I. LAND AND PEOPLE…

I. LAND AND PEOPLE

India like China and Egypt is reputed to be a land of evasive mysteries. Like them it had a self-contained civilisation with apparently no desire to reach out from it to the greater world. To be sure, India was not shut off from outside contact as fully as China, for the Phœnicians were early drawn by its fabled treasures to visit it in a commercial capacity, and tradition relates that, at least once, Assyrian forces had invaded its bounds on a less peaceful mission. But, nevertheless, the share of the Indians themselves in such intercourse was largely passive. They received foreign traders, unlike the early Egyptians; and they repelled foreign invaders; but they themselves seemed just as little inclined as before to spread beyond national bounds. Even the Egyptians had their periods of foreign conquests, when they penetrated Asia, at least as far as the Tigris, but if the Hindus ever yielded to a like impulse there is no record of it preserved to us. Yet their influence upon the nations that traded with them must have been considerable and they thus have a larger share in the scheme of ancient history than China. Even so, however, their place is a minor one compared with that of Egypt and Babylonia. Even were it greater, the records from which to reconstruct its history are meagre and we shall be obliged to content ourselves with a sketch that is at best but fragmentary.

There is another point of view from which the Hindus have an interest exceeding that of even the most important of ancient nations that we have hitherto studied. For with them we come for the first time in contact with the great Aryan race. Hitherto we have traced the history of the Hamitic, Semitic, and Turanian races, but now with the Aryan race we enter upon what may be considered the direct channel of European history, for practically all subsequent history has to do with this race.

Turning then to the Hindus, the easternmost branch of the great Indo-Germanic or Aryan race, we find, as was to be expected, the same utter obscurity as to origin that we have seen encompassing all questions of racial beginnings elsewhere. One perhaps is justified, however, in feeling that in the case of the Hindus secure traditions carry us one stage farther back than is the case, for example, with such races as the Egyptians and Chinese. For it is accepted as a clear historic fact that the Aryan race, who came to be at a very early day,--at least 1000 B.C.,--the absolutely dominant force practically throughout the vast territory of India, had invaded this territory from the northwest; had come, in short, from that Central-Asiatic centre of distribution which we have just spoken of as the long accepted traditional cradle of the Aryan races. Whether at a still earlier period this migration had its source in more distant lands, including ultimately the Atlantic borders of Europe, is altogether problematical, but that the immediate source of invasion was Central Asia is not to be doubted.

The beginning of this invasion in which the Central-Asiatic Aryan people descended upon the northwestern regions of the land, which we now term India, date from a vaguely determined period, which can hardly be more recent than 2000 years B.C. From this beginning the invaders spread farther and farther beyond the Ganges, occupying the great fertile plains of Central India, and ultimately the plateau of the Deccan, and crowding the original inhabitants into out-of-the-way corners of the land till they seemed almost exterminated. This extermination of the original or non-Aryan population of India, however, was only relative, as even now there are many millions of their descendants still living in India; but the invaders became so utterly dominant and so enormously preponderant in numbers that the original inhabitants may practically be disregarded in treating of Indian history.

The exact details of the early history of the Aryans in India are quite unknown. So far as the history of this period can be reconstructed at all, materials for it are furnished, as in the case of the early history of almost all other nations, solely by traditions, which came ultimately, and that at a very early day, to be woven into a system of theology. Here, as elsewhere, those tales and myths of godlike heroes and hero-gods which embalmed the spirit of many aspiring generations, came ultimately, when gathered into books, to be accepted as a divine revelation made to a single early prophet. Here, as among several other nations, there was also built up a great system of national epic poetry. Parts of this are preserved to us under the titles of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and are in themselves, as is always the case with the great national epics, important sources of history if properly interpreted.

The great religious books bore the name of Vedas, and these at a relatively late stage of national evolution,--yet, perhaps as early as 800 or 900 B.C.,--were gathered into a document, which came to be known as Manu’s Code, Manu being a name which signified ethnologically the first man, and the code being of course the supposed divine revelation delivered to that first man. This code in its various departments is the chief source on which historians must draw in interpreting the early history of India. At the time when this code was written, society in India had already reached a relatively high grade of civilisation; in particular, the priests had fixed their firm hold upon the national life, and that strange system of castes, which is so typical a feature in Indian life, had become firmly established.

Some centuries later, the power of the Brahmans was for a time threatened through the advent of a new prophet and philosophical teacher in the person of the prince Buddha. This reformer lived about the 6th century B.C. He was of royal blood, but he early threw aside the prerogatives of his birth and became a peripatetic philosopher. His aim was essentially the same as that which actuated another Aryan, Socrates by name, in the distant land of Greece, at a slightly later period. He strove to inculcate lessons of right living, of practical morality. With religion, as such, he professed to have little concern, yet soon after his death his teachings served as the foundations for a new religious system, which spread rapidly under stimulus of persecution and waged a long, fierce warfare with the established creeds of Brahmanism.

As regards India itself, this religious rebellion did not prove a revolution, for the established religion of Brahmanism remained in firm possession of the field, expelling the would-be usurper. But the doctrines of Buddha thus renounced in the land of their origin, spread rapidly to the east, into Tibet and China, and are to-day accepted as the one true faith by some scores of millions of people--an appreciable proportion of the total population of the globe: perhaps as large a number as subscribe to the tenets of any other single form of religious belief.

As to the political history of India, in a narrower sense, comparatively little need be said, so closely is this history bound up with the growth and struggles of religious doctrines. The land was early divided into lesser principalities ruled by petty sovereigns, who themselves were more or less dominated by the priesthood. There were, of course, times when one or another of these principalities was aggrandised through the efforts of an unusual sovereign, and, as we shall see, there were periods and places where memorials of the power of princes and of priests were left in the form of extraordinary temples and grottos of unique design and execution. But beyond the fact of the gradual sweep of the Aryan civilisation from the northwest toward the south and east, until it gradually encompassed the entire Indian peninsula, and the further fact of the growth of Brahmanism, with all that it implied, until it dominated the entire race, there is no single main current in the evolution of the people of ancient India, which the present-day historian can trace in any such clean-cut way, as, for example, he can trace the succession of dominant dynasties in Egypt, or in Assyrio-Babylonia.[a]

THE LAND

On the southern border of that central highland which, like “a high firm rocky islet in the storm-tossed sea,” forms the centre of the Asiatic continent, rise the Himalayas, the highest mountain-range on earth, in parallel chains broken by wild abysses. Boundless fields of snow and ice which even the power of the tropical sun cannot affect and white mountain tops of shimmering brilliance surround the Himavat, “the King of rocks,” as it is termed in the Indian epic, where “nothing blooms, not a spear of grass puts forth its green, and no bird soars through the air, where not a living thing stirs save the wind alone.” The dead silence of ice-bound nature reigns everywhere, no plant, no moss springs from the steep snow-covered slopes. Vegetation commences only at the third ridge of mountains, and, making its first appearance in oaks, birches, and pines and in a scanty cultivation of corn, soon shows its full power in the mighty tree-growth of the lower forest region, which then passes into a highland on the west, and on the east into a richly watered plain, where in the tree-high jungle grass of the impenetrable primeval forest, tigers, elephants, and huge snakes abound, and in the stagnant waters and swamps the plants rot and “the air is filled with foul pestilence.” “This mountainous wall,” says Duncker, “which extends about 1750 miles from west to east, determines the nature and life of the country that stretches out southward from it as the peninsula of Italy does from the European Alps,” and gives it the character of a “continent isolated geographically, climatically, and historically.”

The Himalaya Mountains protect highland and plains from the rough north winds which blow cold and devastating over the highland of central Asia; but they also check the rain clouds, the collected moisture of the ocean which the monsoons drive hither from the southern sea. So these clouds have to pour forth their store of water on the plains at the foot of the Himalayas, “turning the sun’s heat into coolness and the parched vegetation into a luxuriant green.” Hence arises that variety of climate and vegetation which has ever caused India to appear the most blessed part of the earth, the fruit-garden of the world.

The shape of India can be compared to two triangles, which, coinciding at their base, extend their two apexes to opposite points of the compass, northward and southward. The northern triangle, whose sides are intersected by lofty chains of mountains, while broad lowlands and plains stretch over the middle, is Hindustan proper. Across it the mightiest rivers in the country, the Indus in the west, the Brahmaputra in the east, and the Ganges in the middle, after bursting forth from the icefields of the Himalayas, follow their tortuous courses to the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal.

The southern triangle, on the other hand, the sides of which consist of flat coast and the middle of broad plateaus and chains of mountains, is formed by the Deccan, the middle one of the three great peninsulas which extend from the mainland of Asia toward the south.

Hindustan is composed of the two river valleys of the Indus and Ganges, which are quite distinct in nature and history. Both rivers have their source in the northern mountains, in the vicinity of the sacred lakes, where Kailasa, the mountain of the gods, rises to an unmeasured height, in the same district where the three other great streams of India, the Sutlej, the Brahmaputra, and the Jumna, have their rise.

The Indus at first turns westward, then, not far from the famous vale of Kashmir, it takes a southerly direction, and increased by the Jhelum, Sutlej, and three other tributaries, it flows on through the Punjab (“Land of the Five Rivers”) to the Indian Ocean.

The Ganges, on the contrary, which with its tributary the Jumna takes a southerly course, soon reaches the Indian plains, but, checked in its course by the rugged Vindhya Mountains, it turns to the east, and increased by many tributaries from north and south, it pours its fertilising waters over its low banks, producing that luxuriant vegetation which manifests itself both in the mighty tree-growth with its shady boughs and tops, and in the richness of the splendid products and the tropical flora.

With this fertility, however, is combined an enervating sultry atmosphere and a foul pestilential air, arising from the heat and moisture of the climate, which has most disastrous effects in the alluvial district of Bengal, where the waters of the Brahmaputra in their southerly course approach the wide stream of the Ganges.

“The district above the Delta,” says Lassen, “where the still undivided Ganges is so wide that one can scarcely see from bank to bank, is a most rich and fertile country, but of an enervating and sultry climate. In the Delta itself an even more luxuriant power of production manifests itself. The earth brings forth such mighty, impenetrable thickets of trees and climbing plants that man, unable to contend with it, is obliged to give it over to the wild beasts for a dwelling, to the tiger for sovereignty.”

The Indus first follows, in a westerly direction, the great rock-gorge which runs with a depth of ten thousand feet between the parallel mountain chains of the Karakoram (Muz-Tagh) and the Himalayas. After breaking through the Hindu Kush mountains in a narrow bed, it flows in a southerly direction from the point where, not far from the city of Attock, at the west of the flowery Vale of Kashmir, its waters are increased by the river Kabul.

The Vale of Kashmir, which from snowfield to snowfield has a width of only ten to twelve miles, once enjoyed a great fame as the seat of the original paradise of the human race. And although more exact investigations have stripped off much of its poetic charm, it may nevertheless, on account of the fertility of its soil, its glorious climate, and the beauty of its mountain scenery be regarded as one of the most blessed spots upon earth. It forms an isolated world by itself, is favourably situated for trade with the north and the west, and was in earliest times one of the principal seats of Indian culture. In the mountains of Kashmir rises the Jhelum (Hydaspes) [the ancient Vitasta], one of those famous four rivers which together with the Indus have given the country the name of Punjab (or Land of the Five Rivers). The most easterly river is the Sutlej, called in its lower course Garra, and by the Greeks, Hyphasis.

After the Indus has received these rivers, its valley is bounded on the west by the mountain chains of Persia, and on the east by a wide waterless steppe, which extends from the foothills of the Himalayas to the sea, and which gives only sparse nourishment to the buffalo herds, asses and camels. Near the mouth of the river, inundations of the sea, the dense growth of rushes and reeds and the want of fresh water prevent better cultivation and a denser population.

Westward of the upper Indus lies the rich beautiful mountain land of Afghanistan, intersected by branches of the Hindu Kush Mountains, and since remote antiquity the great caravan route--“a long gateway between Iran and India, through which the products of the land as well as those of the spirit passed for exchange.” In the south of Afghanistan the western boundary of India is formed by some chains of mountains that tower above the low narrow banks of the Indus; first by the Sulaiman chain, with the “Throne of Solomon,” 11,317 feet high, many narrow passes and bare heights, and then by the Brahui Mountains with a southern branch stretching to the sea, and harbouring in its roadless, secluded valleys a black race of strange form and language. In the west these mountains traverse the plateau of Kelat, whose narrow rocky gorges afford the sole pass to the traveller who desires to go from the central Indus valley to Persia. The eastern side of the mountains as far as the bank of the Indus, Sewestan and Kakha Gardara, with its splendid date palms, is still reckoned as Indian territory.

The southern triangle, the Deccan, a tableland of a tropical character, is quite different from Hindustan, which with the exception of the mountainous district in the south of the Himalayas and in the north of Vindhyas, mainly embraces the plains in the two river valleys of the Indus and the Ganges.

From the girdle of the Vindhya Mountains which lie like a great bulwark in front of the Deccan, the bold rugged chain of the Aravalli, rich in myths, branches off to the northwest, while the Ghats stretch along the western coast, leaving only a narrow strip of land with small, westerly flowing streams. The tableland slopes gradually to the east until it forms a rich, well-watered, sea-washed valley near the Bay of Bengal, which receives most of the rivers, like the Mahanadi, the Godavari, the Krishna [Kistna], the Kaveri, etc. Only two of the rivers of the Vindhya, the Narbada and the Tapti, flow westward.

As Lassen says: “The Deccan can be described as a strip of coast in the west, another in the east and in the middle among the Ghats, a mountainous land cut up by streams into several small districts.” The highland in the centre, intersected by many river valleys and wild defiles, “has on the whole no very great elevation, and still it is entirely within the cooler mountain district and removed from the sultry heat of the lowlands; it is only quite in the south that it is high enough for the formation of snow.”

The peninsula, therefore, presents an extremely varied natural aspect, a “grand alternation of waste shifting sands and rich alluvial deposits, of bare mountain-sides and densely wooded swampy lowlands, of narrow defiles and open river beds; and yet it lacks the many indentations of the sea with their navigable rivers which have made western Europe such a populous land.”

The Vindhya Mountains, although only of moderate height, formed a wide barrier between Hindustan and the Deccan, and with their impassable ruggedness, luxuriant forests, and wild beasts afforded the aborigines a safe refuge from the northern conquerors. And thus, even in the splendid period of Brahmanism, unconquered races maintained themselves in independence in these impenetrable defiles and wild forests of the central country, and did not give up their language, their savage nature, and their rude religious cult with its human sacrifices, for the orderly life, the settled state, and the mild Brahmanic religion of the Aryan Hindu.

The alternation of highland and valley, the pleasant mixture of mountain air and tropical heat, the invigorating influence of the moisture, which the nearness of the sea, the countless streams, and the regularly recurring rains of the monsoon season spread over the whole land, produced that richness of vegetation, that fertility of soil, and that fulness and variety of every kind of natural product which even in antiquity caused India to be praised as a land of happiness and blessing, made it the aim of the world’s commerce, but at the same time aroused the cupidity of the conqueror.

Whilst the snow valleys and mountain districts of the Himalayas with their temperate climate, produce plants and cereals, fruit and forest trees corresponding to southern European species, in the plains of the Jumna and the Ganges the vegetation of the tropical climate grows along with that of the temperate zones. By the side of corn, legumes, and fruit in most luxuriant abundance there is here rice and cotton, sugar and indigo, and a wonderful southern flora of a marvellous richness of colour; and in the districts of the Deccan, where, as on the coast of Malabar, the monsoons and the mountain streams bring an abundance of moisture, the noble products of India ripen to a threefold harvest.

Here the most varied tropical plants thrive in rare abundance, here with industry three rice harvests can be obtained, here grow the sugar-cane and the pepper plant, the banana and the mango; here rise stately forests of the Indian oak, called teak, of the precious sandal-wood, of palm and fig trees with their cool shady avenues; this is the home of the betel-nut tree and the nutmeg tree; here the land is redolent of spices and sweet odours; here blooms the vari-coloured water lily, the sacred lotus plant in whose seed the form of the future plant is visible, wherefore it was to the Indian a symbol of the evolution of the world from its original germ.

The streams carry gold sand, in the mountains are diamond mines, and precious stones and crystals of the most beautiful brilliancy, the seas furnish pearls for the adornment of temples and for jewelry. A numerous fauna, particularly the cow, the horse and the elephant, has the most varied relations with man, and hence also occupies an important place in the religious conceptions of the Hindu; the goat of the Himalayas supplies the fine wool for the cashmere shawls, the musk deer gives perfume, the silkworm spins the noble thread for the most costly fabric; and the great dogs of some of the western states were trained by the Indians and Persians for the chase and for war. The bright-feathered birds (parrots), which even learn the language of man, the peacocks with their broad tails of dark blue and emerald, and the countless family of monkeys excited the admiration of Greek antiquity from Herodotus and Ctesias down to the authors of the Alexandrian period [Megasthenes]. India was always the land of wonders, where fancy established her kingdom, where legend and poetry loved to tarry.[b]

This then is the theatre of India’s history. What of the strange people who have dwelt there so little changed by time? The ethnology of the Indians has been debated fiercely and long.

THE EARLY PEOPLES OF INDIA

The population of India amounts to about a fourth part of that of the globe and consists of various races. In the Vindhyas the Munda tribes are still to be found to a great extent in their original condition and without the knowledge of the use of metal. They seem to be the original inhabitants, related to the other coloured peoples of southern Asia, and appear to have been driven from the plains into the mountains by nations who immigrated at a later period. Their religion is fetish-worship. Their clothing is limited to what is absolutely indispensable.

To them belong the Kols who inhabit the highlands of Chota Nagpur in southern Behar, northwest of Calcutta: they are divided into various sections, the Santals, the Kols of Singbum or Larka Kols, the Kols of Bhumij, and the Munda Kols south of Ranchi in the Kolhan, and others; the Khamti, a kindred people, live on the borders of further India: the Ramusi, who live between Poona and Kolapur and the Warali, southeast of Damaun (between Bombay and Surat), speak the Sanskrit tongue of the Mahrattas; the Bhils dwell in the woods on the Tapti and Nerbudda and in Guzerat, but have also adopted civilisation together with the Aryan language. The Mairs in the Aravalli hills southwest of Ajmir and the Mina in the neighbourhood of the Jumna are also Munda tribes.

The Deccan is inhabited mainly by the Dravidians, whose languages are entirely different from the Munda and Sanskrit tongues. Like the Munda they have dark skins, but with the exception of a few mountain peoples they are civilised and they possess voluminous writings. They include the Tamil in the southernmost part of the Deccan, extending from Palikat (north of Madras) to Cape Comorin and east of a line drawn to the same cape from Bangalore through Coimbatore. The Telinga or Telugu (Sanskrit, Andhra) inhabit the country between Palikat and Orissa, and are bordered on the northwest by the Mahratta country. Inscriptions tell us of Andhra kings of the first century B.C. The Telugu names of many towns on the east coast show that this people were once extended over an area which reached much further north and even to Bengal. Like the Tamil they have both a popular and a literary language. The Tulu in the neighbourhood of Mangalore, formerly also reached to the coast, where the Malabar are now to be found; the latter received Christianity from Persia at an early period and wrote their language in Syrian characters called Karshunish.

North of them are the Kanarese, inhabiting the coast and the inland districts towards Mysore, where they join uncivilised mountain peoples, the Kota, Badaga, and Koduga (Coorg). The Toda in the Nilgiris north of Coimbatore, represent the unmixed type of the race; they are taller than the other peoples and practise polyandry. Their religion consists in the fear of spirits, whose malignity is opposed by magic; the grand function of the village priest is the milking of the cows. The Uraon Kols and the Rajmahal Kols of the Lower Ganges as far as Gondwana are also of Dravidian origin. They are the pariahs of the social system; the Gonds speak Hindi, a Sanskrit language. They worship two gods, from whom proceed the good and evil in creation.

Other Dravidian peoples are the Ku or Kandhs in the mountains of Orissa, and finally, the Brahuis in the mountains of Baluchistan, south of Kelat in eastern Iran--the Ethiopians of the Greeks. Their presence in this remote territory is a token of the wide extension of the race in former times, and they perhaps migrated from the highlands of Asia.

Yet another nationality is represented by the original inhabitants of Ceylon (called in Sanskrit Sinhaladvipa, or the Island of the Sinhalas), the Vaddas, i.e. hunters, east of the Mahawalliganga who are still preserved from the admixture of foreign blood; ethnologically they show a resemblance to the ancient Dravidian peoples, but their language, the Elu, is quite peculiar to themselves.

It is supposed that about the year 2000 the immigration of Aryan (Indo-European) tribes started from the northwest. At some undefined period these Aryans formed one people with the Iranians, and their language, Sanskrit, is closely related to the Iranian. About 1500 years before Christ they had spread over the territory of the Indus, but it was not till five hundred years later that they began to conquer the plain of the Ganges, and the severe struggles which they had to sustain against the population are reflected in the epic as well as in countless legends; for in virtue of a peculiar love of the fantastic and thanks to the diligence of Brahman priests, the Aryan Indians have enveloped their ancient history in a cloud of myths and literally revelled in the construction of chronological systems covering immeasurable periods of time.

At the time of the Ophir voyage, when Solomon sent to India for ivory, apes, and peacocks, there were as yet no Aryans in southern India, for the name for apes, in Hebrew “qof,” and in Sanskrit “kapi,” cannot be an Aryan word; it first comes to hand in the latest book of the Rig-Veda, but also appears in the form “qaf” as early as the IVth Dynasty in Egypt, and the name for peacocks, “tuki,” has been borrowed from the Malabar “togei.” From an ethnological point of view the Aryans of India are not a pure race, as they appear to have been when they dwelt in the valley of the Indus; for in the Veda a contrast is often drawn between a clear complexion and the dark skin of the indigenous peoples. They must on the contrary have mixed with natives at some period when a peculiar civilisation and, in consequence, an increasing separation of the different classes was in course of development; and not only has the physical type greatly altered its original Indo-European character, but the whole civilisation of the Indians has received the stamp of southern and eastern Asia, which makes them appear to us even stranger than the Asiatic Semites or the Egyptians. This fact is often overlooked, because the use of the Aryan speech continually reminds us of the close relationship between the Indian Aryans and the Persians and Europeans. And it is not merely that the Aryans have assumed the racial marks of the Dravidian, but on the other hand the pure type of the indigenous population has only been preserved in the uncivilised mountain peoples. In later centuries the course of history introduced still further elements, as the Indo-Scythians in the northwest, the Persians and Arabians, and, finally, the Europeans, including those Mohammedans who have had so much influence on religious development.

