In Europe we are accustomed to a.s.sociate the ideas of sacerdotalism, hierarchy and dogma, mainly because they are united in the greatest religious organization familiar to us, the Roman Catholic Church. But the combination is not necessary. Hinduism is intensely sacerdotal but neither hierarchical nor dogmatic: Mohammedanism is dogmatic but neither sacerdotal nor hierarchical: Buddhism is dogmatic and also somewhat hierarchical, since it has to deal with bodies of men collected in monasteries where discipline is necessary, but except in its most corrupt forms it is not sacerdotal. The absence of the hierarchical idea in Hinduism is striking. Not only is there no Pope, but there is hardly any office comparable with a Bishopric[127]. The relationships recognized in the priesthood are those springing from birth and the equally sacred ties uniting teacher and pupil. Hence there is little to remind us of the organization of Christian Churches. We have simply teachers expounding their sacred books to their scholars, with such combination of tradition and originality as their idiosyncrasies may suggest, somewhat after the theory of congregational churches. But that resemblance is almost destroyed by the fact that both teachers and pupils belong to clans, connected by descent and accepted by the people as a superior order of mankind. Even in the most modern sects the descendants of the founder often receive special reverence.
Though the Brahmans have no ecclesiastical discipline, they do not tolerate the interference of kings. Buddhist sovereigns have summoned councils, but not so Hindu monarchs. They have built temples, paid priests to perform sacrifices and often been jealous of them but for the last two thousand years they have not attempted to control them within their own sphere or to create a State Church. And the Brahmans on their side have kept within their own province. It is true that they have succeeded in imposing-or in identifying themselves with-a most exacting code of social, legal and religious prescriptions, but they have rarely aimed at temporal power or attempted to be more than viziers. They have of course supported pious kings and received support-especially donations-from them, and they have enjoyed political influence as domestic chaplains to royal families, but they have not consented to any such relations between religion and the state as exist (or existed) in England, Russia, Mohammedan countries or China. At the ancient coronation ceremony the priest who presented the new ruler to his subjects said, "This is your King, O people: The King of us Brahmans is Soma[128]."
2
These facts go far to explain some peculiar features of Hinduism.
Compared with Islam or Christianity its doctrines are extraordinarily fluid, multiform and even inconsistent: its practice, though rarely lax, is also very various in different castes and districts. The strangeness of the phenomenon is diminished if one considers that the uniformity and rigidity of western creeds are due to their political more than to their religious character. Like the wind, the spirit bloweth where it listeth: it is governed by no laws but those which its own reverence imposes: it lives in changing speculation. But in Europe it has been in double bondage to the logic of Greece and the law of Rome. India deals in images and metaphor: Greece in dialectic. The original thought of Christianity had something of this Indian quality, though more sober and less fantastic, with more limitation and less imagination. On this substratum the Greeks reared their edifices of dialectic and when the quarrels of theologians began to disturb politics, the state treated the whole question from a legal point of view. It was a.s.sumed that there must be a right doctrine which the state should protect or even enforce, and a wrong doctrine which it should discourage or even forbid. Hence councils, creeds and persecutions. The whole position is logical and legal. The truth has been defined: those who do not accept it harm not only themselves but others: therefore they should be restrained and punished.
But in religious matters Hindus have not proceeded in this way as a rule. They have adopted the att.i.tude not of a judge who decides, but of the humane observer who sees that neither side is completely right or completely wrong and avoids expressing his opinion in a legal form.
Hindu teachers have never hesitated to proclaim their views as the whole and perfect truth. In that indeed they do not yield to Christian theologians but their p.r.o.nouncements are professorial rather than judicial and so diverse and yet all so influential that the state, though bound to protect sound doctrine, dare not champion one more than the other. Religious persecution is rare. It is not absent but the student has to search for instances, whereas in Christian Europe they are among the most conspicuous facts of history.
