the distinction between gods and men is slight. The Brâhmaṇas tell us that the gods were originally mortal and obtained immortality by offering sacrifices: the man who sacrifices like them makes for himself an immortal body in the abode of the gods and practically becomes a Deva and the bliss of great sages is declared equal to the bliss of the gods[137 - 3E.g. Brih.-Âr. Up. IV. 3. 33 and the parallel passages in the Taittirîya and other Upanishads.]. The human and divine worlds are not really distinct, and as in China and Japan, distinguished men are deified. The deification of Buddha takes place before our eyes as we follow the course of history: the origin of Krishna's godhead is more obscure but it is probable that he was a deified local hero. After the period of the Brâhmaṇas the theory that deities manifest themselves to the world in avatâras or descents, that is in our idiom incarnations, becomes part of popular theology.

There are other general characteristics of Indian religion which will be best made clear by more detailed treatment in succeeding chapters. Such are, firstly, a special theory of sacrifice or ritual which, though totally rejected by Buddhism, has survived to modern times. Secondly, a belief in the efficacy of self-mortification as a means of obtaining super-human powers or final salvation. Thirdly, an even more deeply rooted conviction that salvation can be obtained by knowledge. Fourthly, there is the doctrine that faith or devotion to a particular deity is the best way to salvation, but this teaching, though it seems natural to our minds, does not make its appearance in India until relatively late. It is not so peculiarly Indian as the other ideas mentioned, but even at the outset it is well to insist on its prevalence during the last two thousand years because a very false impression may be produced by ignoring it.

There also runs through Indian religion a persistent though inconspicuous current of non-theistic thought. It does not deny the existence of spirits but it treats them as being, like men, subject to natural laws, though able, like men, to influence events. The ultimate truth for it is not pantheism but fixed natural laws of which no explanation is offered. The religion of the Jains and the Sânkhya philosophy belong to this current. So did the teaching of several ancient sects, such as the Âjîvìkas, and strictly speaking Buddhism itself. For the Buddha is not an Avatâra or a messenger but a superman whose exceptional intelligence sees that the Wheel of Causation and the Four Truths are part of the very nature of things. It is strange too that asceticism, sacrifices and modern tantric rites which seem to us concerned with the relations between man and God are in India penetrated by a non-theistic theory, namely that there are certain laws which can be studied and applied, much like electricity, and that then spirits can be coerced to grant what the ascetic or sacrificer desires. At the same time such views are more often implied than formulated. The Dharma is spoken of as the teaching of the Buddha rather than as Cosmic Order like the Tao of the Chinese and though tantric theory assumes the existence of certain forces which can be used scientifically, the general impression produced by tantric works is that they expound an intricate mythology and ritual.

CHAPTER IV

VEDIC DEITIES AND SACRIFICES

1

Our knowledge of early Indian religion is derived almost entirely from literature. After the rise of Buddhism this is supplemented to some extent by buildings, statues and inscriptions, but unlike Egypt and Babylonia, pre-Buddhist India has yielded no temples, images or other religious antiquities, nor is it probable that such will be discovered. Certainly the material for study is not scanty. The theological literature of India is enormous: the difficulty is to grasp it and select what is important. The enquirer is confronted with a series of encyclopædic works of great bulk and considerable antiquity, treating of every aspect of religion which interested the Brahmans. But he continually feels the want of independent testimony to check their statements. They set forth the views of their authors but whether those views met with general acceptance outside the Brahmanic caste and influenced Indian life as a whole or whether classes, such as the military caste, or regions, such as western India and Dravidian India, had different views, it is often hard to say. Even more serious is the difficulty of chronology which affects secular as well as religious literature. The feats of Hindus in the matter of computing time show in the most extravagant form the peculiarities of their mental temperament, for while in their cosmogonies æons whose length the mind can hardly grasp are tabulated with the names of their superhuman rulers there are few[138 - 3The principal one is the date of Asoka, deducible from an inscription in which he names contemporary Seleucid monarchs.] dates in the pre-Mohammedan history which can be determined from purely Indian sources. The fragments of obscure Greek writers and the notes of a travelling Chinaman furnish more trustworthy data about important epochs in the history of the Hindus than the whole of their gigantic literature, in which there has been found no mention of Alexander's invasion and only scattered allusions to the conquests of the Sakas, Kushans and Hûnas. We can hardly imagine doubt as to the century in which Shakespeare or Virgil lived, yet when I first studied Sanskrit the greatest of Indian dramatists, Kalidasa, was supposed to have lived about 50 B.C. His date is not yet fixed with unanimity but it is now generally placed in the fifth or sixth century A.D.