In the territory in which the Aryan population preponderated, the Sanskrit language superseded the native one. The most widely diffused language of India is the Hindi, whose sphere is bordered in the west by the languages of the Punjab and of Sind with that of Cutch, in the south by the Guzerati language, the Mahratta, and the Telinga, and in the east by the tongues of Orissa and Bengal, to which the Asami is added. With the exception of Telinga, these are all Aryan languages.

In the north, Hindi reaches as far as the Terai, a vast prairie and forest inhabited by elephants, rhinoceros, tigers and other wild beasts, beyond which, extended over the southern slope of the Himalayas, dwells a whole series of peoples. In the high mountains and beyond them these peoples adjoin the Tibetans; the Rong or Lepcha in Sikkim, whose language, a Tibetan dialect, became known a few years ago; the Kiratis and Limbus of eastern Nepal; the Murmis and Newars in Nepal; the Kumaunis, and others.

The Mohammedan Indians have enriched Hindi with Arabic and Persian words and make use of the Arabic writing. This language which differs greatly from Hindi in grammar and syntax, is called Hindustani and is the chief speech current in India. Within the Hindi, Kellogg distinguishes eleven idioms, and these are again subdivided into dialects. Besides the Sanskrit languages already mentioned which border on Hindi, there are also some to be found in the Himalayas, especially in Kashmir and in Dardistan, a country bordered on the north by Muztagh (Karakoram), on the west by the mountain chain which divides it from the country of Chitral in the north, on the east by a similar range between the Indus and Krishnaganga, and on the northeast by the territories of Rongdo and Baltistan. According to Ujfalvy the inhabitants of the latter are also Aryans who have adopted the Tibetan language. Dardistan is inhabited by various races, who only immigrated in the Middle Ages and at a still later period, and even now are still in an unsettled condition. It was not explored till recent times by Schlagintweit, Leitner, Hayward and Biddulph. Whilst in ancient times the Darada (Dardæ) were spread over the valley of the Indus as far as the gold-fields of Thok Jalung, the name of Dard was found by Biddulph only opposite the entrance to the Kandia valley, where the Indus turns its course southward.

Another widespread people are the Shins, whose special seat is Gilgit and their language a Sanskrit tongue, closely related to those of the Punjab and Kashmir and to Hindustani. These people found their way from Shinkari between the Indus and Krishnaganga, and form the main population of the Indus valley from Ghor to Ghorband: their language has several dialects and in Baltistan they call themselves Rom, as the gypsies do.

Another daughter-language of Sanskrit is spoken by the tribes in the southwest of Dardistan, who claim to have come from Swat. This language has also different dialects as the Gowro, the Narisati and the language of the Siah-posh in Wamastan. On the other hand the people in Hunza, Nagar and Yassin speak Burishki, which Biddulph regards as the language of the Yuechi. The Yidghah, a Persian idiom, is also found in Dardistan.

The oldest monuments of Indo-Aryan literature, namely the Veda hymns, contain many allusions to historical conditions, which the poet, however, assumed to be well known, or they may have been related in prose passages inserted between the verses which are all that now remain. They mention five peoples, the Turwasa, Jadu, Anu, Druhju and the Puru, who finally won the upper hand after the battle of the ten kings and are called Kuru in the epic. Besides this they mention a series of kings and priests who can, however, be assigned to no definite time or place.

The social conditions are primitive, and whilst the original inhabitants had advanced so far in civilisation that they possessed fortified towns and great wealth in herds, furniture, metal ornaments and good weapons, the Aryans were still in the condition of cattle-breeders, to whom the possessions of the enemy were a welcome spoil. Even in the epic, the Danawa Maja, a Daitja, or enemy of the (Aryan) gods, and architect of the Asuras, builds a palace for the sons of Pandu; for it was from the natives that the Aryans learnt the art of building in stone, they themselves, like other Indo-Europeans, understanding only how to build in wood and piles, or they dwelt in caves.

The Aryan prayers for the prosperity of their own cows, for a rich produce of butter, grass and crops, were directed to divine beings in whom natural phenomena and the elements are personified, but which also embody moral conceptions. But the songs of the Rig-Veda date from such various periods that, side by side with these ideas of a simple age, we also discern a detailed picture of sacrificial rites and an advanced culture, and even the appearance of doubt of the religious verities; it is quite comprehensible that new poems might at any time come into existence, or new families of singers (Rishis) appear on the scene with their store of hymns for sacrificial purposes, until a general collection of songs had been drawn up and adapted to a form of worship regulated in perpetuity by agreement between all the families of Rishis whom their class interests made anxious to be reconciled with one another.

The four Vedas (or collections of ceremonial songs), were supplemented by an enormous mass of literature proceeding from various sections, or schools. This includes, first the Brahmana, works serving to guide the priests in the procedure relating to sacrifices, then those explaining and justifying the application of the verses to each separate part of the service on mythological or symbolic grounds. Here the view taken attains the region of philosophical speculation, so that in these Upanishads, some one hundred and fifty in number, lie the beginnings of a philosophy of religion, and the later works of this class contain a regular philosophical system. The inexhaustible knowledge laid up in these numerous works was finally epitomised in the shortest conceivable form in the so-called Sutra (manuals), which, however, are frequently written only in a language of technical symbols so that they require an explanation from the teacher or a commentary. They are intended to be learnt by heart.

The Vedas cannot have been committed to the Indian writing at a very early period, since we know of none older than the inscriptions of Asoka, which date from the middle of the third century B.C.; one of the writings which here appear, and which runs from left to right, is the Watteluta alphabet, derived from those Arabic alphabets to be seen in the inscriptions found in Harra or Safa in eastern Hauran and deciphered by Halévy in 1877. This character belongs to the Alexandrian period. In the northwest of India a second alphabet is to be found on the Asoka inscriptions and on coins. It runs from right to left and is considered to be the same which was brought here in the Persian epoch and was derived from the Aramaic used in the Persian empire; however, it too may have been introduced later, for it strongly resembles the alphabet of the Blacas papyrus (assigned to the age of the Ptolemies, or, with more probability, to that of the later Persians), and other papyruses of the Alexandrian epoch. It is not conceivable that Asoka and those who issued the coins would have made use of these alphabets if an older and more perfect one had existed in India and been used for the Vedas; but in order to commit the Vedas to writing and to fix their form in all the details of phonetics and accentuation, a character was required whose perfection is only attained by the cultured Devanagari writing, which appears to have been first used in Malwa, the kingdom of Vikramaditya: it is still less conceivable that, for instance, the Pratisakhya sutras of the four Vedas should have had before them a work in a more imperfect writing, since these compendiums of phonology descend to the most extreme subtleties and in doing so presuppose the precise text which we now possess and which must consequently have received a fixed form at least at the epoch of these grammatical works.

If we fix the conquest of the territory of the Ganges in the period at the beginning of the first millennium B.C., we do so on no historical evidence but only on the grounds of the probability that that conquest extended over hundreds of years and that in the first centuries before Christ it was an accomplished fact. The Mahabharata, that vast epic compared with which Homer seems a mere pocket-book, only received its present form some centuries after Christ, and the lists we have of the kings of those peoples who figure in the poem, especially those of the country of Magadha (Behar), are unreliable and vary in the different copies in which they are found.

The spread of the Aryans along the coast of the Deccan and as far as Ceylon, of which the Ramayana gives a fabulous account, is also not chronologically definable, for this poem in twenty-four thousand distiches is also a very late product, and that extension lay far behind it, for in the ancient geographers we already find Aryan names affixed to towns in southern India.

The first piece of information concerning Indian history whose date is certain is that of Darius’ conquest of the territory of the Indus, which formed a Persian satrapy. Since then the western countries of India have been under foreign rulers, first under the Bactrian and Indo-Scythian kings, later on under the Sassanids, as is shown both by Indian coins of contemporary kings with a Sassanian stamp and legends in Pahlavi and Sanskrit and by historical notices concerning the relations of the kings of Marwar to Peroz and Anoscharwan, so that the conquest of Mahmoud of Ghazni and later rulers only renewed the ancient claims of Iran upon Indian possessions.[c]

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II. INDIAN HISTORY--LEGEND AND REALITY

Protected by the highest mountains of the world and traversed by lovely fertile hills, India is bounded on one side by the Pacific Ocean and on the other by the Himalayas, watered by a thousand streams, and great rivers, upon the banks of which the sun ripens all kinds of delicious fruits which grow of themselves.

A large population flourishes on the perpetually green, immense plains sloping down to the sea; the canals are frequented with navigators who from oldest times have received in exchange for money the wonderful natural products of the country.

Five harvests are reaped here annually, and the palms, pine-apples, cinnamon trees, peppers, etc., ripen three times a year. But by the side of such beauty, steep rocks rise to the sky, many equalling the Chimborazo in height, and there are great tracts of arid unwatered sands. The storms are more violent here than anywhere else, and mountain streams descend in foaming torrents bearing devastation and ruin as they traverse the interminable plains on their way to the sea.--CESARE CANTÙ.

CHRONOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE HINDUS

Rude nations seem to derive a peculiar gratification from pretensions to a remote antiquity. As a boastful and turgid vanity distinguishes remarkably the oriental nations, they have in most instances carried their claims extravagantly high. We are informed, in a fragment of Chaldaic history, that there were written accounts, preserved at Babylon, with the greatest care, comprehending a term of fifteen myriads of years. The pretended duration of the Chinese monarchy is still more extraordinary. A single king of Egypt was believed to have reigned three myriads of years.

The present age of the world, according to the system of the Hindus, is distinguished into four grand periods, denominated yugas. The first is the Satya yuga comprehending 1,728,000 years; the second the Treta yuga comprehending 1,296,000 years; the third the Dwapar yuga, including 864,000 years; and the fourth the Kali yuga, which will extend to 432,000 years. Of these periods, the first three are expired; and, in the year 1817 of the Christian era, 4911 years of the last. From the commencement, therefore, of the Satya yuga, to the year 1817, is comprehended a space of 3,892,911 years, the antiquity to which this people lay claim.

The contempt with which judicious historians now treat the historical fables of early society, must be indulged with caution when we explore the ancient condition of Hindustan; because the legendary tales of the Hindus have hitherto, among European inquirers, been regarded with particular respect; and because, without a knowledge of them, much of what has been written in Europe concerning the people of India, cannot be understood. It is necessary, therefore, to relate, that at the commencement of the Satya yuga, or 3,892,911 years ago, lived Satyavrata, otherwise denominated Vaivaswata, and also the seventh Manu. He had escaped with his family from an universal deluge, which had destroyed the rest of the human species. Of his descendants, were two royal branches: the one denominated the children of the sun; the other, the children of the moon. The first reigned at Ajodhya or Oudh; the second at Pratisht’hana or Vitora. These families, or dynasties, subsisted till the thousandth year of the present or Kali yuga, at which time they both became extinct; and a list of the names of the successive princes is presented in the Sanskrit books.

Satyavrata, the primitive sire, prolonged his existence and his reign through the whole period of the Satya yuga or 1,728,000 years. From this patriarchal monarch are enumerated, in the solar line of his descendants, fifty-five princes, who inherited the sovereignty till the time of Rama. Now it is agreed among all the Brahmans that Rama filled the throne of Ajodhya at the end of the Treta yuga. The reigns, therefore, of these fifty-five princes, extending from the beginning to the end of that epoch, filled 1,296,000 years, which, at a medium, is more than 23,000 years to each reign. During the next, or Dwapar yuga of 864,000 years, twenty-nine princes are enumerated, who must, at an average, have reigned each 29,793 years. From the beginning of the present, or Kali yuga to the time when the race of solar princes became extinct, are reckoned 1000 years, and thirty princes. There is a wonderful change, therefore, in the last age, in which only thirty-three years, at a medium, are assigned to a reign.

Beside the two lines of solar and lunar kings, a different race, who reigned in Magadha, or Behar, commence with the fourth age. Of these, twenty in regular descent from their ancestor Jarasandha extended to the conclusion of the first thousand years of the present yuga, and were cotemporary with the last thirty princes of the solar and lunar race. At the memorable epoch of the extinction of those branches, the house of Jarasandha also failed; for the reigning prince was slain by his prime minister, who placed his son Pradyota on the throne. Fifteen of the descendants of this usurper enjoyed the sovereignty, and reigned from the date of his accession 498 years, to the time of Nanda, the last prince of the house of Pradyota. He, after a reign of 100 years, was murdered by a Brahman, who raised to the throne a man of the Maurya race, named Chandra Gupta. This prince is reckoned, by our oriental antiquarians, the same with Sandracottus or Sandracuptos, the cotemporary of Alexander the Great. Only nine princes of his line succeeded him, and held the sceptre for 137 years. On the death of the last, his commander in chief ascended the throne, and, together with nine descendants, to whom he transmitted the sovereignty, reigned 112 years. After that period the reigning prince was killed, and succeeded by his minister Vasudeva. Of his family only four princes are enumerated; but they are said to have reigned 345 years. The throne was next usurped by a race of Sudras, the first of whom slew his master, and seized the government. Twenty-one of this race, of whom Chandrabija was the last, reigned during a space of 456 years. The conclusion of the reign of this prince corresponds therefore with the year 2648 of the Kali yuga, and with the year 446 before the birth of Christ. And with him, according to Sir William Jones, closes the authentic system of Hindu chronology.

It is a most suspicious circumstance in the pretended records of a nation, when we find positive statements for a regular and immense series of years in the remote abyss of time, but are entirely deserted by them when we descend to the ages more nearly approaching our own. Where annals are real, they become circumstantial in proportion as they are recent; where fable stands in the place of fact, the times over which the memory has any influence are rejected, and the imagination riots in those in which it is unrestrained. While we receive accounts, the most precise and confident, regarding the times of remote antiquity not a name of a prince in after ages is presented in Hindu records. A great prince named Vikramaditya, is said to have extended widely his conquests and dominion, and to have reigned at Magadha 396 years after Chandrabija. From that time even fiction is silent. We hear no more of the Hindus and their transactions, till the era of Mohammedan conquest; when the Persians alone become our instructors.

After the contempt with which the extravagant claims to antiquity of the Chaldeans and Egyptians had always been treated in Europe, the love of the marvellous is curiously illustrated by the respect which has been paid to the chronology of the Hindus. We received indeed the accounts of the Hindu chronology, not from the incredulous historians of Greece and Rome, but from men who had seen the people; whose imagination had been powerfully affected by the spectacle of a new system of manners, arts, institutions, and ideas; who naturally expected to augment the opinion of their own consequence, by the greatness of the wonders which they had been favoured to behold; and whose astonishment, admiration, and enthusiasm, for a time, successfully propagated themselves. The Hindu statements, if they have not perhaps in any instance gained a literal belief, have almost universally been regarded as very different from the fictions of an unimproved and credulous people, and entitled to a very serious and profound investigation. Yet they are not only carried to the wildest pitch of extravagance, but are utterly inconsistent both with themselves and with other established opinions of the Brahmans.

Of this a single specimen will suffice. The character which the Brahmans assign to the several yugas is a remarkable part of their system. The Satya yuga is distinguished by the epithet of golden; the Treta yuga by that of silver; the Dwapar yuga by that of copper; and the Kali yuga is denominated earthen. In these several ages the virtue, the life, and the stature of man exhibited a remarkable diversity. In the Satya yuga, the whole race were virtuous and pure; the life of man was 100,000 years, and his stature 21 cubits. In the Treta yuga one-third of mankind were corrupt; and human life was reduced to 10,000 years. One-half of the human race were depraved in the Dwapar yuga, and 1000 years bounded the period of life. In the Kali yuga, all men are corrupt, and human life is restricted to 100 years. But though in the Satya yuga men lived only 100,000 years, Satyavrata, according to chronological fiction, reigned 1,728,000 years; in the Treta yuga human life extended only to 10,000 years, yet fifty-five princes reigned, each at a medium, more than 23,000 years; in the Dwapar yuga, though the life of man was reduced to 1000 years, the duration of the reigns was even extended, for twenty-nine princes held each the sceptre in this period for 29,793 years.[b]

If we turn from such traditions as these and seek more secure records, our quest is futile. Ancient India has no history proper. Its books furnish no document on its past chronology, and its monuments cannot supply the place of books, since the oldest are scarcely three centuries anterior to our era. But for a small number of religious books, in which the historical facts are embedded under masses of legends, the past of India would be as unknown as that of that lost Atlantis, which was destroyed by a geological cataclysm and whose story is related in the ancient traditions preserved by Plato.

THE AUTHORITY OF THE VEDAS

The only ancient documents which we can consult for the purpose of recovering some trace of this vanished past, are supplied by the Vedas, religious poems written at various epochs, and the oldest of which seem to date from fifteen centuries before our era. After them, but much later, come the epic poems, known under the names of Mahabharata and Ramayana, and the religious and social code of Manu.

Viewed from a purely historical standpoint, the Hindu literature of our own era is not richer than that which preceded it. In fact the Puranas constitute the only sources which can be consulted, and these consist of collections drawn up at different periods, the most ancient of them going no further back than the eighth century after Christ. They are, moreover, too much interspersed with marvellous legends, and too devoid of chronological sequence to permit of modern science deriving much benefit from them. Practically it is only after the Mohammedan invasions of the eleventh century, that, thanks to the Mohammedan writers, the historical period of India begins.

To the very insufficient sources of written information just enumerated, we have to add the accounts of travellers who visited India during ancient times. These accounts are very few in number, since for the period preceding Jesus Christ we possess only some extracts from the narrative of the Greek ambassador, Megasthenes, who stayed at the court of Magadha about the year 300 before our era. For the period of more than thirteen centuries, which separates this remote epoch from the Mohammedan invasions, we possess, besides the scanty references of classical authors, only the narratives of the two Chinese pilgrims, Fa-Hian and Hwen Tsang, who visited India, the first in the fifth, the second in the seventh century. Their works, especially that of the second, undoubtedly constitute the most valuable documents which we possess concerning India before the Mohammedan invasions.

MONUMENTAL RECORDS

The extreme inadequacy of the historical books on India gives a very great importance to the plastic works, monuments, medals, and statues, which the peninsula possesses. The most ancient are the columns on which Asoka had his edicts engraved, 250 years before Christ. After them come the bas-reliefs of the great monuments at Bharhut, Sanchi, etc., constructed at the commencement of our era, or in the two or three centuries which preceded it. They give interesting details respecting the manners, customs, beliefs, and arts of the peoples who constructed them, and show us the degree of civilisation to which these people had attained.

Besides these monuments, of which the oldest date from scarcely three centuries before our era, there are subterranean temples, statues, coins, which combine to throw some light on the history of each of the regions where they came into existence. It is only the remains of buildings and statues that have revealed to us the profound influence of the Greeks in certain countries several centuries after first Alexander, and then all the Greeks, had been expelled from India. Similarly it is the bas-reliefs of the temples which can alone tell us of the history of the origin and transformations of the beliefs which succeeded one another in ancient India.[d]

The Indians had learnt the art of writing, and if the Brahmans still handed down the traditions of their schools by word of mouth, they nevertheless did not hesitate to record donations and transfers in legible characters on stone as was done by others. Within the last few years search and investigation directed to these records have brought a great deal to light, cleared up much obscurity, securely established what was doubtful, and passed judgment on what was false; legends from older and versions of later times, have in various instances had their authenticity and truth put to the test. But these investigations are really only beginning.

It has now been decided on the authority of coins and inscriptions that Kanishka or Kanerki was succeeded by one Huvishka or Hoverki (Doerki), and the latter had as a contemporary or co-ruler (Bazodeo or Vasudeva). The dates of the inscriptions of Mathura confirm this last relation. But Vasudeva, “having the Vasu as gods,” points by this name, so renowned in legend, to a Brahmanical belief in the gods. His Okro coins, similar to some which were already in existence in Kanerki’s day, and bearing the image of the triple, three-headed or six-armed Okra deity, strongly remind us of the images of that Trinity, the world-creating, world-preserving, and world-destroying god,--Brahma, Vishnu, Siva,--the so-called Trimurti in the rock temples of Ellora and Elephanta. The Turushka king who, rightly or wrongly, appears according to this to have followed Bazodeo, already exhibits in the images on his coins the type of the Sassanid rule.

At the close of a century the Scythian power in India was broken and gradually thrust back to the territory whence it came, beyond the northern mountain-peaks and, in India itself, to the west and south of the Punjab as far as Guzerat. But the after effects of that power and of the century-long invasion still continued. A Scythian population, united with the aboriginal hill peoples who had been thrust back at an earlier period, remained, and in great part still remains, in those regions. The Jats and the wandering tribes of Sikhs which belong to them are believed to be of non-Aryan origin, and in religion, language, and customs differ from the Brahmans and are opposed to them. The Rajput families of the “king’s sons,” who afterwards founded independent kingdoms in the south, are also considered to be foreign importations into the caste system and as the successors to the Scythian power. The route of these migrations and conquests from the north to the southwest is marked by ruins, and it was on the sites of such ruins that the later Saracens erected their citadels, palaces, and mosques. These too are now nothing but magnificent remains. But we can here treat of older conditions alone, and of those only in brief.

LEGENDS OF THE EARLY HEROES

Legends have arisen concerning the immigration of Saka princes to Surashtra or Guzerat, and stories of an alleged liberation from foreign rule. A celebrated hero of such legends is Vikramaditya, a king of Ujjain in Malwa, and another, with whose birth the Saka era was connected, is Salivahana, the opponent of the first, who is not less renowned than he in legend, and defeated him in the struggle. But though legend has so much to say of these two, history has little or nothing to tell us of them.

On the western side of the Girnar rock near Junagarh, whose eastern side bears Asoka’s inscriptions, and on whose northern side is engraved that of one Skanda Gupta, we may read that of one Rudra Dama. It tells of the buildings erected by this king, or great satrap, for the protection of the country against the destructive power of the waters of the river Palasini, and another inscription, which extols his name in the midst of those of four others, his predecessors and successors, is found on a pillar at Jasdan in Kathiawar or Surashtra, a part of the present Guzerat. The names of the others are--on the one side of his, Chashtana and Jaya Dama--and on the other side Rudra Sinha and Rudra Sena, and the inscription belongs to the year 127 of the era of these princes.