Restless, subtle and argumentative as Hindu thought is, it is less p.r.o.ne than European theology to the vice of distorting transcendental ideas by too stringent definition. It adumbrates the indescribable by metaphors and figures. It is not afraid of inconsistencies which may ill.u.s.trate different aspects of the infinite, but it rarely tries to cramp the divine within the limits of a logical phrase. Attempts to explain how the divine and human nature were combined in Christ convulsed the Byzantine Empire and have fettered succeeding generations with their stiff formulae. It would be rash to say that the ocean of Hindu theological literature contains no speculations about the incarnations of Vishnu similar to the views of the Nestorians, Monophysites and Catholics, but if such exist they have never attracted much interest or been embodied in well-known phrases[129]. The process by which a G.o.d can be born as a man, while continuing to exist as a G.o.d, is not described in quasi-legal language. Similarly the Soma offered in sacrifices is a G.o.d as well as a drink. But though the ritual of this sacrifice has produced an infinity of discussion and exegesis, no doctrine like transubstantiation or consubstantiation has a.s.sumed any prominence.
The Hindu has an extraordinary power of combining dogma and free thought, uniformity and variety. For instance it is held that the Vedas are a self-existent, eternal revelation made manifest to ancient sages and that their correct recitation ensures superhuman results. Yet each Veda exists in several recensions handed down by oral tradition in separate schools, and though the exact text and p.r.o.nunciation are matters of the utmost importance, diversities of opinion respecting them are tolerated and honoured. Further, though the early scriptures were preserved with scrupulous care the canon was never closed. It is impossible to say how many Upanishads there are, nor does a Hindu think the less of an Upanishad because it is not found in a certain list. And in mediaeval and modern times these ancient sacred books have been replaced for all except Brahmans by more recent Sanskrit works, or by a vernacular literature which, though having no particular imprimatur, claims the same authority as the Vedas[130].
The only essential tenets of Hinduism are recognition of the Brahman caste and divine authority of the Vedas. Those who publicly deny these doctrines as the Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs have done, put themselves outside the pale, but the recognition required to ensure orthodoxy or at least to avoid excommunication must not be compared with that implied by such phrases as recognizing the authority of the Bible, or the supremacy of the Pope. The utmost lat.i.tude of interpretation is allowed and the supposed followers of the Veda comprise sects whose beliefs seem to have no relation to one another or to the Veda, philosophic atheists and demonolaters whose religious ideas hardly rise above those of African savages.
One explanation may be, that every nation insists on liberty at the expense of logic in the matters which interest it most. We do this in politics. It might be difficult to make an untravelled oriental understand how parliamentary inst.i.tutions can continue for a day, how socialists and republicans can take part in the government of a monarchical country, and why the majority do not muzzle the opposition.
Yet Englishmen prefer to let this curious illogical muddle continue rather than tolerate some symmetrical and authoritative system which would check free speech and individuality. It is the same in Indian religion. In all ages the Hindu has been pa.s.sionately devoted to speculation. He will bear heavy burdens in the way of priestly exaction, social restrictions, and elaborate ceremonies, but he will not allow secular or even ecclesiastical authority to cramp and school his religious fancy, nor will he be deterred from sampling an attractive form of speculation merely because it is p.r.o.nounced unorthodox by the priesthood, and the priesthood, being themselves Hindus, are discreet in the use of anathemas. They insist not so much on particular doctrines and rites as on the principle that whatever the doctrine, whatever the rite, they must be the teachers and officiants. In critical and revolutionary times the Brahmans have often a.s.sured their pre-eminence by the judicious recognition of heresies. In all ages there has been a conservative clique which restricted religion to ceremonial observances.
Again and again some intellectual or emotional outburst has swept away such narrow limits and proclaimed doctrines which seemed subversive of the orthodoxy of the day. But they have simply become the orthodoxy of the morrow, under the protection of the same Brahman caste. The a.s.sailants are turned into champions, and in time the bold reformers stiffen into antiquated saints.
Hinduism has not been made but has grown. It is a jungle not a building.
