A Comparative View of Religions Part 1

A Comparative View of Religions.

by Johannes Henricus Scholten.

INTRODUCTION.

The conception of religion presupposes, _a_, G.o.d as object; _b_, man as subject; _c_, the mutual relation existing between them. According to the various stages of development which men have reached, religious belief manifests itself either in the form of a pa.s.sive feeling of dependence, where the subject, not yet conscious of his independence, feels himself wholly overmastered by the deity, or the object of worship, as by a power outside of and opposed to himself; or, when the feeling of independence has awakened, in a one-sided elevation of the human, whereby man in worshiping a deity deifies himself. In the highest stage of religious development, the most entire feeling of dependence is united in religion with the strongest consciousness of personal independence. The first of these forms is exhibited in the fetich and nature-worship of the ancient nations; the second in Buddhism, and in the deification of the human, which reaches its full height among the Greeks. The true religion, prepared in Israel, is the Christian, in which man, grown conscious of his oneness with G.o.d, is ruled by the divine as an inner power of life, and acts spontaneously and freely while in the fullest dependence upon G.o.d. Since Christ, no more perfect religion has appeared. What is true and good in Islamism was borrowed from Israel and Christianity.

Although it is probable that every nation pa.s.sed through different forms of religious belief before its religion reached its highest development, yet the earlier periods lie in great part beyond the reach of historical investigation. The history of religion, therefore, has for its task the review of the various forms of religion with which we are historically acquainted, in the order of psychological development.

CHAPTER I.

FETICHISM. THE CHINESE. THE EGYPTIANS.

1. FETICHISM.

The lowest stage of religious development is fetichism, as it is found among the savage tribes of the polar regions, and in Africa, America, and Australia. In this stage, man's needs are as yet very limited and exclusively confined to the material world. Still too little developed intellectually to worship the divine in nature and her powers, he thinks he sees the divinity which he seeks in every unknown object which strikes his senses, or which his imagination calls up. In this stage, religion has no higher character than that of caprice and of love of the mysterious and marvelous, mixed with fear and a slavish adoration of the divine. The worship and the priest's office (Shaman, Shamanism) consist here chiefly in the use of charms, to exorcise a dreaded power.

From this savage fetichism the nature-worship found among the Aztecs in Mexico, and the worship of the sun in Peru, are distinguished by the greater definiteness and order of their religious conceptions and usages. In them the G.o.ds have names, and an ordained priesthood cares for the religious interests of the people. The highest form to which fetichism has attained is the worship of Manitou, the great spirit, which is found among the ancient tribes of North America.

2. THE CHINESE.

When man reaches a higher development, caprice and chance disappear from religion. Having outgrown fetichism, man begins, as is the case among the Chinese, to distinguish in the world around him an active and a pa.s.sive principle, force and matter (Yang and Yn), heaven and earth (Kien and Kouen). We have here nature-worship in its beginnings. In this stage, even less than in fetichism, is there a definite idea of G.o.d, much less a conception of him as personal and spiritual lord. The Chinese, from the practical, empirical point of view peculiar to him, recognizes the spiritual only in man and chiefly in the state. His religion, therefore, is confined exclusively to the faithful keeping of the laws of the state (the Celestial Kingdom), in which he sees the reflection of heaven, to the recognition of the Emperor as the son and representative of heaven, and to the worship of the forefathers, especially of the great men and departed emperors, to whose memory the Chinese temples, or paG.o.das, are dedicated. The origin of this religion dates, according to the tradition, from Fo-hi (2950 B.C.), the founder of the Chinese state. In the fifth century before Christ, Kong-tse, or Kong-fu-tse (Confucius), appeared as a reformer of the religion of his countrymen, and gathered the ancient records and traditions of his people into a sacred literature, which is known by the name of the "King" (the books), "Yo-King" (the book of nature), "Chu-King" (the book of history), "Chi-King" (the book of songs). The contents of the "King"

became later with the Chinese sages Meng-tse (360 B.C.) and Tschu-tsche (1200 A.D.) an object of philosophical speculation. The doctrine of Lao-tse, the younger contemporary of Kong-tse, which lays down as the basis of the world, that is of the unreal or non-existent, a supreme principle, _Tao_, or _Being_, corresponds with the Brahma doctrine of the Indians, among whom he lived for a long time; but this doctrine never became popular in China.

3. THE EGYPTIANS.

The worship of nature, which is seen in its beginnings among the Chinese, exhibits itself among the Egyptians in a more developed form as theogony. Here also the reflecting mind rose to the recognition of two fundamental principles, the producing and the pa.s.sive power of nature, Kneph and Neith, from which sprang successively the remaining powers of nature, time, air, earth, light and darkness, personified by the fantasy of the people into as many divinities. The Egyptian mythology also (none has as yet been discovered among the Chinese) exhibits a like character.