These kings, or great satraps, of whom we possess both inscriptions and coins, beside many others whose names cannot here be given, have been called Sah or Saha or Sinha kings, from a termination added to many of their names. We should perhaps do best in accordance with a good precedent to designate them Xatrapa (Satrap) kings, as not only did they call themselves so, but also actually were, at least in name, governors for the Mauryas and their successors.

The series begins with a certain Nahapana, who with one or two others preceded Chashtana and his sons and grandsons, and ends with one Svami Rudra Sena, the twenty-sixth mentioned. They ruled, roughly speaking, three hundred years from the beginning of the Saka era (in which we may safely place Chashtana) down to somewhere between 284 and 272 of our era. In its best days (which seem to have been under Rudra Dama, as his inscription indicates), their dominions embraced the peninsula of Guzerat, Surashtra, and Malwa, reaching north as far as the middle of the Indus valley and so onward to the sea.

Inscriptions and coins are certainly safe authorities for history: but they are somewhat inadequate when, as here, little else and nothing certain is added to them. Thus we know but little of the history of this great western or Xatrapa kingdom, not much more than the legend which has grown up round its first beginnings and its final overthrow by the Gupta power.

The Sah or Xatrapa kings, so runs the legend, were overthrown by the Guptas, who ruled between the Jumna and the Ganges. That is, they had independent and viceregal honours, and the man who prepared their downfall is called Kamara Gupta, and was succeeded by his son Skanda Gupta, whose inscription we read on the north side of the Girnar rock.--But we must begin at the beginning.

AN INSCRIPTION OF ASOKA

An inscription on the Asoka pillar at Allahabad, that of Samudra Gupta, mentions the ancestors of his family. Sri Gupta, the “august, noble, great king” and “splendour of the world,” was a petty lord who had successfully raised himself to the government from the Vaisya or middle class and, from 319, had his residence at Allahabad or in Ajodhya, and his dominion to the east of the river.

After a reign of fifteen years he was succeeded by his son Ghatotkacha. On the coins of the latter a reference has been found to his namesake the son of Bhima, of the epic legend. He proudly calls himself “Destroyer of all Kings,” and was probably really “Augmenter of the Kingdom” westward as far as the territory of the Indus. After another fifteen years he was in his turn succeeded by his son Chandra Gupta, and an inscription belonging to the latter has been found in the Sanchi Stupa at Bilsa, besides coins with his half-length portrait,--the earliest we have belonging to these kings. His realm was subsequently extended to Malwa and his rule was also friendly to the children of Sakya. He must have ruled for the space of thirty years, but his son Samudra Gupta, who is spoken of in the great inscription on the lion pillar of Allahabad, far surpassed him in fame, power, and magnificence.

The inscription is a great historical record, one of the greatest which we have for this period. It speaks by name of kings whom Samudra Gupta deposed, of others whom he made tributary to himself, of the extent and frontiers of his dominion. Since we cannot go into details we will here only mention that he subdued almost the whole Aryavarta between the northern and southern ranges to his immediate rule, made subject the hill princes in the north, the Vaudheya, Madraka, and Abhira in the Land of the Five Rivers and in Malwa, brought kings south of the Vindhya under his protectorate and ruled over the east as far as to the sea. In all this there is probably a good deal of boasting--the inscription was made after his death--but it is certain that there is also not a little that is true. He is also renowned as a ruler of high and noble disposition, as a patron of the arts and sciences, of music and poetry, which he himself cultivated. His coins, which have been found in great numbers and scattered over a wide area, some bearing the image of the lion hero and others of the king playing on the vina (harp) confirm to some extent what the long eulogy asserts.

After a reign of some thirty years he was followed by another Chandra Gupta, his son, who ruled for about ten years. The dominion of the Guptas then passed to his son, “the far-famed lord of the earth,” Kumara Gupta, who, according to the dates on coins and to tradition, reigned twenty-three years, to about the year 130 of the era of this line of kings. And after him came his son Skanda Gupta, with whom a certain Buddha Gupta is also mentioned, and who was the seventh and last king of his famous house. This is the Gupta whom we mentioned first, and who attained to a dominion to which an inscription on the western peninsula bears witness. After him there seems to be a reference to one Mahendra Gupta, perhaps his co-ruler or the successor to a part of his empire, and of one Narayana Gupta. But a monolith at Kuhan, in the district of Gorakhpur in the northwest of India, asserts that “in the year, or towards the end of the year 141 (i.e., 470 of our era), the empire of Skanda Gupta, in whose hall a hundred kings bowed the head in homage, the empire of the royal line of the Gupta was taken away from those who had been so far renowned, rich above all men, comparable to Indra, the lord of hundreds of kings.”

TRADITIONAL KINGS

Tradition tells of kings in various places in the south and north who had declared themselves independent of the Gupta rule. It tells of a scion of an ancient family, whose forefathers had settled in former times on the banks of the Ganges, a certain Pandu-Sakya, who at that time had established himself on the throne of the Mauryas at Pataliputra (the modern Patna). But it is averred that one of Skanda Gupta’s generals, Bhattaraka, of the family of Ballabhi or Valabhi, had overthrown this personage in Kathiawar, i.e., Guzerat, and had seized the reins of government for himself. He became the founder of a new series of Surashtra kings, the third, which was called after him the Valabhi dynasty. We may place the beginning of this dynasty about the year 480 A.D.

Bearing this in mind we might now, of course, again follow the chronicles, and relate something from that of the kings of Kashmir and from the two of Sinhaladvipa. From the former we might tell of one Damodhara who succeeded Turushka, then of a certain Meghavahana, a Sreshta or Pravarasena, and his two sons, Hiranya or Toramana, until a time came when the throne of Kashmir stood empty, and the “noble” Harsha Vikramaditya sent one of his followers, a Brahman named Matri Gupta who was appointed king. But we will not go through the history of dynasties and dynastic lists, at least not when the authorities are so uncertain. And, as to the other two, it is related in a history of Buddhism, how after Vrishabha came a century in which sanctuaries were built and rebuilt, how under King Tishya there arose heresy and strife and divisions, that some short reigns then followed down to Abhayanaga and again down to Mahasena with whom the later chronicle closes. Again we read of more than one Meghavarna, of a Upatishya who succeeded Mahanaman, under whom a certain Fa Hian came to Ceylon and the Buddhist hermits lived and worked. It is sufficient to give here a brief outline of what is important.

A number of brass tablets or copper plates have been found on the ruined site of the ancient Valabhi (the modern Vala), records of donations to Brahman and Buddhist monks, which give fairly authentic information concerning the period and order of the first Surashtra or Valabhi kings. According to these Bhatarka or Bhattaraka was succeeded by his four sons, Dharasena, the eldest, Dronasena who was already called Great King and was solemnly crowned as ruler of the earth, Dhruvasena the third, and Dharapatta the youngest son. They had brought the peninsula and a great part of the coast and the mainland as far as Malwa under their rule, which in the case of the third certainly lasted to the year 534. The youngest was succeeded by his son Guhasena, who bestowed whole villages on the disciples of the Sakya and on their cloisters, he by his son Sri Dharasena, the second of the name and certainly not later than the end of the sixth century (595) and he again by his son Siladitya or Dharmaditya who continued reigning on into the seventh century. But we need not pursue the series of these kings any further.

During the reign of a nephew of the last named, another Dhruvasena (632-640), the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Tsang came to India (627-645) and to the Valabhi kingdom in the west. His account of his journey has an astonishing amount to say of the riches of the country, of its numerous inhabitants, of the many cloisters with thousands of monks,--some of them Buddhist but he also speaks of others, and mentions Jain monks whom he had seen,--and of the numbers of columns and the magnificent stupas, etc. The kings of that time, one traveller reports, are Xatriya, all relations of the king Siladitya of Malwa; the son-in-law of the reigning king Siladitya at Kanyakubja (Kanauj) is called T’u-lu-p’o-po-tu (Dhruvabhata). And here our pilgrim incidentally describes that ruler as pious, wise, and virtuous and as so open-handed that he redeemed his charitable gifts at double their value. He speaks with all reverence and respect of this prince, to whose brilliant court he went by invitation.[c]

The relations of the Indian dynasties to the successive hordes of Scythians who poured down on northern India, are obscure. There is abundant evidence of a long-continued struggle but the attempt to assign dates to its chief episodes has not yet reached results which can be accepted as final. Two Vikramaditya Sakaris, or vanquishers of the Scythians, are required for the purposes of chronology. The truth seems to be that, during the first six centuries of the Christian era, the fortunes of the Scythian or Tatar races rose and fell from time to time in northern India. They more than once sustained great defeats; and they more than once overthrew the native dynasties.[e]

The latest authorities are now agreed that the great and victorious king Vikramaditya who, as Lefmann says, “together with his battle of Korur has hitherto wandered incessantly like a wavering and restless shadow” from 57 B.C. to 560 A.D., may now be definitely assigned to a reign dating from 510 to 560 A.D. in which time, at Korur, he annihilated the Scythian army.[a]

BRAHMANIC LEARNING

Down to the time of Buddha and beyond, the Brahman schools were still in course of completing and elaborating their sacred knowledge (Veda), the triple science. Their later Upanishads worked up to the Vedanta, “an end or conclusion” of the Veda. Undoubtedly the Brahmans also learnt with and from their opponents. Their systems of mental investigation (nyaya, mimamsa) and pious exercises (yoga) can witness to this if to nothing else. And as the sons of Sakya taught in the language of the people and as Asoka had his admonitions engraved on stone tablets, so Brahmans had long before this begun to exhibit the laws and art of their sacred language side by side with logic and grammar.

Scholasticism, speculative inquiry, the narrow or strict sciences, in general, have in all ages shown themselves opposed and inimical to free artistic creation. This the Brahmans also demonstrated. For centuries they produced no really new poetic work. With care and diligence, unsurpassed elsewhere, they preserved and kept together the inheritance and possessions of antiquity, and imitated them on the same lines but produced nothing new. They needed to pass through the period of foreign dominion in order to receive a new impulse.

Then came the comparatively brief but brilliant period of the Guptas’ rule, under which the coins are first inscribed in Sanskrit. To this period belongs much that was formerly regarded as ancient and even primitive, and was probably really new, but built up on an ancient foundation. A single, but eloquent example, is the collection of the laws of Manu in the form in which it has come down to us. A great deal might be said on this subject. Here we will only remark that at this time the Brahmanical spirit received a fresh impulse and flourished anew.

At the court of King Vikramaditya of Ujjain were nine who are mentioned as the pearls of his age and dominion. An old and famous verse celebrates their names. Amongst them were Dhanvantari, the great physician and healer, Amarasinha, the renowned philologist and lexicographer, Varahamihira, the astronomer and architect, and some add Kalidasa, the poet of the Sakuntala.

It was shortly after the peace of Mangalore in 1783, that Sir William Jones became Judge of the Supreme Court in Bengal and first president of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. In the “edifying letters” of the French Jesuits he had read that there were many books in the north of India which were called Natak, and of which the Brahmans said that they contained a great deal of ancient history without any admixture of fable. He became eager to gain possession of these books in order that he might make himself acquainted with them either by means of translations, if such existed, or by himself learning their language; but he had no sooner come to an understanding with the Brahmans than he learnt from them that the statements were like many others made in those letters.

Natak, he was assured, were not histories at all, but fables, favourite popular books, discourses in prose and verse, such as had formerly been held, in various idioms, at the courts of the Rajahs. Jones thought they were probably treatises on matters of morals, or learning; others of his countrymen concluded from what they had heard that they might perhaps deal with dancing, music, and poetry, when an intelligent Brahman remarked that the Englishmen also possessed something of the nature of the Natak, which were performed publicly in the cold season (meaning dramas).

This was enough. On the question being asked as to which of these Natak was most highly prized, the man unhesitatingly answered “Sakuntala,” and Brahmanlike, had also a verse ready, which “unfolded,” it was said, “all the transcendent riches of the genius of Kalidasa.” A copy having been procured, it was literally translated into Latin with the assistance of his Pandit Ramalocan--of course through Persian--and from Latin into English. From this to publishing it was the work of the first leisure moment, and a noble example of Indian genius from the Sanskrit and Prakrit original was given to the world.

Jones’ English “Sakuntala” appeared in the year 1789, the year of the French revolution. It would be almost impossible to describe the enthusiasm called forth especially amongst the romantic school in Germany, by the “maiden from abroad,” in the foreign dress on a foreign soil, and the “ecstatic transports” over the gentle child from the penitential groves of ancient India. And it was at the fire of this enthusiasm that the lamp was lighted which shed its rays ever further and deeper into the hidden recesses of the Indian spirit, the Indian language, art, and science. And this was effected a hundred years ago by the alluring charm of the Sakuntala.[c]

THE EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY

The history of India has been conveniently, if somewhat arbitrarily, separated into epochs by Le Bon. His classification, which is necessarily very general, and in which the epochs are very far from being clearly defined since they encroach upon one another or exist side by side, embraces the following periods:

1. The Vedic period; 2. The Brahmanical period; 3. The Buddhist period; 4. The period of the revival of Brahmanism or neo-Brahmanic; 5. The Mohammedan period; 6. The European period.

VEDIC PERIOD

The commencement of the Vedic period is about fifteen centuries earlier than our era. It is marked by the invasion of India by the Aryans.

The Vedic period is that age of Indian history which is wholly legendary. The little that we know concerning it is revealed solely by religious books, known under the name of Vedas, the most important of which, the Rig-Veda, has been called, with reason, the Bible of the Aryans of the northwest of India.

Established at first round the Himalayas, as far as the Vindhya Mountains, the primitive Aryans lived in the state of wandering pastoral tribes, and it is to be supposed that their invasion must have taken place gradually. Their most ancient books seem to have been written about fifteen centuries before our era. In that remote age they had no castes, they worshipped the forces of nature and erected neither temples nor statues; to the people on whom they descended they brought a new language and a new religion, but they did not bring them architecture. These primitive Aryan peoples knew how to write books, but they did not know how to build monuments of stone, and nothing in the most ancient of their works indicates that they built either temples or palaces.

We will not here linger over the Aryan civilisation, any more than over the Brahmanical period which terminates it. Historical documents properly so called are lacking for both. The epics which are connected with the Brahmanical period are confirmed by the stories of Megasthenes, and prove that India was then beginning to be covered with towns, temples, and palaces; but of the monuments of this period no remains whatever have come down to us.

THE BUDDHIST PERIOD

The epoch of the birth of Buddhism in India belongs a great deal to legend and very little to history. We know nothing of the beginnings of this period save what is told us in the fantastic stories of the Buddhist books. It is only after Alexander’s invasions, and especially when, about 250 years after Christ, Buddhism became the official religion, that definite facts stand out and the darkness begins to disperse. Unfortunately it soon reappears, and reigns for long centuries.

Alexander’s invasion took place 327 years before our era. After having completed the conquest of Persia, the Macedonian hero made up his mind to undertake the conquest of India, that he might attain to the sovereignty of Asia.

The division of the Punjab into small independent and rival states must have rendered the conquest easy at the outset. Alexander made his appearance with one hundred and twenty thousand men, of whom the Greeks formed the kernel, while the rest of the number was made up by Persians. He had Indian guides and an understanding with some native chiefs, notably with the king of Taxila, a state situated on the left bank of the Indus, and which stretched between that river and the stream then known under the name of Hydaspes and to-day under that of Jhelum.

Alexander marched from Bactriana on the town which now bears the name of Kabul. Continuing his way to India, he crossed the Indus and encountered Porus, sovereign of a state enclosed between the Hydaspes and the Chenab: he beat him, but made him an ally by leaving him his kingdom. Various sovereigns, notably the sovereign of Kashmir, then sent him their submission.

After several battles against native chiefs, he marched on the Hyphasis (the present Beas); but the army refusing to follow him farther, he raised, on the banks of this stream, twelve commemorative altars, intended to mark the end of the expedition. Having returned to the banks of the Hydaspes, he constructed a fleet which descended that stream as far as the Indus, into which it passed. Fighting continually, Alexander arrived at Patala, at the mouth of the Indus, and then sent his fleet, under the orders of Nearchus, along the coast into the Persian Gulf, after which he divided his army into two corps. The one was sent back to Persia through Caramania, under the leadership of Craterus; the other, under his own direction, made its retreat by way of Gedrosia. The fleet having reached the Persian Gulf, and he himself having rejoined Craterus, the return of the expedition was celebrated with festivities.

Regarded solely from the standpoint of conquest, it may be said that the results of Alexander’s invasion were absolutely nil, since a few years after his departure not a single one of the Greek garrisons he had left behind remained in India. But this expedition, which for the first time put Europe in communication with India, was to have indirect consequences that were not without importance.

CHANDRA GUPTA

After the departure of Alexander, a Hindu king, Chandra Gupta, the Sandracottus of the Greeks, son of one of the petty chiefs of the Punjab, whom Alexander had scattered, gradually extended his empire over the whole of the north of the peninsula, and expelled or totally destroyed the Macedonian garrisons. He fixed the seat of his empire at Pataliputra (the modern Patna), capital of the kingdom of Magadha. Soon his renown became so great that, about the year 200 before our era, Seleucus Nicator, who, since Alexander’s death, was reigning in Syria, Babylonia, and all the provinces between the Euphrates and the Indus, sent to his court a Greek ambassador, named Megasthenes, for the purpose of making alliance with him. This ambassador stayed at Pataliputra for a long time, and it is from his narrative, part of which has been preserved, that we gain our first definite notions of the manners and customs of the Hindus of this epoch.

But the relations between the Greeks and Hindus were not confined to Alexander’s invasion and the embassy of Megasthenes; in default of the accounts of historians, we now know, from coins and the ruins of monuments, that the successors of the Græco-Bactrian empire of Seleucus Nicator conquered the Punjab, founded several kingdoms, and penetrated as far as Muttra. One hundred and twenty-six years before Christ an adventurer of the name of Menander founded a kingdom reaching from the Jumna to the mouth of the Nerbudda.

The sculptures and medals are the only relics which have come down to us from the Greek kingdoms of India. These kingdoms disappeared just about the beginning of our era, before the invasions of the Scythians. These invasions had commenced in the century before Christ. A Scythian people descended on the northwest of India and founded a kingdom comprising Bactriana, the banks of the Indus, the Punjab, and a part of Rajputana. This kingdom had a very ephemeral duration, since the Scythians were probably expelled from India in the early days of our era.

Setting aside this obscure part of the history of India, which recent researches have revived, let us go back to Chandra Gupta and his successors.

Chandra Gupta’s grandson was the celebrated Asoka, who reigned about 250 years before Christ. After having, according to certain Buddhist legends, massacred the hundred sons whom his father had had by sixteen different wives and thus prevented rivalries, he extended his empire throughout the north of India. Its limits are marked by inscriptions which still exist. They are to be found from Afghanistan to Bengal and from the Himalayas to the Nerbudda. In the west Asoka’s empire touched the Greek kingdom of Bactriana.

It is with this prince that the architectural history of India begins. Several of the columns he caused to be erected are still standing, and the most celebrated monuments, such as those of Bharhut, Sanchi, and Buddha Gaya, whose bas-reliefs are so valuable for the history of Buddhism, are contemporary with his reign or very little later. Nothing remains of the palaces which he himself constructed, but we may suppose that they must have been very handsome, for the pilgrim Fa-Hian, who saw in the fifth century the ruins of the buildings and the tower of the one belonging to him at Pataliputra, asserts that it was too admirable to have been the work of a mortal.

It was this same Asoka who made Buddhism the official religion of India. His religious zeal was very great, for he sent missionaries to all kinds of places, to Ceylon, and even as far as to Ptolemy Philadelphus in Egypt.

The dynasty called that of Maurya, of which Asoka was the most illustrious representative, lasted about a century and a half, i.e., from 312 to 178 B.C. Afterwards the empire founded by Asoka soon split up into petty independent kingdoms under different sovereigns. The kingdom of Magadha, however, continued to exist down to the sixteenth century of our era; but it now included only the very confined district corresponding to the present Behar. The Puranas give lists of the kings of Magadha for a thousand years, but they are very unreliable.

TWELVE CENTURIES OF OBSCURITY

After Asoka, the only Hindu authorities that we have on India down to the time of the Mohammedan invasion, besides the legendary narratives of the Puranas, are furnished by the monuments. These, with the stories of the Chinese pilgrims of which we have spoken, are the only sources from which we may in some sort reconstitute the civilisation of India during that long period.

During this night of something like twelve centuries, the important personages whose memory the Hindu chroniclers have preserved to us are few in number. The most celebrated is the legendary Vikramaditya, prince of Malwa, who lived at Ujjain, near the Nerbudda. According to the chronicles, he extended his empire over the whole of India, as far as the southern point of the Deccan. Although his history is nothing but a tissue of fabulous legends, he must certainly have fulfilled an important rôle, since the Hindus date a new era, the Samvat era, from his accession, which they suppose to have taken place 57 B.C.

Unfortunately the Hindu chronicles, according to their wont, have paid little respect to chronology, for an attentive study of the inscriptions and the monuments appears to prove that Vikramaditya reigned six hundred years after the epoch indicated by the books.[18]

It is to the same hero that the Hindu legends attribute the expulsion of the Scythians from India. These people had penetrated to the Greeks of Bactriana two centuries before Christ, and had gradually subdued them. One of their kings, Kanishka, a convert to Buddhism, had shortly before our era founded an empire comprising Afghanistan, the Punjab, and Rajputana. We know nothing of the history of the Scythians in India, unless it be that they propagated the artistic influence of the Greeks, as we see by some statues at Muttra.

According to the inscriptions interpreted by Cunningham, we should probably include amongst the contemporaries of Vikramaditya [see footnote] the Rajah Harshavardhara, who reigned from 607-648 and of whom the Chinese pilgrim, Hwen Tsang, who visited India in 634, speaks as one of the most powerful sovereigns of the north of India. His capital was Kanauj, one of the most ancient cities of India, for a long time the seat of the Gupta dynasty, and supposed to have been one of the cradles of Aryan civilisation. Ptolemy mentions it, 140 years after Christ, under the name of Kanogiya. The kingdom of which it was the capital in the days of Hwen Tsang extended from Kashmir to Assam and from Nepal to the Nerbudda.