It is a living example of a great national paganism such as might have existed in Europe if Christianity had not become the state religion of the Roman Empire, if there had remained an incongruous jumble of old local superst.i.tions, Greek philosophy and oriental cults such as the worship of Mithra or Serapis. Yet the parallel is not exact, for in Rome many of the discordant religious elements remained exotic, whereas in India they all, whatever their origin, became Indian and smack of the soil. There was wanting in European paganism the bond of union supplied by the Brahmans who by sometimes originating, sometimes tolerating and adapting, have managed to set their seal upon all Indian beliefs.
3
Thus the dominance of the Brahmans and their readiness to countenance every cult and doctrine which can attract worshippers explains the diversity of Indian religion, but are there no general characteristics which mark all its multiple forms? There are, and they apply to Buddhism as well as Hinduism, but in attempting to formulate them it is well to say that Indian religion is as wilful and unexpected in its variations as human nature itself and that all generalizations about it are subject to exceptions. If we say that it preaches asceticism and the subjection of the flesh, we may be confronted with the Vallabhacaryas who inculcate self-indulgence; if we say that it teaches reincarnation and successive lives, we may be told that the Lingayats[131] do not hold that doctrine.
And though we might logically maintain that these sects are unorthodox, yet it does not appear that Hindus excommunicate them. Still, it is just to say that the doctrines mentioned are characteristic of Hinduism and are repudiated only by eccentric sects.
Perhaps the idea which has had the widest and most penetrating influence on Indian thought is that conception of the Universe which is known as Sa?sara, the world of change and transmigration. The idea of rebirth and the wandering of souls from one body to another exists in a fragmentary form among savage tribes in many countries, but in India it makes its appearance as a product of ripening metaphysics rather than as a survival. It plays no part in the Vedic hymns: it first acquires importance in the older Upanishads but more as a mystery to be communicated to the elect than as a popular belief and to some extent as the special doctrine of the military cla.s.s rather than of the Brahmans.
At the time of the Buddha, however, it had pa.s.sed beyond this stage and was as integral a part of popular theology as is the immortality of the soul in Europe.
Such expressions as the transmigration of souls or metempsychosis imperfectly represent Indian ideas. They are incorrect as descriptions of Buddhist dogmas, which start by denying the existence of a soul, and they are not entirely suitable to those Vedantic schools which regard transmigration as part of the illusory phenomenal world. The thought underlying the doctrine is rather that as a child grows into youth and age, so the soul pa.s.ses from life to life in continuity if not in ident.i.ty. Whatever the origin of the idea may have been, its root in post-Vedic times is a sense of the transitoriness but continuity of everything. Nothing is eternal or even permanent: not even the G.o.ds, for they must die, not even death, for it must turn into new life.
This view of life is ingrained in Indian nature. It is not merely a scientific or philosophical speculation, but it summarizes the outlook of ordinary humanity. In Europe the average religious man thanks or at least remembers his Creator. But in India the Creator has less place in popular thought. There is a disinclination to make him responsible for the sufferings of the world, and speculation, though continually occupied with the origins of things, rarely adopts the idea familiar to Christians and Mohammedans alike, that something was produced out of nothing by the divine fiat. Hindu cosmogonies are various and discordant in details, but usually start with the evolution or emanation of living beings from the Divinity and often a reproductive act forms part of the process, such as the hatching of an egg or the division of a Divinity into male and female halves. In many accounts the Deity brings into being personages who continue the work of world-making and such ent.i.ties as mind, time and desire are produced before the material world. But everything in these creation stories is figurative. The faithful are not perplexed by the discrepancies in the inspired narratives, and one can hardly imagine an Indian sect agitated by the question whether G.o.d made the world in six literal days.
All religious doctrines, especially theories about the soul, are matters of temperament. A race with more power of will and more delight in life might have held that the soul is the one agent that can stand firm and unshaken midst the flux of circ.u.mstance. The intelligent but pa.s.sive Hindu sees clearly that whatever illusions the soul may have, it really pa.s.ses on like everything else and continueth not in one stay. He is disposed to think of it not as created with the birth of the body, but as a drop drawn from some ocean to which it is destined to return. As a rule he considers it to be immortal but he does not emphasize or value personality in our sense. In previous births he has already been a great many persons and he will be a great many more. Whatever may be the thread between these existences it is not individuality. And what he craves is not eternal personal activity, but unbroken rest in which personality, even if supposed to continue, can have little meaning.
