X. BRAHMANIC PANTHEISM.--THE UPANISHADS
In the Vedic hymns man fears the gods, and imagines God. In the Br[=a]hmanas man subdues the gods, and fears God. In the Upanishads man ignores the gods, and becomes God.[1]
Such in a word is the theosophic relations between the three periods represented by the first Vedic Collection, the ritualistic Br[=a]hmanas, and the philosophical treatises called Upanishads. Yet if one took these three strata of thought to be quite independent of each other he would go amiss. Rather is it true that the Br[=a]hmanas logically continue what the hymns begin; that the Upanishads logically carry on the thought of the Br[=a]hmanas. And more, for in the oldest Upanishads are traits that connect this class of writings (if they were written) directly, and even closely with the Vedic hymns themselves; so that one may safely assume that the time of the first Upanishads is not much posterior to that of the latest additions made to the Vedic collections, though this indicates only that these additions were composed at a much later period than is generally supposed.[2] In India no literary period subsides with the rise of its eventually 'succeeding' period. All the works overlap. Parts of the Br[=a]hmanas succeed, sometimes with the addition of whole books, their proper literary successors, the Upanishads. Vedic hymns are composed in the Brahmanic period.[3] The prose S[=u]tras, which, in general, are earlier, sometimes post-date metrical Ç[=a]stra-rules. Thus it is highly probable that, whereas the Upanishads began before the time of Buddha, the Çatapatha Br[=a]hmana (if not others of this class) continued to within two or three centuries of our era; that the legal S[=u]tras were, therefore, contemporary with part of the Br[=a]hmanic period;[4] and that, in short, the end of the Vedic period is so knit with the beginning of the Br[=a]hmanic, while the Br[=a]hmanic period is so knit with the rise of the Upanishads, S[=u]tras, epics, and Buddhism, that one cannot say of any one: 'this is later,' 'this is earlier'; but each must be taken only for a phase of indefinitely dated thought, exhibited on certain lines. It must also be remembered that by the same class of works a wide geographical area may be represented; by the Br[=a]hmanas, west and east; by the S[=u]tras, north and south; by the Vedic poems, northwest and east to Benares (AV.); by the epics, all India, centred about the holy middle land near Delhi.
The meaning of Upanishad as used in the compositions themselves, is either, as it is used to-day, the title of a philosophical work; that of knowledge derived from esoteric teaching; or the esoteric teaching itself. Thus brahma upanishad is the secret doctrine of brahma, and 'whoever follows this upanishad' means whoever follows this doctrine. This seems, however, to be a meaning derived from the nature of the Upanishads themselves, and we are almost inclined to think that the true significance of the word was originally that in which alone occurs, in the early period, the combination upa-ni-[s.]ad, and this is purely external: "he makes the common people upa-ni-s[=a]din," i.e., 'sitting below' or 'subject,' it is said in Çat. Br. ix. 4. 3. 3 (from the literal meaning of 'sitting below').[5] Instead, therefore, of seeing in upan[=i]sad, Upanishad, the idea of a session, of pupils sitting down to hear instruction (the prepositions and verb are never used in this sense), it may be that the Upanishads were at first subsidiary works of the ritualistic Br[=a]hmanas contained in the [=A]ranyakas or Forest Books, that is, appendices to the Br[=a]hmana, ostensibly intended for the use of pious forest-hermits (who had passed beyond the need of sacrifice); and this, in point of fact, is just what they were; till their growth resulted in their becoming an independent branch of literature. The usual explanation of 'Upanishad,' however, is that it represents the instruction given to the pupil 'sitting under' the teacher.
Although at present between two and three hundred Upanishads are known, at least by name, to exist, yet scarcely a dozen appear to be of great antiquity. Some of these are integral parts of Br[=a]hmanas, and apparently were added to the ritualistic works at an early period.[6]
While man's chief effort in the Brahmanic period seems to be by sacrifice and penance to attain happiness hereafter, and to get the upper hand of divine powers; while he recognizes a God, who, though supreme, has yet, like the priest himself, attained his supremacy by sacrifice and penance; while he dreams of a life hereafter in heavenly worlds, in the realm of light, though hardly seeking to avoid a continuation of earthly re-births; nevertheless he frees himself at times from ritualistic observances sufficiently to continue the questioning asked by his Vedic ancestors, and to wonder whither his immortal part is definitively going, and whether that spirit of his will live independently, or be united with some higher power, such as the sun or Brahm[=a].
The philosophical writings called Upanishads[7] take up this question in earnest, but the answer is already assured, and the philosophers, or poets, of this period seek less to prove the truth than to expound it. The soul of man will not only join a heavenly Power. It is part of that Power. Man's spirit (self) is the world-spirit. And what is this? While all the Upanishads are at one in answering the first question, they are not at one in the method by which they arrive at the same result. There is no systematic philosophy; but a tentative, and more or less dogmatic, logic. In regard to the second question they are still less at one; but in general their answer is that the world-spirit is All, and everything is a part of It or Him. Yet, whether that All is personal or impersonal, and what is the relation between spirit and matter, this is still an unsettled point.
The methods and results of this half-philosophical literature will most easily be understood by a few examples. But, before these are given, it will be necessary to emphasize the colloquial and scrappy nature of the teaching. Legend, parable, ritualistic absurdities, belief in gods, denial of gods, belief in heaven, denial of heaven, are all mingled, and for a purpose. For some men are able, and some are unable, to receive the true light of knowledge. But man's fate depends on his knowledge. The wise man becomes hereafter what his knowledge has prepared him to be. Not every spirit is fitted for immortality, but only the spirit of them that have wisely desired it, or, rather, not desired it; for every desire must have been extinguished before one is fitted for this end. Hence, with advancing belief in absorption and pantheism, there still lingers, and not as a mere superfluity, the use of sacrifice and penance. Rites and the paraphernalia of religion are essential till one learns that they are unessential. Desire will be gratified till one learns that the most desirable thing is lack of desire. But so long as one desires even the lack of desire he is still in the fetters of desire. The way is long to the extinction of emotion, but its attainment results in happiness that is greater than delight; in peace that surpasses joy.
In the exposition of this doctrine the old gods are retained as figures. They are not real gods. But they are existent forms of God. They are portions of the absolute, a form of the Eternal, even as man is a form of the same. Absolute being, again, is described as anthropomorphic. 'This is that' under a certain form. Incessantly made is the attempt to explain the identity of the absolute with phenomena. The power brahma, which is originally applied to prayer, is now taken as absolute being, and this, again, must be equated with the personal spirit (ego, self, [=a]tm[=a]). One finds himself back in the age of Vedic speculation when he reads of prayer (or penance) and power as one. For, as was shown above, the Rig Veda already recognizes that prayer is power. There the word for power, brahma, is used only as equivalent of prayer, and Brihaspati or Brahmanaspati is literally the 'god of power,' as he is interpreted by the priests. The significance of the other great word of this period, namely [=a]tm[=a], is not at all uncertain, but to translate it is difficult. It is breath, spirit, self, soul. Yet, since in its original sense it corresponds to spiritus (comparable to athmen), the word spirit, which also signifies the real person, perhaps represents it best. We shall then render brahma and [=a]tm[=a] by the absolute and the ego or spirit, respectively; or leave them, which is perhaps the best way, in their native form. The physical breath, pr[=a]na, is occasionally used just like [=a]tm[=a]. Thus it is said that all the gods are one god, and this is pr[=a]na, identical with brahma (Brihad [=A]ranyaka Upanishad, 3.9.9); or pr[=a]na is so used as to be the same with spirit, though, on the other hand, 'breath is born of spirit' (Praçna Up. 3.3), just as in the Rig Veda (above) it is said that all comes from the breath of God.
One of the most instructive of the older Upanishads is the Ch[=a]ndogya. A sketch of its doctrines will give a clearer idea of Upanishad philosophy than a chapter of disconnected excerpts:
All this (universe) is brahma. Man has intelligent force (or will). He, after death, will exist in accordance with his will in life. This spirit in (my) heart is that mind-making, breath-bodied, light-formed, truth-thoughted, ether-spirited One, of whom are all works, all desires, all smells, and all tastes; who comprehends the universe, who speaks not and is not moved; smaller than a rice-corn, smaller than a mustard-seed, ... greater than earth, greater than heaven. This (universal being) is my ego, spirit, and is brahma, force (absolute being). After death I shall enter into him (3.14).[8] This all is breath (==spirit in 3.15.4).
After this epitome of pantheism follows a ritualistic bit:
Man is sacrifice. Four and twenty years are the morning libation; the next four and forty, the mid-day libation; the next eight and forty, the evening libation. The son of Itar[=a], knowing this, lived one hundred and sixteen years. He who knows this lives one hundred and sixteen years (3.16).
Then, for the abolition of all sacrifice, follows a chapter which explains that man may sacrifice symbolically, so that, for example, gifts to the priests (a necessary adjunct of a real sacrifice) here become penance, liberality, rectitude, non-injury, truth-speaking (ib. 17. 4). There follows then the identification of brahma with mind, sun, breath, cardinal points, ether, etc, even puns being brought into requisition, Ka is Kha and Kha is Ka (4. 10. 5);[9] earth, fire, food, sun, water, stars, man, are brahma, and brahma is the man seen in the moon (4. 12. I). And now comes the identity of the impersonal brahma with the personal spirit. The man seen in the eye is the spirit; this is the immortal, unfearing brahma (4. 15. I = 8. 7. 4). He that knows this goes after death to light, thence to day, thence to the light moon, thence to the season, thence to the year, thence to the sun, thence to the moon, thence to lightning; thus he becomes divine, and enters brahma. They that go on this path of the gods that conducts to brahma do not return to human conditions (ib. 15. 6).
But the Father-god of the Br[=a]hmanas is still a temporary creator, and thus he appears now (ib. 17): The Father-god brooded over[10] the worlds, and from them extracted essences, fire from earth, wind from air, sun from sky. These three divinities (the triad, fire, wind, and sun) he brooded over, and from them extracted essences, the Rig Veda from fire, the Yajur Veda from wind, the S[=a]ma Veda from sun. In the preceding the northern path of them that know the absolute (brahma) has been described, and it was said that they return no more to earth. Now follows the southern path of them that only partly know brahma:
"He that knows the oldest, jye[s.]tham and the best, çre[s]tham, becomes the oldest and the best. Now breath is oldest and best" (then follows the famous parable of the senses and breath, 5. 1. I). This (found elsewhere) is evidently regarded as a new doctrine, for, after the deduction has been made that, because a creature can live without senses, and even without mind, but cannot live without breath, therefore the breath is the 'oldest and best,' the text continues, 'if one told this to a dry stick, branches would be produced and leaves put forth' (5. 2. 3).[11]] The path of him that partly knows the brahma which is expressed in breath, etc, is as follows: He goes to the moon, and, when his good works are used up, he (ultimately mist) rains down, becoming seed, and begins life over again on earth, to become like the people who eat him (5. 10. 6); they that are good become priests, warriors, or members of the third estate; while the bad become dogs, hogs, or members of the low castes.[12] A story is now told, instructive as illustrating the time. Five great doctors of the law came together to discuss what is Spirit, what is brahma. In the end they are taught by a king that the universal Spirit is one's own spirit (5. 18. 1).
It is interesting to see that, although the Rig Veda distinctly says that 'being was born of not-being' (ásatas sád aj[=a]yata, X. 72. 3),[13] yet not-being is here derived quite as emphatically from being. For in the philosophical explanation of the universe given in 6. 2. 1 ff. one reads: "Being alone existed in the beginning, one, and without a second. Others say 'not-being alone' ... but how could being be born of not-being? Being alone existed in the beginning."[14] This being is then represented as sentient. "It saw (and desired), 'may I be many,' and sent forth fire (or heat); fire (or heat) desired and produced water; water, food (earth); with the living spirit the divinity entered fire, water, and earth" (6. 3). As mind comes from food, breath from water, and speech from fire, all that makes a man is thus derived from the (true) being (6. 7. 6); and when one dies his speech is absorbed into mind, his mind into breath, his breath into fire (heat), and heat into the highest godhead (6. 8. 7). This is the subtle spirit, that is the Spirit, that is the True, and this is the spirit of man. Now comes the grand conclusion of the Ch[=a]ndogya. He who knows the ego escapes grief. What is the ego? The Vedas are names, and he that sees brahma in the Vedas is indeed (partly) wise; but speech is better than a name; mind is better than speech; will is better than mind; meditation, better than will; reflection, than meditation; understanding, than reflection; power, than understanding; food, than power; water, than food; heat (fire), than water; ether, than heat; memory, than ether; hope, than memory; breath (=spirit), than hope. In each let one see brahma; ego in All. Who knows this is supreme in knowledge; but more supreme in knowledge is he that knows that in true (being) is the highest being. True being is happiness; true being is ego; ego is all; ego is the absolute.[15]
The relativity o£ divinity is the discovery of the Upanishads. And the relativity of happiness hereafter is the key-note of their religious philosophy. Pious men are of three classes, according to the completed system. Some are good men, but they do not know enough to appreciate, intellectually or spiritually, the highest. Let this class meditate on the Vedas. They desire wealth, not freedom. The second class wish, indeed, to emancipate themselves; but to do so step by step; not to reach absolute brahma, but to live in bliss hereafter. Let these worship the Spirit as physical life. They will attain to the bliss of the realm of light, the realm of the personal creator. But the highest class, they that wish to emancipate themselves at once, know that physical life is but a form of spiritual life; that the personal creator is but a form of the Spirit; that the Spirit is absolute brahma; and that in reaching this they attain to immortality. These, then, are to meditate on spirit as the highest Spirit, that is, the absolute. To fear heaven as much as hell, to know that knowledge is, after all, the key to brahma; that brahma is knowledge; this is the way to emancipation. The gods are; but they are forms of the ego, and their heaven is mortal. It is false to deny the gods. Indra and the Father-god exist, just as men exist, as transient forms of brahma. Therefore, according to the weakness or strength of a man's mind and heart (desire) is he fitted to ignore gods and sacrifice. To obtain brahma his desires must be weak, his knowledge strong; but sacrifice is not to be put away as useless. The disciplinary teaching of the sacrifice is a necessary preparation for highest wisdom. It is here that the Upanishads, which otherwise are to a great extent on the highway to Buddhism, practically contrast with it. Buddhism ignores the sacrifice and the stadia in a priest's life. The Upanishads retain them, but only to throw them over at the end when one has learned not to need them. Philosophically there is no place for the ritual in the Upanishad doctrine; but their teachers stood too much under the dominion of the Br[=a]hmanas to ignore the ritual. They kept it as a means of perfecting the knowledge of what was essential.
So 'by wisdom' it is said 'one gets immortality.' The Spirit develops gradually in man; by means of the mortal he desires the immortal; whereas other animals have only hunger and thirst as a kind of understanding, and they are reborn according to their knowledge as beasts again. Such is the teaching of another of the Upanishads, the [=A]itareya [=A]ranyaka.
This Upanishad contains some rather striking passages: "Whatever man attains, he desires to go beyond it; if he should reach heaven itself he would desire to go beyond it" (2. 3. 3. 1). "Brahma is the A, thither goes the ego" (2. 3. 8. 7). "A is the whole of Speech, and Speech is Truth, and Truth is Spirit" (2. 3. 6. 5-14).[16] "The Spirit brooded over the water, and form (matter) was born" (2. 4. 3. 1 ff.); so physically water is the origin of all things" (2. 1. 8. 1).[17] "Whatever belongs to the father belongs to the son, whatever belongs to the son belongs to the father" (ib.). "Man has three births: he is born of his mother, reborn in the person of his son, and finds his highest birth in death" (2. 5).
In the exposition of these two Upanishads one gets at once the sum of them all. The methods, the illustrations, even the doctrines, differ in detail; but in the chief end and object of the Upanishads, and in the principle of knowledge as a means of attaining brahma, they are united. This it is that causes the refutation of the Vedic 'being from not-being.' It is even said in the [=A]itareya that the gods worshipped breath (the spirit) as being and so became gods (great); while devils worshipped spirit as not-being, and hence became (inferior) devils (2. 1. 8. 6).
It was noticed above that a king instructed priests. This interchange of the rôles of the two castes is not unique. In the K[=a]ush[=i]taki Upanishad (4. 19), occurs another instance of a warrior teaching a Brahman. This, with the familiar illustration of a Gandh[=a]ra (Kandahar) man, the song of the Kurus, and the absence of Brahmanic literature as such in the list of works, cited vii. 1, would indicate that the Ch[=a]ndogya was at least as old as the Br[=a]hmana literature.[18]
In their present form several differences remain to be pointed out between the Vedic period and that of the Upanishads. The goal of the soul, the two paths of gods and of brahma, have been indicated. As already explained, the road to the absolute brahma lies beyond the path to the conditioned brahma. Opposed to this is the path that leads to the world of heaven, whence, when good works have been exhausted, the spirit descends to a new birth on earth. The course of this second path is conceived to be the dark half of the moon, and so back to man. Both roads lead first to the moon, then one goes on to brahma, the other returns to earth. It will be seen that good works are regarded as buoying a man up for a time, till, like gas in a balloon, they lose their force, and he sinks down again. What then becomes of the virtue of a man who enters the absolute brahma, and descends no more? He himself goes to the world where there is "no sorrow and no snow," where he lives forever (Brihad [=A]ran. 5. 10); but "his beloved relations get his virtue, and the relations he does not love get his evil" (K[=a]ush[=i]t. Up. 1. 4). In this Upanishad fire, sun, moon, and lightning die out, and reappear as brahma. This is the doctrine of the Götterdämmerung, and succession of aeons with their divinities (2. 12). Here again is it distinctly stated that pr[=a]na, breath, is brahma; that is, spirit is the absolute (2. 13).
What becomes of them that die ignorant of the ego? They go either to the worlds of evil spirits, which are covered with darkness--the same antithesis of light and darkness, as good and evil, that was seen in the Br[=a]hmanas--or are reborn on earth again like the wicked ([=I]ç[=a], 3).
It is to be noted that at times all the parts of a man are said to become immortal. For just as different rivers enter the ocean and their names and forms are lost in it, so the sixteen parts of a man sink into the godhead and he becomes without parts and immortal (Praçna Up. 6. 5); a purely pantheistic view of absorption, in distinction from the Vedic view of heaven, which latter, in the form of immortal joy hereafter, still lingers in the earlier Upanishads.