Kanauj lies east of Agra, a few miles from the Ganges. All the traditions agree in extolling its splendour. It filled Mahmud of Ghazni with admiration when he attacked it in 1016 A.D. Ferishta says that as he approached it, he saw “a city which raised its head as high as heaven, and which, in fortifications and architecture, could justly boast that it had no rival.”

Of this ancient capital which, if we are to believe Hwen Tsang, was three miles in length, there remains not a stone to tell its history. As in the case of many famous old capitals, the destruction of the monuments anterior to the Mohammedan invasion was so complete that, in spite of all his investigations, Cunningham could not succeed in recovering a single relic. The oldest thing which he observed at Kanauj is an inscription dating only from 1136 and consequently later than the Mohammedan invasion. All the existing monuments of this town are exclusively Mohammedan, though sometimes constructed from the débris of ancient Hindu monuments.

Kanauj is one of those great ancient capitals whose history we know only from vague traditions and a few inscriptions. To those who have seen the remains of the small number which have escaped destruction, as, for instance, Khajurao, it is impossible to ascribe the enthusiastic descriptions of the splendour of these antique cities solely to the writers’ imagination.

Kanauj, Khajurao, Mahoba, and many other famous towns of which the name and the ruins are all that now survive, were the seats of mighty empires. Of these the most celebrated were governed by kings of the Rajput race, the only one whose dynasties still exist and which has preserved, if not its independence, at least its institutions and its customs. Unfortunately, we know almost nothing of the history of the Rajputs till the time when they entered into conflict with the Mohammedans. The latter succeeded in destroying their capitals and in thrusting them back to the steep and mountainous regions of Rajputana, but they only obtained from them a purely nominal submission.

The whole of this period, which extends from the successors of Asoka to the revival of Brahmanism and even to the Mohammedan invasions, is thus almost as obscure as that which preceded it, and but for the monuments it has left us we should know practically nothing about it. Historical documents are equally lacking for the period of the revival of Brahmanism, or the neo-Brahmanical period. Coins and monuments are about the only authorities which we can consult concerning it.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[18] [“The name Vikramaditya,” says Sir W. W. Hunter in his Brief History of the Indian People, p. 81, “is a title meaning ‘A Very Sun in Prowess,’ which has been borne by several kings in Indian history. But the Vikramaditya of the first century before Christ was the greatest of them,--great alike as a defender of his country against the Scythian hordes, as a patron of men of learning, and as a good ruler of his subjects.” This will explain the confusion that has enveloped the name. See also the previous section on “Traditional Kings.”]

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III. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ANCIENT HINDUS

The first complete picture of the state of Hindu society is afforded by the code of laws which bears the name of Manu, and which was probably drawn up in the ninth century before Christ. But to gain accurate notions even of the people contemporary with the supposed Manu we must remember that a code is never the work of a single age, some of the earliest and rudest laws being preserved and incorporated with the improvements of the most enlightened times. To take a familiar example, there are many of the laws in Blackstone, the existence of which proves a high state of refinement in the nation; but those relating to witchcraft, and the wager of battle, afford no correspondent proof of the continuance of barbarism down to the age in which the commentaries were written.

Even if the whole code referred to one period, it would not show the real state of manners. Its injunctions are drawn from the model to which it is wished to raise the community, and its prohibitions from the worst state of crime which it was possible to apprehend. It is to the general spirit of the code, therefore, that we must look for that of the age; and even then, we must soften the features before we reach the actual condition of the people. We have adhered to the usual phraseology in speaking of this compilation; but, though early adopted as an unquestionable authority for the law, we should scarcely venture to regard it as a code drawn up for the regulation of a particular state under the sanction of a government. It seems rather to be the work of a learned man, designed to set forth his idea of a perfect commonwealth under Hindu institutions. On this supposition it would show the state of society as correctly as a legal code; since it is evident that it incorporates the existing laws, and any alterations it may have introduced, with a view to bring them up to its preconceived standard of perfection, must still have been drawn from the opinions which prevailed when it was written. These considerations being premised, we shall now give an outline of the information contained in Manu.

DIVISION AND EMPLOYMENT OF CLASSES

The first feature that strikes us in the society described by Manu is the division into four classes or castes (the sacerdotal, the military, the industrial, and the servile). In these we are struck with the prodigious elevation and sanctity of the Brahmans, and the studied degradation of the lowest class.

The three first classes, though by no means equal, are yet admitted into one pale: they all partake in certain sacred rites, to which peculiar importance is attached throughout the code; and they appear to form the whole community for whose government the laws are framed. The fourth class and the outcasts are no further considered than as they contribute to the advantage of the superior castes.

A Brahman is the chief of all created beings; the world and all in it are his: through him, indeed, other mortals enjoy life; by his imprecations he could destroy a king, with his troops, elephants, horses, and cars; could frame other worlds and regents of worlds, and could give being to new gods and new mortals. A Brahman is to be treated with more respect than a king. His life and person are protected by the severest laws in this world, and the most tremendous denunciations for the next. He is exempt from capital punishment, even for the most enormous crimes. His offences against other classes are treated with remarkable lenity, while all offences against him are punished with tenfold severity.

Yet it would seem, at first sight, as if the Brahmans, content with gratifying their spiritual pride, had no design to profit by worldly wealth or power. The life prescribed to them is one of laborious study, as well as of austerity and retirement.

The first quarter of a Brahman’s life he must spend as a student; during which time he leads a life of abstinence and humiliation. His attention should be unremittingly directed to the Vedas, and should on no account be wasted on worldly studies. He should treat his preceptor with implicit obedience, and with humble respect and attachment, which ought to be extended to his family. He must perform various servile offices for his preceptor, and must labour for himself in bringing logs and other materials for sacrifice, and water for oblations. He must subsist entirely by begging from door to door.

For the second quarter of his life, he lives with his wife and family, and discharges the ordinary duties of a Brahman. These are briefly stated to be, reading and teaching the Vedas; sacrificing and assisting others to sacrifice; bestowing alms, and accepting gifts.

The most honourable of these employments is teaching. It is remarkable that, unlike other religions, where the dignity of the priesthood is derived from their service at the temples, a Brahman is considered as degraded by performing acts of worship or assisting at sacrifices, as a profession. All Brahmans are strongly and repeatedly prohibited from receiving gifts from low-born, wicked, or unworthy persons. They are not even to take many presents from unexceptionable givers, and are carefully to avoid making it a habit to accept of unnecessary presents. When the regular sources fail, a Brahman may, for a mere subsistence, glean, or beg, or cultivate, or even (in case of extreme necessity) he may trade; but he must in no extremity enter into service; he must not have recourse to popular conversation, must abstain from music, singing, dancing, gaming, and generally from everything inconsistent with gravity and composure.

He should, indeed, refrain from all sensual enjoyments, should avoid all wealth that may impede his reading the Vedas, and should shun all worldly honour as he would shun poison. Yet he is not to subject himself to fasts, or other needless severities. All that is required is, that his life should be decorous and occupied in the prescribed studies and observances. Even his dress is laid down with minuteness; and he may easily be figured (much as learned Brahmans are still), quiet and demure, clean and decent, “his hair and beard clipped, his passions subdued, his mantle white, and his body pure”; with a staff and a copy of the Vedas in his hands, and bright golden rings in his ears. When he has paid the three debts, by reading the scriptures, begetting a son, and performing the regular sacrifices, he may (even in the second portion of his life) make over all to his son, and remain in his family house, with no employment but that of an umpire.

The third portion of a Brahman’s life he must spend as an anchorite in the woods. Clad in bark or in the skin of a black antelope, with his hair and nails uncut, sleeping on the bare earth, he must live “without fire, without a mansion, wholly silent, feeding on roots and fruit.” He must also submit to many and harsh mortifications, expose himself, naked, to the heaviest rains, wear humid garments in winter, and in summer stand in the midst of five fires under the burning sun. He must carefully perform all sacrifices and oblations, and consider it his special duty to fulfil the prescribed forms and ceremonies of religion.

In the last period of his life, the Brahman is nearly as solitary and abstracted as during the third. But he is now released from all forms and external observances: his business is contemplation; his mortifications cease. His dress more nearly resembles that of ordinary Brahmans; and his abstinence, though still great, is not so rigid as before. He is no longer to invite suffering, but is to cultivate equanimity and to enjoy delight in meditation on the Divinity; till, at last, he quits the body “as a bird leaves the branch of a tree at its pleasure.”

Thus it appears that during three-fourths of a Brahman’s life, he was entirely secluded from the world, and during the remaining fourth, besides having his time completely occupied by ceremonies and in reading the Vedas, he was expressly debarred from the enjoyment of wealth or pleasure and from the pursuit of ambition. But a little further acquaintance with the code makes it evident that these rules are founded on a former condition of the Brahmans; and that, although still regarded as the model for their conduct, they had already been encroached on by the temptations of power and riches.

The king must have a Brahman for his most confidential counsellor; and by Brahmans is he to be instructed in policy as well as in justice and all learning. The whole judicial authority (except that exercised by the king in person) is in the hands of Brahmans; and, although the perusal of the sacred writings is not withheld from the two nearest classes, yet the sense of them is only to be obtained through the exposition of a Brahman.

The interpretation of the laws is expressly confined to the Brahmans; and we can perceive, from the code itself, how large a share of the work of legislation was in the hands of that order.

THE PROPERTY OF THE BRAHMAN

The property of the sacred class is as well protected by the law as its power. Liberality to Brahmans is made incumbent on every virtuous man, and is the especial duty of a king. Sacrifices and oblations, and all the ceremonies of religion, involve feasts and presents to the Brahmans, and those gifts must always be liberal: “the organs of sense and action, reputation in this life, happiness in the next, life itself, children, and cattle, are all destroyed by a sacrifice offered with trifling gifts to the priests.” Many penances may be commuted for large fines, which all go to the sacred class. If a Brahman finds a treasure, he keeps it all; if it is found by another person, the king takes it, but must give one-half to the Brahmans. On failure of heirs, the property of others escheats to the king, but that of Brahmans is divided among their class. A learned Brahman is exempt from all taxation, and ought, if in want, to be maintained by the king.

Stealing the gold of Brahmans incurs an extraordinary punishment, which is to be inflicted by the king in person, and is likely, in most cases, to be capital. Their property is protected by many other denunciations: and for injuring their cattle, a man is to suffer amputation of half his foot.

The military class, though far from being placed on an equality with the Brahmans, is still treated with honour. It is indeed acknowledged that the sacerdotal order cannot prosper without the military, or the military without the sacerdotal; and that the prosperity of both in this world and the next depends on their cordial union.

The military class enjoys, in a less degree, with respect to the Vaisyas, the same inequality in criminal law that the Brahman possesses in respect to all the other classes. The king belongs to this class, as probably do all his ordinary ministers. The command of armies and of military divisions, in short, the whole military profession, and in strictness all situations of command, are also their birthright. It is indeed very observable, that even in the code drawn up by themselves, with the exception of interpreting the law, no interference in the executive government is ever allowed to Brahmans.

The duties of the military class are stated to be, to defend the people, to give alms, to sacrifice, to read the Vedas, and to shun the allurements of sensual gratification.

The rank of Vaisyas is not high; for where a Brahman is enjoined to show hospitality to strangers, he is directed to show benevolence even to a merchant and to give him food at the same time with his domestics. Besides largesses, sacrifice, and reading the Vedas, the duties of a Vaisya are to keep herds of cattle, to carry on trade, to lend at interest, and to cultivate the land.

The practical knowledge required from a Vaisya is more general than that of the other classes; for in addition to a knowledge of the means of breeding cattle, and a thorough acquaintance with all commodities and all soils, he must understand the productions and wants of other countries, the wages of servants, the various dialects of men, and whatever else belongs to purchase and sale.

THE DESPISED SUDRA

The duty of a Sudra is briefly stated to be to serve the other classes, but it is more particularly explained in different places that his chief duty is to serve the Brahmans; and it is specially permitted to him, in case of want of subsistence and inability to procure service from that class, to serve a Kshattriya; or if even that service cannot be obtained, to attend on an opulent Vaisya. It is a general rule that, in times of distress, each of the classes may subsist by the occupations allotted to those beneath it, but must never encroach on the employments of those above it. A Sudra has no class beneath him; but, if other employments fail, he may subsist by handicrafts, especially joinery and masonry, painting, and writing.

A Sudra may perform sacrifices with the omission of the holy texts; yet it is an offence requiring expiation for a Brahman to assist him in sacrificing. A Brahman must not read the Veda, even to himself, in the presence of a Sudra. To teach him the law, or to instruct him in the mode of expiating sin, sinks a Brahman into the hell called Asamvrita.

It is even forbidden to give him temporal advice. No offence is more repeatedly or more strongly inveighed against than that of a Brahman receiving a gift from a Sudra: it cannot even be expiated by penance, until the gift has been restored. A Brahman, starving, may take dry grain from a Sudra, but must never eat meat cooked by him. A Sudra is to be fed by the leavings of his master, or by his refuse grain, and clad in his worn-out garments.

He must amass no wealth, even if he has the power, lest he become proud, and give pain to Brahmans.

If a Sudra use abusive language to one of a superior class, his tongue is to be slit. If he sit on the same seat with a Brahman, he is to have a gash made on the part offending. If he advise him about his religious duties, hot oil is to be dropped into his mouth and ears.

These are specimens of the laws, equally ludicrous and inhuman, which are made in favour of the other classes against the Sudras.

The proper name of a Sudra is directed to be expressive of contempt, and the religious penance for killing him is the same as for killing a cat, a frog, a dog, a lizard, and various other animals.

Yet, though the degraded state of a Sudra be sufficiently evident, his precise civil condition is by no means so clear. Sudras are universally termed the servile class; and, in one place, it is declared that a Sudra, though emancipated by his master, is not released from a state of servitude, “for,” it is added, “of a state which is natural to him, by whom can he be divested?”

Yet every Sudra is not necessarily the slave of an individual; for it has been seen that they are allowed to offer their services to whom they please, and even to exercise trades on their own account: there is nothing to lead to a belief that they are the slaves of the state; and, indeed, the exemption of Sudras from the laws against emigration shows that no perfect right to their services was deemed to exist anywhere.

Their right to property (which was denied to slaves) is admitted in many places. Their persons are protected, even against their masters, who can only correct them in a manner fixed by law, and equally applicable to wives, children, pupils, and younger brothers.

That there were some Sudra slaves is indisputable; but there is every reason to believe that men of the other classes were also liable to fall into servitude.

The condition of Sudras, therefore, was very much better than that of the public slaves under some ancient republics, and, indeed, than that of the villeins of the Middle Ages, or any other servile class with which we are acquainted.

MIXTURE OF CLASSES

Though the line between the different classes was so strongly marked, the means taken to prevent their mixture do not seem to have been nearly so much attended to as in after times. The law in this respect seems rather dictated by jealousy of the honour of the women of the higher classes than by regard for the purity of descents.

Men of the first three classes are freely indulged in the choice of women from any inferior caste, provided they do not give them the first place in their family. But no marriage is permitted with women of a higher class; criminal intercourse with them is checked by the severest penalties, and their offspring is degraded far below either of its parents. The son of a Brahman, by a woman of the class next below him, takes a station intermediate between his father and mother; and the daughters of such connections, if they go on marrying Brahmans for seven generations, restore their progeny to the original purity of the sacerdotal class; but the son of a Sudra by a Brahman woman is a Chandala, “the lowest of mortals,” and his intercourse with women of the higher classes produces “a race more foul than their begetter.”

The classes do not seem to have associated at their meals even in the time of Manu; and there is a striking contrast between the cordial festivity recommended to Brahmans with their own class, and the constrained hospitality with which they are directed to prepare food after the Brahmans for a military man coming as a guest.

But there is no prohibition in the code against eating with other classes, or partaking of food cooked by them (which is now the great occasion for loss of caste), except in the case of Sudras; and even then the offence is expiated by living on water gruel for seven days.

Loss of caste seems, in general, to have been incurred by crimes, or by omitting the prescribed expiations for offences.

It is remarkable that, in the four classes, no place is assigned to artisans: Sudras, indeed, are permitted to practise mechanic trades during a scarcity of other employment, but it is not said to whom the employment regularly belongs.

From some of the allotments, it would appear that the artisans were supplied, as they are now, from the mixed classes: a circumstance which affords ground for surmise that the division into castes took place while arts were in too simple a state to require separate workmen for each; and also that many generations had elapsed between that division and the code, to allow so important a portion of the employments of the community to be filled by classes formed subsequently to the original distribution of the people.[c]

This distribution of the whole people into four classes only, and the appropriation of them to four species of employment,--an arrangement which, in the very simple state of society in which it must have been introduced, was a great step in improvement,--must have become productive of innumerable inconveniences, as the wants of society multiplied. The bare necessaries of life, with a small number of its rudest accommodations, are all it prepares to meet the desires of man. As those desires speedily extend beyond such narrow limits, a struggle must have early ensued between the first principles of human nature and those of the political establishment. The different castes were strictly commanded to marry with those only of their own class and profession; and the mixture of the classes from the union of the sexes was guarded against by the severest laws.[19] This was an occurrence, however, which laws could not prevent. Irregularities took place; children were born, who belonged to no caste, and for whom there was no occupation. No event could befall society more calamitous than this. Unholy and infamous, on account of that violation of the sacred law to which they owed their unwelcome birth, those wretched outcasts had no resource for subsistence, excepting either the bounty of the established classes, to whom they were objects of execration and abhorrence; or the plunder of those same classes, a course to which they would betake themselves with all the ingenuity of necessitous, and all the atrocity of much injured, men. When a class of this description became numerous, they must have filled society with the greatest disorders. In the preface of that compilation of the Hindu Laws, which was translated by Mr. Halhed, it is stated that, after a succession of good kings, who secured obedience to the laws, and under whom the people enjoyed felicity, came a monarch evil and corrupt, under whom the laws were violated, the mixture of the classes was perpetrated, and a new and impious race were produced. The Brahmans put this wicked king to death, and, by an effort of miraculous power, created a successor endowed with the most excellent qualities. But the kingdom did not prosper, by reason of the Burren Sunker, so were this impure brood denominated; and it required the wisdom of this virtuous king to devise a remedy. He resolved upon a classification of the mixed race, and to assign them occupations. This, accordingly, was the commencement of arts and manufactures. The Burren Sunker became all manner of artisans and handicrafts; one tribe of them weavers of cloth, another artificers in iron, and so on in other cases, till the subdivisions of the class were exhausted, or the exigencies of the community supplied.

Thus were remedied two evils at once. The increasing wants of an improving society were provided for; and a class of men, the pest of the community, were converted to its service. This is another important era in the history of Hindu society; and having reached this stage, it does not appear that it has made, or that it is capable of making, much further progress. Thirty-six branches of the impure class are specified in the sacred books, of whom and of their employments it would be tedious and useless to present the description. The highest is that sprung from the conjunction of a Brahman with a woman of the Kshattriya class whose duty is the teaching of military exercises. The lowest of all is the offspring of a Sudra with a woman of the sacred class. This tribe are denominated Chandalas, and are regarded with great abhorrence. Their profession is to carry out corpses, to execute criminals, and perform other offices, reckoned to the last degree unclean and degrading. If, by the laws of Hindustan, the Sudras are placed in a low and vile situation, the impure and mixed classes are placed in one still more odious and degrading. Nothing can equal the contempt and insolence to which it is the lot of the lowest among them to see themselves exposed. They are condemned to live in a sequestered spot by themselves, that they may not pollute the very town in which they reside. If they meet a man of the higher castes, they must turn out of the way, lest he should be contaminated by their presence.

“Avoid,” says the Tantra, “the touch of the Chandala, and other abject classes. Whoever associates with them undoubtedly falls from his class; whoever bathes or drinks in wells or pools which they have caused to be made, must be purified by the five productions of kine.”[20] From this outline of the classification and distribution of the people, as extracted from the books of the Hindus, some of the most intelligent of our British observers appeal to the present practice of the people, which they affirm is much more conformable to the laws of human welfare, than the institutions described in the ancient books. Of this, the author is aware; so inconsistent with the laws of human welfare are the institutions described in the Hindu ancient books, that they never could have been observed with any accuracy; it is, at the same time, very evident, that the institutions described in the ancient books are the model upon which the present frame of Hindu society has been formed; and when we consider the powerful causes which have operated so long to draw, or rather to force, the Hindus from their inconvenient institutions and customs, the only source of wonder is, that the state of society which they now exhibit should hold so great a resemblance to that which is depicted in their books. The President de Goguet is of opinion, that a division of the people into tribes and hereditary professions similar to that of the Hindus existed in the ancient Assyrian empire, and that it prevailed from the highest antiquity over almost all Asia. Cecrops distributed into four tribes all the inhabitants of Attica. Theseus afterwards made them three by uniting, as it should seem, the sacerdotal class with that of the nobles, or magistrates. They consisted then of nobles and priests, labourers or husbandmen, and artificers; and there is no doubt that, like the Egyptians and Indians, they were hereditary. Aristotle expressly informs us that in Crete the people were divided by the laws of Minos into classes after the manner of the Egyptians. We have most remarkable proof of a division, the same as that of the Hindus, anciently established among the Persians. In the Zendavesta, translated by Anquetil Duperron, is the following passage: “Ormuzd said: There are three measures (literally weights, that is, tests, rules) of conduct, four states, and five places of dignity.--The states are: that of the priests; that of the soldier; that of the husbandman, the source of riches; and that of the artisan or labourer.” There are sufficient vestiges to prove an ancient establishment of the same sort among the Buddhists of Ceylon, and by consequence to infer it among the other Buddhists over so large a portion of Asia.[d]

THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

As Manu’s code mapped out Hindu life in fine detail, it gives especially definite rules for the laws and the courts. Justice is to be administered by the king in person, assisted by Brahmans and other counsellors; or that function may be deputed to one Brahman, aided by three assessors of the same class.