The character of the successive appearances or tenements of the soul is determined by the law of Karma, which even more than metempsychosis is the basis of Indian ideas about the universe. Karma is best known as a term of the Buddhists, who are largely responsible both for the definition and wide diffusion of the doctrine. But the idea is Brahmanic as well as Buddhist and occurs in well-known pa.s.sages of the Upanishads, where it is laid down that as a man acts so shall he be in the next life[132]. The word (which means simply _deed_) is the accepted abbreviation for the doctrine that all deeds bring upon the doer an accurately proportionate consequence either in this existence, or, more often, in a future birth. At the end of a man"s life his character or personality is practically the sum of his acts, and when extraneous circ.u.mstances such as worldly position disappear, the soul is left with nothing but these acts and the character they have formed as, in Indian language, the fruit of life and it is these acts and this character which determine its next tenement. That tenement is simply the home which it is able to occupy in virtue of the configuration and qualities which it has induced in itself. It cannot complain.
One aspect of the theory of Sa?sara which is important for the whole history of Indian thought is its tendency towards pessimism. This tendency is specially definite and dogmatic in Buddhism, but it is a marked characteristic of the Indian temperament and appears in almost every form of devotion and speculation. What salvation or the desire to be saved is to the ordinary Protestant, Mukti or Moksha, deliverance, is to the ordinary Hindu. In Buddhism this desire is given a dogmatic basis for it is declared that all existence in all possible worlds necessarily involves dukkha or suffering[133] and this view seems to have met with popular as well as philosophic a.s.sent. But the desire for release and deliverance is based less on a contemplation of the woes of life than on a profound sense of its impermanence and instability[134]. Life is not the preface to eternity, as religious Europeans think: the Hindu justly rejects the notion that the conduct of the soul during a few score years can fix its everlasting destiny. Every action is important for it helps to determine the character of the next life, but this next life, even if it should be pa.s.sed in some temporary heaven, will not be essentially different from the present. Before and behind there stretches a vista of lives, past, present and to come, impermanent and unsatisfying, so that future existences are spoken of not as immortality but as repeated death.
4
This sense of weary reiteration is increased by two other doctrines, which are prevalent in Hinduism, though not universal or uncontested.
The first of them identifies the human soul with the supreme and only Being. The doctrine of Sa?sara holds that different forms of existence may be phases of the same soul and thus prepares the way for the doctrine that all forms of existence are the same and all souls parts of, or even identical with the atman or Self, the divine soul which not only pervades the world but _is_ the world. Connected with this doctrine is another, namely, that the whole world of phenomena is Maya or illusion. Nothing really exists except the supreme atman: all perception of plurality and difference is illusion and error: the reality is unity, ident.i.ty and rest. The development of these ideas leads to some of the princ.i.p.al systems of philosophy and will claim our attention later. At present I merely give their outlines as indicative of Hindu thought and temperament. The Indian thinks of this world as a circular and unending journey, an ocean without sh.o.r.e, a shadow play without even a plot. He feels more strongly than the European that change is in itself an evil and he finds small satisfaction in action for its own sake. All his higher aspirations bid him extricate himself from this labyrinth of repeated births, this phantasmagoria of fleeting, unsubstantial visions and he has generally the conviction that this can be done by knowledge, for since the whole Sa?sara is illusion, it collapses and ceases so soon as the soul knows its own real nature and its independence of phenomena.
This conviction that the soul in itself is capable of happiness and in order to enjoy needs only the courage to know itself and be itself goes far to correct the apathy which is the great danger of Indian thought.
It is also just to point out that from the Upanishads down to the writings of Rabindranath Tagore in the present day Indian literature from time to time enunciates the idea that the whole universe is the manifestation of some exuberant force giving expression to itself in joyous movement. Thus the Taittiriya Upanishad (III. 6) says: "Bliss is Brahman, for from bliss all these beings are born, by bliss when born they live, into bliss they enter at their death."