It is further to be observed as the crowning point of these speculations that, just as the bliss of emancipation must not be desired, although it is desirable, so too, though knowledge is the fundamental condition of emancipation, yet is delight in the true a fatal error: "They that revere what is not knowledge enter into blind darkness; they that delight in knowledge come as it were into still greater darkness" (Iç[=a], 9). Here, what is not real knowledge means good works, sacrifice, etc. But the sacrifice is not discarded. To those people capable only of attaining to rectitude, sacrifices, and belief in gods there is given some bliss hereafter; but to him that is risen above this, who knows the ego (Spirit) and real being, such bliss is no bliss. His bliss is union with the Spirit.
This is the completion of Upanishad philosophy. Before it is a stage where bliss alone, not absorption, is taught.[19] But what is the ego, spirit or self ([=a]tm[=a])? First of all it is conscious; next it is not the Person, for the Person is produced by the [=a]tm[=a]. Since this Person is the type of the personal god, it is evident that the ego is regarded as lying back of personality. Nevertheless, the teachers sometimes stop with the latter. The developed view is that the immortality of the personal creator is commensurate only with that of the world which he creates. It is for this reason that in the Mundaka (1. 2. 10) it is said that fools regard fulfillment of desire in heavenly happiness as the best thing; for although they have their 'reward in the top of heaven, yet, when the elevation caused by their good works ends, as it will end, when the buoyant power of good works is exhausted, then they drop down to earth again. Hence, to worship the creator as the [=a]tm[=a] is indeed productive of temporary pleasure, but no more. "If a man worship another divinity, devat[=a], with the idea that he and the god are different, he does not know" (Brihad [=A]ran. Up. 1. 4. 10). "Without passion and without parts" is the brahma (Mund. 2. 2. 9). The further doctrine, therefore, that all except brahma is delusion is implied here, and the "extinction of gods in brahma" is once or twice formulated.[20] The fatal error of judgment is to imagine that there is in absolute being anything separate from man's being. When personified, this being appears as the supreme Person, identical with the ego, who is lord of what has been and what will be. By perceiving this controlling spirit in one's own spirit (or self) one obtains eternal bliss; "when desires cease, the mortal becomes immortal; he attains brahma here" in life (Katha Up. 2. 5. 12; 6. 14; Br. [=A]ran. Up. 4. 4. 7).
How inconsistent are the teachings of the Upanishads in regard to cosmogonic and eschatological matters will be evident if one contrast the statements of the different tracts not only with those of other writings of the same sort, but even with other statements in the same Upanishads. Thus the Mundaka teaches first that Brahm[=a], the personal creator, made the world and explained brahma (1. 1. 1). It then defines brahma as the Imperishable, which, like a spider, sends out a web of being and draws it in again (ib. 6, 7). It states with all distinctness that the (neuter) brahma comes from The (masculine)
One who is all-wise, all-knowing (ib. 9). This heavenly Person is the imperishable ego; it is without form; higher than the imperishable (1. 2. 10 ff.; 2. 1. 2); greater than the great (3. 2. 8). Against this is then set (2. 2. 9) the great being brahma, without passions or parts, i. e., without intelligence such as was predicated of the [=a]tm[=a]; and (3. 1. 3) then follows the doctrine of the personal 'Lord, who is the maker, the Person, who has his birth in brahma' (purusho brahmayonis). That this Upanishad is pantheistic is plain from 3. 2. 6, where Ved[=a]nta and Yoga are named. According to this tract the wise go to brahma or to ego (3. 2. 9 and 1. 2. 11), while fools go to heaven and return again.
On the same plane stands the [=I]ç[=a], where [=a]tm[=a], ego, Spirit, is the True, the Lord, and is in the sun. Opposed to each other here are 'darkness' and 'immortality,' as fruit, respectively, of ignorance and wisdom.
In the K[=a]ush[=i]taki Upanishad, taken with the meaning put into it by the commentators, the wise man goes to a very different sort of brahma--one where he is met by nymphs, and rejoices in a kind of heaven. This brahma is of two sorts, absolute and conditioned; but it is ultimately defined as 'breath.' Whenever it is convenient, 'breath' is regarded by the commentators as ego, 'spirit'; but one can scarcely escape the conviction that in many passages 'breath' was meant by the speaker to be taken at its face value. It is the vital power. With this vital power (breath or spirit) one in dreamless sleep unites. Indra has nothing higher to say than that he is breath (spirit), conscious and immortal. Eventually the soul after death comes to Indra, or gains the bright heaven. But here too the doctrine of the dying out of the gods is known (as in T[=a]tt. 3. 10. 4). Cosmogonically all here springs from water (1. 4, 6, 7; 2. 1, 12; 3. 1, 2; 4. 20).
Most striking are the contradictions in the Brihad [=A]ranyaka: "In the beginning there was only nothing; this (world) was covered with death, that is hunger;[21] he desired," etc. (1. 2. 1). "In the beginning there was only ego ([=a]tm[=a])." [=A]tm[=a] articulated "I am," and (finding himself lonely and unhappy) divided himself into male and female,[22] whence arose men, etc. (1. 4. 1). Again: "In the beginning there was only brahma; this (neuter) knew [=a]tm[=a] ... brahma was the one and only ... it created" (1. 4. 10-11); followed immediately by "he created" (12). And after this, in 17, one is brought back to "in the beginning there was only [=a]tm[=a]; he desired 'let me have a wife.'"
In 2. 3. 1 ff. the explicitness of the differences in brahma makes the account of unusual value. It appears that there are two forms of brahma, one is mortal, with form; the other is immortal, without form. Whatever is other than air and the space between (heaven and earth) is mortal and with form. This is being, its essence is in the sun. On the other hand, the essence of the immortal is the person in the circle (of the sun). In man's body breath and ether are the immortal, the essence of which is the person in the eye. There is a visible and invisible brahma ([=a]tm[=a]); the real brahma is incomprehensible and is described only by negations (3. 4. 1; 9. 26). The highest is the Imperishable (neuter), but this sees, hears, and knows. It is in this that ether (as above) is woven (3. 8. 11). After death the wise man goes to the world of the gods (1. 5. 16); he becomes the [=a]tm[=a] of all beings, just like that deity (1. 5. 20); he becomes identical ('how can one know the knower?' vijñ[=a]tar) in 2. 4. 12-13; and according to 3. 2. 13, the doctrine of sams[=a]ra is extolled ("they talked of karma, extolled karma secretly"), as something too secret to be divulged easily, even to priests.
That different views are recognized is evident from Taitt. 2. 6: "If one knows brahma as asat he becomes only asat (non-existence); if he knows that 'brahma is' (i.e., a sad brahma), people know him as thence existing." Personal [=a]tm[=a] is here insisted on ("He wished 'may I be many'"); and from [=a]tm[=a], the conscious brahma, in highest heaven, came the ether (2. 1, 6). Yet, immediately afterwards: "In the beginning was the non-existent; thence arose the existent; and That made for himself an ego (spirit, conscious life, [=a]tm[=a]; tad [=a]tm[=a]nain svayam akuruta, 2. 7). In man brahma is the sun-brahma. Here too one finds the brahma[n.]a[h.] parimaras (3. 10. 4 = K[=a]ush[=i]t. 2. 12, d[=a]iva), or extinction of gods in brahma. But what that brahma is, except that it is bliss, and that man after death reaches 'the bliss-making [=a]tm[=a],' it is impossible to say (3. 6; 2. 8). Especially as the departed soul 'eats and sits down singing' in heaven (3. 10. 5).
The greatest discrepancies in eschatology occur perhaps in the [=A]itareya [=A]ranyaka. After death one either "gets brahma" (i. 3. 1. 2), "comes near to the immortal spirit" (1. 3. 8. 14), or goes to the "heavenly world." Knowledge here expressly conditions the hereafter; so much so that it is represented not (as above) that fools go to heaven and return, but that all, save the very highest, are to recognize a personal creator (Praj[=a]pati) in breath (=ego=brahma), and then they will "go to the heavenly world" (2. 3. 8. 5), "become the sun" (2. 1. 8. 14), or "go to gods" (2. 2. 4. 6). Moreover after the highest wisdom has been revealed, and the second class of men has been disposed of, the author still returns to the 'shining sky,' svarga, as the best promise (3). Sinners are born again (2. 1. 1. 5) on earth, although hell is mentioned (2. 3. 2. 5). The origin of world is water, as usual (2. 1. 8. 1). The highest teaching is that all was [=a]tm[=a], who sent forth worlds (lok[=a]n as[r.]jata), and formed the Person (as guardian of worlds), taking him from waters. Hence [=a]tm[=a], Praj[=a]pati (of the second-class thinkers), and brahma are the same. Knowledge is brahma (2. 4. 1. 1; 6. 1. 5-7).
In the Kena, where the best that can be said in regard to brahma is that he is tadvana, the one that 'likes this' (or, perhaps, is 'like this'), there is no absorption into a world-spirit. The wise 'become immortal'; 'by knowledge one gets immortality'; 'who knows this stands in heaven' (1. 2; 2. 4; 4. 9). The general results are about those formulated by Whitney in regard to the Katha: knowledge gives continuation of happiness in heaven; the punishment of the unworthy is to continue sams[=a]ra, the round of rebirths. Hell is not mentioned in the [=A]itareya Upanishad itself but in the [=A]ranyaka[23] (2. 3. 2. 5). That, however, a union with the universal [=a]tm[=a] (as well as heaven) is desired, would seem to be the case from several of the passages cited above, notably Brihad [=A]ran., i. 5. 20 (sa eva[.m]vit sarve[s.][=a]m bh[=u]t[=a]n[=a]m [=a]tm[=a] bhavati, Yath[=a] i[s.][=a] devat[=a]ivam sa); 'he that knows this becomes the [=a]tm[=a] of all creatures, as is that divinity so is he'; though this is doubtless the [=a]nandamaya [=a]tm[=a], or joy-making Spirit (T[=a]itt. 2. 8).
Again two forms of brahma are explained (M[=a]it. Up. 6. 15 ff.): There are two forms of brahma, time and not-time. That which was before the sun is not-time and has no parts. Time and parts begin with the sun. Time is the Father-god, the Spirit. Time makes and dissolves all in the Spirit. He knows the Veda who knows into what Time itself is dissolved. This manifest time is the ocean of creatures. But brahma exists before and after time.[24]
As an example of the best style of the Upanishads we will cite a favorite passage (given no less than four times in various versions) where the doctrine of absorption is most distinctly taught under the form of a tale. It is the famous
DIALOGUE OF Y[=A]JÑAVALKYA AND M[=A]ITREY[=I].[25]
Y[=a]jñavalkya had two wives, M[=a]itrey[=i] and K[=a]ty[=a]yani. Now M[=a]itrey[=i] was versed in holy knowledge (brahma), but K[=a]ty[=a]yani had only such knowledge as women have. But when Y[=a]jñavalkya was about to go away into the forest (to become a hermit), he said: 'M[=a]itrey[=i], I am going away from this place. Behold, I will make a settlement between thee and that K[=a]ty[=a]yani.' Then said M[=a]itrey[=i]: 'Lord, if this whole earth filled with wealth were mine, how then? should I be immortal by reason of this wealth?' 'Nay,' said Y[=a]jñavalkya. 'Even as is the life of the rich would be thy life; by reason of wealth one has no hope of immortality.' Then said M[=a]itrey[=i]: 'With what I cannot be immortal, what can I do with that? whatever my Lord knows even that tell me.' And Y[=a]jñavalkya said: 'Dear to me thou art, indeed, and fondly speakest. Therefore I will explain to thee and do thou regard me as I explain.' And he said: 'Not for the husband's sake is a husband dear, but for the ego's sake is the husband dear. Not for the wife's sake is a wife dear; but for the ego's sake is a wife dear; not for the son's sake are sons dear, but for the ego's sake are sons dear; not for wealth's sake is wealth dear, but for the ego's sake is wealth dear; not for the sake of the Brahman caste is the Brahman caste dear, but for the sake of the ego is the Brahman caste dear; not for the sake of the Warrior caste is the Warrior caste dear, but for love of the ego is the Warrior caste dear; not for the sake of the worlds are worlds dear, but for the sake of the ego are worlds dear; not for the sake of gods are gods dear, but for the ego's sake are gods dear; not for the sake of bh[=u]ts (spirits) are bh[=u]ts dear, but for the ego's sake are bhuts dear; not for the sake of anything is anything dear, but for love of one's self (ego) is anything (everything) dear; the ego (self) must be seen, heard, apprehended, regarded, M[=a]itrey[=i], for with the seeing, hearing, apprehending, and regarding of the ego the All is known.... Even as smoke pours out of a fire lighted with damp kindling wood, even so out of the Great Being is blown out all that which is, Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, S[=a]ma Veda, Atharva (Angiras) Veda, Stories, Tales, Sciences, Upanishads, food, drink, sacrifices; all creatures that exist are blown (breathed) out of this one (Great Spirit) alone. As in the ocean all the waters have their meeting-place; as the skin is the meeting-place of all touches; the tongue, of all tastes; the nose, of all smells; the mind, of all precepts; the heart, of all knowledges; ... as salt cast into water is dissolved so that one cannot seize it, but wherever one tastes it is salty, so this Great Being, endless, limitless, is a mass of knowledge. It arises out of the elements and then disappears in them. After death there is no more consciousness.[26] I have spoken.' Thus said Y[=a]jñavalkya. Then said M[=a]itrey[=i]: 'Truly my Lord has bewildered me in saying that after death there is no more consciousness.' And Y[=a]jñavalkya said: 'I say nothing bewildering, but what suffices for understanding. For where there is as it were duality (dv[=a]itam), there one sees, smells, hears, addresses, notices, knows another; but when all the universe has become mere ego, with what should one smell, see, hear, address, notice, know any one (else)? How can one know him through whom he knows this all, how can he know the knower (as something different)? The ego is to be described by negations alone, the incomprehensible, imperishable, unattached, unfettered; the ego neither suffers nor fails. Thus, M[=a]itrey[=i], hast thou been instructed. So much for immortality.' And having spoken thus Y[=a]jñavalkya went away (into the forest).
Returning to the Upanishad, of which an outline was given in the beginning of this chapter, one finds a state of things which, in general, may be said to be characteristic of the whole Upanishad period. The same vague views in regard to cosmogony and eschatology obtain in all save the outspoken sectarian tracts, and the same uncertainty in regard to man's future fate prevails in this whole cycle.[27] A few extracts will show this. According to the Ch[=a]ndogya (4. 17. 1), a personal creator, the old Father-god of the Br[=a]hmanas, Praj[=a]pati, made the elements proceed from the worlds he had 'brooded' over (or had done penance over, abhyatapat). In 3. 19. 1, not-being was first; this became being (with the mundane egg, etc.). In sharp contradiction (6. 2. 1): 'being was the first thing, it willed,' etc., a conscious divinity, as is seen in ib. 3. 2, where it is a 'deity,' producing elements as 'deities' (ib. 8. 6) which it enters 'with the living [=a]tm[=a],' and so develops names and forms (so T[=a]itt. 2. 7). The latter is the prevailing view of the Upanishad. In 1. 7. 5 ff. the [=a]tm[=a] is the same with the universal [=a]tm[=a]; in 3. 12. 7, the brahma is the same with ether without and within, unchanging; in 3. 13. 7, the 'light above heaven' is identical with the light in man; in 3. 14. 1, all is brahma (neuter), and this is an intelligent universal spirit. Like the ether is the [=a]tm[=a] in the heart, this is brahma (ib. 2 ff.); in 4. 3. air and breath are the two ends (so in the argument above, these are immortal as distinguished from all else); in 4. 10. 5 yad v[=a]v[=a] ka[.m] tad eva kham (brahma is ether); in 4. 15. 1, the ego is brahma; in 5. 18. 1 the universal ego is identified with the particular ego ([=a]tm[=a]); in 6. 8 the ego is the True, with which one unites in dreamless sleep; in 6. 15. 1, into par[=a] devat[=a] or 'highest divinity' enters man's spirit, like salt in water (ib. 13). In 7. 15-26, a view but half correct is stated to be that 'breath' is all, but it is better to know that yo bh[=u]m[=a] tad am[r.]tam, the immortal (all) is infinity, which rests in its own greatness, with a corrective 'but perhaps it doesn't' (yadi v[=a] na). This infinity is ego and [=a]tm[=a].[28]
What is the reward for knowing this? One obtains worlds, unchanging happiness, brahma; or, with some circumnavigation, one goes to the moon, and eventually reaches brahma or obtains the worlds of the blessed (5. 10. 10). The round of existence, sams[=a]ra, is indicated at 6. 16, and expressly stated in 5. 10. 7 (insects have here a third path). Immortality is forcibly claimed: 'The living one dies not' (6. 11. 3). He who knows the sections 7. 15 to 26 becomes [=a]tm[=a]nanda and "lord of all worlds"; whereas an incorrect view gives perishable worlds. In one Upanishad there is a verse (Çvet. 4. 5) which would indicate a formal duality like that of the S[=a]nkhyas;[29] but in general one may say that the Upanishads are simply pantheistic, only the absorption into a world-soul is as yet scarcely formulated. On the other hand, some of the older Upanishads show traces of an atheistic and materialistic (asad) philosophy, which is swallowed up in the growing inclination to personify the creative principle, and ultimately is lost in the erection of a personal Lord, as in the latest Upanishads. This tendency to personify, with the increase of special sectarian gods, will lead again, after centuries, to the rehabilitation of a triad of gods, the trim[=u]rti, where unite Vishnu, Çiva, and, with these, who are more powerful, Brahm[=a], the Praj[=a]pati of the Veda, as the All-god of purely pantheistic systems. In the purer, older form recorded above, the purusha (Person) is sprung from the [=a]tm[=a]. There is no distinction between matter and spirit. Conscious being (sat) wills, and so produces all. Or [=a]tm[=a] comes first; and this is conscious sat and the cause of the worlds; which [=a]tm[=a] eventually becomes the Lord. The [=a]tm[=a] in man, owing to his environment, cannot see whole, and needs the Yoga discipline of asceticism to enable him to do so. But he is the same ego which is the All.