The king is entitled to five per cent. on all debts admitted by the defendant on trial, and to ten per cent. on all denied and proved. This fee probably went direct to the judges, who would thus be remunerated without infringing the law against Brahmans serving for hire. A king or judge in trying causes is carefully to observe the countenances, gestures, and mode of speech of the parties and witnesses. He is to attend to local usages of districts, the peculiar laws of classes and rules of families, and the customs of traders: when not inconsistent with the above, he is to observe the principles established by former judges. Neither he nor his officers are to encourage litigation, though they must show no slackness in taking up any suit regularly instituted.

A king is reckoned among the worst of criminals who receives his revenue from his subjects without affording them due protection in return. The king is enjoined to bear with rough language from irritated litigants, as well as from old or sick people, who come before him. He is also cautioned against deciding causes on his own judgment, without consulting persons learned in the law; and is positively forbidden to disturb any transaction that has once been settled conformably to law. In trials he is to adhere to established practice.

Criminal Law

The criminal law is very rude, and this portion of the code, together with the religious penances, leaves a more unfavourable impression of the early Hindus than any other part of the institutes.

It is not, however, sanguinary, unless when influenced by superstition or by the prejudice of caste; and if punishments are, in some cases, too severe, in others they are far too lenient. Mutilation (chiefly of the hand) is among the punishments, as in all Asiatic codes. Burning alive is one of the inflictions on offenders against the sacerdotal order; but it is an honourable distinction from most ancient codes that torture is never employed either against witnesses or criminals.

The punishments, though not always in themselves severe, are often disproportioned to the offence; and are frequently so indistinctly or contradictorily declared as to leave the fate of an offender quite uncertain; such are the punishments for adultery and what are called overt acts of adulterous inclination. Among these last are included, talking to the wife of another man at a place of pilgrimage, or in a forest, or at the confluence of rivers; sending her flowers or perfumes; touching her apparel or her ornaments, and sitting on the same couch with her; yet the penalty is banishment, with such bodily marks as may excite aversion.

For adultery itself, it is first declared, without reserve, that the woman is to be devoured by dogs, and the man burned on an iron bed; yet, in the verses next following, it appears that the punishment of adultery without aggravation is a fine of from 500 to 1000 panas.

The punishment, indeed, increases in proportion to the dignity of the party offended against. Even a soldier committing adultery with a Brahman woman, if she be of eminently good qualities, and properly guarded, is to be burned alive in a fire of dry grass or reeds. These flat contradictions can only be accounted for by supposing that the compiler put down the laws of different periods, or those supported by different authorities, without considering how they bore on each other.

There is no express punishment for murder. From one passage it would appear that it (as well as arson and robbery attended with violence) is capital, and that the slighter punishments mentioned in other places were in cases where there was no premeditation; but, as the murder of particular descriptions of persons is afterwards declared capital, it remains doubtful what is the punishment for the offence in simple cases.

Theft is punished, if small, with fine; if of greater amount, with cutting off the hand; but if the thief be taken with the stolen goods upon him, it is capital. Receivers of stolen goods, and persons who harbour thieves, are liable to the same punishment as the thief. It is remarkable that, in cases of small theft, the fine of a Brahman offender is at least eight times as great as that of a Sudra, and the scale varies in a similar manner and proportion between all the classes. A king committing an offence is to pay a thousand times as great a fine as would be exacted from an ordinary person. Robbery seems to incur amputation of the limb principally employed. If accompanied with violence it is capital; and all who shelter robbers, or supply them with food or implements, are to be punished with death.

Abusive language is still more distinguished for the inequality of punishments among the castes, but even in this branch of the law are traces of a civilised spirit. Men reproaching their neighbours with lameness, blindness, or any other natural infirmity, are liable to a small fine, even if they speak the truth. Assaults, if among equals, are punished by a fine of 100 panas for blood drawn, a larger sum for a wound, and banishment for breaking a bone. The prodigious inequalities into which the penalty runs between men of different classes have already been noticed.

The offences of physicians or surgeons who injure their patients for want of skill; breaking hedges, palisades, and earthen idols; mixing pure with impure commodities, and other impositions on purchasers, are all lumped up under a penalty of from 250 to 500 panas. Selling bad grain for good, however, incurs severe corporal punishment; and, what far more passes the limits of just distinction, a goldsmith guilty of fraud is ordered to be cut to pieces with razors.

Some offences not noticed by other codes are punished in this one with whimsical disregard to their relative importance; forsaking one’s parents, son, or wife, for instance, is punished by a fine of 600 panas; and not inviting one’s next neighbour to entertainments on certain occasions by a fine of one masha of silver.

Gamesters, public dancers, and singers, revilers of scripture, open heretics, men who perform not the duties of their several classes, and sellers of spirituous liquors, are to be instantly banished the town.

Civil Law

The laws for civil judicature are very superior to the penal code, and, indeed, are much more rational and matured than could well be expected of so early an age.

The law of evidence in many particulars resembles that of England: persons having a pecuniary interest in the cause, infamous persons, menial servants, familiar friends, with others disqualified on slighter grounds, are in the first instance excluded from giving testimony; but, in default of other evidence, almost every description of persons may be examined, the judge making due allowances for the disqualifying causes.

Two exceptions which disgrace these otherwise well-intentioned rules have attracted more attention in Europe than the rules themselves. One is the declaration that a giver of false evidence, for the purpose of saving the life of a man of whatever class, who may have exposed himself to capital punishment, shall not lose a seat in heaven; and, though bound to perform an expiation, has, on the whole, performed a meritorious action.

The other does not relate to judicial evidence, but pronounces that, in courting a woman, in an affair where grass or fruit has been eaten by a cow, and in case of a promise made for the preservation of a Brahman, it is no deadly sin to take a light oath. From these passages it has been assumed that the Hindu law gives a direct sanction to perjury; and to this has been ascribed the prevalence of false evidence, which is common to men of all religions in India: yet there is more space devoted in this code to the prohibition of false evidence than to that of any other crime, and the offence is denounced in terms as awful as have ever been applied to it in any European treatise either of religion or of law.

“Naked and shorn, tormented with hunger and thirst, and deprived of sight, shall the man who gives false evidence go with a potsherd to beg food at the door of his enemy.”--“Headlong, in utter darkness, shall the impious wretch tumble into hell, who, being interrogated on a judicial inquiry answers one question falsely.”

A creditor is authorised, before complaining to the court, to recover his property by any means in his power, resorting even to force within certain bounds. This law still operates so strongly in some Hindu states, that a creditor imprisons his debtor in his private house, and even keeps him for a period without food and exposed to the sun, to compel him to produce the money he owes. Interest varies from two per cent. per mensem for a Brahman to five per cent. for a Sudra.

The rules regarding man and wife are full of puerilities; the most important ones shall be stated after a short account of the laws relating to marriage. Six forms of marriage are recognised as lawful. Of these, four only are allowed to Brahmans, which (though differing in minute particulars) all agree in insisting that the father shall give away his daughter without receiving a price. The remaining two forms are permitted to the military class alone, and are abundantly liberal even with that limitation. One is, when a soldier carries off a woman after a victory, and espouses her against her will; and the other, when consummation takes place by mutual consent, without any formal ceremony whatever. Two sorts of marriage are forbidden: when the father receives a nuptial present; and when the woman, from intoxication, or other cause, has been incapable of giving a real consent to the union.

A girl may be married at eight, or even earlier; and, if her father fails to give her a husband for three years after she is marriageable (i.e., capable of being a parent), she is at liberty to choose one for herself. Men may marry women of the classes below them, but on no account of those superior to their own. A man must not marry within six known degrees of relationship on either side, nor with any woman whose family name, being the same, shows her to be of the same race as his own. The marriage of people of equal class is performed by joining hands; but a woman of the military class, marrying a Brahman, holds an arrow in her hand; a Vaisya woman a whip; and a Sudra, the skirt of a mantle. The marriage of equals is most recommended, for the first wife at least: that of a Brahman with a Sudra is discouraged; and, as a first wife, it is positively forbidden.

Marriage is indissoluble, and the parties are bound to observe mutual fidelity. From the few cases hereafter specified, in which the husband may take a second wife, it may be inferred that, with those exceptions, he must have but one wife. A man may marry again on the death of his wife; but the marriage of widows is discouraged, if not prohibited (except in the case of Sudras). A wife who is barren for eight years, or she who has produced no male children in eleven, may be superseded by another wife.

It appears, notwithstanding this expression, that the wife first married retains the highest rank in the family. Drunken and immoral wives, those who bear malice to their husbands, or are guilty of very great extravagance, may also be superseded. A wife who leaves her husband’s house, or neglects him for a twelvemonth, without a cause, may be deserted altogether.

A man going abroad must leave a provision for his wife. The wife is bound to wait for her absent husband for eight years, if he be gone on religious duty; six, if in pursuit of knowledge or fame; and three, if for pleasure only. The practice of allowing a man to raise up issue to his brother, if he died without children, or even if (though still alive) he have no hopes of progeny, is reprobated, except for Sudras, or in case of a widow who has lost her husband before consummation.

The natural heirs of a man are the sons of his body, and their sons, and the sons of his daughters, when appointed in default of heirs male to raise up issue to him. The son of his wife, begotten by a near kinsman, at some time when his own life had been despaired of, according to the practice formerly noticed (which, though disapproved of as heretical, would appear to be recognised when it has actually taken place), is also entitled to inherit as a son. On the failure of issue of the above description, an adopted son succeeds: such a son loses all claim on the inheritance of his original father; and is entitled to a sixth of the property of his adoptive one, even if, subsequently to his adoption, sons of the body should be born. On failure of the above heirs follow ten descriptions of sons, such as never could have been thought of but by Hindus, with whom the importance of a descendant for the purpose of performing obsequies is superior to most considerations. Among these are included the son of a man’s wife by an uncertain father, begotten when he himself has long been absent, and the son of his wife of whom she was pregnant, without his knowledge, at the time of the marriage. The illegitimate son of his daughter by a man whom she afterwards marries, the son of a man by a married woman who has forsaken her husband, or by a widow, are also admitted into this class; as are, last of all, his own sons by a Sudra wife. These and others (ten in all) are admitted, by a fiction of the law, to be sons, though the author of the code himself speaks contemptuously of the affiliation, even as affording the means of efficacious obsequies.[c]

HINDU COMMERCE

The Hindus in their most ancient works of poetry are represented as a commercial people. And it is one evidence of the prosperity and well-being of a country, that its merchants can travel from one place to another with perfect security to themselves and their merchandise. But further, the regulations of society appear to have awarded a high rank to persons who were employed in the business of commerce. In the Ramayana we are informed, that at the triumphal entry of Rama into his capital, “all the men of distinction, together with the merchants and chief men of the people,” went out to meet him; and the procession is closed by the warriors, tradesmen, and artisans.

The internal commerce of India could not have been inconsiderable, as it was in a certain degree prescribed by nature herself. For the sandy shores of the peninsula, not producing in sufficient quantity the first necessaries of life, and particularly rice, the importation of these articles from the country bordering on the Ganges became absolutely indispensable. In return for which the latter received chiefly spices; and among other valuables, precious stones, and the fine pearls only to be procured in the ocean which surrounds the former. Although cotton, one of the most important materials used for clothing, is common all over India, and manufactured with the same activity on the coasts of the peninsula as in the land of the Ganges, yet the fabric of the two countries differs so much in texture, that a commercial interchange of both kinds would naturally be introduced.

Precious Metals

The great quantity of the precious metals, particularly gold, possessed by India, may well excite our attention and surprise. Though it had neither gold nor silver mines, it has always been celebrated even in the earliest times for its riches. The Ramayana frequently mentions gold as in abundant circulation throughout the country. And the nuptial present made to Sita, we are told, consisted of a whole measure of gold pieces, and a vast quantity of the same precious metal in ingots. Golden chariots, golden trappings for elephants and horses, and golden bells, are also noticed as articles of luxury and magnificence; and it has been already shown, in the course of our inquiries into Phœnician commerce, that the Hindus were the only people subject to that empire who paid their tribute in gold and not in silver. The quantity of this metal then current in India will therefore enable us to infer, with reason, the existence of a considerable foreign commerce and trade with the gold countries.

Without doubt commercial transactions with India during the time of the Romans, and for some time afterwards, were principally carried on in ready money, which is more than once mentioned as an article of importation. And who does not recollect the complaints of the elder Pliny, of the vast sums annually absorbed by the commerce with India? How, indeed, could the case have been otherwise, when a country, which produced in superabundance every possible article, whether required for the necessaries of life or the refinements of luxury, would of course export a great deal, while it imported little or nothing in return; so that the commercial balance would always be in its favour. Hence it followed, that from the moment she possessed a foreign commerce, India would enrich herself with the precious metals by a necessary consequence from the very nature of things, and not by any fortuitous concourse of circumstances.

Coinage; Precious Stones; Weaving

This naturally brings us to the question, whether the Hindus possessed a regular coinage, and how far back the use of it extends. There is no doubt that the precious metals, gold and silver, particularly gold, were in very ancient times the established medium of exchange in India; but this, however, will not prove it to have been coined. If we can repose any confidence in the published translations of native works, the use of coined money would appear to have prevailed in very remote times; for it is expressly mentioned in the fable of Krishna.

Precious stones and pearls, both of them indigenous productions, may be comprised among the most ancient objects of Hindu luxury, and, therefore, of commerce; and they are even expressly recommended by Manu, together with coral and woven stuffs, as the most important articles on which the Vaisyas were carefully to inform themselves as to price, etc. It would be superfluous to adduce proofs on this head from native works; for even the oldest specimens of Hindu sculpture, found in the rock temples, sufficiently attest it. According to the Periplus, precious stones of every kind were brought from the interior to the port of Nelkynda; among these, diamonds and rubies are particularly noticed; and as the former is a native of India, we may reasonably conclude that some of the mines where they are found must have been worked at a very remote period.

The use and manufacture of ornamental works in ivory is equally ancient throughout India. Pendants for the ear, and necklaces, both of that material, form the ordinary decorations of the divinities of Elephanta, as was observed to be the case even in Alexander’s time. Above all, the art of working in ivory must have attained a high degree of perfection, from the circumstance, that the ornamental chains above noticed seem to have been carved out of a single piece.

According to the unanimous report both of history and tradition, weaving is reckoned among the most important manufactures of ancient India; a country which nature has abundantly furnished with all kinds of raw material for the purpose, and especially cotton. We are not informed, however, who was the inventor of the simple loom used by the Hindus, which from its first origin does not appear to have undergone any alteration. The variety of cloth fabrics mentioned even by the author of the Periplus, as articles of commerce, is so great, that we can hardly suppose the number to have increased afterwards. We there read of the finest Bengal muslins; of coarse, middle, and fine cloths, either plain or striped; of coarse and fine calicoes; of coloured shawls and sashes; of coarse and fine purple goods, as well as pieces of gold embroidery; of spun silk and furs from Serica. The cotton garments of the Hindus were the first to draw the attention of the Greeks, from the extraordinary whiteness of the cloth; and they are described as being made and worn in the same manner as at the present day. The accounts we find of this cloth in the prophet Ezekiel would lead us to similar conclusions. That the “coloured cloths and rich apparel” brought to Tyre and Babylon from distant countries were partly of Indian manufacture will scarcely be doubted, after what has been already said of the extent of the Phœnician and Babylonian commerce.

Intoxicants; Spices; Perfumery

Of strong and intoxicating liquors, ancient India was acquainted with more than one sort; the use of them, however, was by no means general. The Ramayana distinguishes the Surs, who indulged themselves in these liquors, from the Asurs, who abstained from them; two sects which even at that time must have been of pretty ancient standing, as they are noticed in the old fable about the descendants of Aditi (who are the Surs) and Diti (who are the Asurs).

Under the head of strong liquors, wine is more than once mentioned in the Ramayana. If we suppose this to mean wine made from grapes, it must, in that case, have been imported; because, to the best of our knowledge, they do not press the grape in India itself. It is very doubtful, however, whether this sort of wine is to be understood in the passages alluded to; and even admitting it to have been introduced into the country as early as the time of the Ramayana, it would scarcely be the usual drink of common soldiers, any more than it is at the present day. It appears, indeed, much more probable that palm-wine is intended by the expression; as this could be easily made in any part of India, and was, moreover, in the time of the Periplus, imported from Arabia, which is the reason of its being called Arabian wine.

The strong liquors, however, in most general use throughout India, appear to have been those obtained by distillation. The Ramayana mentions a beverage of this sort procured from fruits and the sugar-cane; and in Manu we find three principal kinds distinguished, according as the liquors in question were distilled from molasses, bruised rice, or the Madhuca-flower. Of the last we know nothing beyond the mere name; the two former are most likely equivalent to the arrack and rum of modern times. The Brahmans are forbidden the use of all three.

India is the mother country of spices; and we have already shown, in the course of our inquiries into Phœnician commerce, that, from the most ancient times, she supplied the whole Western world with that article. Although in the few native works at our present disposal there is no particular mention made of spices, yet we cannot possibly doubt of their consumption in the country itself. This silence, however, is merely the effect of accidental causes; for neither Manu or the Ramayana had any special occasion of alluding to the subject. But it is quite certain that pepper was very early known to the Western world as an article of commerce; for Theophrastus even distinguishes several varieties of it. Together with the spice itself, the name also of pepper seems to have migrated, probably through Persia, into the countries of the West. There is little doubt that it came originally from the southern parts of Malabar, from Cochin and the neighbourhood; which was noticed for its growth of pepper by Cosmas in the sixth century, and indeed is so at the present day.

With respect to articles of perfumery, we are enabled to speak more decisively. These are of various kinds, partly foreign, as frankincense, and partly indigenous, as the sandal-wood, which is frequently mentioned in the Ramayana and the Gitagovinda, and was in common use throughout India as well as China.

Perfumes in general, and particularly frankincense, were from the most ancient times not confined solely to the purposes of sacrifice; they were also indispensable requisites in Hindu private life, and above all on festal occasions; an example of which will be found in the Ramayana, where the poet describes the solemn entry of Bharata into his grandfather’s capital: “The inhabitants, after having watered the streets, had sprinkled them with sand, and garnished them with flower-pots, ranged in order, and containing fragrant plants in full blossom. The city was adorned with garlands, and exhaled the odours of frankincense and sweet-smelling perfumes.” The quantity of frankincense consumed in India deserves to be particularly remarked, as it is not an indigenous production, but imported from Arabia. Many other kinds of perfume are mentioned in the Periplus as being of native growth; we can scarcely, therefore, doubt their having been used in very remote antiquity.

This is not the place for enumerating in detail all the objects of commerce mentioned in the earliest accounts of India; such, for instance, as female slaves, destined for the replenishing of harems; different sorts of colours, as lac and indigo; together with base and precious metals; not forgetting the celebrated Indian steel, and many other valuable productions. But enough has been already said for the purpose of showing the extent of ancient Hindu commerce, considered with reference to its principal objects.

Commercial Routes

The nature of the country, however, rendered the internal commerce of India different from that of the rest of Asia, in respect of transportation; for it was not necessary, nor indeed was it always possible, to employ caravans, as in the extensive tracts of inner Asia. That this mode of conveyance was nevertheless occasionally resorted to, we learn from the beautiful episode of Nala, where Damayanti in her flight is represented to have joined a caravan of merchants. But the beasts of burden made use of, in this instance, are tame elephants, which were therefore attacked in the night and dispersed by their wild brethren of the forest; and besides, the caravan in question appears to have belonged to some royal personage, rather than to a company of private merchants. The greatest part of India, that is to say, the whole of the peninsula, being traversed with rocky mountains, would scarcely, if at all, admit of the employment of camels; and the moderate distances between one town and another, and the general spread of civilisation, would enable merchants to travel alone with perfect security, while river navigation and the coasting trade afforded unusual facilities for transporting merchandise.

The Ganges and its tributary streams were the grand commercial routes of northern India; and mention is also made of navigation on the rivers of the peninsula in the south. It is not improbable, indeed, that artificial routes between the Ganges and the Indus, as we find to have been the case in aftertimes, existed even at an earlier period. The great high-roads across the country are not only frequently mentioned in the Ramayana; but we also read of a particular class of men who were commissioned to keep them in repair. According to Arrian, the commercial intercourse between the eastern and western coasts was carried on in country-built vessels; and when we consider the high antiquity of the pearl-fisheries in the straits of Ceylon, together with the necessary requisites thereto, we can hardly doubt that such was also the case many hundred years before his time. It would appear, then, that conveyance of merchandise by means of a caravan, as in other countries of the East, continued always foreign to the practice of India, unless the multitudes of pilgrims and penitents, that were continually resorting to places of sanctity, may be said to have compensated for the want of it. The almost innumerable crowds that yearly flock to Benares, Jagannath, and elsewhere, amounting to many hundred thousands of souls, would obviously give rise to a species of commerce united with devotion; and markets and fairs would be a natural, and indeed an indispensable requisite to satisfy the wants of such throngs of people. And consequently, too, the establishments called choultries, the erection of which was considered a religious duty, and whose forms not unfrequently displayed all the magnificence of native architecture, might be said to have a similar destination with the caravanseries of other Eastern countries, without, however, the resemblance between the two being exactly perfect.

The nature of the country and its productions, together with the peculiar genius of the people themselves, both contributed to render Hindu commerce of a passive rather than an active character. For as the productions of India were always in high request with the Western world, the Hindus would clearly have no occasion to transport them to foreign countries themselves; they would of course expect the inhabitants of the latter to come and fetch what they wanted. And again, the Hindu national character has no pretensions to that hardy spirit of adventure, which is capable of achieving the most extraordinary undertakings. While their fables abound with prodigious enterprise, the people themselves are content to lead a quiet and peaceful life, with just so much activity as is requisite to guide the plough or direct the shuttle, without running the risk of hazardous and unnecessary adventure. Their India--their Jambu-dvipa, comprised in their estimation the limits of the known world. Separated from the rest of Asia by a chain of impassable mountains on the north; while on all other sides the ocean formed a barrier, which, if their laws are silent on the subject, yet at least their habits or their customs would not permit them to transgress; we can find no certain proof that the Hindus were ever mariners.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[19] The original system seems to have been very lax in this respect, and each caste might take wives from the caste or castes below them, as well as their own. “A Sudra woman only, must be the wife of a Sudra; she and a Vaisya of a Vaisya; they too and a Kshattriya of a Kshattriya; those too and a Brahmani of a Brahman.” Manu, iii. 13. And although it was a sin for a Brahman to marry a Sudra woman, yet such things did happen.