It is remarkable that Indian thought, restless and speculative as it is, hardly ever concerns itself with the design, object or end of the world.
The notion of [Greek: Telos] plays little part in its cosmogony or ethics[135]. The Universe is often regarded as a sport, a pa.s.sing whim of the divine Being, almost a mistake. Those legends which describe it as the outcome of a creative act, generally represent the creator as moved by some impulse to multiply himself rather than as executing some deliberate if mysterious plan. Legends about the end of the world and the establishment of a better order are rare. Hindu chronology revels in periods, whose enormous length though expressed in figures leaves no real impression on the mind, days and nights of Brahma, Kalpas, Manvantaras and Yugas, in which G.o.ds and worlds are absorbed into the supreme essence and born again. But there is no finality about these catastrophes: the destruction of the whole universe is as certain as the death of a mouse and to the philosopher not more important[136].
Everything is periodic: Buddhas, Jinas and incarnations of all sorts are all members of a series. They all deserve great respect and are of great importance in their own day, but they are none of them final, still less are they able to create a new heaven and earth or to rise above the perpetual flux of Sa?sara. The Buddhists look forward to the advent of Maitreya, the future Buddha, and the Hindus to the reappearance of Vishnu as Kalki, who, sword in hand and mounted on a white horse, will purge India of barbarians, but these future apparitions excite only a feeble interest in the popular conscience and cannot be compared in intensity with such ideas as the Jewish Messiah.
It may seem that Indian religion is dreamy, hopeless, and unpractical, but another point of view will show that all Indian systems are intensely practical and hopeful. They promise happiness and point out the way. A mode of life is always prescribed, not merely by works on law and ceremony but by theological and metaphysical treatises. These are not a.n.a.logous to the writings of Kant or Schopenhauer and to study them as if they were, is like trying to learn riding or cricket by reading handbooks. The aphorisms of the Sankhya and Vednata are meant to be read under the direction of a teacher who will see that the pupil"s mind is duly prepared not only by explanation but by abstinence and other physical training. Hindu religions are unpractical only in so far that they decline to subordinate themselves to human life. It is a.s.sumed that the religious man who is striving towards a goal beyond this world is ready to sacrifice the world without regret and in India the a.s.sumption is justified surprisingly often.
As mentioned already the word G.o.d has more than one meaning. In India we have at least two different cla.s.ses of divinities, distinguished in the native languages. First there is Brahman the one self-existent, omnipresent, superpersonal spirit from whom all things emanate and to whom all things return. The elaboration of this conception is the most original feature of Indian theology, which tends to regard Brahman as not merely immanent in all things, but as being all things, so that the soul liberated from illusion can see that it is one with him and that nothing else exists. Very different is the meaning of Deva: this signifies a G.o.d (which is not the same as G.o.d, though our language insufficiently distinguishes the two) roughly comparable with the G.o.ds of cla.s.sical mythology[137]. How little sense of divinity it carries with it is seen by the fact that it became the common form of address to kings and simply equivalent to Your Majesty. In later times, though Siva is styled Mahadeva, it was felt that the great sectarian G.o.ds, who are for their respective worshippers the personal manifestations in which Brahman makes himself intelligible, required some name distinguishing them from the hosts of minor deities. They are commonly spoken of by some t.i.tle signifying the Lord: thus Siva is isvara, Vishnu and his incarnations are more often styled Bhagavad.
From the Vedic hymns onwards the G.o.ds of India have been polymorphic figures not restricted by the limitations of human personality. If a Jew or a Moslim hears new views about G.o.d, he is disposed to condemn them as wrong. The Hindu"s inclination is to appropriate them and ascribe to his own deity the novel attributes, whether they are consistent with the existing figure or not. All Indian G.o.ds are really everything. As the thought of the worshipper wanders among them they turn into one another.