The relation between the absolute and the ego is through will. "This (neuter) brahma willed, 'May I be many,' and created" (Ch[=a]nd., above). Sometimes the impersonal, and sometimes the personal "spirit willed" (T[=a]iit. 2. 6). And when it is said, in Brihad [=A]ran. 1. 4. 1, that "In the beginning ego, spirit, [=a]tm[=a], alone existed," one finds this spirit (self) to be a form of brahma (ib. 10-11). Personified in a sectarian sense, this spirit becomes the divinity Rudra Çiva, the Blessed One (Çvet[=a]çvatara, 3. 5. 11).[30]
In short, the teachers of the Upanishads not only do not declare clearly what they believed in regard to cosmogonic and eschatological matters, but many of them probably did not know clearly what they believed. Their great discovery was that man's spirit was not particular and mortal, but part of the immortal universal. Whether this universal was a being alive and a personal [=a]tm[=a], or whether this personal being was but a transient form of impersonal, imperishable being;[31] and whether the union with being, brahma, would result in a survival of individual consciousness,--these are evidently points they were not agreed upon, and, in all probability, no one of the sages was certain in regard to them. Crass identifications of the vital principle with breath, as one with ether, which is twice emphasized as one of the two immortal things, were provisionally accepted. Then breath and immortal spirit were made one. Matter had energy from the beginning, brahma; or was chaos, asat, without being. But when asat becomes sat, that sat becomes brahma, energized being, and to asat there is no return. In eschatology the real (spirit, or self) part of man (ego) either rejoices forever as a conscious part of the conscious world-self, or exists immortal in brahma--imperishable being, conceived as more or less conscious.[32]
The teachers recognize the limitations of understanding: "The gods are in Indra, Indra is in the Father-god, the Father-god (the Spirit) is in brahma"--"But in what is brahma?" And the answer is, "Ask not too much" (Brihad. [=A]ran. Up. 3. 6).
These problems will be those of the future formal philosophy. Even the Upanishads do not furnish a philosophy altogether new. Their doctrine of karma their identification of particular ego and universal ego, is not original. The 'breaths,' the 'nine doors,' the 'three qualities,' the purusha as identical with ego, are older even than the Br[=a]hmanas (Scherman, loc. cit. p. 62).
It is not a new philosophy, it is a new religion that the Upanishads offer.[33] This is no religion of rites and ceremonies, although the cult is retained as helpful in disciplining and teaching; it is a religion for sorrowing humanity. It is a religion that comforts the afflicted, and gives to the soul 'that peace which the world cannot give.' In the sectarian Upanishads this bliss of religion is ever present. "Through knowing Him who is more subtile than subtile, who is creator of everything, who has many forms, who embraces everything, the Blessed Lord--one attains to peace without end" (Çvet. 4. 14-15). These teachers, who enjoin the highest morality ('self-restraint, generosity, and mercy' are God's commandments in Brihad [=A]ran. 5. 2) refuse to be satisfied with virtue's reward, and, being able to obtain heaven, 'seek for something beyond.' And this they do not from mere pessimism, but from a conviction that they will find a joy greater than that of heaven, and more enduring, in that world where is "the light beyond the darkness" (Çvet. 3. 8); "where shines neither sun, moon, stars, lightning, nor fire, but all shines after Him that shines alone, and through His light the universe is lighted" (Mund. 2. 2. 10). This, moreover, is not a future joy. It is one that frees from perturbation in this life, and gives relief from sorrow. In the Ch[=a]ndogya (7. 1. 3) a man in grief comes seeking this new knowledge of the universal Spirit; "For," says he, "I have heard it said that he who knows the Spirit passes beyond grief." So in the [=I]ç[=a], though this is a late sectarian work, it is asked, "What sorrow can there be for him to whom Spirit alone has become all things?' (7). Again, "He that knows the joy of brahma, whence speech with mind turns away without apprehending it, fears not" (T[=a]itt. 2. 4); for "fear comes only from a second" (Brihad [=A]ran. Up. 1. 4. 2), and when one recognizes that all is one he no longer fears death (ib. 4. 4. 15).
Such is the religion of these teachers. In the quiet assumption that life is not worth living, they are as pessimistic as was Buddha. But if, as seems to be the case, the Buddhist believed in the eventual extinction of his individuality, their pessimism is of a different sort. For the teacher of the Upanishads believes that he will attain to unending joy; not the rude happiness of 'heaven-seekers,' but the unchanging bliss of immortal peace. For him that wished it, there was heaven and the gods. These were not denied; they were as real as the "fool" that desired them. But for him that conquered passion, and knew the truth, there was existence without the pain of desire, life without end, freedom from rebirth. The spirit of the sage becomes one with the Eternal; man becomes God.
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Compare Çal. Br. ii. 4. 2. 1-6, where the Father-god gives laws of conduct; and Kaush[=i]taki Brahmana Upanishad, 3. 8: "This spirit (breath) is guardian of the world, the lord of the world; he is my spirit" (or, myself), sa ma [=a]tm[=a]. The Brahmanic priest teaches that he is a god like other gods, and goes so far as to say that he may be united with a god after death. The Upanishad philosopher says 'I am God.']
[Footnote 2: Compare Scherman, Philosophische Hymnen, p. 93; above, p. 156.]
[Footnote 3: Or, in other words, the thought of the Brahmanic period (not necessarily of extant Br[=a]hmanas) is synchronous with part of the Vedic collection.]
[Footnote 4: The last additions to this class of literature would, of course, conform in language to their models, just as the late Vedic Mantras conform as well as their composers can make them to the older song or chandas style.]
[Footnote 5: Cited by Müller in SBE. i. Introd. p. lxxxii.]
[Footnote 6: Compare Weber, Ind. Lit. p. 171; Müller, loc. cit. p. lxviii.]
[Footnote 7: The relation between the Br[=a]hmanas (ritual works discussed in the last chapter) and the early Upanishads will be seen better with the help of a concrete example. As has been explained before, Rig Veda means to the Hindu not only the 'Collection' of hymns, but all the library connected with this collection; for instance, the two Br[=a]hmanas (of the Rig Veda), namely, the Aitareya and the K[=a]ush[=i]taki (or Ç[=a]nkh[=a]yana). Now, each of these Br[=a]hmanas concludes with an [=A]ranyaka, that is, a Forest-Book (ara[n.]ya, forest, solitude); and in each Forest Book is an Upanishad. For example, the third book of the K[=a]ush[=i]taki [=A]ranyaka is the K[=a]ush[=i]taki Upanishad. So the Ch[=a]ndogya and Brihad [=A]ranyaka belong respectively to the S[=a]man and Yajus.]
[Footnote 8: This teaching is ascribed to Ç[=a]ndilya, to whose heresy, as opposed to the pure Vedantic doctrinc of Çankara, we shall have to revert in a later chapter. The heresy consists, in a word, in regarding the individual spirit as at any time distinct from the Supreme Spirit, though Ç[=a]ndilya teaches that it is ultimately absorbed into the latter.]
[Footnote 9: "God' Who' is air, air (space) is God 'Who'," as if one said 'either is aether.']
[Footnote 10: 'Did penance over,' as one doing penance remains in meditation. 'Brooded' is Müller's apt word for this abhi-tap.]
[Footnote 11: Compare Brihad [=A]ran. Up. 6. 3. 7.]
[Footnote 12: This is the karma or sams[=a]ra doctrine.]
[Footnote 13: In J.U.B. alone have we noticed the formula asserting that 'both being and not-being existed in the beginning' (1. 53. 1; JAOS. XVI. 130).]
[Footnote 14: Opposed is 3. 19. 1 and T[=a]itt. Up. 2. 7. 1 (Br. II. 2. 9. 1, 10): "Not-being was here in the beginning. From it arose being." And so Çat. Br. VI. 1. 1. 1 (though in word only, for here not-being is the seven spirits of God!)]
[Footnote 15: As the Vedic notion of not-being existing before being is refuted, so the Atharvan homage to Time as Lord is also derided (Çvet. 6) in the Upanishads. The supreme being is above time, as he is without parts (ib.). In this later Upanishad wisdom, penance, and the grace of God are requisite to know brahma.]
[Footnote 16: This Vedic [Greek: Adgos] doctrine is conspicuous in the Br[=a]hmana. Compare Çat. Br. VII. 5. 2. 21: "V[=a]c ([Greek: Adgos]) is the Unborn one; from V[=a]c the all-maker made creatures." See Weber, _Ind. Stud_. IX. 477 ff.]
[Footnote 17: Compare J.U.B. i. 56. 1, 'Water (alone) existed in the beginning.' This is the oldest and latest Hindu explanation of the matter of the physical universe. From the time of the Vedas to mediaeval times, as is recorded by the Greek travellers, water is regarded as the original element.]
[Footnote 18: The Gandh[=a]ra might indicate a late geographical expansion as well as an early heritage, so that this is not conclusive.]
[Footnote 19: Gough, Philosophy of the Upanishads, has sought to show that the pure Vedantism of Çankara is the only belief taught in the Upanishads, ignoring the weight of those passages that oppose his (in our view) too sweeping assertion.]
[Footnote 20: See the Parimara described, [=A]it. Br. VIII. 28. Here brahma is wind, around which die five divinities--lightning in rain, rain in moon, moon in sun, sun in fire, fire in wind--and they are reborn in reverse order. The 'dying' is used as a curse. The king shall say, 'When fire dies in wind then may my foe die,' and he will die; so when any of the other gods dies around brahma.]
[Footnote 21: Compare sterben, starve.]
[Footnote 22: The androgynous creator of the Br[=a]hmanas.]
[Footnote 23: We cannot, however, quite agree with Whitney who, loc. cit. p. 92, and Journal, xiii, p. ciii ff., implies that belief in hell comes later than this period. This is not so late a teaching. Hell is Vedic and Brahmanic.]
[Footnote 24: This, in pantheistic style, is expressed thus (Çvet. 4): "When the light has arisen there is no day no night, neither being nor not-being; the Blessed One alone exists there. There is no likeness of him whose name is Great Glory."]
[Footnote 25: Brihad [=A]ranyaka Upanishad, 2.4; 4. 5.]
[Footnote 26: Na pretya sa[.m]jñ[=a] 'sti.]
[Footnote 27: Some of the Upanishads have been tampered with, so that all of the contradictions may not be due to the composers. Nevertheless, as the uncertainty of opinion in regard to cosmogony is quite as great as that in respect of absorption, all the vagueness cannot properly be attributed to the efforts of later systematizers to bring the Upanishads into their more or less orthodox Vedantism.]
[Footnote 28: In 4. 10. 5 kam is pleasure, one with ether as brahma, not as wrongly above, p. 222, the god Ka.]
[Footnote 29: This Upanishad appears to be sectarian, perhaps an early Çivaite tract (dualistic), if the allusion to Rudra Çiva, below, be accepted as original.]
[Footnote 30: As is foreshadowed in the doctrine of grace by V[=a]c in the Rig Veda, in the Çvet, the Katha, and the Mund. Upanishads (K. 2. 23; M. 3. 2. 3), but nowhere else, there enters, with the sectarian phase, that radical subversion of the Upanishad doctrine which becomes so powerful at a later date, the teaching that salvation is a gift of God. "This Spirit is not got by wisdom; the Spirit chooses as his own the body of that man whom He chooses."]
[Footnote 31: See above. As descriptive of the immortal conscious Spirit, there is the famous verse: "If the slayer thinks to slay, if the slain thinks he is slain; they both understand not; this one (the Spirit) slays not, and is not slain" (Katha, 2. 19); loosely rendered by Emerson, 'If the red slayer think he slays,' etc.]
[Footnote 32: The fact remarked by Thibaut that radically different systems of philosophy are built upon the Upanishads is enough to show how ambiguous are the declarations of the latter.]
[Footnote 33: Compare Barth, Religions, p. 76.]
* * * * *
XI. THE POPULAR BRAHMANIC FAITH
For a long time after the Vedic age there is little that gives one an insight into the views of the people. It may be presumed, since the orthodox systems never dispensed with the established cult, that the form of the old Vedic creed was kept intact. Yet, since the real belief changed, and the cult became more and more the practice of a formality, it becomes necessary to seek, apart from the inherited ritual, the faith which formed the actual religion of the people. Inasmuch as this phase of Hindu belief has scarcely been touched upon elsewhere, it may be well to state more fully the object of the present chapter.
We have shown above that the theology of the Vedic period had resulted, before its close, in a form of pantheism, which was accompanied, as is attested by the Atharva Veda, with a demonology and witch-craft religion, the latter presumably of high antiquity. Immediately after this come the esoteric Br[=a]hmanas, in which the gods are, more or less, figures in the eyes of the priests, and the form of a Father-god rises into chief prominence, being sometimes regarded as the creative force, but at all times as the moral authority in the world. At the end of this period, however, and probably even before this period ended, there is for the first time, in the Upanishads, a new religion, that, in some regards, is esoteric. Hitherto the secrets of religious mysteries had been treated as hidden priestly wisdom, not to be revealed. But, for the most part, this wisdom is really nonsense; and when it is said in the Br[=a]hmanas, at the end of a bit of theological mystery, that it is a secret, or that 'the gods love that which is secret,' one is not persuaded by the examples given that this esoteric knowledge is intellectually valuable. But with the Upanishads there comes the antithesis of inherited belief and right belief. The latter is public property, though it is not taught carelessly. The student is not initiated into the higher wisdom till he is drilled in the lower. The most unexpected characters appear in the rôle of instructors of priests, namely, women, kings, and members of the third caste, whose deeper wisdom is promulgated oftentimes as something quite new, and sometimes is whispered in secret. Pantheism, sams[=a]ra,[1] and the eternal bliss of the individual spirit when eventually it is freed from further transmigration,--these three fundamental traits of the new religion are discussed in such a way as to show that they had no hold upon the general public, but they were the intellectual wealth of a few. Some of the Upanishads hide behind a veil of mystery; yet many of them, as Windisch has said, are, in a way, popular; that is, they are intended for a general public, not for priests alone. This is especially the case with the pantheistic Upanishads in their more pronounced form. But still it is only the very wise that can accept the teaching. It is not the faith of the people.
Epic literature, which is the next living literature of the Brahmans, after the Upanishads, takes one, in a trice, from the beginnings of a formal pantheism, to a pantheism already disintegrated by the newer worship of sectaries. Here the impersonal [=a]tm[=a], or nameless Lord, is not only an anthropomorphic Çiva, as in the late Upanishads, where the philosophic brahma is equated with a long recognized type of divinity, but [=a]tm[=a] is identified with the figure of a theomorphic man.
Is there, then, nothing with which to bridge this gulf?
In our opinion the religion of the law-books, as a legitimate phase of Hindu religion, has been too much ignored. The religion of Upanishad and Ved[=a]nta, with its attractive analogies with modern speculation, has been taken as illustrative of the religion of a vast period, to the discrediting of the belief represented in the manuals of law. To these certainly the name of literature can scarcely be applied, but in their rapport with ordinary life they will be found more apt than are the profounder speculations of the philosophers to reflect the religious belief taught to the masses and accepted by them.
The study of these books casts a broad light upon that interval between the Vedic and epic periods wherein it is customary to imagine religion as being, in the main, cult or philosophy. Nor does the interest cease with the yield of necessarily scanty yet very significant facts in regard to eschatological and cosmogonic views. The gods themselves are not what they are in the rites of the cunning priests or in the dogmas of the sages. In the Hindu law there is a reversion to Vedic belief; or rather not a reversion, but here one sees again, through the froth of rites and the murk of philosophy, the under-stream of faith that still flows from the old fount, if somewhat discolored, and waters the heart of the people.
At just what time was elaborated the stupendous system of rites, which are already traditional in the Br[=a]hmanas, can never be known. Some of these rites have to do with special ceremonies, such as the royal inauguration, some are stated soma-sacrifices.[2] Opposed to these soma-feasts is the simpler and older fire-cult, which persists in the house-rituals. All of these together make up a sightly array of sacrifices.[3] The soma-ritual is developed in the Br[=a]hmanas. But with this class of works there must have been from ancient times another which treated of the fire-ritual, and of which the more modern representatives are the extant S[=u]tras. It is with S[=u]tras that legal literature begins, but these differ from the ritualistic S[=u]tras. Yet both are full of religious meat. In these collections, even in the more special, there is no arrangement that corresponds to western ideas of order. In a completed code, for example, there is a rough distribution of subjects under different heads, but the attempt is only tentative, and each work presents the appearance of a heterogeneous mass of regulations and laws, from which one must pick out the law for which he is seeking. The earlier legal works were in prose; the later evolved codes, of which there is a large number, in metre. It is in these two classes of house-ritual and law-ritual, which together constitute what is called Smriti, tradition-ritual (in distinction from the so-called Çruti, revelation-ritual), that one may expect to find the religion of the time; not as inculcated by the promoters of mystery, nor yet as disclosed by the philosopher, but as taught (through the priest) to the people, and as accepted by them for their daily guidance in matters of every-day observance. We glance first at the religious observances, for here, as in the case of the great sacrifices, a detailed examination would be of no more value than a collective impression; unless, indeed, one were hunting for folk-lore superstitions, of which we can treat now only in the mass. It is sufficient to understand that, according to the house-ritual (g[r.]hya-s[=u]tra) and the law-ritual (dharma-s[=u]tra, and dharma-ç[=a]stra),[4] for every change in life there was an appropriate ceremony and a religious observance; for every day, oblations (three at least); for every fortnight and season, a sacrifice. Religious formulae were said over the child yet unborn. From the moment of birth he was surrounded with observances.[5] At such and such a time the child's head was shaved; he was taken out to look at the sun; made to eat from a golden spoon; invested with the sacred cord, etc, etc. When grown up, a certain number of years were passed with a Guru, or tutor, who taught the boy his Veda; and to whom he acted as body-servant (a study and office often cut short in the case of Aryans who were not priests). Of the sacraments alone, such as the observances to which we have just alluded, there are no less than forty according to Gautama's laws (the name-rite, eating-rite, etc.). The pious householder who had once set up his own fire, that is, got married, must have spent most of his time, if he followed directions, in attending to some religious ceremony. He had several little rites to attend to even before he might say his prayers in the morning; and since even to-day most of these personal regulations are dutifully observed, one may assume that in the full power of Brahmanhood they were very straitly enforced.[6]
It is, therefore, important to know what these works, so closely in touch with the general public, have to say in regard to religion. What they inculcate will be the popular theology of completed Brahmanism. For these books are intended to give instruction to all the Aryan castes, and, though this instruction filtrates through the hands of the priest, one may be sure that the understanding between king and priest was such as to make the code the real norm of justice and arbiter of religious opinions. For instance, when one reads that the king is a prime divinity, and that, quid pro quo, the priest may be banished, but never may be punished corporally by the king, because the former is a still greater divinity, it may be taken for granted that such was received opinion. When we come to take up the Hinduism of the epic we shall point out that that work contains a religion more popular even than that of the legal literature, for one knows that this latter phase of religion was at first not taught at all, but grew up in the face of opposition. But for the present, before the rise of epic 'Hinduism,' and before taking up the heretical writings, it is a great gain to be able to scan a side of religion that may be called popular in so far as it evidently is the faith which not only was taught to the masses, but which, as is universally assumed in the law, the masses accept; whereas philosophers alone accept the [=a]tm[=a] religion of the Upanishads, and the Br[=a]hmanas are not intended for the public at all, but only for initiated priests.