[20] Colebrooke on the Indian Classes, Asiat. Research., Vol. LIII.

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IV. BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF BRAHMANISM

In the vast highlands formed by the conjunction of the great mountain chains of Bolor-Tagh in the northwest of the Himalayas, where, not far from the sources of the Oxus and other great rivers the tableland of Pamir, “the roof of the world,” extends, a well-built nomadic race, possessing the rudiments of civilisation and calling themselves the “excellent” Aryans, in prehistoric times pastured their horses and flocks. Shut off on the north and east by impassable mountains from Central Asia, the country on the west and south was appointed them for the evolution of their natural capacities. When the Aryans, following the inborn wandering instinct of all pastoral races, left their home, one part of them settled in the mountain districts north and west of the Hindu Kush (Paropamisus), which in the Greek writers bore the names of Sogdiana, Bactriana, Hyrcania, and Arachosia; another part went farther, wandered through the southwestern passes of these mountains, and took possession of the rich, fertile country on the banks of the Indus (Sindh). The former, called the Iranians, or according to their sacred language, the Zend people, evolved in time the state of culture which their conquerors--the Medes and Persians--adopted from them. The latter, called among the other nations of the ancient world, Indians or Hindus, after the principal river of their land, became the creators of that perfected system of religion, of those peculiar political and legal forms, and of that Sanskrit literature, which we still admire in its remains and traditions.

The aborigines, dark-skinned races, of rude customs and wild mode of life, were partly exterminated or pushed back into the forests by the Aryan immigrants, partly subjugated and reduced to the condition of servitude and slavery, and in this way an impassable barrier was erected between the two races.

The deep contempt with which the conquerors looked down upon the conquered increased in the Indian consciousness that self-satisfied conceit which led the Brahmans to consider all people who spoke another language, or who were under other laws, as barbarians, called by them Mlechcha (i.e., weak), with whom they must avoid all intermixture and all social intercourse.

There is no trustworthy historical information of antiquity to throw light on the development and gradual evolution of the culture of the Aryans, and so until the chronicles and legends of the Buddhists in the sixth and fifth and the records of the Greeks in the fourth and third centuries, it can only be gathered from a few traces and analogies. The Brahmans had not the slightest interest in records; on the other hand they endeavoured to blot out all recollection of earlier times and other conditions, so that the conditions and views which developed later might appear to the people as the original ones. So the chronological order of the accounts, derived from the national poems and religious writings, is necessarily so very deficient and intermittent that the more ancient periods can only be surmised.

From the years of their immigration into the district of the Indus, which must have occurred in the third millennium before our era, until the fifteenth century, the Aryans lived in the Land of the Five Rivers as far as the sacred Saraswati. Divided into many tribes, they led a settled pastoral and agricultural life under the leadership of elders, chiefs, and kings, worshipping the sun-god Indra and the other powers of nature with songs and sacrifices, and hardening themselves by battle and tribal feuds. In the oldest portions of the Vedas are still preserved some of the songs and invocations sung at the festivals of the gods or at the sacrificial feasts of the dead.

In their gradual expansion towards the south, they may have reached the mouth of the Indus by the fourteenth or thirteenth century, and on the southern seacoast they may have made commercial alliances with the Babylonians and Phœnicians. Diodorus’ account, taken from the Greek historian Ctesias, of the journey of Queen Semiramis to the Indus, and her battle with the “Lord of the Earth” (Stabrobates-Sthavarapatis) seems, in spite of its fabulous exaggeration, to rest upon historical tradition, which, combined with the report that Semiramis founded the city of Kophen on the river Kabul tends to prove, that at this time the country on the right bank of the Upper Indus was subject and paid tribute to the Assyrians.[21]

A second stage of evolution is connected with the conquest of the land of the Ganges, beginning about the fourteenth century before our era, when an heroic period commenced full of warlike deeds, the traces of which are retained in the oldest legends of the national epic, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and in the names of some tribal princes and ruling families. We should have more accurate information about this period of heroic activity had not the heroic poems later undergone complete transformation under the hands of the Brahmans, but even in their present form they still retain a core of historical truth although more concealed and veiled than among other peoples. The farther the Aryans went to the east, the more the forsaken home on the Indus and its tributaries was regarded as the sacred mother country where the Aryan race was unmixed with foreign elements and where the sacred Sanskrit language maintained its original purity. But the patriarchal institutions and the old nature-religion were in the course of time so eliminated from the memory of the race that the remaining tribes, which had not kept pace with the evolution of the people of the Ganges, or had clung to the old forms, were excluded from the religious communion and the legal system of the worshippers of Brahma as impure and of low degree. Some of these tribes on the Upper Indus were under Persian dominion and marched as far as the plains of Eleusis in the army of Xerxes.

The national strength of the Indians seems to have been shattered by these centuries of long-continued struggles, first against the aboriginal population, and then after their subjugation or expulsion, among the Aryan races themselves, the first settlers seeking to defend the territory they had gained against later immigrants. Therefore it was not difficult for the priests, when arms were at last laid down, to repress the warlike portion of the population, which had been supreme in the heroic period, but had lost its best forces and its most capable leaders in the bloody battles, especially as the enervating climate and the fertility of their new abode on the Ganges and Jumna were more conducive to religious contemplation and peaceful courses than to martial excitement and military life.

These circumstances combined with the more passive and vegetative nature of the people, were favourable to the efforts of the Brahmans to subjugate the whole external and internal life of the nation to priestly dominion. They supplanted the old nature-religion by the pantheistic emanation doctrine of Brahma as the soul of the world, and gave the heroic Indra and his crowds of gods a subordinate place as guardians of the world. They restricted the free development of national power by a strict exclusive order of caste, in which they took the foremost place; and they repressed all natural activity by endless ceremonial and ritualistic laws, by sacrifices and purifications. They cast a gloom over life on earth and suppressed all pleasure in life and joyous impulse by the terrifying doctrine of rebirth and hell punishment. They taught a gloomy asceticism full of expiations and penances, the mortification of the flesh and all sensual pleasure by absorption in an imaginary Divine Being as the surest way to free the soul from the bonds of the body and to restore it to its heavenly home from this miserable earthly life.

Moreover the Brahmans not only obtained dominion over the domain of religion, and endowed it with its peculiar spiritualistic character, but they tried to gain power over and regulate with their precepts the state and law, and civil life in all its manifestations. With this end in view, they put into effect a code of law, ostensibly coming from Manu, which was to have authority in all Indian states and which by dint of severe punishments, and a strict royal despotism, based upon the power of officials and police, kept the people in a state of obedient submission.

The Brahmans were more anxious for the Indians to lead a uniform existence according to the precepts of the law, than for the separate kingdoms to unite into a political whole, and form a power with strong external relations. Therefore the Indian nation was never united by a common alliance, but just as the different castes existed side by side, but separated and without any common interest, so the Indian country was broken up into a lot of smaller or greater states without any external connection. They never formed a federal state, nor even a confederation of states. Separated and asunder, and not seldom in hostile relations, the different kingdoms were as distinct as the castes, and the kingdoms themselves consisted in turn of a lot of disunited villages and city communities only loosely connected together for convenience of taxation and supervision.

These political and social divisions and disruptions were not calculated to turn the attention of the Indian race to political life, so it recoiled from the wretched régime in which gloomy tyranny suppressed all joy in life, and watched over every spiritual activity and sought its happiness and salvation in the realm of faith and fantasy, in the world of imagination and dreams. It submerged itself in the divine, it filled heaven and earth with spirits and higher beings of every kind, and in the fascinating world of legends and stories of saints, of fables of miracles, and myths of penitents, it forgot the real world with its oppression of castes, its despotism of princes and officials, and its blood-sucking system of taxation. Thus did the Indians on the Ganges withdraw more than any other race from real practical life, for the “realm of fantasy was their fatherland, and heaven was their home.”

This was the line taken by Indian culture until the sixth century before our era, and it spread over a great part of the peninsula of the Deccan more by the Brahmanical missions and colonisation, than by force of arms. Then Buddhism developed out of Brahmanism and became a mighty ferment for the whole of eastern Asia. Moreover, the new doctrine was not without its influence on the Brahmanic religious system. The perception that the people were so much attached to the doctrine of Buddha because it cherished the belief that a god had appeared in human form on earth, led the Brahmans to the development of the doctrine of incarnations. They divided the creator Brahma, who always remained an incomprehensible idea to the popular mind, into three forms, and taught that the most popular and beneficent form of this triune deity, Vishnu, the vivifying, supporting spirit of nature, appeared from time to time on earth in human form, to restore order to the disturbed arrangement of the world and to lead back erring humanity to the right road. Rama and Krishna, the heroes of the national epics, were represented as such incarnations of Vishnu and the songs of the heroes were reconstructed according to this idea. Therefore, the profound speech of Bhagavad-gita was incorporated in the Mahabharata, in which the attempt to reconcile the faith of the Buddhists with the doctrine of Brahma is evident.

Hellenic culture then found its way to India, and it may have been through Greek influence that many sciences and arts, such as knowledge of the zodiac, scientific astronomy, minting, etc., were first adopted in the land of the Ganges. The Hellenic spirit seems to have been influential in the development of poetry and plastic arts, at least in that of the drama and architecture. Greek culture also led to an early introduction of Christian opinions into India; in the idea of a personal god, which later became prominent and in the evolution of the doctrine of Vishnu-Krishna the influence of Christian ideas is not to be ignored.

In the Macedonian and Alexandrian period, when India came in contact with western Asiatic and Greek culture, Indian spiritual life had come to a standstill, the creative spirit was extinct. The speculative and inquiring spirit had brought forward an abundance of theories and systems, and applied them to life with astonishing consistency; and now it was exhausted, and left to posterity the wonderful images as strict forms and categories for the inner and outer life.

With the peculiar tenacity of the oriental nature, the Indians have retained throughout all centuries, down to the present time, the religious conceptions, the fantastic doctrine of the gods, the oppressing order of caste, the strict asceticism, the faith in the second birth, and in short all the forms and theories, which crippled and broke the moral and productive force of the nation. However many conquerors put their iron heel on the neck of the people, however many storms and wars spread death and desolation over the sacred land, these principles of Indian life survived all changes, and withstood all oppression, persecution, and attempts at conversion.

The despotism and caste power, impregnating the Indian nature, have imbued it with a force of endurance and passive resistance which could not be broken by any outside power. Cunning, artifice, dissimulation, lying, and deceit, the weapons and vices of all the weak and oppressed, helped the Indian to bear his painful position. He bowed under dominion without being broken in character; and as death always appeared to him a gain, and asceticism deadened him to suffering, he always suffered death with composure and stoicism.[b]

Having read an account of the rise of Brahmanism we may well examine its code of morals somewhat more fully before passing on to Buddhism.

The Vedas

The religion taught in the Institutes is derived from the Vedas, to which scriptures they refer in every page. There are four Vedas; but the fourth is rejected by many of the learned Hindus, and the number reduced to three.

The primary doctrine of the Vedas is the Unity of God. “There is in truth,” say repeated texts, “but one Deity, the Supreme Spirit, the Lord of the Universe, whose work is the universe.”

Among the creatures of the Supreme Being are some superior to man, who should be adored, and from whom protection and favours may be obtained through prayer. The most frequently mentioned of these are the gods of the elements, the stars, and the planets; but other personified powers and virtues likewise appear. “The three principal manifestations of the Divinity (Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva), with other personified attributes and energies, and most of the other gods of Hindu mythology, are indeed mentioned, or at least indicated, in the Veda; but the worship of deified heroes is no part of the system.” Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, are rarely named, enjoy no preëminence, nor are they ever objects of special adoration; and Mr. Colebrooke could discover no passage in which their incarnations were suggested. There seem to have been no images and no visible types of the objects of worship. The doctrine of monotheism prevails throughout the Institutes; and it is declared towards the close that, of all duties, “the principal is to obtain from the Upanishads a true knowledge of one supreme God.” But although Manu has preserved the idea of the unity of God, his opinions on the nature and operations of the Divinity have fallen off from the purity of their original. This is chiefly apparent in his account of the creation. There are passages in the Vedas which declare that God is “the material, as well as the efficient, cause of the universe; the potter by whom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is fabricated”: yet those best qualified to interpret conceive that these expressions are not to be taken literally, and mean no more than to assert the origin of all things from the same first cause. The general tendency of the Vedas is to show that the substance as well as the form of all created beings was derived from the will of the Self-existing Cause.

The Institutes on the contrary, though not very distinct, appear to regard the universe as formed from the substance of the Creator, and to have a vague notion of the eternal existence of matter as part of the divine substance. According to them, “the Self-existing Power, himself undiscerned, but making this world discernible, with five elements and other principles, appeared with undiminished glory dispelling the gloom.”

“He, having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, first with a thought created the waters, and placed in them a productive seed.”

From this seed sprung the mundane egg, in which the Supreme Being was himself born in the form of Brahma. By similar mythological processes, he, under the form of Brahma, produced the heavens and earth, and the human soul; and to all creatures he gave distinct names and distinct occupations. He likewise created the deities “with divine attributes and pure souls,” and “inferior genii exquisitely delicate.” This whole creation only endures for a certain period; when that expires, the divine energy is withdrawn, Brahma is absorbed in the supreme essence, and the whole system fades away. These extinctions of creation, with corresponding revivals, occur periodically, at terms of prodigious length.

The inferior deities are representatives of the elements, as Indra, air; Agni, fire; Varuna, water; Prithivi, earth: or of heavenly bodies, Surya, the sun; Chandra, the moon; Vrispati and other planets: or of abstract ideas, as Dharma, God of Justice; Dhanvantari, God of Medicine. None of the heroes who are omitted in the Vedas, but who now fill so prominent a part in the Hindu Pantheon (Rama, Krishna, etc.), are ever alluded to. Even the deities of which these are incarnations are never noticed. Brahma is more than once named, but Vishnu and Siva never. These three forms of the Divinity occupy no conspicuous place among the deities of the Vedas; and their mystical union or triad is never hinted at in Manu, nor probably in the Vedas. The three forms, into some one of which all other deities are there said to be resolvable, are fire, air, and the sun.

Altogether distinct from the gods are good and evil genii, who are noticed in the creation rather among the animals than the divinities: “benevolent genii, fierce giants, blood-thirsty savages, heavenly choristers, nymphs and demons, huge serpents and birds of mighty wing, and separate companies of Pitris, or progenitors of mankind.”

Man is endowed with two internal spirits, the vital soul, which gives motion to the body, and the rational, which is the seat of passions and good and bad qualities; and both these souls, though independent existences, are connected with the divine essence which pervades all beings. It is the vital soul which expiates the sins of the man. It is subjected to torments for periods proportioned to its offences, and is then sent to transmigrate through men and animals, and even plants; the mansion being the lower the greater has been its guilt, until at length it has been purified by suffering and humiliations, is again united to its more pure associates, and again commences a career which may lead to eternal bliss.

The practical part of religion may be divided into ritual and moral. The ritual branch occupies too great a portion of the Hindu code, but not to the exclusion of the moral. There are religious ceremonies during the pregnancy of the mother, at the birth of the child, and on various subsequent occasions, the principal of which is the shaving of his head, all but one lock, at the first or third year. But by far the most important ceremonial is the investiture with the sacred thread, which must not be delayed beyond sixteen for a Brahman, or twenty-four for a merchant. This great ceremony is called the second birth, and procures for the three classes who are admitted to it the title of “twice-born men,” by which they are always distinguished throughout the code. It is on this occasion that the persons invested are taught the mysterious word om, and the gayatri, which is the most holy verse of the Vedas, which is enjoined in innumerable parts of the code to be repeated either as devotion or expiation; and which, indeed, joined to universal benevolence, may raise a man to beatitude without the aid of any other religious exercise. This mysterious text, though it is now confined to the Brahmans, and is no longer so easy to learn, has been well ascertained by learned Europeans, and is thus translated by Mr. Colebrooke, “Let us meditate the adorable light of the Divine Ruler; may it guide our intellects.”

From fuller forms of the same verse it is evident that the light alluded to is the Supreme Creator, though it might also appear to mean the sun. It is not easy to see on what its superior sanctity is founded, unless it may at one time have communicated, though in ambiguous language, the secret of the real nature of God to the initiated, when the material sun was the popular object of worship.

Every Brahman, and perhaps every twice-born man, must bathe daily; must pray at morning and evening twilight, in some unfrequented place near pure water; and must daily perform five sacraments, viz., studying the Veda; making oblations to the manes and to fire in honour of the deities; giving rice to living creatures; and receiving guests with honour. The gods are worshipped by burnt-offerings of clarified butter, and libations of the juice of the moon plant, at which ceremonies they are invoked by name; but although idols are mentioned, and in one place desired to be respected, yet the adoration of them is never noticed but with disapprobation; nor is the present practice of offering perfumes and flowers to them ever alluded to.

The reading of the Vedas is a serious task. They must be read distinctly and aloud, with a calm mind and in a respectful posture. The reading is liable to be interrupted by many omens, and must be suspended likewise on the occurrence of various contingencies, which, by disturbing the mind, may render it unfit for such an occupation. Wind, rain, thunder, earthquakes, meteors, eclipses, the howling of jackals, and many other incidents are of the first description: the prohibition against reading where lutes sound or where arrows whistle, when a town is beset by robbers, or when terrors have been excited by strange phenomena, clearly refers to the second. The last sacrament, that of hospitality to guests, is treated at length, and contains precepts of politeness and self-denial which would be very pleasing if they were not so much restricted to Brahmans entertaining men of their own class.

Besides the daily oblations, there are monthly obsequies to the manes of each man’s ancestors. These are to be performed “in empty glades, naturally clean, or on the banks of rivers, and in solitary spots.” The sacrificer is there to burn certain offerings, and with many ceremonies to set down cakes of rice and clarified butter, invoking the manes to come and partake of them. He is afterwards to feast a small number of Brahmans (not, however, his usual friends or guests). He is to serve them with respect, and they are to eat in silence. “Departed ancestors, no doubt, are attendant on such invited Brahmans, hovering around them like pure spirits, and sitting by them when they are seated.” Innumerable are the articles of food from which a twice-born man must abstain: some for plain reasons, as carnivorous birds, tame hogs, and other animals whose appearance or way of living is disgusting; but others are so arbitrarily fixed that a cock, a mushroom, a leek, or an onion occasions immediate loss of caste; while hedgehogs, porcupines, lizards, and tortoises are expressly declared to be lawful food. A Brahman is forbidden, under severe penalties, to eat the food of a hunter or a dishonest man, a worker in gold or in cane, or a washer of clothes, or a dyer. The cruelty of a hunter’s trade may join him, in the eyes of a Brahman, to a dishonest man; but, among many other arbitrary proscriptions, one is surprised to find a physician, and to observe that this learned and beneficent profession is always classed with those which are most impure. What chiefly surprises us is to find most sorts of flesh permitted to Brahmans, and even that of oxen particularly enjoined on solemn festivals. Brahmans must not, indeed, eat flesh, unless at a sacrifice; but sacrifices, as have been seen, are among the daily sacraments; and rice pudding, bread, and many other things equally innocent are included in the very same prohibition.

It is true that humanity to animals is everywhere most strongly inculcated, and that abstaining from animal food is declared to be very meritorious, from its tendency to diminish their sufferings; but, though the use of it is dissuaded on these grounds, it is never once forbidden or hinted at as impure, and is in many places positively declared lawful. The permission to eat beef is the more remarkable as the cow seems to have been as holy in those days as she is now. Saving the life of a cow was considered to atone for the murder of a Brahman, killing one required to be expiated by three months’ austerities and servile attendance on a herd of cattle.

Besides these restraints on eating, a Brahman is subjected to a multitude of minute regulations relating to the most ordinary occupations of life, the transgressing of any of which is nevertheless to be considered as a sin. Drinking spirits is classed in the first degree of crime. Performing sacrifices to destroy the innocent only falls under the third. Under the same penance with some real offences come giving pain to a Brahman and “smelling things not fit to be smelled.” Some penances would, if compulsory, be punishments of the most atrocious cruelty. They are sufficiently absurd when left, as they are, to the will of the offenders, to be employed in averting exclusion from society in this world or retribution in the next. For incest with the wife of a father, natural or spiritual, or with a sister, connection with a child under the age of puberty, or with a woman of the lowest class, the penance is death by burning on an iron bed, or embracing a red-hot metal image. For drinking spirits the penance is death by drinking the boiling hot urine of a cow.

The other expiations are mostly made by fines and austerities. The fines are almost always in cattle to be given to Brahmans, some as high as a bull and a thousand cows. They, also, are oddly enough proportioned: for killing a snake a Brahman must give a hoe; for killing an eunuch, a load of rice straw. Saying “hush” or “pish” to a superior, or overpowering a Brahman in argument, involve each a slight penance. Killing insects, and even cutting down plants and grass (if not for a useful purpose), require a penance, since plants also are supposed to be endued with feeling. One passage about expiation is characteristic in many ways. “A priest who should retain in his memory the whole Rig-Veda would be absolved from all guilt, even if he had slain the inhabitants of the three worlds, and had eaten food from the foulest hands.”

The effect of the religion of Manu on morals is, indeed, generally good. The essential distinction between right and wrong, it has been seen, is strongly marked at the outset, and is in general well preserved. The well-known passages relating to false evidence, one or two where the property of another may be appropriated for the purposes of sacrifice, and some laxity in the means by which a king may detect and seize offenders, are the only exceptions noted. On the other hand, there are numerous injunctions to justice, truth, and virtue; and many are the evils, both in this world and the next, which are said to follow from vicious conduct. The upright man need not be cast down, though oppressed with penury, while “the unjust man attains no felicity, nor he whose wealth proceeds from false evidence.”

The moral duties are in one place distinctly declared to be superior to the ceremonial ones. The punishments of a future state are as much directed against the offences which disturb society as against sins affecting religion. One maxim, however, on this subject, is of a less laudable tendency; for it declares that the men who receive from the government the punishment due to their crimes go pure to heaven, and become as clean as those who have done well.