Even so st.u.r.dy a personality as Indra is declared to be the same as Agni and as Varuna, and probably every deity in the Vedic pantheon is at some time identified with another deity. But though in one way the G.o.ds seem vague and impersonal, in another the distinction between G.o.ds and men is slight. The Brahma?as tell us that the G.o.ds were originally mortal and obtained immortality by offering sacrifices: the man who sacrifices like them makes for himself an immortal body in the abode of the G.o.ds and practically becomes a Deva and the bliss of great sages is declared equal to the bliss of the G.o.ds[138]. The human and divine worlds are not really distinct, and as in China and j.a.pan, distinguished men are deified. The deification of Buddha takes place before our eyes as we follow the course of history: the origin of Krishna"s G.o.dhead is more obscure but it is probable that he was a deified local hero. After the period of the Brahma?as the theory that deities manifest themselves to the world in avataras or descents, that is in our idiom incarnations, becomes part of popular theology.
There are other general characteristics of Indian religion which will be best made clear by more detailed treatment in succeeding chapters. Such are, firstly, a special theory of sacrifice or ritual which, though totally rejected by Buddhism, has survived to modern times. Secondly, a belief in the efficacy of self-mortification as a means of obtaining super-human powers or final salvation. Thirdly, an even more deeply rooted conviction that salvation can be obtained by knowledge. Fourthly, there is the doctrine that faith or devotion to a particular deity is the best way to salvation, but this teaching, though it seems natural to our minds, does not make its appearance in India until relatively late.
It is not so peculiarly Indian as the other ideas mentioned, but even at the outset it is well to insist on its prevalence during the last two thousand years because a very false impression may be produced by ignoring it.
There also runs through Indian religion a persistent though inconspicuous current of non-theistic thought. It does not deny the existence of spirits but it treats them as being, like men, subject to natural laws, though able, like men, to influence events. The ultimate truth for it is not pantheism but fixed natural laws of which no explanation is offered. The religion of the Jains and the Sankhya philosophy belong to this current. So did the teaching of several ancient sects, such as the ajivkas, and strictly speaking Buddhism itself. For the Buddha is not an Avatara or a messenger but a superman whose exceptional intelligence sees that the Wheel of Causation and the Four Truths are part of the very nature of things. It is strange too that asceticism, sacrifices and modern tantric rites which seem to us concerned with the relations between man and G.o.d are in India penetrated by a non-theistic theory, namely that there are certain laws which can be studied and applied, much like electricity, and that then spirits can be coerced to grant what the ascetic or sacrificer desires. At the same time such views are more often implied than formulated. The Dharma is spoken of as the teaching of the Buddha rather than as Cosmic Order like the Tao of the Chinese and though tantric theory a.s.sumes the existence of certain forces which can be used scientifically, the general impression produced by tantric works is that they expound an intricate mythology and ritual.
CHAPTER IV
VEDIC DEITIES AND SACRIFICES
1
Our knowledge of early Indian religion is derived almost entirely from literature. After the rise of Buddhism this is supplemented to some extent by buildings, statues and inscriptions, but unlike Egypt and Babylonia, pre-Buddhist India has yielded no temples, images or other religious antiquities, nor is it probable that such will be discovered.
Certainly the material for study is not scanty. The theological literature of India is enormous: the difficulty is to grasp it and select what is important. The enquirer is confronted with a series of encyclopaedic works of great bulk and considerable antiquity, treating of every aspect of religion which interested the Brahmans. But he continually feels the want of independent testimony to check their statements. They set forth the views of their authors but whether those views met with general acceptance outside the Brahmanic caste and influenced Indian life as a whole or whether cla.s.ses, such as the military caste, or regions, such as western India and Dravidian India, had different views, it is often hard to say. Even more serious is the difficulty of chronology which affects secular as well as religious literature. The feats of Hindus in the matter of computing time show in the most extravagant form the peculiarities of their mental temperament, for while in their cosmogonies aeons whose length the mind can hardly grasp are tabulated with the names of their superhuman rulers there are few[139] dates in the pre-Mohammedan history which can be determined from purely Indian sources. The fragments of obscure Greek writers and the notes of a travelling Chinaman furnish more trustworthy data about important epochs in the history of the Hindus than the whole of their gigantic literature, in which there has been found no mention of Alexander"s invasion and only scattered allusions to the conquests of the Sakas, Kushans and Hunas. We can hardly imagine doubt as to the century in which Shakespeare or Virgil lived, yet when I first studied Sanskrit the greatest of Indian dramatists, Kalidasa, was supposed to have lived about 50 B.C. His date is not yet fixed with unanimity but it is now generally placed in the fifth or sixth century A.D.