What, then, is the religious belief and the moral position of the Hindu law-books? In how far has philosophy affected public religion, and in what way has a reconciliation been affected between the contradictory beliefs in regard to the gods; in regard to the value of works on the one hand, and of knowledge on the other; in regard to hell as a means of punishment for sin on the one hand, and reincarnation (sams[=a]ra) on the other; in regard to heaven as a reward of good deeds on the one hand, and absorption into God on the other; in regard to a personal creator on the one hand, and a First Cause without personal attributes on the other?
For the philosophical treatises are known and referred to in the early codes; so that, although the completed systems post-dated the S[=u]tras, the cosmical and theological speculations of the earlier Upanishads were familiar to the authors of the legal systems.
The first general impression produced by a perusal of the law-books is that the popular religion has remained unaffected by philosophy. And this is correct in so far as that it must be put first in describing the codes, which, in the main, in keeping the ancient observances, reflect the inherited faith. When, therefore, one says that pantheism[7] succeeded polytheism in India, he must qualify the assertion. The philosophers are pantheists, but what of the vulgar? Do they give up polytheism; are they inclined to do so, or are they taught to do so? No. For there is no formal abatement in the rigor of the older creed. Whatever the wise man thought, and whatever in his philosophy was the instruction which he imparted to his peers, when he dealt with the world about him he taught his intellectual inferiors a scarcely modified form of the creed of their fathers. How in his own mind this wise man reconciled the two sets of opinion has been shown above. The works of sacrifice, with all the inherited belief implied by them, were for him preparatory studies. The elasticity of his philosophy admitted the whole world of gods, as a temporary reality, into his pantheistic scheme. It was, therefore, neither the hypocrisy of the Roman augur, nor the fear of results that in his teaching held him to the inheritance he had received. Gods, ghosts, demons, and consequently sacrifices, rites, ordeals, and formulae were not incongruous with his philosophical opinions. He himself believed in these spiritual powers and in the usefulness of serving them. It is true that he believed in their eventual doom, but so far as man was concerned they were practically real. There was, therefore, not only no reason why the sage should not inculcate the old rites, but there was every reason why he should. Especially in the case of pious but ignorant people, whose wisdom was not yet developed to a full appreciation of divine relativity, was it incumbent on him to keep them, the lower castes, to the one religion that they could comprehend.
It is thus that the apparent inconsistency in exoteric and esoteric beliefs explains itself. For the two are not contradictory. They do not exclude each other. Hindu pantheism includes polytheism with its attendant patrolatry, demonology, and consequent ritualism.[8]
With rare exceptions it was only the grosser religion that the vulgar could understand; it was only this that they were taught and believed.
Thus the old Vedic gods are revered and worshipped by name. The Sun, Indra, and all the divinities embalmed in ritual, are placated and 'satiated' with offerings, just as they had been satiated from time immemorial. But no hint is given that this is a form; or that the Vedic gods are of less account than they had been. Moreover, it is not in the inherited formulae of the ritual alone that this view is upheld. To be sure, when philosophical speculation is introduced, the Father-god comes to the fore; Brahm[=a][9] sits aloft, indulgently advising his children, as he does in the intermediate stage of the Br[=a]hmanas; and [=a]tm[=a] (brahma) too is recognized to be the real being of Brahm[=a], as in the Upanishads.[10] But none of this touches the practice of the common law, where the ordinary man is admonished to fear Yama's hell and Varuna's bonds, as he would have been admonished before the philosopher grew wiser than the Vedic seers. Only personified Right, Dharma, takes his seat with shadowy Brahm[=a] among the other gods.[11]
What is the speech which the judge on the bench is ordered to repeat to the witnesses? Thus says the law-giver Manu: "When the witnesses are collected together in the court, in the presence of the plaintiff and defendant, the (Brahman) judge should call upon them to speak, kindly addressing them in the following manner: 'Whatever you know has been done in this affair ... declare it all. A witness who in testifying speaks the truth reaches the worlds where all is plenty ... such testimony is honored by Brahm[=a]. One who in testifying speaks an untruth is, all unwilling, bound fast by the cords of Varuna,[12] till an hundred births are passed.' ... (Then, speaking to one witness): 'Spirit (soul) is the witness for the Spirit, and the Spirit is likewise the refuge of the Spirit. Despise not, therefore, thine own spirit (or soul), the highest witness of man. Verily, the wicked think 'no one sees us,' but the gods are looking at them, and also the person within (conscience). Dyaus, Earth, the Waters, (the person in the) heart, Moon, Sun, Fire, Yama, Wind, Night, the twin Twilights, and Dharma know the conduct of all corporeal beings.... Although, O good man, thou regardest thyself, thinking, 'I am alone,' yet the holy one (saint) who sees the evil and the good, stands ever in thy heart. It is in truth god Yama, the son of Vivasvant, who resideth in thy heart; if thou beest not at variance with him (thou needest) not (to) go to the Ganges and to the (holy land of) the Kurus (to be purified).'"
Here there is no abatement in Vedic polytheism, although it is circled round with a thin mist from later teachings. In the same way the ordinary man is taught that at death his spirit (soul) will pass as a manikin out of his body and go to Yama to be judged; while the feasts to the Manes, of course, imply always the belief in the individual activity of dead ancestors. Such expressions as 'The seven daughters of Varuna' (sapta v[=a]ru[n.][=i]r im[=a]s, [=A]çv. Grih. S. 2. 3. 3) show that even in detail the old views are still retained. There is no advance, except in superstitions,[13] on the main features of the old religion. So the same old fear of words is found, resulting in new euphemisms. One must not say 'scull,' kap[=a]la, but call it bhag[=a]la, 'lucky' (Gaut. 9. 21); a factor in the making of African languages also, according to modern travellers. Images of the gods are now over-recognized by the priest, for they must be revered like the gods themselves (ib. 12; P[=a]r. Grih. S. 3. 14. 8. etc.). Among the developed objects of the cult serpents now occupy a prominent place. They are mentioned as worshipful in the Br[=a]hmanas. In the S[=u]tra period offerings are made to snakes of earth, air, and heaven; the serpents are 'satiated' along with gods, plants, demons, etc. (Ç[=a][.n]kh. 4. 9. 3; 15. 4; [=A]çv. 2. 1. 9; 3. 4. 1; P[=a]rask. 2. 14. 9) and blood is poured out to them ([=A]çv. 4. 8. 27.).[14] But other later divinities than those of the earliest Veda, such as Wealth (Kubera), and Dharma, have crept into the ritual. With the Vedic gods appears as a divinity in Kh[=a]d. 1. 5. 31 the love-god K[=a]ma, of the Atharvan; while on the other hand Rudra the beast-lord (Paçupati, Lord of Cattle), the 'kindly' Çiva, appears as 'great god,' whose names are Çankara, Prish[=a]taka, Bhava, Çarva, Ugra, Iç[=a]na (Lord); who has all names and greatness, while he yet is described in the words of the older text as 'the god that desires to kill' ([=A]çv. 2. 2. 2; 4. 8. 9, 19,[15] 29, 32; [=A]it. Br. 3. 34). On the other hand Vishnu is also adored, and that in connection with the [Greek: logos], or V[=a]c (ib. 3. 3. 4). Quite in Upanishad manner--for it is necessary to show that these were then really known--is the formula 'thou art a student of pr[=a][n.]a (Breath,) and art given over to Ka' (ib. 1. 20. 8.), or 'whom?' In [=A]çval[=a]yana no Upanishads are given in the list of literature, which includes the 'Eulogies of men,' Itih[=a]sas, Pur[=a]nas, and even the Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata (3. 3. 1; 4. 4). But in 1. 13. 1, Upanishad-rites (and that of a very domestic nature) are recognized, which would corroborate the explanation of Upanishad given above, as being at first a subsidiary work, dealing with minor points.[16] Something of the sciolism of the Upanishads seems to lie in the prayer that of the four paths on which walk the gods the mortal may be led in that which bestows 'freedom from death' (P[=a]r. 3. 1. 2); and many of the teachers famous in the Upanishads are now revered by name like gods ([=A]çv. 3. 4. 4, etc.).
On turning from these domestic S[=u]tras to the legal S[=u]tras it becomes evident that the pantheistic doctrine of the Upanishads, and in part the Upanishads themselves, were already familiar to the law-makers, and that they influenced, in some degree, the doctrines of the law, despite the retention of the older forms. Not only is sams[=a]ra the accepted doctrine, but the [=a]tm[=a], as if in a veritable Upanishad, is the object of religious devotion. Here, however, this quest is permitted only to the ascetic, who presumably has performed all ritualistic duties and passed through the stadia that legally precede his own.
Of all the legal S[=u]tra-writers Gautama is oldest, and perhaps is pre-buddhistic. Turning to his work one notices first that the M[=i]m[=a]msist is omitted in the list of learned men (28. 49);[17] but since the Upanishads and Ved[=a]nta are expressly mentioned, it is evident that the author of even the oldest S[=u]tra was acquainted with whatever then corresponded to these works.[18] The opposed teaching of hell versus sams[=a]ra is found in Gautama. But there is rather an interesting attempt to unite them. Ordinarily it is to hell and heaven that reference is made, e.g., 'the one that knows the law obtains the heavenly world' (28. 52); 'if one speak untruth to a teacher, even in thought, even in respect to little things, he slays seven men after and before him' (seven descendants and seven ancestors, 23. 31). So in the case of witnesses: 'heaven (is the fruit) for speaking the truth; otherwise hell' (13. 7); 'for stealing (land) hell' (is the punishment, ib. 17). Now and then comes the philosophical doctrine: 'one does not fall from the world of Brahm[=a]' (9. 74); 'one enters into union and into the same world with Brahm[=a]' (8. 25).
But in 21. 4-6 there occurs the following statement: 'To be an outcast is to be deprived of the works of the twice-born, and hereafter to be deprived of happiness; this some (call) hell.' It is evident here that the expression asiddhis (deprivation of success or happiness) is placed optionally beside naraka (hell) as the view of one set of theologians compared with that of another; 'lack of obtaining success, i.e., reward' stands parallel to 'hell.' In the same chapter, where Manu says that he who assaults a Brahman "obtains hell for one hundred years" (M. xi. 207), Gautama (21. 20) says "for one hundred years, lack of heaven" (asvargyam), which may mean hell or the deprivation of the result of merit, i.e., one hundred years will be deducted from his heavenly life. In this case not a new and better birth but heaven is assumed to be the reward of good acts. Now if one turns to 11. 29-30 he finds both views combined. In the parallel passage in [=A]pastamba only better or worse re-births are promised as a reward for good or evil (2. 5. 11. 10-11); but here it is said: "The castes and orders that remain by their duty, having died, having enjoyed the fruits of their acts, with the remnant of their (merit) obtain re-birth, having an excellent country, caste, and family; having long life, learning, good conduct, wealth, happiness, and wisdom. They of different sort are destroyed in various ways." Here, heavenly joys (such as are implied by ni[h.]çreyasam in 26) are to be enjoyed first, and a good birth afterwards, and by implication one probably has to interpret the next sentence to mean 'they are sent to hell and then re-born in various low births.' This, too, is Manu's rule (below). At this time the sacred places which purify are in great vogue, and in Gautama a list of them is given (19. 14), viz.: "all mountains, all rivers, holy pools, places of pilgrimage (i.e., river-fords, tirth[=a]ni), homes of saints, cow-pens, and altars." Of these the tirthas are particularly interesting, as they later become of great importance, thousands of verses in the epic being devoted to their enumeration and praise.
Gautama says also that ascetics, according to some teachers, need not be householders first (3. 1), and that the Brahman ascetic stays at home during the rainy season, like the heretic monks (ib. 13). If one examine the relative importance of the forms and spirit of religion as taught in this, the oldest dharma-s[=u]tra,[19] he will be impressed at first with the tremendous weight laid on the former as compared with the latter. But, as was said apropos of the Brahmanic literature, one errs who fails to appreciate the fact that these works are intended not to give a summary of religious conduct, but to inculcate ceremonial rules. Of the more importance, therefore, is the occasional pause which is made to insist, beyond peradventure, on the superiority of moral rules. A very good instance of this is found in Gautama. He has a list of venial sins. Since lying is one of the most heinous offences to a Hindu lawgiver, and the penances are severe, all the treatises state formally that an untruth uttered in fun, or when one is in danger, or an oath of the sort implied by Plato: [Greek: aphrodision orkon ou phasin einai],--all these are venial, and so are lies told to benefit a (holy) cow, or to aid a priest; or told from religious motives of any sort without self-interest. This is almost the only example of looseness in morals as taught in the law. But the following case shows most plainly the importance of morality as opposed to formal righteousness. After all the forty sacraments (to which allusion was made above), have been recounted, there are given 'eight good qualities of the soul,' viz., mercy, forbearance, freedom from envy, purity, calmness, correct behavior, freedom from greed and from covetousness. Then follows: "He that has (performed) the forty sacraments but has not the eight good qualities enters not into union with Brahm[=a], nor into the heaven of Brahm[=a].[20] But he that has (performed) only a part of the forty sacraments and has the eight good qualities enters into union with Brahm[=a], and into the heaven of Brahm[=a]." This is as near to heresy as pre-buddhistic Brahmanism permitted itself to come.
In the later legal S[=u]tra of the northern Vasistha[21] occurs a rule which, while it distinctly explains what is meant by liberality, viz., gifts to a priest, also recognizes the 'heavenly reward': "If gifts are given to a man that does not know the Veda the divinities are not satisfied" (3. 8). In the same work (6. 1) 'destruction' is the fate of the sinner that lives without observance of good custom; yet is it said in the same chapter (27): "If a twice-born man dies with the food of a Ç[=u]dra (lowest caste) in his belly, he would become a village pig, or he is born again in that (Ç[=u]dra's) family"; and, in respect to sons begotten when he has in him such food: "Of whom the food, of him are these sons; and he himself would not mount to heaven ... he does not find the upward path" (29, 28). In ib. 8. 17 the Brahman that observes all the rules 'does not fall from brahmaloka,' i.e., the locality of Brahm[=a]. Further, in 10. 4: "Let (an ascetic) do away with all (sacrificial) works; but let him not do away with one thing, the Veda; for from doing away with the Veda (one becomes) a Ç[=u]dra." But, in the same chapter: "Let (the ascetic) live at the end of a village, in a temple ('god's house'), in a deserted house, or at the root of a tree; there in his mind studying the knowledge (of the [=a]tm[=a]) ... so they cite (verses): 'Sure is the freedom from re-birth in the case of one that lives in the wood with passions subdued ... and meditates on the supreme spirit' ... Let him not be confined to any custom ... and in regard to this (freedom from worldly pursuits) they cite these verses: 'There is no salvation (literally 'release') for a philologist (na çabdaç[=a]str[=a]bhiratasya mokshas), nor for one that delights in catching (men) in the world, nor for one addicted to food and dress, nor for one pleased with a fine house. By means of prodigies, omens, astrology, palmistry, teaching, and talking let him not seek alms ... he best knows salvation who (cares for naught)' ... (such are the verses). Let him neither harm nor do good to anything.... Avoidance of disagreeable conduct, jealousy, presumption, selfishness, lack of belief, lack of uprightness, self-praise, blame of others, harm, greed, distraction, wrath, and envy, is a rule that applies to all the stadia of life. The Brahman that is pure, and wears the girdle, and carries the gourd in his hand, and avoids the food of low castes fails not of obtaining the world of Brahm[=a]" (ib. 10. 18 ff.). Yama, the Manes, and evil spirits (asuras) are referred to in the following chapter (20, 25); and hell in the same chapter is declared to be the portion of such ascetics as will not eat meat when requested to do so at a feast to the Manes or gods (11. 34),--rather an interesting verse, for in Manu's code the corresponding threat is that, instead of going to hell 'for as long, i.e., as many years, as the beast has hairs,' as here, one shall experience 'twenty-one rebirths,' i.e., the hell-doctrine in terms of sams[=a]ra; while the same image occurs in Manu in the form 'he that slaughters beasts unlawfully obtains as many rebirths as there are hairs on the beast' (v. 35. 38). The passive attitude sometimes ascribed to the Manes is denied; they rejoice over a virtuous descendant (11. 41); a bad one deprives them of the heaven they stand in (16. 36). The authorities on morals are here, as elsewhere, Manu and other seers, the Vedas, and the Father-god, who with Yama gives directions to man in regard to lawful food, etc. (14. 30). The moral side of the code, apart from ritual impurities, is given, as usual, by a list of good and bad qualities (above), while formal laws in regard to theft, murder (especially of a priest), adultery and drunkenness (20. 44; i. 20), with violation of caste-regulations by intercourse with outcasts, are 'great crimes.' Though older than [=A]pastamba, who mentions the P[=u]rva-m[=i]m[=a]ms[=a], Vasistha, too, knows the Ved[=a]nta (3. 17), and the M[=i]m[=a]ms[=a] (vikalpin--tarkin, 3. 20, M. XII. 111).
From the S[=u]tras of B[=a]udh[=a]yana's probably southern school something of additional interest is to be gained. Here 'darkness' takes the place of hell (2. 3. 5. 9), which, however, by a citation is explained (in 2. 2. 3. 34) as 'Yama's hall.' A verse is cited to show that the greatest sin is lack of faith (1. 5. 10. 6) and not going to heaven is the reward of folly (ib. 7); while the reward of virtue is to live in heaven for long (4. 8. 7). The same freedom in regard to ascetics as occurs in other S[=u]tra works is to be found in this author, not in the more suspicious final chapters, but in that part of the work which is accepted as oldest,[22] and agrees with the data found in the Br[=a]hmanas, where the pre-buddhistic monk is called Bhikshu, 'beggar/or Sanny[=a]sin 'he that renounces,' just as these terms are employed in the heretical writings. As among the Jains (and Buddhists), the Brahmanic ascetic carries a few simple utensils, and wanders about from house to house and village to village, begging food. Some authorities (among the Brahmans) say that one may become an ascetic as soon as he has completed his study, though ordinarily this may be done only after passing through the householder stadium. On becoming an ascetic the beggar takes the vow not to injure any living thing (B[=a]udh. II.10.17.2. 11, 29), exactly as the Jain ascetic takes the vow of non-injury. More than this, as will be seen below, the details of the Brahman ascetic's vows are almost identical with those of the Jain ascetic. He vows not to injure living beings, not to lie, not to steal, to be continent, to be liberal; with the five minor vows, not to get angry, to obey the Teacher, not to be rash, to be cleanly and pure in eating.[23] To this ascetic order in the Brahman priesthood may be traced the origin of the heretical monks. Even in the Br[=a]hmanas occur the termini technici of the Buddhist priesthood, notably the Çramana or ascetic monk, and the word buddha, 'awakened' (pratibudh). The 'four orders' are those enumerated as the householder, student, ascetic, and forest-hermit. If one live in all four orders according to rule, and be serene, he will come to peace, that is, salvation ([=A]pastamba, 2. 9. 21. I, 2).