It may be observed, in conclusion, that the morality thus enjoined by the law was not, as now, sapped by the example of fabled gods, or by the debauchery permitted in the religious ceremonies of certain sects. From many passages cited in different places it has been shown that the code is not by any means deficient in generous maxims or in elevated sentiments; but the general tendency of the Brahman morality is rather towards innocence than active virtue, and its main objects are to enjoy tranquillity and to prevent pain or evil to any sentient being.[c]

Soul Transmigration

It is well known that the metempsychosis, or the transmigration of the soul into various orders of being, reviving in one form when it ceases to exist in another, is the tenet of the Hindus. The Brahmans grafted upon it, in their usual way, a number of fantastic refinements, and gave to their ideas on this subject a more systematic form than is usual with those eccentric theologians. They describe the mind as characterised by three qualities--goodness, passion, darkness. According as any soul is distinguished by one or another of those qualities in its present life, is the species of being into which it migrates in the life to come.

Souls endued with goodness attain the condition of deities; those filled with passion receive that of men; those immersed in darkness are condemned to that of beasts. Each of these conditions, again, is divided into three degrees--a lower, a middle, and a higher. Of the souls distinguished by darkness, the lowest are thrust into mineral and vegetable substances, into worms, reptiles, fishes, snakes, tortoises, cattle, jackals; the middle pass into elephants, horses, Sudras, Mlechcha (a word of very opprobrious import, denoting men of all other races not Hindu), lions, tigers, and boars; the highest animate the forms of dancers, singers, birds, deceitful men, giants, and blood-thirsty savages.

Of the souls who receive their future condition from the quality of passion, the lowest pass into cudgel-players, boxers, wrestlers, actors, those who teach the use of weapons, and those who are addicted to gaming and drinking; the middle enter the bodies of kings, men of the fighting class, domestic priests of kings, and men skilled in the war of controversy; the highest become gandharvas (a species of supposed aerial spirits, whose business is music), genii attending superior gods, together with various companies of apsaras, or nymphs. Of the souls who are characterised by the quality of goodness, the lowest migrate into hermits, religious mendicants, other Brahmans, such orders of demigods as are wafted in airy cars, genii of the signs and lunar mansions, and Daityas, another of their many orders of superior spirits; the middle attain the condition of sacrificers, of holy sages, deities of the lower heaven, genii of the Vedas, regents of stars, divinities of years, Pitris, and Sadhyas, two other species of exalted intelligence; the highest ascend to the condition of Brahma with four faces, of creators of worlds, of the genius of virtue, and the divinities presiding over the two principles of nature.

Besides this general description of the future allotment of different souls, a variety of particular dooms are specified, of which a few may be taken as an example. “Sinners in the first degree,” says the ordinance of Manu, “having passed through terrible regions of torture, for a great number of years, are condemned to the following births at the close of that period. The slayer of a Brahman must enter the body of a dog, a boar, an ass, a camel, a bull, a goat, a sheep, a stag, a bird, a Chandala, or a Pucassa. He who steals the gold of a priest shall pass a thousand times into the bodies of spiders, of snakes, and chameleons, of crocodiles, and other aquatic monsters, or of mischievous blood-sucking demons. He who violates the bed of his natural or spiritual father migrates a hundred times into the forms of grasses, of shrubs with crowded stems, or of creeping and twining plants, carnivorous animals, beasts with sharp teeth, or cruel brutes.” After a variety of other cases, a general rule is declared for those of the four castes who neglect the duties of their order: “Should a Brahman omit his peculiar duty, he shall be changed into a demon, with a mouth like a firebrand, who devours what has been vomited; a Kshattriya, into a demon who feeds on ordure and carrion; a Vaisya, into an evil being who eats purulent carcases; and a Sudra, who neglects his occupations, into a foul embodied spirit, who feeds on lice.” The reward of the most exalted piety, of the most profound meditation, of that exquisite abstemiousness which dries up the mortal frame, is peculiar; such a perfect soul becomes absorbed in the Divine essence, and is forever exempt from transmigration.

We might very easily, from the known laws of human nature, conclude, notwithstanding the language held by the Hindus on the connection between future happiness and the virtue of the present life, that rewards and punishments, very distant and very obscure, would be wholly impotent against temptations to crime, though at the instigation of the priests they might engage the people in a ceaseless train of wretched ceremonies. The fact corresponds most exactly with the anticipation. An admirable witness has said, “The doctrine of a state of future rewards and punishments, as some persons may plead, has always been supposed to have a strong influence on public morals: the Hindus not only have this doctrine in their writings, but are taught to consider every disease and misfortune of life as an undoubted symptom of moral disease, and the terrific appearance of its close-pursuing punishment. Can this fail to produce a dread of vice, and a desire to merit the favour of the Deity? I will still further,” he adds, “assist the objector; and inform him that the Hindu writings declare that till every immoral taint is removed, every sin atoned for, and the mind has obtained perfect abstraction from material objects, it is impossible to be reunited to the great spirit; and that to obtain this perfection, the sinner must linger in many hells, and transmigrate through almost every form of matter.” Our informant then declares: “Great as these terrors are, there is nothing more palpable than that, with most of the Hindus, they do not weigh the weight of a feather compared with the loss of a rupee. The reason is obvious: every Hindu considers all his action as the effect of his destiny; he laments, perhaps, his miserable fate, but he resigns himself to it without a struggle, like the malefactor in a condemned cell.” This experienced observer adds, which is still more comprehensive, that the doctrine of future rewards and punishments has, in no situation and among no people, a power to make men virtuous.[d]

Fate, as understood by the Hindus, is something very different from that of other people. It is necessity, as the consequence of past acts; that is, a man’s station and fortunes in his present life are the necessary consequences of his conduct in his pre-existence. To them he must submit, but not from despair. He has his future condition in his own power, and it depends upon himself in what capacity he shall be born again. He is not therefore the helpless victim of an irresistible and inscrutable destiny, but the sufferer for his own misdeeds, or the possessor of good which his own merits have secured him.[e]

BUDDHISM

When Buddhism was first made known to Europe, not so very many years ago, by means of translations of philosophic writings dated six centuries after Buddha, profound astonishment was felt at taking cognisance of the fact that a religion which had brought three hundred million souls under its law should acknowledge no god; should look upon the world as vain illusion, and should offer nothing but annihilation to the aspirations of man.

The examination of the bas-reliefs, with which the ancient monuments of India are covered, proves that the religion of Buddha, as practised by the Hindus during a period of one thousand years, differs completely from the representation of it given us by written documents. Not in books, in fact, but in a close study of the monuments themselves, can be learned what Buddhism was in former days; and the message these monuments deliver to us is a totally different one from that contained in books. The monuments reveal that this religion, which modern scientists have distorted into an atheistic belief, was, on the contrary, the most polytheistic of all religions.

It is true that in the first Buddhist monuments, eighteen to twenty centuries old, such as the balustrades of Bharhut, Sanchi, Buddha-Gaya, etc., the reformer figures solely as an emblem. Worship is accorded to the imprint of his feet, and to the image of the tree under which he entered the state of supreme wisdom; but we shortly begin to see Buddha represented as a god, having a place in all the sanctuaries. At first he is represented as alone, or nearly so, as in the most ancient temples of Ajunta; then gradually he appears in company with Brahman gods: Indra, Kali, Sarasvati, etc., as is to be seen in the Buddhist temples of the Ellora series of monuments. Completely lost a little later in the crowd of gods that he had at first dominated, he comes, after a few centuries, to be regarded as nothing more than an incarnation of Vishnu. From that day Buddhism has been extinct in India.

The disappearance, or rather the transformation which has just been indicated in a few lines, required a thousand years for its accomplishment. The numerous monuments which retrace its history were erected during the period extending from three centuries B.C. to the seventh of our era. During this long interval of time Buddha was constantly worshipped by his followers as an all-powerful god. Legends show him to us appearing before his disciples and according them favours. One of the men most deeply learned in Buddhist practices, the pilgrim, Hwen Tsang, who visited the peninsula in the seventh century and entered a long novitiate, relates having seen Buddha appear before him in a sacred grotto. Legends and monuments are perfectly clear in their teachings, and had the study of Buddhism been primarily based upon them, an entirely different impression of the religion would have gained ground from that which now prevails. Unfortunately, the European writers on India had never visited that country, gaining all their knowledge of Buddhism from books; and ill chance had directed them upon the works of certain philosophical sects, written five or six centuries after the death of Buddha, and containing little or nothing of the religion as actually practised.

Neither did the metaphysical speculations, which so astonished Europe by their depth, contain anything new. Now that the works of Indian writers are better known, the same theories have been found in the writings of the philosophical sects which developed during the Brahmanic period. Atheism, the contempt for life, morality as existing apart from religion, the world considered as illusion--all these had already appeared in certain philosophical works known under the name of Upanishads, of which there exist about two hundred and fifty, dating from all the epochs. In some are found the same doctrines that are presented in the philosophical writings of the Buddhists. Their authors also profess the doctrine of Karma, the fundamental belief of Buddhism as of all the religions of India--a doctrine according to which the acts accomplished by man in this life determine his condition in a future existence, this forming also the base of the code of Manu. The ultimate purpose of these successive reincarnations is absorption in the universal principle of things, the Brahma of which Manu speaks, parent to the Nirvana of Buddhism. Then, and then only is the soul absolved from reincarnation.

For the attainment of this final state of absorption, Buddhists and Brahmanists lay down the same rules; namely, suppression of all desire, renunciation of the things of this world, and a life passed in solitude and contemplation.

The philosophical theories of the age of Buddhism were thus the same as those held in the Brahmanic age which had preceded it. They are theories which developed parallel with the religion that was taught by the priests and practised by the people, yet they differed from it essentially. To look upon these doctrines as being identical with Buddhism would be to commit an error as great as though we were to confound the theories of certain Upanishads with Brahmanism; nevertheless it is these philosophical utterances of some of the disciples of Buddha which have been received in Europe as Buddhism itself.

It would seem to suggest itself at once as improbable that a religion counting five hundred million believers could be founded solely on cold philosophical reasoning; but perhaps an error of such a nature is excusable in the case of learned men who, having passed their lives in the study of books, have had no time to pursue the deeper study of men. In two or three thousand years, when the centre of civilisation shall have again shifted and our present languages and the books written in them have been forgotten, it is quite probable that some professor who has come upon the English language in his researches shall translate the first works that come to his hand, such as Spencer’s First Principles, or Darwin’s Origin of Species, and give them to the world as the beliefs professed by the Christian peoples in the nineteenth century.

It is only necessary to observe Hindus closely to perceive that they are not the people to adopt the tenets of any religion that is without divinity. The Hindu not believe in gods? Why, the world is full of them for him. He addresses prayers to the tiger that devours his flocks, to the railroad bridge constructed by the European, to the European himself if occasion arises. Make him learn by heart the catechism of the southern Buddhists, recently composed with the assistance of Europeans, which teaches that the universe has no creator, that all is illusion, and you will see that that will not prevent him from feeling the need of still offering up worship to the great Buddha and all the gods of his sanctuary. The most ancient of all books on Buddhism, the Lalita Vistara written some eighteen centuries ago, six centuries later than Buddha himself, contains a number of dissertations on the illusiveness and vanity of the things of this world. But to whom is Buddha teaching these truths? To the gods, principally, to those innumerable gods of whom mention is made on every page and who, Brahma at their head, presided at the birth of the reformer who was to be god in his turn, accompanied him wherever he went and finally came to offer him worship. Naturally contradictions abound in this book; but they are no contradictions to the Hindu. His thought is formed in an entirely different mould from ours, for him our European logic does not exist. Not a single one of his books, from the antique epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata to the philosophical works previously referred to, is free from glaring contradictions. Doubtless logic is not always lacking, but it is that feminine form which carries its deductions to their extreme limit without concerning itself with contradictions.

It is quite necessary, if one wishes to comprehend Buddhism, to consider alongside of the philosophical speculations superimposed upon it the multitude of gods which no religion of India can do without. Buddha no more tried to shake the foundations of the Brahmanic Pantheon than he tried--an oft-repeated error notwithstanding--to set at naught the laws of caste. Indeed there has never been a reformer powerful enough to dislodge this corner-stone of India’s social constitution.

The preceding goes to make plainly apparent that Buddhism is simply an evolution of Brahmanism, preserving its multiplicity of gods, and altering merely its moral teachings. Nor was it until the expiration of several centuries that it began to be clearly differentiated from the ancient faith; probably at the outset it was not even looked upon as in the nature of a new cult. There is nothing to indicate that Asoka believed himself to be adhering to doctrines hitherto untaught; mention is made but once or twice of Buddha in all the religious edicts which this king spread over India and of which a great number remain to us. He recommends the widest tolerance towards all religious sects, and Buddhism must have presented itself to him simply as one of these, to be esteemed principally on account of the spirit of charity displayed by the king’s son who founded it.

We shall shortly prove that Buddhism disappeared from India by being gradually absorbed into ancient Brahmanism. In the countries other than India in which it became established, Cambodia, Burmah, the Brahmanic Pantheon was a part of it; but the Brahmanic gods never having previously been worshipped in these countries, there were no sects interested in maintaining their supremacy, and Buddha always retained there the dominant position which in India he was to lose.

Discussion was for a long time rife as to whether, by reason of the commingling upon them of the emblems of Buddha and of Siva, the celebrated monuments of Angkor were Buddhist or Brahmanic. No disputes on this point would have arisen if the scientists who examined the monuments of Cambodia had first studied those of India--of Nepal in particular. On these they would have found the same intermingling of the two sets of emblems; they would also have observed the same peculiarity in a neighbouring country, Burmah. Mr. Wheeler, a former English functionary there, calls attention to the fact that the Burmans, Buddhists as is well known, also worshipped the Vedic gods, notably Indra and Brahma; and that the king of Burmah had many Brahmans at his court. He also makes a remark that the Mogul Khans of Asia, those in the neighbourhood of Mount Altai, worship the Vedic gods to this day.

The facts which we have brought forward show conclusively that the wide gulf which was supposed, at a time when the first was known solely through books, to separate Buddhism from Brahmanism has never existed, and it is only the preconceived idea of this separation that has prevented the close bond that in reality unites them from being seen. One of the keenest European observers who has ever made his home in India, Hodgson, in citing certain Sivaic images which are to be seen in the Buddhist temples of India, goes to infinite pains to explain their presence. Not for an instant is it to be admitted, he says, that there could be fusion between cults as widely separated as heaven and earth. Yet Hodgson was a resident in Nepal and had only to cast his eyes about him to see, the point to which Brahmanic and Buddhist gods were intermingled in the temples of the land in which he lived. At this epoch the two religions were held to be so wholly distinct that it was impossible that the idea of their having the least thing in common should arise in any mind.

This instance, showing how a preconceived belief can blind to evidence, is the more curious inasmuch as there exists a work (on the extreme resemblance that prevails between many of the symbols of Buddhism and Sivaism) in which the author shows, by numerous examples, how frequently the Hindu writers and learned men themselves confound the Buddhist and Brahmanic images contained in the ancient temples; a confusion that is instantly made clear if one takes into account what we have said regarding the final merging into one of Buddhism and Brahmanism.

Disappearance of Buddhism in India

No one is ignorant of the fact that after having spread from India all over the rest of Asia, China, Russian Tatary, Burmah, etc., Buddhism, now the religion of three hundred million people, that is to say, of one-fifth of the world’s inhabitants, disappeared almost entirely towards the seventh or eighth century of our era from the country that gave it birth. It still subsists in India only upon the two extreme frontiers of that vast empire; Nepal in the north, and Ceylon in the south. Hindu books being absolutely silent on the subject of this disappearance, recourse has been had until now, in order to explain it, to the hypothesis of violent persecution. Admitting the tolerant character of the Hindus to be compatible with the idea of religious persecution, also granting that the effect of persecution is to destroy a religion instead of facilitating, as history teaches, its propagation, there would still be this difficulty: why, in a country divided as was formerly India into a hundred petty kingdoms, should all the reigning princes have suddenly decided at the same time to renounce the religion practised for centuries by their ancestors, and to force upon their people the adoption of another?

One begins to perceive the cause of the transformation of Buddhism as soon as one applies himself to the study of the monuments of India. After having studied attentively the greater part of the important monuments of India, one arrives at the conclusion that Buddhism disappeared simply because it gradually became reabsorbed into the religion from which it originally sprang.

This transformation was effected very slowly; but in a country which has no history, where are to be encountered periods of five or six centuries concerning which no knowledge has been handed down, there is no possible way of knitting together the loose ends of phases which appear to us alone and unconnected. In relation to these we are in the situation of the ancient geologists who, seeing the transformations that had taken place in the different layers of the earth and their inhabitants, and knowing nothing of the periods that had intervened between these transformations, supposed them all to be the result of violent cataclysms. A more advanced science would have shown them that it was by means of a series of insensible evolutions that these gigantic changes had been wrought.

The monuments of India relate to us plainly, when we examine with care the statues and bas-reliefs with which they are covered, the history of the transformation of Buddhism. They show us how the founder, who disdained all gods, finally became a god himself and figured, after having been absent from all, in every sanctuary. How, after having been the head of the crowd of Brahmanic divinities, he gradually became confounded with them until he finally passed out of sight entirely among their number.

In order to place beyond dispute the theory just advanced in explanation of this transformation and disappearance of Buddhism from India, it will be necessary to place ourselves back in the seventh century of the Christian era, or to discover a country which is undergoing a phase similar to that which India passed through at that epoch. Nepal, one of the cradles of Buddhism, is the region which has opposed the strongest resistance to the transforming forces by which it was menaced as soon as it came in contact with ancient Brahmanism, and has now reached the very moment of transformation at which Buddhism has become mingled with Brahmanism without having been entirely swallowed up. The Hindu and Buddhist gods are so closely intermingled in the temples of Nepal, that it is often impossible to determine to which religion a particular temple belongs. This peculiarity has been remarked, though nothing has been offered in the way of explanation by those English scientists who have made a study of Nepal. The fact, so inexplicable when not made clear by a study of the ancient monuments of India, is perfectly apparent when they have been given careful examination. One notes, as was said a little earlier, that the same confusion of divinities prevails everywhere at a certain period, and it is easy to comprehend how ancient temples could be attributed, even by learned Hindus, first to one religion and then to the other.

The same explanation makes clear to us the fact, so strange at a first glance, of Buddhist-Jain and Brahmanic temples being constructed side by side during the same period. Looking now on the phase when the two intermingled religions were on the point of merging into one, it will be at once comprehended how a sovereign can have distributed his liberalities between them with as much impartiality as a king of the Middle Ages displayed towards churches dedicated to different saints.

There remains to us but the account of a single traveller relative to the epoch of which we speak, that of the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Tsang; and in this we are told how a Hindu sovereign on the occasion of some festival, divides his generosity equally between the two dominant religions of that time; giving presents to Buddhist sectarians the first day, to those of Brahmanism the second. The phase had already been arrived at when the cults were entirely reconcilable, a phase which preceded that of their being united into one. The study of the religion of Nepal at the present time shows exactly how this fusion came about.

The date of the introduction of Buddhism into Nepal is a very ancient one. According to tradition Buddha himself visited the land. In any case it is in the ancient monasteries of Nepal that have been discovered the oldest known writings on Buddhism. To follow the same tradition, Asoka, king of Magadha, who reigned three centuries before Christ, made a pilgrimage to Nepal for the purpose of visiting the temples of Symbhunatha, Pashupatti, etc. He is also said to have founded the city of Patan, of which the Newar name is Lalita Patan, a corruption presumably of Pataliputra, the name given in India to the capital of Asoka. Several tumulus-formed temples have, from time immemorial, been attributed to him.

In Nepal, one of its cradles, the religion of Buddha has reigned for more than two thousand years. The isolation of this region of India may have preserved Buddhism to it for a longer period than is observable in the rest of the peninsula, but it has not prevented its undergoing,--like causes producing always the same effects,--a process of transformation analogous to that preceding its disappearance elsewhere. By reason of certain circumstances the gradual absorption has taken place more slowly in Nepal, and it is thanks to this slowness that we are able to learn what Buddhism was in India during the seventh or eighth century of our era, when its antique monastical institutions had disappeared, when its sacerdotal functions had once more become hereditary, and the ancient divinities had resumed their sway.

Buddhism and Brahmanism form to-day in Nepal, as they did in India in the seventh century, two religions nominally distinct, but having one for the other that tolerance which, according to the facts already cited, must have existed in the rest of India before the disappearance of Buddhism. This tolerance, explained sufficiently by the analogy between the two beliefs, is carried to such a point that their respective followers possess in common a certain number of pagodas, divinities, and feasts.

Instead of holding, with certain philosophical Buddhist sects, that the world is formed of matter alone, imperishable, possessing creative power and constituting the sole divinity of the universe, the Buddhism of Nepal offers for the worship of its followers a supreme trinity. This comprises 1st, Ali-Buddha, who is its principal personage, representing spirit; 2nd, Dharma, representing matter; 3rd, Sangha; representing the visible world, produced by the union of spirit and matter. This trinity, nearly enough related, as one sees, to that of Brahmanism, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, has for symbol a triangle with a point at its centre. This point is the emblem of Ali-Buddha, looked upon definitively as the first cause.

Below this superior trinity are placed the gods of the old Brahmanic pantheon--Vishnu, Siva, Ganesa, Lakshmi, etc. Simple emanations of supreme power, they were created by it to govern the world. Fallen somewhat from the elevated rank they occupied in the Brahmanic religion, they are still sufficiently high to have the right to the worship of mortals.

The theories of the Nepal Buddhists concerning the human soul, do not differ sensibly from the old Brahmanic theories. It is looked upon, as is also the soul of all animals, as an emanation of Ali-Buddha, which, after numerous transmigrations, passes back to the bosom of the supreme being who gave it life. Deliverance from this long series of transmigrations by reabsorption into Ali-Buddha, is the supreme end proposed as recompense to all believers. The number and the nature of these transmigrations depend entirely on the conduct during life, the acts of men determining irrevocably their future destiny.

As for the founder of Buddhism himself; he is looked upon as are all the other Buddhas who have preceded him, as a holy personage purified by long anterior existences, and on the point of attaining the supreme absorption.

The most important of the temples of Nepal, notably that of Symbhunatha, are dedicated to Ali-Buddha. In all, the Buddhist trinity (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) is represented in the form of a statue seated, with legs crossed upon a lotus-leaf; Buddha having two arms, Dharma and Sangha generally four. Of this trinity, Dharma alone, the goddess of matter, is given the form of woman.