This chronological chaos naturally affects the value of literature as a record of the development of thought. We are in danger of moving in a vicious circle: of assigning ideas to an epoch because they occur in a certain book, while at the same time we fix the date of the book in virtue of the ideas which it contains. Still we may feel some security as to the sequence, if not the exact dates, of the great divisions in Indian religious literature such as the period of the Vedic hymns, the period of the Brâhmaṇas, the rise of Buddhism, the composition of the two great epics, and the Puranas. If we follow the opinion of most authorities and accept the picture of Indian life and thought contained in the Pali Tripitaka as in the main historical, it seems to follow that both the ritual system of the Brâhmaṇas and the philosophic speculations of the Upanishads were in existence by 500 B.C.[139 - 4E.g. a learned Brahman is often described in the Sutta Pitaka as "a repeater (of the sacred words) knowing the mystic verses by heart, one who had mastered the three Vedas, with the indices, the ritual, the phonology, the exegesis and the legends as a fifth."] and sufficiently developed to impress the public mind with a sense of their futility. Some interval of mental growth seems to separate the Upanishads from the Brâhmaṇas and a more decided interval separates the Brâhmaṇas from the earlier hymns of the Rig Veda, if not from the compilation of the whole collection[140 - 4There had been time for misunderstandings to arise. Thus the S^{.}atapatha Brâhmana sees in the well-known verse "who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifices" an address to a deity named Ka (Sanskrit for who) and it would seem that an old word, uloka, has been separated in several passages into two words, u (a meaningless particle) and loka.]. We may hence say that the older Upanishads and Brahmaṇas must have been composed between 800 and 500 B.C. and the hymns of the Rig Veda hardly later than 1000 B.C. Many authorities think the earlier hymns must date from 2000 rather than 1000 B.C. but the resemblance of the Rig Veda to the Zoroastrian Gathas (which are generally regarded as considerably later than 1000 B.C.) is plain, and it will be strange if the two collections prove to be separated by an interval of many centuries. But the stage of social and religious culture indicated in the Vedic hymns may have begun long before they were composed, and rites and deities common to Indians and Iranians existed before the reforms of Zoroaster[141 - 4Recent scholars are disposed to fix the appearance of Zoroaster between the middle of the seventh century and the earlier half of the sixth century B.C. But this date offers many difficulties. It makes it hard to explain the resemblances between the Gathas and the Rig Veda and how is it that respectable classical authorities of the fourth century B.C. quoted by Pliny attribute a high antiquity to Zoroaster?].

It may seem that everything is uncertain in this literature without dates or authors and that the growth of religion in India cannot be scientifically studied. The difficulties are indeed considerable but they are materially reduced by the veneration in which the ancient scriptures were held, and by the retentiveness of memory and devotion to grammar, if not to history, which have characterized the Brahmans for at least twenty-five centuries. The authenticity of certain Vedic texts is guaranteed not only by the quotations found in later works, but by treatises on phonetics, grammar and versification as well as by indices which give the number of words in every book, chapter and verse. We may be sure that we possess not perhaps the exact words of the Vedic poets, but what were believed about 600 B.C. to be their exact words, and there is no reason to doubt that this is a substantially correct version of the hymns as recited several centuries earlier[142 - 4This applies chiefly to the three Samhitâs or collections of hymns and prayers. On the other hand there was no feeling against the composition of new Upanishads or the interpolation and amplification of the Epics.].

In drawing any deductions from the hymns of the Rig Veda it must be remembered that it is the manual of the Hotri priests[143 - 4The Hotri recites prayers while other priests perform the act of sacrifice. But there are several poems in the Rig Veda for which even Indian ingenuity has not been able to find a liturgical use.]. This does not affect the age or character of the single pieces: they may have been composed at very different dates and they are not arranged in the order in which the priest recites them. But the liturgical character of the compilation does somewhat qualify its title to give a complete picture of religion. One could not throw doubt on a ceremony of the Church, still less on a popular custom, because it was not mentioned in the missal, and we cannot assume that ideas or usages not mentioned in the Rig Veda did not exist at the time when it was composed.

We have no other Sanskrit writings contemporary with the older parts of the Rig Veda, but the roots of epic poetry stretch far back and ballads may be as old as hymns, though they neither sought nor obtained the official sanction of the priesthood. Side by side with Vedic tradition, unrecorded Epic tradition built up the figures of Siva, Râma and Krishna which astonish us by their sudden appearance in later literature only because their earlier phases have not been preserved.