According to this later legal writer, who belongs to Southern India,[24] it is only after one has passed through all the preceding stadia that he may give up works (sacrifice, etc.) and devote himself to seeking the [=a]tm[=a],'wandering about, without caring for earth or heaven, renouncing truth and falsehood, pleasure and pain' (ib. 10, 13). There follows this passage one significant of the opposition between purely Upanishad-ideas and those of the law-givers: 'Acquirement of peace (salvation) depends, it is said, on knowledge; this is opposed by the codes. If on knowledge (depended) acquirement of peace, even here (in this world) one would escape grief' (ib. 14-16). Further, in describing the forest-hermit's austerities (ib. 23. 4 ff.), verses from a Pur[=a]na are cited which are virtually Upanishadic: 'The eight and eighty thousand seers who desired offspring (went) south on Aryaman's path, and obtained (as their reward) graves; (but) the eight and eighty thousand who did not desire offspring (went) north on Aryaman's path and make for themselves immortality,' that is to say 'abandon desire for offspring; and of the two paths (which, as the commentator observes, are mentioned in the Ch[=a]ndogya Upanishad), that which gives immortality instead of death (graves) will be yours.' It is admitted that such ascetics have miraculous powers; but the law-maker emphatically protests in the following S[=u]tra against the supposition that a rule which stands opposed to the received rites (marriage, sacrifice, etc.) is of any power, and asserts that for the future life an endless reward ('fruit'), called in revelation 'heavenly,' is appointed (ib. 8-11). The next chapter, however, limits, as it were, this dogma, for it is stated that immortality is the re-birth of one's self in the body of one's son, and a verse is cited: 'Thou procreatest progeny, and that's thy immortality, O mortal,' with other verses, which teach that sons that attend to the Vedic rites magnify the fame and heaven of their ancestors, who 'live in heaven until the destruction of creation' ([=a] bh[=u]tasamptav[=a]t, 2. 9. 24. 5), But 'according to the Bhavishyat-Pur[=a]na' after this destruction of creation 'they exist again in heaven as the cause of seed' (ib.) 6. And then follows a quotation from the Father-god: 'We live with those people who do these (following) things: (attend to) the three Vedas, live as students, create children, sacrifice to the Manes, do penance, make sacrifice to the gods, practice liberality; he that extols anything else becomes air (or dust) and perishes' (ib.) 8; and further: 'only they that commit sin perish' (not their ancestors).
The animus of this whole passage is apparent. The law-maker has to contend with them that would reject the necessity of following in order the traditional stadia of a priest's life; that imagine that by becoming ascetics without first having passed through the preliminary stadia they can by knowledge alone attain the bliss that is obtained by union with brahma (or Brahm[=a]). In other words the jurist has to contend with a trait eminently anti-Brahmanistic, even Buddhistic. He denies this value of knowledge, and therewith shows that what he wishes to have inculcated is a belief in the temporary personal existence of the Manes; in heaven till the end of the world-order; and the annihilation of the wicked; while he has a confused or mixed opinion in regard to one's own personal immortality, believing on the one hand that there is a future existence in heaven with the gods, and on the other (rather a materialistic view) that immortality is nothing but continued existence in the person of one's descendants, who are virtually one's self in another body: dehatvam ev[=a]'nyat, "only the body is different" (ib) 2. As to cosmogony it is stated to be (not the emanation of an [=a]tm[=a]) but the "emission (creation) of the Father-god and of the seers" (the latter being visible as stars, ib. 13, 14). In this there is plainly a received popular opinion, which reflects the Vedic and Brahmanic stage, and is opposed to the philosophical views of the Upanishads, in other words of the first Vedantic philosophy; while it is mixed up with the late doctrine of the cataclysms, which ruin each succeeding^ creation. The equal annihilation of the wicked (dhvamsanti) and unorthodox (dhvamsate) is to be noticed. They are here subject neither to hell nor to rebirth, but they "become dust and perish" (ib. 8. 9).
Throughout the whole legal literature one will find this same antithesis of views in regard to the fate of good and bad, although it is seldom that annihilation is predicated of the latter. Usually hell or rebirth are their fate--two views, which no one can really reconcile. They are put side by side; exactly as in priestly discussion in India and Europe it still remains an unsettled question as to when the soul becomes immortal.[25] Occidental experience teaches how easy it is for such views to stand together unattacked, although they are the object of speculation. This passage is perhaps, historically, the most satisfactory (as it is philosophically unsatisfactory) that can be cited in answer to the questions that were posed above. But from other parts of legal literature a few more statements may be culled, to illustrate still further the lack of uniformity not only in popular belief, but in the teaching provided for the public. First from the same work of [=A]pastamba, in 2. 11. 29. 9-10 it is said that if a witness in court perjure himself he shall be punished by the king, "and further, in passing to the next world, hell" (is his portion); whereas "(the reward) for truth is heaven, and praise on the part of all creatures." Now, let one compare first ib. 2. 5. 11. 10-11: "Men of low castes are reborn in higher castes in successive births, and men of high castes in low castes, if they respectively perform and neglect their duties." And then this Vedantic passage of the same author (1. 8. 22 ff.): "Let one (as penance for sin) devote himself to the Yoga (mental discipline) which has to do with the highest [=a]tm[=a] ... Nothing is known higher than the acquisition of [=a]tm[=a]. We shall (now) cite some [=a]tm[=a]-acquisition-verses, viz.: All living creatures (are) the citadel of him that rests in secret, the indestructible one, the immaculate one. Immortal they that devote themselves to the moveless one who has a movable dwelling ... the great one whose body is light, universal, free ... the eternal (part) in all creatures, the wise, immortal, unchanging one, limbless, voiceless, formless, touchless, purest, the highest goal. He that everywhere devotes himself to Him ([=a]tm[=a] as Lord), and always lives accordingly; that by virtue of Yoga recognizes Him, the subtile one, shall rejoice in the top of heaven ... He, [=a]tm[=a], comprehends all, embraces all, more subtile than a lotus-thread and huger than the earth ... From him are created all bodies; he is the root, he the Everlasting, the Eternal One."
This discipline it will be observed is enjoined as penance and to get rid of faults, that is, to subdue the passions. As the same chapter contains a list of the faults which are to be overcome before one "arrives at peace" (salvation) they may be cited here: "Anger, joy, wrath, greed, distraction, injury, threats, lying, over-eating, calumny, envy, sexual desire, and hate, lack of studying [=a]tm[=a], lack of Yoga--the destruction of these (faults) is based on Yoga" (mental concentration). On the other hand: "He that devotes himself, in accordance with the law, to avoiding anger, joy, wrath, greed, distraction, injury, threats, lies, over-eating, calumny and envy; and practices liberality, renunciation, uprightness, kindness, subduing (of the passions), self-control; and is at peace with all creatures; and practices Yoga; and acts in an [=A]ryan (noble) way; and does not hurt anything; and has contentment--qualities which, it is agreed, appertain to all the (four) stadia--he becomes s[=a]rvag[=a]min" (ib. 23.6), that is 'one belonging to the all-pervading' (All-soul). There appears to be a contradiction between the former passage, where Yoga is enjoined on ascetics alone; and this, where Yoga is part of the discipline of all four stadia. But what was in the author's mind was probably that all these vices and moral virtues are enumerated as such for all; and he slips in mental concentration as a virtue for the ascetic, meaning to include all the virtues he knows.
A few further illustrations from that special code which has won for itself a preeminent name, 'the law-book of Manu,'[26] will give in epitome the popular religion as taught to the masses; withal even better than this is taught in the S[=u]tras. For Father Manu's law-book, as the Hindus call it, is a popular Ç[=a]stra or metrical[27] composite of law and religion, which reflects the opinion of Brahmanism in its geographical stronghold, whereas the S[=u]tras emanate from various localities, north and south. To Manu there is but one Holy Land, the Kurus' plain and the region round-about it (near Delhi).
The work takes us forward in time beyond even the latest S[=u]tras, but the content is such as to show that formal Brahmanism in this latest stage still keeps to its old norm and to Brahmanic models.
It deserves therefore to be examined with care from several points of view if one would escape from the belief of the philosopher to the more general teaching. In this popular religion all morality is conditioned by the castes,[28] which is true also to a certain degree of the earlier Sutras, but the evil fruit of this plant is not there quite so ripe as it is in the later code. The enormity of all crimes depends on who commits them, and against whom they are committed. The three upper castes alone have religious privileges. The lowest caste, outcasts, women, and diseased persons are not allowed to hear the holy texts or take part in ceremonies.[29] As to the rites, they are the inherited ones, sacrifices to gods, offerings to Manes and spirits, and all the ceremonies of house and individual, as explained above; with especial and very minute rules of observance for each of the four stadia of a priest's life.[30] There is no hint in any of this of the importance of the knowledge of the [=a]tm[=a]. But in their proper place the rules of morality and the higher philosophical views are taught. The doctrine of re-birth is formally stated, and the attainment of the world of Brahm[=a] (brahma) by union of ceremonies and knowledge is inculcated. The ascetic should seek, by meditation, to go to Brahm[=a] (or brahma) for when he is utterly indifferent, then, both here and after death, he gains everlasting happiness. Therefore he should study the Vedas, but especially the teachings in regard to the Supreme Spirit, and the Upanishads; studying the Ved[=a]nta is a regular part of his final discipline (VI, 74-94). In another part of the work the distinction made in the Upanishads is upheld, that religious acts are of two sorts, one designed to procure bliss, and cause a good man to reach equality with the gods; the other performed without selfish motive; by which latter "even the five elements are overcome," that is, the absorption into brahma is effected. For "among all virtuous acts the knowledge of the spirit, [=a]tm[=a], is highest; through this is obtained even immortality. One that sees spirit in all things and all things in spirit sacrifices to spirit and enters Brahm[=a] (or brahma)" "The spirit (or self) is all divinities; the All is based on spirit." And in Upanishadic vein the Person is then proclaimed as lord of gods, whom "some call fire, some call Manu, some call Indra, some call air, and some call eternal brahma." But though this be the view of the closing verses, yet in the beginning of the work is this Person represented as being produced from a First Cause. It would be out of place here to analyse the conflicting philosophical views of the Manu code. Even his commentators are uncertain whether he belonged to the pantheistic Ved[=a]nta or dualistic S[=a]nkhya school. For them that believe in no Manu the solution is simpler. Although Manu is usually called a Puranic Sankhyan, yet are both schools represented, and that without regard to incongruous teaching. Manu is no more Sankhyan than Vedantic. Indeed in the main part of the work the teaching is clearly more Vedantic. But it suffices here to point out that the [=a]tm[=a]-philosophy and religion is not ignored; it is taught as essential. Nevertheless, it is not taught in such a way as to indicate that it is requisite for the vulgar. On the contrary, it is only when one becomes an ascetic that he is told to devote himself to the pursuit of the knowledge of [=a]tm[=a]. In one passage there is evidence that two replies were given to this fundamental question in regard to works and knowledge. For after enumerating a list of good acts, among which are knowledge and Vedic ceremonies, it is asked which among them most tends to deliverance. The answer is vital. Or it should be, but it is given in an ambiguous form (xii. 85-6): "Amid all these acts the knowledge of self, [=a]tm[=a], is the highest, for it produces immortality. Amid all these acts the one most productive of happiness, both after death and in this life, is the Vedic ceremony."
Knowledge gives real immortality; rites give temporary bliss. The Upanishads teach that the latter is lower than the former, but each answers the question. There were two answers, and Manu gives both. That is the secret of many discrepancies in Hindu rules. The law-giver cannot admit absolutely and once for all that the Vedic ceremony is of no abiding use, as it can be of no use to one that accepts the higher teaching. He keeps it as a training and allows only the ascetic to be a philosopher indeed. But at the same time he gives as a sort of peroration to his treatise some 'elegant extracts' from philosophical works, which he believes theoretically, although practically he will not allow them to influence his ritualism. He is a true Brahman priest.
It is this that is always so annoying in Brahmanic philosophy. For the slavery of tradition is everywhere. Not only does the ritualist, while admitting the force of the philosopher's reasons, remain by Vedic tradition, and in consequence refuse to supplant 'revelation' with the higher wisdom and better religion, which he sees while he will not follow it; but even the philosopher must needs be 'orthodox,' and, since the scriptures themselves are self-contradictory, he is obliged to use his energies not in discovering truth, but in reconciling his ancestors' dogmas, in order to the creation of a philosophical system which shall agree with everything that has been said in the Vedas and Upanishads. When one sees what subtlety and logical acumen these philosophers possessed, he is moved to wonder what might have been the outcome had their minds been as free as those of more liberal Hellas. But unfortunately they were bound to argue within limits, and were as much handicapped in the race of thought as were they that had to conform to the teachings of Rome. For though India had no church, it had an inquisitorial priestly caste, and the unbeliever was an outcast. What is said of custom is true of faith: "Let one walk in the path of good men, the path in which his father walked, in which his grandfathers walked; walking in that path one does no wrong" (Manu iv. 178). Real philosophy, unhampered by tradition, is found only among the heretics and in the sects of a later time.
The gods of old are accepted by the orthodox as a matter of course, although theoretically they are born of the All-god, who is without the need of ceremonial rites. To the other castes the active and most terrible deity is represented as being the priest himself. He not only symbolizes the fire-god, to whom is offered the sacrifice, but he actually is the divinity in person. Hence there is no greater merit than in giving gifts to priests. As to eschatology, opinions are not contrasted any more. They are put side by side. In morality truth, purity, and harmlessness are chiefly inculcated. But the last (ascribed by some scholars to Buddhistic influence) is not permitted to interfere with animal sacrifices.
Some of the rules for the life of a householder will show in brief the moral excellence and theoretical uncertainty of Manu's law-code. The following extracts are from the fourth, the Ten Commandments from the sixth, and the description of the hells (twenty-two in all)[31] from the fourth and twelfth books of Manu's code. These rules may be accepted as a true reflexion of what was taught to the people by stringent Brahmanism as yet holding aloof from Hinduism.
A householder must live without giving any pain (to living creatures). He must perform daily the ceremonies ordained in the Veda. In this way he obtains heaven. Let him never neglect the offerings to seers, gods, spirits (sprites), men, and Manes. Some offer sacrifice only in their organs of sense (not in external offerings); some by knowledge alone. Let him not explain law and rites to the Ç[=u]dra (slave) caste; if he does so, he sinks into the hell Boundless. Let him not take presents from an avaricious king who disobeys the law-codes; if he does so, he goes to twenty-one hells (called Darkness, Dense-darkness, Frightful, Hell, Thread of Death, Great Hell, Burning, Place of Spikes, Frying-pan, River of Hell, etc., etc., etc.). Let him never despise a warrior, a snake, or a priest. Let him never despise himself. Let him say what is true and what is agreeable, but not disagreeable truth or agreeable false-hood. Let him not dispute with anybody, but let him say 'very well.' Let him not insult anybody. Remembering his former births, and studying the Veda again and again, he gets endless happiness. Let him avoid unbelief and censure of the Vedas, reviling of gods, hatred, pride, anger, and cruelty. He that even threatens a priest will go to the hell Darkness for one hundred years; if he strikes him he will be born in twenty-one sinful rebirths (according to another passage in the eleventh book he goes to hell for a thousand years for the latter offence). Priests rule the world of gods. But deceitful, hypocritical priests go to hell. Let the householder give gifts, and he will be rewarded. One that gives a garment gets a place in the moon; a giver of grain gets eternal happiness; a giver of the Veda gets union with Brahm[=a] (brahma; these gifts, of course, are all to priests). He that gives respectfully and he that receives respectfully go to heaven; otherwise both go to hell. Let him, without giving pain to any creature, slowly pile up virtue, as does an ant its house, that he may have a companion in the next world. For after death neither father, nor mother, nor son, nor wife, nor relations are his companions; his virtue alone remains with him. The relations leave the dead body, but its virtue follows the spirit: with his virtue as his companion he will traverse the darkness that is hard to cross; and virtue will lead him to the other world with a luminous form and ethereal body. A priest that makes low connections is reborn as a slave. The Father-god permits a priest to accept alms even from a bad man. For fifteen years the Manes refuse to accept food from one that despises a free gift. A priest that sins should be punished (that is, mulcted, a priest may not be punished corporally), more than an ordinary man, for the greater the wisdom the greater the offence. They that commit the Five Great Sins live many years in hells, and afterwards obtain vile births; the slayer of a priest becomes in turn a dog, a pig, an ass, a camel, a cow, a goat, a sheep, etc, etc. A priest that drinks intoxicating liquor becomes various insects, one after another. A priest that steals becomes a spider, snake, etc, etc. By repeating sinful acts men are reborn in painful and base births, and are hurled about in hells; where are sword-leaved trees, etc, and where they are eaten, burned, spitted, and boiled; and they receive births in despicable wombs; rebirth to age, sorrow, and unquenchable death. But to secure supreme bliss a priest must study the Veda, practice austerity, seek knowledge, subdue the senses, abstain from injury, and serve his Teacher. Which of these gives highest bliss? The knowledge of the spirit is the highest and foremost, for it gives immortality. The performance of Vedic ceremonies is the most productive of happiness here and hereafter. The Ten Commandments for the twice-born are: Contentment, patience, self-control, not to steal, purity, control of passions, devotion (or wisdom), knowledge, truthfulness, and freedom from anger. These are concisely summarized again in the following: 'Manu declared the condensed rule of duty for (all) the four castes to be: not to injure a living thing; to speak the truth; not to steal; to be pure; to control the passions' (VI. 92; X. 63). The 'non-injury' rule does not apply, of course, to sacrifice (ib. III. 268). In the epic the commandments are given sometimes as ten, sometimes as eight.