This chronological chaos naturally affects the value of literature as a record of the development of thought. We are in danger of moving in a vicious circle: of a.s.signing ideas to an epoch because they occur in a certain book, while at the same time we fix the date of the book in virtue of the ideas which it contains. Still we may feel some security as to the sequence, if not the exact dates, of the great divisions in Indian religious literature such as the period of the Vedic hymns, the period of the Brahma?as, the rise of Buddhism, the composition of the two great epics, and the Puranas. If we follow the opinion of most authorities and accept the picture of Indian life and thought contained in the Pali Tripitaka as in the main historical, it seems to follow that both the ritual system of the Brahma?as and the philosophic speculations of the Upanishads were in existence by 500 B.C.[140] and sufficiently developed to impress the public mind with a sense of their futility.
Some interval of mental growth seems to separate the Upanishads from the Brahma?as and a more decided interval separates the Brahma?as from the earlier hymns of the Rig Veda, if not from the compilation of the whole collection[141]. We may hence say that the older Upanishads and Brahma?as must have been composed between 800 and 500 B.C. and the hymns of the Rig Veda hardly later than 1000 B.C. Many authorities think the earlier hymns must date from 2000 rather than 1000 B.C. but the resemblance of the Rig Veda to the Zoroastrian Gathas (which are generally regarded as considerably later than 1000 B.C.) is plain, and it will be strange if the two collections prove to be separated by an interval of many centuries. But the stage of social and religious culture indicated in the Vedic hymns may have begun long before they were composed, and rites and deities common to Indians and Iranians existed before the reforms of Zoroaster[142].
It may seem that everything is uncertain in this literature without dates or authors and that the growth of religion in India cannot be scientifically studied. The difficulties are indeed considerable but they are materially reduced by the veneration in which the ancient scriptures were held, and by the retentiveness of memory and devotion to grammar, if not to history, which have characterized the Brahmans for at least twenty-five centuries. The authenticity of certain Vedic texts is guaranteed not only by the quotations found in later works, but by treatises on phonetics, grammar and versification as well as by indices which give the number of words in every book, chapter and verse. We may be sure that we possess not perhaps the exact words of the Vedic poets, but what were believed about 600 B.C. to be their exact words, and there is no reason to doubt that this is a substantially correct version of the hymns as recited several centuries earlier[143].
In drawing any deductions from the hymns of the Rig Veda it must be remembered that it is the manual of the Hotri priests[144]. This does not affect the age or character of the single pieces: they may have been composed at very different dates and they are not arranged in the order in which the priest recites them. But the liturgical character of the compilation does somewhat qualify its t.i.tle to give a complete picture of religion. One could not throw doubt on a ceremony of the Church, still less on a popular custom, because it was not mentioned in the missal, and we cannot a.s.sume that ideas or usages not mentioned in the Rig Veda did not exist at the time when it was composed.
We have no other Sanskrit writings contemporary with the older parts of the Rig Veda, but the roots of epic poetry stretch far back and ballads may be as old as hymns, though they neither sought nor obtained the official sanction of the priesthood. Side by side with Vedic tradition, unrecorded Epic tradition built up the figures of Siva, Rama and Krishna which astonish us by their sudden appearance in later literature only because their earlier phases have not been preserved.