After the Buddhist trinity the most common objects of worship are the images of the founder of Buddhism and of his predecessors, both mortal and divine. Next came the gods of the Hindu Pantheon, Mahenkal, avatar of Siva; Kali, wife of Siva; Indra, king of Heaven; Garuda, god of birds, having a bird’s head; Ganesa, divinity of wisdom, having an elephant’s head, etc. The last is the most venerated, his image being found at the entrance to every temple, and it is with the worship of this purely Brahmanic divinity that all the Buddhist ceremonies commence.

The Hindu lingam has also been adopted by the Nepal Buddhists, but with the complete alteration of its significance. Instead of looking upon it as the male creative power of Siva, it is held to be the emblem of the lotus in which Ali-Buddha manifested himself in the form of a flame. Its shape is also modified. Four figures of Buddha are sculptured upon its lateral parts, and its summit is surmounted in the manner of the Buddhist chaityas.

It is to be seen from the preceding how intermingled with Brahmanism is Buddhism in Nepal. The religion of that part of the population which calls itself Brahmanic is equally tinged with Buddhism. Buddha is frequently represented in the temples dedicated to Siva, and several temples containing divinities common to the two religions are frequented alike by Brahmans and Buddhists.

This fusion of the two religions to be observed in the temples is also found in the legends with which the literature of Nepal abounds during the religious festivals. In the case of some of these it is really impossible to decide whether they are Buddhist or Brahmanic. Pilgrims also visit with equal confidence the shrines of the two religions.

Such is Buddhism at present in Nepal, and it is easy to predict from what has taken place in the past, that with the expiration of two or three centuries it will have been swallowed up in Brahmanism. The traveller of the future, ignorant of the phase of evolution through which Nepal is now passing will attribute, as do modern writers who treat of Buddhism in India, its disappearance to violent causes. The temple ruins with which Nepal will at that time no doubt be strewn, will also be invoked to attest the mercilessness of the persecutions.

But if the traveller whose existence we have supposed, has not confined himself to the study of a single region in India, but has had the patience to go over all the diverse lands of the immense peninsula, the idea of a religious evolution having taken place will have penetrated too deeply in his mind to allow him to commit such an error. In this respect the study of India itself immeasurably exceeds in value the perusal of history in books; it is the one country in the world where by means of a simple passing from one place to another, can be looked upon anew the successive forms that humanity has taken on from prehistoric times to the present day. This living study reveals rapidly to the observer the anterior transformations experienced by institutions and beliefs, of which books but show us the extremest phases.[f]

New Light on Buddhism

Recent discoveries and researches have greatly modified our notions of early India. In the last few years nearly the whole of the works composed in the earliest period of Buddhism have been edited in the original Pali, chiefly through the Pali Text Society. A few works of the second period have been edited in the original Pali or Sanskrit, and a number of books of later Buddhism have appeared in the various languages of eastern Asia. To appreciate the additions thus made to our knowledge it is necessary to remember that the Buddha, like other Indian teachers of his period, taught by conversation only. A highly-educated man (according to the education current at the time), speaking constantly to men of similar education, he followed the literary habit of his day by embodying his doctrines in set phrases (sutras), on which he enlarged, on different occasions, in different ways. Writing was then widely known. But the lack of suitable writing materials made any lengthy books impossible. Such sutras were therefore the recognised form of preserving and communicating opinion. They were catch-words, as it were, memoria technica, which could be easily remembered, and would recall the fuller expositions that had been based upon them.

In the Buddha’s time the Brahmans had their sutras in Sanskrit, already a dead language. He purposely put his into the ordinary conversational idiom of the day, that is to say, into Pali. When the Buddha died these sayings were collected together by his disciples into what they call the Four Nikayas, or “collections.” These cannot have reached their final form till about fifty or sixty years afterwards. Other sayings and verses, most of them ascribed, not to the Buddha, but to the disciples themselves, were put into a supplementary Nikaya. We know of slight additions made to this Nikaya as late as the time of Asoka, third century B.C. And the developed doctrine, found in certain portions of it, shows that these are later than the four old Nikayas. For a generation or two the books so put together were handed down by memory, though probably written memoranda were also used. And they were doubtless accompanied from the first, as they were being taught, by a running commentary.

About one hundred years after the Buddha’s death there was a schism in the community. Each of the two schools kept an arrangement of the canon--still in Pali, or some allied dialect. Sanskrit was not used for any Buddhist work till long afterwards, and never used at all, so far as is known, for the canonical books. Each of these two schools broke up, in the following centuries, into others. Several of them had their different arrangements of the canonical books, differing also in minor details. These books remained the only authorities for about five centuries, but they all, except only our extant Pali Nikayas, have been lost in India. These then are our authorities for the earliest period of Buddhism. Now what are these books?

We talk necessarily of Pali books. They are not books in the modern sense. They are memorial sentences or verses intended to be learnt by heart.

In depth of philosophic insight, in the method of Socratic questioning often adopted, in the earnest and elevated tone of the whole, in the evidence they afford of the most cultured thought of the day, these dialogues constantly remind the reader of the dialogues of Plato. But not in style. They have indeed a style of their own; always dignified, and occasionally rising into eloquence. But it is entirely different from the style of Western writings, which are always intended to be read.

The striking archæological discoveries of the last few years have both confirmed and added to our knowledge.

The principal points on which this large number of older and better authorities has modified our knowledge are as follows:--1. We have learnt that the division of Buddhism, originating with Burnouf, into northern and southern, is misleading. He found that the Buddhism in his Pali manuscript, which came from Ceylon, differed from that in his Sanskrit manuscript which came from Nepal. Now that the works he used have been made accessible in printed editions, we find that, wherever the existing manuscript came from, the original works themselves were all composed in the same stretch of country, that is, in the valley of the Ganges. The difference of the opinions expressed in the manuscript is due, not to the place where they are now found, but to the difference of time at which they were originally composed. Not one of the books mentioned above is either northern or southern. They all claim, and rightly claim, to belong, so far as their place of origin is concerned, to the Majjhima Desa, the middle country. It is undesirable to base the main division of our subject on an adventitious circumstance, and especially so when the nomenclature thus introduced (it is not found in the books themselves) cuts right across the true line of division. The use of the terms northern and southern as applied, not to the existing manuscript, but to the original books, or to the Buddhism they teach, not only does not help us, it is the source of serious misunderstanding. It inevitably leads careless writers to take for granted that we have, historically, two Buddhisms--one manufactured in Ceylon, the other in Nepal. Now this is admittedly wrong. What we have to consider is Buddhism varying through slight degrees, as the centuries pass by, in almost every book. We may call it one, or we may call it many. What is quite certain is that it is not two. And the most useful distinction to emphasise is, not the ambiguous and misleading geographical one--derived from the places where the modern copies of the manuscripts are found; nor even, though that would be better, the linguistic one--but the chronological one. The use, therefore, of the inaccurate and misleading terms northern and southern ought no longer to be followed in scholarly works on Buddhism.

2. Our ideas as to the social conditions that prevailed, during the Buddha’s life-time, in the eastern valley of the Ganges have been modified. The people were divided into clans, many of them governed as republics, more or less aristocratic. In a few cases several of such republics had formed confederations, and in four cases such confederations had already become hereditary monarchies. The right historical analogy is not the state of Germany in the Middle Ages, but the state of Greece in the time of Socrates. The Sakyas were still a republic. They had republics for their neighbours on the east and south, but on the western boundary was the kingdom of Kosala, the modern Oudh, which they acknowledged as a suzerain power. Gotama, the Buddha’s father, was not a king. There were rajahs in the clan, but the word meant at most something like consul or archon. All the four real kings were called Maha-rajah. And Suddhodana, the teacher’s father, was not even rajah. One of his cousins, named Bhaddiya, is styled a rajah; but Suddhodana is spoken of, like other citizens, as Suddhodana the Sakyan. As the ancient books are very particular on this question of titles, this is decisive.

3. There was no caste--no caste, that is, in the modern sense of the term. We have long known that the connubium was the cause of a long and determined struggle between the patricians and the plebeians in Rome. Evidence has been yearly accumulating on the existence of restrictions as to intermarriage, and as to the right of eating together (commensality) among other Aryan tribes, Greeks, Germans, Russians, and so on. Even without the fact of the existence now of such restrictions among the modern successors of the ancient Aryans in India, it would have been probable that they also were addicted to similar customs. It is certain that the notion of such usages was familiar enough to some at least of the tribes that preceded the Aryans in India. Rules of endogamy and exogamy; privileges, restricted to certain classes, of eating together, are not only Indian or Aryan, but world-wide phenomena. Both the spirit, and to a large degree the actual details, of modern Indian caste-usages are identical with these ancient, and no doubt universal, customs. It is in them that we have the key to the origin of caste.

At any moment in the history of a nation such customs seem, to a superficial observer, to be fixed and immutable. As a matter of fact they are never quite the same in successive centuries, or even generations. The numerous and complicated details which we sum up under the convenient, but often misleading, single name of caste are solely dependent for their sanction on public opinion. That opinion seems stable. But it is always tending to vary as to the degree of importance attached to some particular one of the details, as to the size and complexity of the particular groups in which each detail ought to be observed.

Owing to the fact that the particular group that in India worked its way to the top, based its claims on religious grounds, not on political power, nor on wealth, the system has, no doubt, lasted longer in India than in Europe. But public opinion still insists, in considerable circles, even in Europe, on restrictions of a more or less defined kind, both as to marriage and as to eating together. And in India the problem still remains to trace, in the literature, the gradual growth of the system--the gradual formation of new sections among the people, the gradual extension of the institution to the families of people engaged in certain trades, belonging to the same group, or sect, or tribe, tracing their ancestry, whether rightly or wrongly, to the same source. All these factors, and others besides, are real factors. But they are phases of the extension and growth, not explanations of the origin of the system.

There is no evidence to show that at the time of the rise of Buddhism there was any substantial difference, as regards the barriers in question, between the peoples dwelling in the valley of the Ganges and their contemporaries, Greek or Roman, dwelling on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The point of greatest weight in the establishment of the subsequent development, the supremacy in India of the priests, was still being hotly debated. All the new evidence tends to show that the struggle was being decided rather against than for the Brahmans. What we find in the Buddha’s time is caste in the making. The great mass of the people were distinguished quite roughly into four classes, social strata, of which the boundary lines were vague and uncertain. At one end of the scale were certain outlying tribes and certain hereditary crafts of a dirty or despised kind. At the other end the nobles claimed the superiority. But Brahmans by birth (not necessarily sacrificial priests, for they followed all sorts of occupations) were trying to oust the nobles from the highest grade. They only succeeded, long afterwards, when the power of Buddhism had declined.

4. It had been supposed on the authority of late priestly texts, where boasts of persecution are put forth, that the cause of the decline of Buddhism in India had been Brahman persecution. The now accessible older authorities, with one doubtful exception, make no mention of persecution. On the other hand, the comparison we are now able to make between the canonical books of the older Buddhism and the later texts of the following centuries, shows a continual decline from the old standpoint, a continual approximation of the Buddhist views to those of the other philosophies and religions of India. We can see now that the very event which seemed, in the eyes of the world, to be the most striking proof of the success of the new movement, the conversion and strenuous support, in the third century B.C., of Asoka, the most powerful ruler India had had, only hastened the decline. The adhesion of large numbers of nominal converts, more especially from the newly incorporated and less advanced provinces, produced weakness rather than strength in the movement for reform. The day of compromise had come. Every relaxation of the old thoroughgoing position was welcomed and supported by converts only half converted. And so the margin of difference between the Buddhists and their opponents gradually faded almost entirely away. The soul theory, step by step, gained again the upper hand. The popular gods and the popular superstitions are once more favoured by Buddhists themselves. The philosophical basis of the old ethics is overshadowed by new speculations. And even the old ideal of life, the salvation of the Arahat to be won in this world and in this world only, by self-culture and self-mastery, is forgotten, or mentioned only to be condemned. The end was inevitable. The need of a separate organisation became less and less apparent. The whole pantheon of the Vedic gods, with the ceremonies and the sacrifices associated with them, passed indeed away. But the ancient Buddhism, the party of reform, was overwhelmed also in its fall; and modern Hinduism arose on the ruins of both.[g]

THE ACTUAL PIETY OF THE HINDUS AND THE HINDU SEPARATION OF RELIGION FROM FINE MORALS

We have now examined the elaborate doctrines of the Hindus in some detail. It remains to be seen how far they affected the real life of the people.

The works of modern science have not yet been able to dispel the false ideas that prevail concerning the religions of India. It is only after studying the practice of these religions on the soil of the peninsula itself that one can begin to have a conception of its contradictions that seem to us so strange, and to comprehend that the word religion has totally different meanings for the Hindu and the European. In the buoyant, illogical, dreamy soul of the Hindu the most contrary beliefs are associated in a manner quite incomprehensible to us. The same man who will believe firmly in the speculations of the most daring atheism will prostrate himself with equal conviction before thousands of strange, grotesque, or terrible divinities, or respectfully kiss the footprint of Buddha or Vishnu. In India, not only do all religions dwell in perfect harmony, but the most contrary dogmas exist side by side in the same religion.

The innumerable sects of Neo-Brahmanism or Hinduism all share in the two dominant cults of Siva the destroyer and Vishnu the preserver, the two great divinities worshipped by every pious Hindu, who, together with the great creator Brahma, make up the Hindu trinity or trimurti. Although Brahma is conceived as the most powerful of these three gods, he has no special worshippers, and there is hardly a temple in all India dedicated to him. While the symbols of Siva and the incarnations of Vishnu, people the temples with a crowd of forms and images, Brahma is not represented in visible form, and remains the great impalpable soul that animates all creatures and in whose bosom the Hindu dreams of being absorbed.

Siva, the god of destruction, or rather of transformation, the god of birth and of death, whose symbol is the lingam or phallus and to whom victims are sacrificed, the god of the seed that produces beings and of the death that dissolves them--Siva is the true god of India, the true creation of its racial genius.

The female counterpart of Siva is his spouse, Parvati or Kali, goddess of life and death, the great mother of whom the universe was born, and by whom it will finally be swallowed up again. No cult has been the source of more monstrous scenes than that of the terrible Kali. Her worship was a mixture of obscenity and cruelty. On her altars flowed the blood of the last human sacrifices, which have now been abolished forever among the Brahmanic populations. Scenes of debauchery impossible to describe, gloomy or obscene mysteries are still practised in her temples, especially in those frequented by the sect called “Sivaites of the left hand.”

While Siva appeals rather to the intellect and represents the particular form in which Hindu genius has conceived the universe, Vishnu responds to the eternal needs of the heart. He is the god of love and of faith. He is without question a monistic god; but in order to manifest himself to mortals he has assumed so many different forms that it would be quite impossible to define, or even simply to enumerate them. These incarnations, called the avatars of Vishnu, represent so many special divinities, the worship of each belonging to a particular country, age, or social condition. While the principal ones are only ten in number, there is no limit to the multiplication of the others. One can fearlessly preach to the Hindus whatever god one will, as sublime or as coarse as the imagination of man can conceive; they will very likely adopt it, making it at once an avatar of Vishnu. Thus, Christ, whose history has some analogy with that of Krishna, has become one of these avatars; and to all the representations of the missionaries the Hindus reply that they have nothing to learn from them, being already more Christian than the Christians themselves.

As to external forms, they have always changed, and are still changing. The prodigious imagination of the Hindu, which has so multiplied them, is continually altering them. The Hindus love images and material symbols; they are great formalists in the practice of their religion, whatever it may be. Their temples are full of emblems, the principal ones being the lingam and the yoni, symbols of the male and female natures. Vows, penances, mortifications, the reading of sacred books, litanies, prayers, pilgrimages, are regarded as very meritorious and are very scrupulously observed. No other people has ever shown itself so strict in the performance of religious duties.

The pilgrims of Benares, of Jagannath, and of the great pagodas of the south of India, must still be estimated at hundreds of thousands annually. The celebrated places of pilgrimage are most frequently common to the two great sects. Vishnuites and Sivaites mingle on the solemn day; even Mussulmans sometimes come, not through a motive of curiosity, but for a pious end and to perform a meritorious work.

No place in India is more celebrated for its pilgrimages than Jagannath (popularly known as Juggernaut) or Puri on the coast of Orissa; nowhere, moreover, can one prove so well the singular fraternity of the cults of India, and at the same time their enormous diversity. There is not one of them that is not represented here. To whatever religion a Hindu belongs, at whatever distance his residence, and whatever the difficulties of the journey, he strives to go at least once in his life to Jagannath. In the rites of this temple Vishnu [called here Jagannath] shares with the gloomy and fatal Siva the adorations of the multitude whose over-excited piety rises to the point of delirium. His pagoda on wheels is drawn through the city, and such enthusiasm was aroused in the bosoms of the noisy multitudes that fanatics used to throw themselves beneath the wheels with cries of joy.[22]

There are many other places of pilgrimage in India, generally of less importance than Benares and Jagannath. The shores of the Ganges are sacred from source to mouth, and many of the faithful come from afar to visit them. The water of the river is sacred and is carried at great expense from one end of the peninsula to the other. The Hindus attribute a sacred character to all watercourses, but none approaches the holy Ganges in the veneration it inspires. This cult of waters, like that of the clouds and the monsoons, goes back to a very remote antiquity; it is entirely natural in a country of drought, where water brings life and whole populations die of famine when it fails.

Between the religion and the morals of the Hindu there is an abyss which it is difficult for the occidental mind to comprehend. It has been truthfully said that the Hindus are the most religious of all peoples. From the point of view of European ideas it might be said with no less justice that they are perhaps the least moral.

To please the gods and gain their favour is the end that the Hindu has ever before his eyes. But he would be greatly astonished if one should try to persuade him that the gods have the least particle of interest in the honesty of his relations with his fellowmen, the chastity of his life or the integrity of his word and his conduct, or that these all-powerful beings have the slightest disposition to be angry when he steals his neighbour’s goods or practices infanticide.

Their vengeance will smite him severely if he neglects to say his prayers, if he does not read the sacred books, if he is absent from the religious ceremonies, if he kills a cow, or if he does not perform the required purifications. These are the faults that arouse the anger of the gods. They demand sacrifices, pilgrimages, penances, prayers, the performance of a thousand external rites; they are concerned about nothing else. The rest is man’s affair, the material, utilitarian, practical side of life, quite beneath divine care.

If we turn to the laws of Manu, we find that the infraction of apparently puerile rites constitutes for the Hindu a fearful crime that can be atoned only by torture or even death, while robberies and murders may be expiated by the lightest penances. With the exception of adultery, which so deeply disturbs the constitution of families and consequently that of the race, all the sins of the flesh are of little importance to the Hindus. The voluptuous cults which they practice, rather impel them to license, and love becomes criminal only when its object is a being of an inferior caste. Murder derives its culpability from the rank of the person upon whom it is committed. If the victim is a cow or a Brahman, the crime is a grave one; in any other case it becomes a peccadillo. Certain murders, like the infanticide of girls, are not even faults.

The only great moral element that has penetrated the nature of the Hindu is the spirit of Buddhist charity. This spirit has even crept into the rigid code invented for the pleasure of fantastic and cruel gods and not for the true good of mankind. It has softened it and added precepts of love and liberality to its harsh and severe directions. The Buddhist period was the most moral in the history of India, and its beneficent influence still makes itself felt. The good qualities that the Hindu possesses, such as gentleness, faithfulness to his masters, love of family, an admirable spirit of tolerance, belong to his character and are independent of his morals. The most of his virtues are, moreover, altogether passive; he can obey, and he is never so good as when he yields to the yoke of a master. Let him command in his turn and he quickly becomes unjust, arrogant, and tyrannical. One could not say of a single one of his virtues that it is the fruit of a morality grounded upon the powerful base of religious faith and strengthened by ages of development.

The Hindu is, then, an essentially religious being, but he is not a moral being. His yielding and gentle nature is accustomed to submit to the force of a climate that has sapped all his energy and to a long slavery. If he had no curb but his moral conscience, he would perhaps be one of the most fierce and dangerous peoples of the globe. His character alone has made him one of the most inoffensive.[f]

FOOTNOTES

[21] [This picturesque account by Diodorus has already been given in the history of Mesopotamia.]

[22] [On the matter of the famous “Juggernaut” procession which has become a proverb of relentlessness and fanaticism, it is important to note that Sir W. W. Hunter in his history of The Indian Empire makes a sweeping denial of the traditions concerning Jagannath, declaring that his religion is opposed to suicide or slaughter and that the deaths which happen at his festivals are few in number, less indeed than at ordinary political parades, and are due to accident or hysteria and not at all to religious frenzy.]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

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I. LAND AND PEOPLE

[b] GEORG WEBER, Allgemeine Weltgeschichte.

[c] FERDINAND JUSTI, Geschichte der Orientalischen Völker im Alterthum.

[d] The Mahabharata and Ramayana.

[e] The Vedas.

[f] MAX DUNCKER, Geschichte des Alterthums.

[g] CHRISTIAN LASSEN, Commentatio geographica atque historica de Pentapotamia Indica.

[h] HERODOTUS, Histories.

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II. INDIAN HISTORY--LEGEND AND REALITY

[b] JAMES MILL, History of British India.

[c] SOLOMON LEFMANN, Geschichte des alten Indiens.

[d] GUSTAVE LE BON, Les civilisations de l’Inde.

[e] W. W. HUNTER, from the article “India” in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

[f] W. W. HUNTER, Brief History of the Indian People.

[g] J. FERGUSSON, “On the Sakaa and Samvat and Gupta Eras” (Journal R. As. Soc., N. S. XII).

[h] CESARE CANTÙ, Storia universale.

[i] SIR WM. JONES, Dissertations.

[j] FA-HIAN and HWEN-TSANG, Chronicles of Voyages in India.

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III. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ANCIENT HINDUS

[b] A. H. L. HEEREN, Historical Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the Principal Nations of Antiquity (Asiatic Nations).

[c] MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE, The History of India.

[d] JAMES MILL, op. cit.

[e] H. H. WILSON, Editor of James Mill’s History of British India.

[f] H. P. COLEBROKE in Asiatic Researches, Vol. LIII.

[g] HANNO, Periplus.

[h] PLINIUS SECUNDUS, Historia Naturalis.

[i] ARRIAN, Indica.

[j] COLEBROKE, in Transactions of the Asiatic Society.

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