In order to give a completed exposition of Brahmanism we have passed beyond the period of the great heresies, to which we must soon revert. But, before leaving the present division of the subject, we select from the mass of Brahmanic domestic rites, the details of which offer in general little that is worth noting, two or three ceremonies which possess a more human interest, the marriage rite, the funeral rite, and those strange trials, known among so many other peoples, the ordeals. We sketch these briefly, wishing merely to illustrate the religious side of each ceremony, as it appears in one or more of its features.
THE MARRIAGE RITE.
Traces of exogamy may be suspected in the bridegroom's driving off with his bride, but no such custom, of course, is recognized in the law. On the contrary, the groom is supposed to belong to the same village, and special rites are enjoined 'if he be from another village.' But again, in the early rule there is no trace of that taint of family which the totem-scholars of to-day cite so loosely from Hindu law. The girl is not precluded because she belongs to the same family within certain degrees. The only restriction in the House-rituals is that she shall have had "on the mother's and father's side" wise, pious, and honorable ancestors for ten generations ([=A]çvl. I. 5). Then comes the legal restriction, which some scholars call 'primitive,' that the wife must not be too nearly related. The girl has her own ordeal (not generally mentioned among ordeals!): The wooer that thus selects his bride (this he does if one has not been found already either by his parents or by his own inclination) makes eight balls of earth and calls on the girl to choose one ('may she get that to which she is born'). If she select a ball made from the earth of a field that bears two crops, she (or her child) will be rich in grain; if from the cow-stall, rich in cattle; if from the place of sacrifice, godly; if from a pool that does not dry, gifted; if from the gambler's court, devoted to gambling; if from cross-roads, unfaithful; if from a barren field, poor in grain; if from the burying-ground, destructful of her husband. There are several forms of making a choice, but we confine ourselves to the marriage.[32] In village-life the bridegroom is escorted to the girl's house by young women who tease him. The bridegroom presents presents to the bride, and receives a cow. The bridegroom takes the bride's hand, saying 'I take thy hand for weal' (Rig Veda, X. 85. 36), and leads her to a certain stone, on which she steps first with the right foot (toe). Then three times they circumambulate the fire, keeping it to the right, an old Aryan custom for many rites, as in the deisel of the Kelts; the bride herself offering grain in the fire, and the groom repeating more Vedic verses. They then take together the seven solemn steps (with verses),[33] and so they are married. The groom, if of another village, now drives away with the bride, and has ready Vedic verses for every stage of the journey. After sun-down the groom points out the north star, and admonishes the bride to be no less constant and faithful. Three or twelve days they remain chaste, some say one night; others say, only if he be from another village. The new husband must now see to the house-fire, which he keeps ever burning, the sign of his being a householder.
THE FUNERAL CEREMONY.
Roth has an article in the Journal of the German Oriental Society (VIII. 467) which is at once a description of one of the funeral hymns o£ the Rig Veda (X. 18) with the later ritual, and a criticism of the bearing of the latter on the former.[34] He shows here that the ritual, so far from having induced the hymn, totally changes it. The hymn was written for a burial ceremony. The later ritual knows only cremation. The ritual, therefore, forces the hymn into its service, and makes it a cremation-hymn. This is a very good (though very extreme) example of the difference in age between the early hymns of the Rig Veda and the more modern ritual. Müller, ib. IX. p. I (sic), has given a thorough account of the later ritual and ritualistic paraphernalia. We confine ourselves here to the older ceremony.
The scene of the Vedic hymn is as follows: The friends and relatives stand about the corpse of a married man. By the side of the corpse sits the widow. The hymn begins: "Depart, O Death, upon some other pathway, upon thy path, which differs from the path of gods ... harm not our children, nor our heroes.... These living ones are separated from the dead; successful today was our call to the gods. (This man is dead, but) we go back to dancing and to laughter, extending further our still lengthened lives." Then the priest puts a stone between the dead and living: "I set up a wall for the living, may no one of these come to this goal; may they live an hundred full harvests, and hide death with this stone...."
The matrons assembled are now bid to advance without tears, and make their offerings to the fire, while the widow is separated from the corpse of her husband and told to enter again into the world of the living. The priest removes the dead warrior's bow from his hand: "Let the women, not widows, advance with the ointment and holy butter; and without tears, happy, adorned, let them, to begin with, mount to the altar (verse 7, p. 274, below). Raise thyself, woman, to the world of the living; his breath is gone by whom thou liest; come hither; of the taker of thy hand (in marriage), of thy wooer thou art become the wife[35] (verse 8). I take the bow from the hand of the dead for our (own) lordship, glory, and strength." Then he addresses the dead: "Thou art there, and we are here; we will slay every foe and every attacker (with the power got from thee). Go thou now to Mother Earth, who is wide opened, favorable, a wool-soft maiden to the good man; may she guard thee from the lap of destruction. Open, O earth, be not oppressive to him; let him enter easily; may he fasten close to thee. Cover him like a mother, who wraps her child in her garment. Roomy and firm be the earth, supported by a thousand pillars; from this time on thou (man) hast thy home and happiness yonder; may a sure place remain to him forever. I make firm the earth about thee; may I not be harmed in laying the clod here; may the fathers hold this pillar for thee, and Yama make thee a home yonder."
In the Atharva Veda mention is made of a coffin, but none is noticed here.
Hillebrandt (loc. cit. xl. 711) has made it probable that the eighth verse belongs to a still older ritual, according to which this verse is one for human sacrifice, which is here ignored, though the text is kept.[36] 'Just so the later ritual keeps all this text, but twists it into a crematory rite. For in the later period only young children are buried. Of burial there was nothing for adults but the collection of bones and ashes. At this time too the ritual consists of three parts, cremation, collection of ashes, expiation. How are these to be reconciled with this hymn? Very simply. The rite is described and verses from the hymn are injected into it without the slightest logical connection. That is the essence of all the Brahmanic ritualism. The later rite is as follows: Three altars are erected, northwest, southwest, and southeast of a mound of earth. In the fourth corner is the corpse; at whose feet, the widow. The brother of the dead man, or an old servant, takes the widow's hand and causes her to rise while the priest says "Raise thyself, woman, to the world of the living." Then follows the removal of the bow; or the breaking of it, in the case of a slave. The body is now burned, while the priest says "These living ones are separated from the dead"; and the mourners depart without looking around, and must at once perform their ablutions of lustration. After a time the collection of bones is made with the verse "Go thou now to Mother Earth" and "Open, O earth." Dust is flung on the bones with the words "Roomy and firm be the earth"; and the skull is laid on top with the verse "I make firm the earth about thee." In other words the original hymn is fitted to the ritual only by displacement of verses from their proper order and by a forced application of the words. After all this comes the ceremony of expiation with the use of the verse "I set up a wall" without application of any sort. Further ceremonies, with further senseless use of other verses, follow in course of time. These are all explained minutely in the essay of Roth, whose clear demonstration of the modernness of the ritual, as compared with the antiquity of the hymn should be read complete.
The seventh verse (above) has a special literature of its own, since the words "let them, to begin with, mount the altar," have been changed by the advocates of suttee, widow-burning, to mean 'to the place of fire'; which change, however, is quite recent. The burning of widows begins rather late in India, and probably was confined at first to the pet wife of royal persons. It was then claimed as an honor by the first wife, and eventually without real authority, and in fact against early law, became the rule and sign of a devoted wife. The practice was abolished by the English in 1829; but, considering the widow's present horrible existence, it is questionable whether it would not be a mercy to her and to her family to restore the right of dying and the hope of heaven, in the place of the living death and actual hell on earth in which she is entombed to-day.
ORDEALS.[37]
Fire and water are the means employed in India to test guilt in the earlier period. Then comes the oath with judgment indicated by subsequent misfortune. All other forms of ordeals are first recognized in late law-books. We speak first of the ordeals that have been thought to be primitive Aryan. The Fire-ordeal: (1) Seven fig-leaves are tied seven times upon the hands after rice has been rubbed upon the palms; and the judge then lays a red-hot ball upon them; the accused, or the judge himself, invoking the god (Fire) to indicate the innocence or the guilt of the accused. The latter then walks a certain distance, 'slowly through seven circles, each circle sixteen fingers broad, and the space between the circles being of the same extent,' according to some jurists; but other dimensions, and eight or nine circles are given by other authorities. If the accused drop the ball he must repeat the test. The burning of the hands indicates guilt. The Teutonic laws give a different measurement, and state that the hand is to be sealed for three days (manus sub sigillo triduum tegatur) before inspection. This sealing for three days is paralleled by modern Indic practice, but not by ancient law. In Greece there is the simple [Greek: mudrous airein cheroin] (Ant. 264) to be compared. The German sealing of the hand is not reported till the ninth century.[38]
(2) Walking on Fire: There is no ordeal in India to correspond to the Teutonic walking over six, nine, or twelve hot ploughshares. To lick a hot ploughshare, to sit on or handle hot iron, and to take a short walk over coals is late Indic. The German practice also according to Schlagintweit "war erst in späterer Zeit aufgekommen."[39]
(3) Walking through Fire: This is a Teutonic ordeal, and (like the conflict-ordeal) an Indic custom not formally legalized. The accused walks directly into the fire. So [Greek: pur dierpein] (loc. cit.).
Water-ordeals: (1) May better be reckoned to fire-ordeals. The innocent plunges his hand into boiling water and fetches out a stone (Anglo-Saxon law) or a coin (Indic law) without injury to his hand. Sometimes (in both practices) the plunge alone is demanded. The depth to which the hand must be inserted is defined by Hindu jurists.
(2) The Floating-ordeal. The victim is cast into water. If he floats he is guilty; if he drowns he is innocent. According to some Indic authorities an arrow is shot off at the moment the accused is dropped into the water, and a 'swift runner' goes after and fetches it back. "If at his return he find the body of the accused still under water, the latter shall be declared to be innocent."[40] According to Kaegi this ordeal would appear to be unknown in Europe before the ninth century. In both countries Water (in India, Varuna) is invoked not to keep the body of a guilty man but to reject it (make it float).
Food-ordeal: Some Hindu law-books prescribe that in the case of suspected theft the accused shall eat consecrated rice. If the gums be not hurt, no blood appear on spitting, and the man do not tremble, he will be innocent. This is also a Teutonic test, but it is to be observed that the older laws in India do not mention it.
On the basis of these examples (not chosen in historical sequence) Kaegi has concluded, while admitting that ordeals with a general similarity to these have arisen quite apart from Aryan influence, that there is here a bit of primitive Aryan law; and that even the minutiae of the various trials described above are un-Aryan. This we do not believe. But before stating our objections we must mention another ordeal.
The Oath: While fire and water are the usual means of testing crime in India, a simple oath is also permitted, which may involve either the accused alone or his whole family. If misfortune, within a certain time (at once, in seven days, in a fortnight, or even half a year) happen to the one that has sworn, he will be guilty. This oath-test is also employed in the case of witnesses at court, perjury being indicated by the subsequent misfortune (Manu, viii. 108).[41]
Our objections to seeing primitive Aryan law in the minutiae of ordeals is based on the gradual evolution of these ordeals and of their minutiae in India itself. The earlier law of the S[=u]tras barely mentions ordeals; the first 'tradition law' of Manu has only fire, water, and the oath. All others, and all special descriptions and restrictions, are mentioned in later books alone. Moreover, the earliest (pre-legal) notice of ordeals in India describes the carrying of hot iron (in the test of theft) as simply "bearing a hot axe," while still earlier there is only walking through fire.[42]
To the tests by oath, fire, and water of the code of Manu are soon added in later law those of consecrated water, poison, and the balance. Restrictions increase and new trials are described as one descends the series of law-books (the consecrated food, the hot-water test, the licking of the ploughshare, and the lot), Some of these later forms have already been described. The further later tests we will now sketch briefly.
Poison: The earliest poison-test, in the code of Y[=a]jñavalkya (the next after Manu), is an application of aconite-root, and as the poison is very deadly, the accused is pretty sure to die. Other laws give other poisons and very minute restrictions, tending to ease the severity of the trial.
The Balance-test: This is the opposite of the floating-test. The man[43] stands in one scale and is placed in equilibrium with a weight of stone in the other scale. He then gets out and prays, and gets in again. If the balance sinks, he is guilty; if it rises, he is innocent.
The Lot-ordeal: This consists in drawing out of a vessel one of two lots, equivalent respectively to dharma and adharma, right and wrong. Although Tacitus mentions the same ordeal among the Germans, it is not early Indic law, not being known to any of the ancient legal codes.
One may claim without proof or disproof that these are all 'primitive Aryan'; but to us it appears most probable that only the idea of the ordeal, or at most its application in the simplest forms of water and fire (and perhaps oath) is primitive Aryan, and that all else (including ordeal by conflict) is of secondary growth among the different nations.
As an offset to the later Indic tendency to lighten the severity of the ordeal may be mentioned the description of the floating-test as seen by a Chinese traveller in India in the seventh century A.D.:[44] "The accused is put into a sack and a stone is put into another sack. The two sacks are connected by a cord and flung into deep water. If the sack with the man sinks and the sack with the stone floats the accused is declared to be innocent."
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Literally, transmigration, the doctrine of metempsychosis, successive births; first, as in Plato: [Greek: metabolê tis tugchanei ousa kai metoikêois tê psuchê ton topon tou enthende eis allon tochon], then metabole, from 'the other place,' back to earth; then, with advancing speculation, fresh metabole again, and so on; a theory more or less clumsily united with the bell-doctrine.]
[Footnote 2: Weber has lately published two monographs on the sacrifices, the R[=a]jas[=u]ya and the V[=a]japeya rites, both full of interesting details and popular features.]
[Footnote 3: The traditional sacrifices are twenty-one in number, divided into three classes of seven each. The formal divisions are (1) oblations of butter, milk, corn, etc.; (2) soma sacrifices; (3) animal sacrifices, regarded as part of the first two. The sacrifice of the new and full moon is to be repeated on each occasion for thirty years. A sattra, session, is a long sacrifice which may last a year or more.]
[Footnote 4: The latter are the metrical codes, a part of Smriti (sm[r.]ti).]
[Footnote 5: The Five Paramount Sacrifices (Observances) are, according to Manu III. 70, study of the Veda (or teaching it); sacrifice to the Manes and to the gods; offerings of foods to ghosts (or spirits); and hospitality.]
[Footnote 6: In the report of the Or. Congress for 1880, p. 158 ff., Williams has a very interesting account of the daily rites of the modern orthodox Hindu ('Rig Veda in Religious Service').]
[Footnote 7: We ignore here the later distinction between the Ved[=a]nta and S[=a]nkhya systems. Properly speaking, the latter is dualistic.]
[Footnote 8: At a later date Buddha himself is admitted into the Brahmanic pantheon as an avatar of the All-god!]
[Footnote 9: Sometimes regarded as one with Praj[=a]pati, and sometimes treated as distinct from him.]
[Footnote 10: Thus (for the priestly ascetic alone) in M. vi. 79: 'Leaving his good deeds to his loved ones and his evil deeds to his enemies, by force of meditation he goes to the eternal brahma.' Here brahma; but in Gautama perhaps Brahm[=a].]
[Footnote 11: That is, when the latter are grouped as in the following list. Our point is that, despite new faith and new gods, Vedic polytheism is taught not as a form but as a reality, and that in this period the people still believe as of old in the old gods, though they also acknowledge new ones (below).]
[Footnote 12: Compare Manu, ix. 245: "Varuna is the lord of punishment and holdeth a sceptre (punishment) even over kings."]
[Footnote 13: In new rites, for instance. Thus in P[=a]rask. Grih. S. 3. 7 a silly and dirty rite 'prevents a slave from running away'; and there is an ordeal for girls before becoming engaged (below).]
[Footnote 14: Blood is poured out to the demons in order that they may take this and no other part of the sacrifice, [=A]it. Br. ii. 7. 1.]
[Footnote 15: Here. 4. 8. 19, Çiva's names are Hara, Mrida, Çarva, Çiva, Bhava, Mah[=a]deva, Ugra, Bhima, Paçupati, Rudra, Çankara, Içana.]
[Footnote 16: These rites are described in 6. 4. 24 of the Brihad [=A]ranyaka Upanishad which consists both of metaphysics and of ceremonial rules.]
[Footnote 17: Especially mentioned in the later Vasistha (see below); on m[=i]m[=a]ms[=a] a branch of the Ved[=a]nta system see below.]
[Footnote 18: The commentator here (19. 12, cited by Bühler) defines Ved[=a]nta as the part of the [=A]ranyakas which are not Upanishads, that is, apparently as a local 'Veda-end' (veda-anta), though this meaning is not admitted by some scholars, who will see in anta only the meaning 'goal, aim.']
[Footnote 19: The Rudra (Çiva) invocation at 26. 12 ff. is interpolated, according to Bühler.]
[Footnote 20: Here there is plainly an allusion to the two states of felicity of the Upanishads. Whether the law-giver believes that the spirit will be united with Brahm[=a] or simply live in his heaven he does not say.]
[Footnote 21: Gautama, too, is probably a Northerner. The S[=u]tra, it should be observed, are not so individual as would be implied by the name of the teachers to whom they are credited. They were each texts of a school, carana, but they are attributed uniformly to a special teacher, who represents the cara[n.]a, as has been shown by Müller. For what is known in regard to the early 'S[=u]tra-makers' see Bühler's introductions to volumes ii. and xiv. of the Sacred Books.]
[Footnote 22: Compare Bühler's Introduction, p. XXXV, SBE. vol. XIV.]
[Footnote 23: B[=a]udh. II. 18. 2-3. Compare Jacobi's Introduction, p. XXIII ff. of SBE. vol. XXII.]
[Footnote 24: Bühler (Introduction, p. XXXI) gives as the district of the [=A]pastamb[=i]ya school parts of the Bombay Presidency, the greater parts of the Niz[=a]m's possessions, and parts of the Madras Presidency. Apastamba himself refers to Northerners as if they were foreigners (loc. cit.).]
[Footnote 25: In India the latter question is: does the soul immediately at death unite with the [=a]tm[=a] or does it travel to it. In Europe: does the soul wait for the Last Day, or get to heaven immediately? Compare Maine, Early Law and Custom, p. 71.]
[Footnote 26: Thought by some scholars to have been developed out of the code of The M[=a]navas; but ascribed by the Hindus to Father Manu, as are many other verses of legal character contained in the epic and elsewhere.]