The Vedic hymns were probably collected and arranged between 1000 and 500 B.C. At that period rites and ceremonies multiplied and absorbed man"s mind to a degree unparalleled in the history of the world and literature occupied itself with the description or discussion of this dreary ceremonial. Buddhism was a protest against the necessity of sacrifices and, though Buddhism decayed in India, the sacrificial system never recovered from the attack and a.s.sumed comparatively modest proportions. But in an earlier period, after the composition of the Vedic hymns and before the predominance of speculation, skill in ceremonial was regarded as the highest and indeed only science and the ancient prayers and poems of the race were arranged in three collections to suit the ritual. These were the Rig Veda, containing metrical prayers: the Yajur Veda (in an old and new recension known as the Black and the White) containing formulae mainly in prose to be muttered during the course of the sacrifice: and the Sama Veda, a book of chants, consisting almost entirely of verses taken from the Rig Veda and arranged for singing. The Rig Veda is clearly older than the others: its elements are anterior to the Brahmanic liturgy and are arranged in less complete subservience to it than in the Yajur and Sama Vedas.
The restriction of the words Veda and Vedic to the collection of hymns, though convenient, is not in accordance with Indian usage, which applies the name to a much larger body of religious literature. What we call the Rig Veda is strictly speaking the mantras of the Rig Veda or the Rig-Veda-Sa?hita: besides this, there are the Brahma?as or ceremonial treatises, the ara?yakas and Upanishads containing philosophy and speculation, the Sutras or aphoristic rules, all comprised in the Veda or Sruti (hearing), that is the revelation heard directly by saints as opposed to Sm?iti (remembering) or tradition starting from human teachers. Modern Hindus when not influenced by the language of European scholars apply the word Veda especially to the Upanishads.
For some time only three[145] Vedas were accepted. But the Epics and the Puranas know of the fourfold Veda and place the Atharva Veda on a level with the other three. It was the manual of two ancient priestly families, the Atharvans and Angirasas, whose speciality was charms and prophylactics rather than the performance of the regular sacrifices. The hymns and magic songs which it contains were probably collected subsequently to the composition of the Brahma?as, but the separate poems are older and, so far as can be judged from their language, are intermediate between the Rig Veda and the Brahma?as. But the substance of many of the spells must be older still, since the incantations prescribed show a remarkable similarity to old German, Russian and Lettish charms. The Atharva also contains speculative poems and, if it has not the freshness of the Rig Veda, is most valuable for the history of Indian thought and civilization.
I will not here enquire what was the original home of the Aryans or whether the resemblances shown by Aryan languages justify us in believing that the ancestors of the Hindus, Greeks, Kelts, Slavs, etc., belonged to a single race and physical type. The grounds for such a belief seem to me doubtful. But a comparison of language, religion and customs makes it probable that the ancestors of the Iranians and Hindus dwelt together in some region lying to the north of India and then, in descending southwards, parted company and wandered, one band westwards to Persia and the other to the Panjab and south-east[146]. These latter produced the poets of the Rig Veda. Their home is indicated by their acquaintance with the Himalayas, the Kabul river, the Indus and rivers of the Panjab, and the Jamna. The Ganges, though known, apparently lay beyond their sphere, but the geography of the Atharva extends as far as Benares and implies a practical knowledge of the sea, which is spoken of somewhat vaguely in the Rig Veda. It is probable that the oldest hymns were composed among the rivers of the Panjab, but the majority somewhat further to the east, in the district of Kurukshetra or Thanesar. At some period subsequent to the Aryan immigration there was a great struggle between two branches of the same stock, related in a legendary form as the contest between the Kauravas and Pa??avas. Some have thought that we have here an indication of a second invasion composed of Aryans who remained in the mountainous districts north of the Hindu Kush when the first detachment moved south and who developed there somewhat different customs. It is also possible that the Atharva Veda may represent the religious ideas of these second invaders. In several pa.s.sages the Mahabharata speaks of the Atharva as the highest Veda and represents the Pa??avas as practising polyandry, a custom which still prevails among many Himalayan tribes.
The Rig Veda depicts a life not far advanced in material arts but, considering the date, humane and civilized. There were no towns but merely villages and fortified enclosures to be used as refuges in case of necessity. The general tone of the hymns is kindly and healthy; many of them indeed have more robust piety than interest. There are few indications of barbarous customs. The general impression is of a free and joyous life in which the princ.i.p.al actors are chiefs and priests, though neither have become tyrannical.