[Footnote 27: Although S[=u]tras may be metrical too in part, yet is the complete metrical form, as in the case of still later Ç[=a]stra, evidence that the work is intended for the general public.]
[Footnote 28: The priest alone, in the post-Vedic age, has the right to teach the sacred texts; he has immunity from bodily punishment; the right to receive gifts, and other special privileges. The three upper castes have each the right and duty of studying the sacred texts for a number of years.]
[Footnote 29: Weber has shown, loc. cit., that the Ç[=u]dras did attend some of the more popular ceremonies, and at first apparently even took a part in them.]
[Footnote 30: The 'four orders' or stadia of a priest's life, student, householder, hermit, ascetic, must not be confused with the 'four (political) orders' (castes), priest, warrior, farmer, slave--to which, from time to time, were added many 'mixed castes,' as well as 'outcasts,' and natural pariahs. At the time of Manu's code there were already many of these half-assimilated groups.]
[Footnote 31: Theoretically, twenty-one; but an extra one has slipped in by mistake.]
[Footnote 32: The girl is given or bought, or may make her own choice among different suitors. Buying a wife is reprehended by the early law-givers (therefore, customary). The rite of marriage presupposes a grown girl, but child-marriages also were known to the early law.]
[Footnote 33: The groom 'releases her from Varuna's fetter,' by symbolically loosening the hair. They step northeast, and he says: 'One step for sap; two for strength; three for riches; four for luck; five for children; six for the seasons; seven for friendship. Be true to me--may we have many long-lived sons.']
[Footnote 34: There is another funeral hymn, X. 16, in which the Fire is invoked to burn the dead, and bear him to the fathers; his corporeal parts being distributed 'eye to the sun, breath to the wind,' etc.]
[Footnote 35: See below.]
[Footnote 36: Compare Weber, Streifen, I. 66; The king's first wife lies with a dead victim, and is bid to come back again to life. Levirate marriage is known to all the codes, but it is reprehended by the same code that enjoins it. (M. ix. 65.)]
[Footnote 37: The ordeal is called divyam (pram[=a][n.]am) 'Gottesurtheil.' This means of information is employed especially in a disputed debt and deposit, and according to the formal code is to be applied only in the absence of witnesses. The code also restricts the use of fire, water, and poison to the slaves (Y[=a]j. ii. 98).]
[Footnote 38: Kaegi. Alter und Herkunft des Germanischen Gottesurtheils, p. 50. We call especial attention to the fact that the most striking coincidences in details of practice are not early either in India or Germany.]
[Footnote 39: Schlagintweit, _Die Gattesurtheile der Indier_, p. 24.]
[Footnote 40: This is the earliest formula. Later law-books describe the length and strength of the bow, and some even give the measure of distance to which the arrow must be shot. Two runners, one to go and one to return, are sometimes allowed. There is another water-ordeal "for religious men." The accused is to drink consecrated water. If in fourteen (or more or less) days no calamity happen to him he will be innocent. The same test is made in the case of the oath and of poison (below).]
[Footnote 41: In the case of witnesses Manu gives seven days as the limit. When one adopts the oath as an ordeal the misfortune of the guilty is supposed to come 'quickly.' As an ordeal this is not found in the later law. It is one of the Greek tests (loc. cit.). When swearing the Hindu holds water or holy-grass.]
[Footnote 42: AV. ii. 12 is not a certain case of this, but it is at least Brahmanic. The carrying of the axe is alluded to in the Ch[=a]ndogya Upanishad (Schlagintweit, Die Gattesurtheile der Indier, p. 6).]
[Footnote 43: Y[=a]jñavalkya (loc. cit.) restricts this test to women, children, priests, the old, blind, lame, and sick. On ph[=a]la for agni, ib. ii. 99, see ZDMG. ix. 677.]
[Footnote 44: Schlagintweit, loc. cit. p. 26 (Hiouen Thsang).]
* * * * *
XII. JAINISM.[1]
One cannot read the Upanishads without feeling that he is already facing an intellectual revolt. Not only in the later tracts, which are inspired with devotion to a supreme and universal Lord, but even in the oldest of these works the atmosphere, as compared with that of the earlier Brahmanic period, is essentially different. The close and stifling air of ritualism has been charged with an electrical current of thought that must soon produce a storm.
That storm reached a head in Buddhism, but its premonitory signs appear in the Upanishads, and its first outbreak preceded the advent of Gautama. Were it possible to draw a line of demarcation between the Upanishads that come before and after Buddhism, it would be historically more correct to review the two great schisms, Jainism and Buddhism, before referring to the sectarian Upanishads. For these latter in their present form are posterior to the rise of the two great heresies. But, since such a division is practically uncertain in its application, we have thought it better in our sketch of the Upanishads and legal literature to follow to the end the course of that agitated thought, which, starting with the great identification of jiva, the individual spirit, and [=a]tm[=a], the world-spirit, the All, continues till it loses itself in a multiplication of sectarian dogmas, where the All becomes the god that has been elected by one communion of devotees.[2]
The external characteristics of Upanishad thought are those of a religion that has replaced formal acts by formal introspection. The Yogin devotee, who by mystic communion desires absorption into the world-spirit, replaces the Sanny[=a]sin and Yati ascetics, who would accomplish the same end by renunciation and severe self-mortification. This is a fresh figure on the stage of thought, where before were mad Munis, beggars, and miracle-mongers. On this stage stands beside the ascetic the theoretical theosophist who has succeeded in identifying himself, soberly, not in frenzy, with God.[3] What were the practical results of this teaching has been indicated in part already. The futility of the stereotyped religious offices was recognized. But these offices could not be discarded by the orthodox. With the lame and illogical excuse that they were useful as discipline, though unessential in reality, they were retained by the Brahman priest. Not so by the Jain; still less so by the Buddhist.
In the era in which arose the public revolt against the dogmatic teaching of the Brahman there were more sects than one that have now passed away forgotten. The eastern part of India, to which appertain the later part of the Çatapatha Br[=a]hmana and the schismatic heresies, was full of religious and philosophical controversy. The great heretics were not innovators in heresy. The Brahmans permitted, encouraged, and shared in theoretical controversy. There was nothing in the tenets of Jainism or of Buddhism that from a philosophical point of view need have caused a rupture with the Brahmans.
But the heresies, nevertheless, do not represent the priestly caste, so much as the caste most apt to rival and to disregard the claim of the Brahman, viz., the warrior-caste. They were supported by kings, who gladly stood against priests. To a great extent both Jainism and Buddhism owed their success (amid other rival heresies with no less claim to good protestantism) to the politics of the day. The kings of the East were impatient of the Western church; they were pleased to throw it over. The leaders in the 'reformation' were the younger sons of noble blood. The church received many of these younger sons as priests. Both Buddha and Mah[=a]v[=i]ra were, in fact, revolting adherents of the Brahmanic faith, but they were princes and had royalty to back them.
Nor in the Brahmanhood of Benares was Brahmanhood at its strongest. The seat of the Vedic cult lay to the westward, where it arose, in the 'holy land,' which received the Vedic Aryans after they had crossed out of the Punj[=a]b. With the eastward course of conquest the character of the people and the very orthodoxy of the priests were relaxed. The country that gave rise to the first heresies was one not consecrated to the ancient rites. Very slowly had these rites marched thither, and they were, so to speak, far from their religious base of supplies. The West was more conservative than the East. It was the home of the rites it favored. The East was but a foster-father. New tribes, new land, new growth, socially and intellectually,--all these contributed in the new seat of Brahmanhood to weaken the hold of the priests upon their speculative and now recalcitrant laity. So before Buddha there were heretics and even Buddhas, for the title was Buddha's only by adoption. But of most of these earlier sects one knows little. Three or four names of reformers have been handed down; half a dozen opponents or rivals of Buddha existed and vied with him. Most important of these, both on account of his probable priority and because of the lasting character of his school, was the founder or reformer of Jainism, Mah[=a]v[=i]ra Jñ[=a]triputra,[4] who with his eleven chief disciples may be regarded as the first open seceders from Brahmanism, unless one assign the same date to the revolt of Buddha. The two schisms have so much in common, especially in outward features, that for long it was thought that Jainism was a sub-sect of Buddhism. In their legends, in the localities in which they flourished, and in many minutiae of observances they are alike. Nevertheless, their differences are as great as the resemblance between them, and what Jainism at first appeared to have got of Buddhism seems now to be rather the common loan made by each sect from Brahmanism. It is safest, perhaps, to rest in the assurance that the two heresies were contemporaries of the sixth century B.C, and leave unanswered the question which Master preceded the other, though we incline to the opinion that the founder of Jainism, be he Mah[=a]v[=i]ra or his own reputed master, P[=a]rçvan[=a]tha, had founded his sect before Gautama became Buddha. But there is one good reason for treating of Jainism before Buddhism,[5] and that is, that the former represents a theological mean between Brahmanism and Buddhism.
Mah[=a]v[=i]ra, the reputed founder of his sect, was, like Buddha and perhaps his other rivals, of aristocratic birth. His father is called king, but he was probably hereditary chief of a district incorporated as a suburb of the capital city of Videha, while by marriage he was related to the king of Videha, and to the ruling house of M[=a]gadha. His family name was Jñ[=a]triputra, or, in his own Prakrit (Ardham[=a]gadh[=i]) dialect, N[=a]taputta; but by his sect he was entitled the Great Hero, Mah[=a]v[=i]ra; the Conqueror, Jina; the Great One, Vardham[=a]na (Vardahmana in the original), etc. His sect was that of the Nirgranthas (Nigganthas), i.e., 'without bonds,' perhaps the oldest name of the whole body. Later there are found no less than seven sub-sects, to which come as eighth the Digambaras, in contradistinction to all the seven Çvet[=a]mbara sects. These two names represent the two present bodies of the church, one body being the Çvet[=a]mbaras, or 'white-attire' faction, who are in the north and west; the other, the Digambaras, or 'sky-attire,' i.e., naked devotees of the south. The latter split off from the main body about two hundred years after Mah[=a]v[=i]ra's death; as has been thought by some, because the Çvet[=a]mbaras refused to follow the Digambaras in insisting upon nakedness as the rule for ascetics.[6] The earlier writings show that nakedness was recommended, but was not compulsory.[7] Other designations of the main sects, as of the sub-sects, are found. Thus, from the practice of pulling out the hairs of their body, the Jains were derisively termed Luñcitakeças, or 'hair-pluckers.' The naked devotees of this school are probably the gymnosophists of the Greek historians, although this general term may have been used in describing other sects, as the practice of dispensing with attire is common even to-day with many Hindu devotees.[8]
An account of the Jain absurdities in the way of speculation would indeed give some idea of their intellectual frailty, but, as in the case of the Buddhists, such an account has but little to do with their religion. It will suffice to state that the 'ages' of the Brahmans from whom Jain and Buddhist derived their general conceptions of the ages, are here reckoned quite differently; and that the first Jina of the long series of pre-historic prophets lived more than eight million years and was five hundred bow-lengths in height. Monks and laymen now appear at large in India, a division which originated neither with Jain nor Buddhist,[9] though these orders are more clearly divided among the heretics, from whom, again, was borrowed by the Hindu sects, the monastic institution, in the ninth century (A.D.), in all the older heretical completeness. Although atheistic the Jain worshipped the Teacher, and paid some regard to the Brahmanical divinities, just as he worships the Hindu gods to-day, for the atheistical systems admitted gods as demi-gods or dummy gods, and in point of fact became very superstitious. Yet are both founder-worship and superstition rather the growth of later generations than the original practice. The atheism of the Jain means denial of a divine creative Spirit.[10]
Though at times in conflict with the Brahmans the Jains never departed from India as did the Buddhists, and even Brahmanic priests in some parts of India serve today in Jain temples.
In metaphysics as in religion the Jain differs radically from the Buddhist. He believes in a dualism not unlike that of the S[=a]nkhyas, whereas Buddhistic philosophy has no close connection with this Brahmanic system. To the Jain eternal matter stands opposed to eternal spirits, for (opposed to pantheism) every material entity (even water) has its own individual spirit. The Jain's Nirv[=a]na, as Barth has said, is escape from the body, not escape from existence.[11] Like the Buddhist the Jain believes in reincarnation, eight births, after one has started on the right road, being necessary to the completion of perfection. Both sects, with the Brahmans, insist on the non-injury doctrine, but in this regard the Jain exceeds his Brahmanical teacher's practice. Both heretical sects claim that their reputed founders were the last of twenty-four or twenty-five prophets who preceded the real founder, each successively having become less monstrous (more human) in form.
The Jain literature left to us is quite large[12] and enough has been published already to make it necessary to revise the old belief in regard to the relation between Jainism and Buddhism.
We have said that Jainism stands nearer to Brahmanism (with which, however, it frequently had quarrels) than does Buddhism.[13] The most striking outward sign of this is the weight laid on asceticism, which is common to Brahmanism and Jainism but is repudiated by Buddhism. Twelve years of asceticism are necessary to salvation, as thinks the Jain, and this self-mortification is of the most stringent sort. But it is not in their different conception of a Nirv[=a]na release rather than of annihilation, nor in the S[=a]nkhya-like[14] duality they affect, nor yet in the prominence given to self-mortification that the Jains differ most from the Buddhists. The contrast will appear more clearly when we come to deal with the latter sect. At present we take up the Jain doctrine for itself.
The 'three gems' which, according to the Jains,[15] result in the spirit's attainment of deliverance are knowledge, faith, and virtue, or literally 'right knowledge, right intuition, and right practices.' Right knowledge is a true knowledge of the relation of spirit and not-spirit (the world consists of two classes, spirit and non-spirit), the latter being immortal like the former. Right intuition is absolute faith in the word of the Master and the declarations of the [=A]gamas, or sacred texts. Right practices or virtue consists, according to the Yogaç[=a]stra, in the correct fivefold conduct of one that has knowledge and faith: (1) Non-injury, (2) kindness and speaking which is true (in so far as the truth is pleasant to the hearer),[16] (3) honorable conduct, typified by 'not stealing,' (4) chastity in word, thought, and deed, (5) renunciation of earthly interests.
The doctrine of non-injury found but modified approval among the Brahmans. They limited its application in the case of sacrifice, and for this reason were bitterly taunted by the Jains as 'murderers.' "Viler than unbelievers," says the Yogaç[=a]stra, quoting a law of Manu to the effect that animals may be slain for sacrifice, "all those cruel ones who make the law that teaches killing."[17] For this reason the Jain is far more particular in his respect for life than is the Buddhist. Lest animate things, even plants and animalculae, be destroyed, he sweeps the ground before him as he goes, walks veiled lest he inhale a living organism, strains water, and rejects not only meat but even honey, together with various fruits that are supposed to contain worms; not because of his distaste for worms but because of his regard for life. Other arguments which, logically, should not be allowed to influence him are admitted, however, in order to terrify the hearer. Thus the first argument against the use of honey is that it destroys life; then follows the argument that honey is 'spit out by bees' and therefore it is nasty.[18]
The Jain differs from the Buddhist still more in ascetic practices. He is a forerunner, in fact, of the horrible modern devotee whose practices we shall describe below. The older view of seven hells in opposition to the legal Brahmanic number of thrice seven is found (as it is in the M[=a]rkandeya Pur[=a]na), but whether this be the rule we cannot say.[19] It is interesting to see that hell is prescribed with metempsychosis exactly as it is among the Brahmans.[20] Reincarnation onearth and punishment in hells between reincarnation seems to be the usual belief. The salvation which is attained by the practice of knowledge, faith, and five-fold virtue, is not immediate, but it will come after successive reincarnations; and this salvation is the freeing of the eternal spirit from the bonds of eternal matter; in other words, it is much more like the 'release' of the Brahman than it is like the Buddhistic Nirv[=a]na, though, of course, there is no 'absorption,' each spirit remaining single. In the order of the Ratnatraya or 'three gems' Çankara appears to lay the greatest weight on faith, but in Hemacandra's schedule knowledge[21] holds the first place. This is part of that Yoga, asceticism, which is the most important element in attaining salvation.[22]
Another division of right practices is cited by the Yogaç[=a]stra (I. 33 ff.): Some saints say that virtue is divided into five kinds of care and three kinds of control, to wit, proper care in walking, talking, begging for food, sitting, and performing natural functions of the body--these constitute the five kinds of care, and the kinds of control are those of thought, speech, and act. This teaching it is stated, is for the monks. The practice of the laity is to accord with the custom of their country.
The chief general rules for the laity consist in vows of obedience to the true god, to the law, and to the (present) Teacher; which are somewhat like the vows of the Buddhist. God here is the Arhat, the 'venerable' founder of the sect. The laic has also five lesser vows: not to kill, not to lie, not to steal, not to commit adultery or fornication, to be content with little.
According to the Ç[=a]stra already cited the laic must rise early in the morning, worship the god's idol at home, go to the temple and circumambulate the Jina idol three times, strewing flowers, and singing hymnsand then read the Praty[=a]khy[=a]na (an old P[=u]rva, gospel).[23] Further rules of prayer and practice guide him through his day. And by following this rule he expects to obtain spiritual 'freedom' hereafter; but for his life on earth he is "without praise or blame for this world or the next, for life or for death, having meditation as his one pure wife" (iii. 150). He will become a god in heaven, be reborn again on earth, and so, after eight successive existences (the Buddhistic number), at last obtain salvation, release (from bodies) for his eternal soul (153).
As in the Upanishads, the gods, like men, are a part of the system of the universe. The wise man goes to them (becomes a god) only to return to earth again. All systems thus unite hell and heaven with the karma doctrine. But in this Jain work, as in so many of the orthodox writings, the weight is laid more on hell as a punishment than on rebirth. Probably the first Jains did not acknowledge gods at all, for it is an early rule with them not to say 'God rains,' or use any such expression, but to say 'the cloud rains'; and in other ways they avoid to employ a terminology which admits even implicitly the existence of divinities. Yet do they use a god not infrequently as an agent of glorification of Mah[=a]v[=i]ra, saying in later writings that Indra transformed himself, to do the Teacher honor; and often they speak of the gods and goddesses as if these were regarded as spirits. Demons and inferior beings are also utilized in the same way, as when it is said that at the Teacher's birth the demons (spirits) showered gold upon the town.
The religious orders of the Çvet[=a]mbara sect contained nuns as well as monks, although, as we have said, women are not esteemed very favorably: "The world is greatly troubled by women. People say that women are vessels of pleasure. But this leads them to pain, to delusion, to death, to hell, to birth as hell-beings or brute-beasts." Such is the decision in the [=A]e[=a]r[=a]nga S[=u]tra, or book of usages for the Jain monk and nun. From the same work we extract a few rules to illustrate the practices of the Jains. This literature is the most tedious in the world, and to give the gist of the heretic law-maker's manual will suffice.
Asceticism should be practiced by monk and nun, if possible. But if one finds that he cannot resist his passions, or is disabled and cannot endure austerities, he may commit suicide; although this release is sometimes reprehended, and is not allowable till one has striven against yielding to such a means. But when the twelve years of asceticism are passed one has assurance of reaching Nirv[=a]na, and so may kill himself. Of Nirv[=a]na there is no description. It is release, salvation, but it is of such sort that in regard to it 'speculation has no place,' and 'the mind cannot conceive of it' (copied from the Upanishads). In other regards, in contrast to the nihilistic Buddhist, the Jain assumes a doubtful attitude, so that he is termed the 'may-be philosopher,' sy[=a]dv[=a]din,[24] in opposition to the Buddhist, the philosopher of 'the void.'
But if the Jain may kill himself, he may not kill or injure anything else. Not even food prepared over a fire is acceptable, lest he hurt the 'fire-beings,' for as he believes in water-beings, so he believes in fire-beings, wind-beings, etc. Every plant and seed is holy with the sacredness of life. He may not hurt or drive away the insects that torment his naked flesh. 'Patience is the highest good,' he declares, and the rules for sitting and lying conclude with the statement that not to move at all, not to stir, is the best rule. To lie naked, bitten by vermin, and not to disturb them, is religion. Like a true Puritan, the Jain regards pleasure in itself as sinful. "What is discontent, and what is pleasure? One should live subject to neither. Giving up all gaiety, circumspect, restrained, one should lead a religious life. Man! Thou art thine own friend; why longest thou for a friend beyond thyself?... First troubles, then pleasures; first pleasures, then troubles. These are the cause of quarrels." And again, "Let one think, 'I am I.'" i.e., let one be dependent on himself alone. When a Jain monk or nun hears that there is to be a festival (perhaps to the gods, to Indra, Skahda, Rudra, Vishnu,[25] or the demons, as in [=A]c[=a]r[=a]nga S[=u]tra, ii. 1. 2) he must not go thither; he must keep himself from all frivolities and entertainments. During the four months of the rainy season he is to remain in one place,[26] but at other times, either naked or attired in a few garments, he is to wander about begging. In going on his begging tour he is not to answer questions, nor to retort if reviled. He is to speak politely (the formulae for polite address and rude address are given), beg modestly, and not render himself liable to suspicion on account of his behavior when in the house of one of the faithful. Whatever be the quality of the food he must eat it, if it be not a wrong sort. Rice and beans are especially recommended to him. The great Teacher Jñ[=a]triputra (Mah[=a]v[=i]ra), it is said, never went to shows, pantomines, boxing-matches, and the like; but, remaining in his parents' house till their death, that he might not grieve his mother, at the age of twenty-eight renounced the world with the consent of the government, and betook himself to asceticism; travelling naked (after a year of clothes) into barbarous lands, but always converting and enduring the reproach of the wicked. He was beaten and set upon by sinful men, yet was he never moved to anger. Thus it was that he became the Arhat, the Jina, the Kevalin (perfect sage).[27] It is sad to have to add, however, that Mah[=a]v[=i]ra is traditionally said to have died in a fit of apoplectic rage.
The equipment of a monk are his clothes (or, better, none), his alms-bowl, broom, and veil. He is 'unfettered,' in being without desires and without injury to others. 'Some say that all sorts of living beings may be slain, or abused, or tormented, or driven away--the doctrine of the unworthy. The righteous man does not kill nor cause others to kill. He should not cause the same punishment for himself.'
The last clause is significant. What he does to another living being will be done to him. He will suffer as he has caused others to suffer. The chain from emotion to hell--the avoidance of the former is on account of the fear of the latter--is thus connected: He who knows wrath knows pride; he who knows pride knows deceit; he who knows deceit knows greed (and so on; thus one advances) from greed to love, from love to hate, from hate to delusion, from delusion to conception, from conception to birth, from birth to death, from death to hell, from hell to animal existence, 'and he who knows animal existence knows pain.'
The five great vows, which have been thought by some scholars to be copies of the Buddhistic rules, whereas they are really modifications of the old Brahmanic rules for ascetics as explained in pre-Buddhistic literature, are in detail as follows:[28]
The First vow: I renounce all killing of living beings, whether subtile or gross, whether movable or immovable. Nor shall I myself kill living beings nor cause others to do it, nor consent to it. As long as I live I confess and blame, repent and exempt myself of these sins in the thrice threefold way,[29] in mind, speech, and body.
The five 'clauses' that explain this vow are: (1) the Niggantha (Jain) is careful in walking; (2) he does not allow his mind to act in a way to suggest injury of living beings; (3) he does not allow his speech to incite to injury; (4) he is careful in laying down his utensils; (5) he inspects his food and drink lest he hurt living beings.
The Second Vow: I renounce all vices of lying speech arising from anger, or greed, or fear, or mirth. I confess (etc, as in the first vow).
The five clauses here explain that the Niggantha speaks only after deliberation; does not get angry; renounces greed; renounces fear; renounces mirth--lest through any of these he be moved to lie.
The Third Vow: I renounce all taking of anything not given, either in a village, or a town, or a wood, either of little or much, or small or great, of living or lifeless things. I shall neither take myself what is not given nor cause others to take it, nor consent to their taking it. As long as I live I confess (etc., as in the first vow).
The clauses here explain that the Niggantha must avoid different possibilities of stealing, such as taking food without permission of his superior. One clause states that he may take only a limited ground for a limited time, i.e., he may not settle down indefinitely on a wide area, for he may not hold land absolutely. Another clause insists on his having his grant to the land renewed frequently.
The Fourth Vow: I renounce all sexual pleasures, either with gods, or men, or animals. I shall not give way to sensuality (etc).
The clauses here forbid the Niggantha to discuss topics relating to women, to contemplate the forms of women, to recall the pleasures and amusements he used to have with women, to eat and drink too highly seasoned viands, to lie near women.
The Fifth Vow: I renounce all attachments, whether little or much, small or great, living or lifeless; neither shall I myself form such attachments, nor cause others to do so, nor consent to their doing so (etc.).
The five clauses particularize the dangerous attachments formed by ears, eyes, smell, taste, touch.
It has been shown above (following Jacobi's telling comparison of the heretical vows with those of the early Brahman ascetic) that these vows are taken not from Buddhism but from Brahmanism. Jacobi opines that the Jains took the four first and that the reformer Mah[=a]v[=i]ra added the fifth as an offset to the Brahmanical vow of liberality.[30] The same writer shows that certain minor rules of the Jain sect are derived from the same Brahmanical source.
The main differences between the two Jain sects have been catalogued in an interesting sketch by Williams,[31] who mentions as the chief Jain stations of the north Delhi (where there is an annual gathering), Jeypur, and [=A]jm[=i]r. To these Mathur[=a] on the Jumna should be added.[32] The Çvet[=a]mbaras had forty-five or forty-six [=A]gamas, eleven or twelve Angas, twelve Up[=a]ngas, and other scriptures of the third or fourth century B.C., as they claim. They do not go naked (even their idols are clothed), and they admit women into the order. The Digambaras do not admit women, go naked, and have for sacred texts later works of the fifth century A.D. The latter of course assert that the scriptures of the former sect are spurious.[33]
In distinction from the Buddhists the Jains of to-day keep up caste. Some of them are Brahmans. They have, of course, a different prayer-formula, and have no St[=u]pas or D[=a]gobas (to hold relics); and, besides the metaphysical difference spoken of above, they differ from the Buddhists in assuming that metempsychosis does not stop at animal existence, but includes inanimate things (as these are regarded by others). According to one of their own sect of to-day, ahi[.m]s[=a] paramo dharmas, 'the highest law of duty is not to hurt a living creature.'[34]
The most striking absurdity of the Jain reverence for life has frequently been commented upon. Almost every city of western India, where they are found, has its beast-hospital, where animals are kept and fed. An amusing account of such an hospital, called Pi[=n]jra Pol, at Saurar[=a]shtra, Surat, is given in the first number of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.[35] Five thousand rats were supported in such a temple-hospital in Kutch.[36]
Of all the great religious sects of India that of N[=a]taputta is perhaps the least interesting, and has apparently the least excuse for being.[37] The Jains offered to the world but one great moral truth, withal a negative truth, 'not to harm,' nor was this verity invented by them. Indeed, what to the Jain is the great truth is only a grotesque exaggeration of what other sects recognized in a reasonable form. Of all the sects the Jains are the most colorless, the most insipid. They have no literature worthy of the name. They were not original enough to give up many orthodox features, so that they seem like a weakened rill of Brahmanism, cut off from the source, yet devoid of all independent character. A religion in which the chief points insisted upon are that one should deny God, worship man, and nourish vermin, has indeed no right to exist; nor has it had as a system much influence on the history of thought. As in the case of Buddhism, the refined Jain metaphysics are probably a late growth. Historically these sectaries served a purpose as early protestants against ritualistic and polytheistic Brahmanism; but their real affinity with the latter faith is so great that at heart they soon became Brahmanic again. Their position geographically would make it seem probable that they, and not the Buddhists, had a hand in the making of the ethics of the later epic.
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FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: We retain here and in Buddhism the usual terminology. Strictly speaking, Jainism is to Jina (the reformer's title) as is Bauddhism to Buddha, so that one should say Jinism, Buddhism, or Jainism, Bauddhism. Both titles, Jina and Buddha ('victor' and 'awakened'), were given to each leader; as in general many other mutual titles of honor were applied by each sect to its own head, Jina, Arhat ('venerable'), Mah[=a]v[=i]ra ('great hero'), Buddha, etc. One of these titles was used, however, as a title of honor by the Jains, but to designate heretics by the Buddhists, viz., T[=i]rthankara (T[=i]rthakara in the original), 'prophet' (see Jacobi, SBE. xxii. Introd. p. xx).]
[Footnote 2: It is possible, however, on the other hand, that both Vishnuite and Çivaite sects (or, less anglicized, Vaishnavas, Çaivas, if one will also say Vaidic for Vedic), were formed before the end of the sixth century B.C. Not long after this the divinities Çiva and Vishnu receive especial honor.]
[Footnote 3: The Beggar (Çramana, Bhikshu), the Renunciator (Sanny[=a]s[=i]n), the Ascetic (Yati), are Brahmanic terms as well as sectarian.]
[Footnote 4: The three great reformers of this period are Mah[=a]v[=i]ra, Buddha, and Gos[=a]la. The last was first a pupil and then a rival of Mah[=a]v[=i]ra. The latter's nephew, Jam[=a]li, also founded a distinct sect and became his uncle's opponent, the speculative sectarian tendency being as pronounced as it was about the same time in Hellas. Gos[=a]la appears to have had quite a following, and his sect existed for a long time, but now it is utterly perished. An account of this reformer and of Jam[=a]li will be found in Leumann's essay, Indische Studien, xvii. p. 98 ff. and in the appendix to Rockhill's Life of Buddha.]
[Footnote 5: The Nirgranthas (Jains) are never referred to by the Buddhists as being a new sect, nor is their reputed founder, N[=a]taputta, spoken of as their founder; whence Jacobi plausibly argues that their real founder was older than Mah[=a]v[=i]ra, and that the sect preceded that of Buddha. Lassen and Weber have claimed, on the contrary, that Jainism is a revolt against Buddhism. The identification of N[=a]taputta (Jñ[=a]triputra) with Mah[=a]v[=i]ra is due to Bühler and Jacobi (Kalpas[=u]tra, Introd. p.6).]
[Footnote 6: According to Jacobi, ZDMG. xxxviii. 17, the split in the party arose in this way. About 350 B.C. some Jain monks under the leadership of Bhadrab[=a]hu went south, and they followed stricter rules of asceticism than did their fellows in the north. Both sects are modifications of the original type, and their differences did not result in sectarian separation till about the time of our era, at which epoch arose the differentiating titles of sects that had not previously separated into formal divisions, but had drifted apart geographically.]
[Footnote 7: Compare Jacobi, loc. cit. and Leumann's account of the seven sects of the Çvet[=a]mbaras in the essay in the Indische Studien referred to above. At the present day the Jains are found to the number of about a million in the northwest (Çvet[=a]mbaras), and south (Digambaras) of India. The original seat of the whole body in its first form was, as we have said, near Benares, where also arose and flourished Buddhism.]
[Footnote 8: Hemacandra's Yogaç[=a]stra, edited by Windisch, ZDMG. xxviii. 185 ff. (iii. 133). The Jain's hate of women did not prevent his worshipping goddesses as the female energy like the later Hindu sects. The Jains are divided in regard to the possibility of woman's salvation. The Yogaç[=a]stra alludes to women as 'the lamps that burn on the road that leads to the gate of hell,' ii. 87. The Digambaras do not admit women into the order, as do the Çvet[=a]mbaras.]
[Footnote 9: Die Bharata-sage, Leumann, ZDMG. xlviii. p.65. See also above in the S[=u]tras. With the Jains there is less of the monastic side of religion than with the Buddhists.]
[Footnote 10: Jains are sometimes called Arhats on account of their veneration for the Arhat or chief Jina (whence Jain). Their only real gods are their chiefs or Teachers, whose idols are worshipped in the temples. Thus, like the Buddhist and some Hindu sects of modern times, they have given up God to worship man. Rather have they adopted an idolatry of man and worship of womanhood, for they also revere the female energy. Positivism has ancient models!]
[Footnote 11: The Jain sub-sects did not differ much among themselves in philosophical speculation. Their differences were rather of a practical sort.]
[Footnote 12: See the list of the Bertin MSS.; Weber, Berlin MSS. vol. ii. 1892; and the thirty-third volume of the German Oriental Journal, pp. 178, 693. For an account of the literature see also Jacobi's introduction to the SBE. vol. xxii; and Weber, Ueber die heiligen Schriften der Jaina in vols. xvi, xvii of the Indische Studien (translated by Smyth in the Indian Antiquary); and the Bibliography (below).]
[Footnote 13: A case of connection in legends between Buddhist and Jain is mentioned below. Another is the history of king Paêsi, elaborated in Buddhistic literature (Tripitaka) and in the second Jain Up[=a]nga alike, as has been shown by Leumann.]
[Footnote 14: The Jain's spirit, however, is not a world-spirit. He does not believe in an All-Spirit, but in a plurality of eternal spirits, fire-spirits, wind-spirits, plant-spirits, etc.]
[Footnote 15: Compare Colebrooke's Essays, vol. II. pp. 404, 444, and the Yogaç[=a]stra cited above.]
[Footnote 16: This is not in the earlier form of the vow (see below).]
[Footnote 17: II. 37 and 41. Although the Brahman ascetic took the vow not to kill, yet is he permitted to do so for sacrifice, and he may eat flesh of animals killed by other animals (Gautama, 3. 31).]
[Footnote 18: Loc. cit. III. 37-38. The evening and night are not times to eat, and for the same reason "The Gods eat in the morning, the Seers at noon, the Fathers in the afternoon, the devils at twilight and night" (ib. 58). For at night one might eat a a living thing by mistake.]
[Footnote 19: Loc. cit. II. 27.]
[Footnote 20: The pun m[=a][.m]sa, "Me eat will be hereafter whose meat I eat in this life" (Lanman), shows that Jain and Brahman believed in a hell where the injured avenged themselves (Manu, V. 55; HYÇ. III. 26), just as is related in the Bhrigu story (above).]
[Footnote 21: By intuition or instruction.]
[Footnote 22: Loc. cit. I. 15 ff.]
[Footnote 23: Loc. cit. 121 ff. Wilson, Essays, I. 319, gives a description of the simple Jain ritual.]
[Footnote 24: Who says "may be."]
[Footnote 25: Mukunda.]
[Footnote 26: This 'keeping vasso' is also a Brahmanic custom, as Bühler has pointed out. But it is said somewhere that at that season the roads are impossible, so that there is not so much a conscious copying as a physical necessity in keeping vasso; perhaps also a moral touch, owing to the increase of life and danger of killing.]
[Footnote 27: In the lives of the Jinas it is said that Jñ[=a]triputra's (N[=a]taputta's) parents worshipped the 'people's favorite,' P[=a]rçva, and were followers of the Çramanas (ascetics). In the same work (which contains nothing further for our purpose) it is said that Arhats, Cakravarts, Baladevas, and Vasudevas, present, past, and future, are aristocrats, born in noble families. The heresies and sectaries certainly claim as much.]
[Footnote 28: [=A]c[=a]r[=a]nga S. ii. 15. We give Jacobi's translation, as in the verses already cited from this work.]
[Footnote 29: Acting, commanding, consenting, past, present, or future (Jacobi).]
[Footnote 30: SBE. xxii. Introd. p. xxiv.]
[Footnote 31: JRAS. xx. 279.]
[Footnote 32: See Bühler, the last volume of the Epigraphica Indica, and his other articles in the WZKM. v. 59, 175. Jeypur, according to Williams, is the stronghold of the Digambara Jains. Compare Thomas, JRAS. ix. 155, _Early Faith of Açoka_.]
[Footnote 33: The redaction of the Jain canon took place, according to tradition, in 454 or 467 A.D. (possibly 527). "The origin of the extant Jaina literature cannot be placed earlier than about 300 B.C." (Jacobi, Introduction to Jain S[=u]tras, pp. xxxvii, xliii). The present Angas ('divisions') were preceded by P[=u]rvas, of which there are said to have been at first fourteen. On the number of the scriptures see Weber, loc. cit.]
[Footnote 34: Williams, loc. cit. The prayer-formula is: 'Reverence to Arhats, saints, teachers, subteachers, and all good men.']
[Footnote 35: 'A place which is appropriated for the reception of old, worn-out, lame, or disabled animals. At that time (1823) they chiefly consisted of buffaloes and cows, but there were also goats and sheep, and even cocks and hens,' and also 'hosts of vermin.']
[Footnote 36: JRAS. 1834, p. 96. The town was taxed to provide the food for the rats.]
[Footnote 37: Because the Jains have reverted to idolatry, demonology, and man-worship. But at the outset they appear to have had two great principles, one, that there is no divine power higher than man; the other, that all life is sacred. One of these is now practically given up, and the other was always taken too seriously.]
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