Fruitfulness and drought, the results of the Nile's overflowing and receding, are imaged in the myth of _Osiris_, _Isis_, and _Typhon_. The visible form under which the divine was worshiped in Egypt was the sacred animal, the bull _Apis_, dedicated to _Osiris_, the cow, dedicated to _Isis_, as symbols of agriculture; the bird _Ibis_, the crocodile, the dog _Anubis_, and other animals, whose physical characteristics impressed the as yet childish man, who saw in them the symbol, either of the beneficent power of nature which moved him to thankfulness, or of a destructive power which he dreaded and whose anger he sought to avert. The religion of Egypt was not of a purely spiritual character. To the man whose eye is not yet open to the manifestation of the spiritual around him and in him, the divine is not spirit, but as yet only nature. The animal, although in the form of the sphinx approaching the human, holds in Egyptian art a place above the human as symbol of the divine.

CHAPTER II.

THE ARIAN NATIONS.

1. THE EAST ARIANS. THE INDIANS.

In the development of religion among the Indians, the following periods may be distinguished:--

_a._ The original Veda-religion.

_b._ The priestly religion of the Brahmins.

_c._ The philosophical speculation.

_d._ Buddhism.

_e._ The modified Brahminism after Buddha, in connection with the worship of Vishnu and Siva.

_a. The original Veda-religion._

The original religion of Arya originated in Bactria. From thence, before the time of Zoroaster, it was brought over, with the great migration of the people, to the land of the seven rivers, which they conquered, and which stretched from the Indus to the Hesidrus. It consisted, according to the oldest literature of the Veda, in a polytheistical worship of the divine, either as the beneficent or the baneful power of nature. The clear, blue sky, the light of the sun, the rosy dawn, the storm that spends itself in fruitful rain, the winds and gales which drive away the clouds, the rivers whose fruitful slime overspreads the fields,--these moved the inhabitants of India to the worship of the divine as the beneficent power of nature which blesses man. On the other hand, he changed under the impression of the harmful phenomena of nature, the dark and close-packed clouds which hold back the rain and intercept the sunshine, the parching heat of summer, which dries up the rivers and hinders growth and fruitfulness, and these also he erected into objects of awe and religious adoration. From this view of nature sprang the Indian mythology. The oldest divinity (Deva) of the Indians is Varuna, the all-embracing heaven, who marks out their courses for the heavenly luminaries, who rules the day and the night, who is lord of life and death, whose protection is invoked, whose anger deprecated. After him, the great ruler of nature, there appear, in the Veda hymns, Indra, the blue sky, G.o.d of light and thunder, the warrior who in battle stands beside the combatants; Vayu, the G.o.d of the wind, the chief of the Maruts, or the winds; Rudra, the G.o.d of the hurricane; Vritra, the hostile G.o.d of the clouds; Ahi, the parching heat of summer. In the mythology of the people, Indra, G.o.d of light, aided by Vayu and Rudra, wages war with Vritra,--who, as G.o.d of the clouds, holds back the rain and the light,--and appears as opponent of the destructive Ahi. The other divinities also which appear in the Vedas are personified powers of nature,--the twin brothers Aswins (equites), or the first rays of the sun, Ushas the maiden, or the rosy dawn, Surya, Savitri, the G.o.d of the sun. Great significance is given in the Indian mythology to Agni, the G.o.d of fire, who burns the sacrifice in honor of the G.o.ds, who conveys the offerings and prayers of men to G.o.ds and their gifts to men, who gladdens the domestic hearth, lights up the darkness of night, drives away the evil spirits, the Ashuras and Rakshas, and purges of evil the souls of men. Religion, still wholly patriarchal in form, and free from hierarchical constraint and from the later dogmatic narrowness, bore in this earlier stage of its development the character of the still free and warlike life of a nomadic people living in the midst of a sublime nature, where everything, the clear sky, sunshine, and boisterous storm, mountains and rivers, disposed to worship. As yet the Indian knew no close priestly caste. Worship consisted in prayers and offerings, especially in the Soma-offering, which was offered as food to the G.o.ds.

No fear of future torment after death as yet embittered the enjoyment of life and made dying fearful. Yama was the friendly guide of the souls of heroes to the heaven of Indra or Varuna, and not yet the inexorable prince of h.e.l.l who tormented the souls of the unG.o.dly in the kingdom of the dead. Of later barbarous usages also, such as the widow's sacrificing herself on the funeral pile of her departed husband, there was as yet no trace; and in the heroic poetry, as yet not disfigured by later Brahminical alterations and additions, the heroes Krishna and Rama appear as types of courage and self-sacrifice, and not, as later, as avatars, or human incarnations, of the deity.

_b. Brahminism._

When the nomadic and warlike life of the nations of India in the land of the seven rivers, in connection with their removal to the conquered land of the Ganges (1300 B.C.), gave place to a more ordered social const.i.tution, a priestly cla.s.s formed itself, which began to represent the people before the deity, and from its chief function, _Brahma_, or prayer, took the name of _Brahmins_, i.e., the praying. This Brahma, before whose power even the G.o.ds must yield, was gradually exalted by the Brahmins to the highest deity, to whom, under the name of Brahma, the old Veda divinities were subordinated. Brahma is no G.o.d of the people, but a G.o.d of the priests; not the lord of nature, but the abstract and impersonal _Being_, out of whom nature and her phenomena emanate. From Brahma the priest derives his authority; and the system of caste, by which the priesthood is raised to the first rank, its origin.

The worship of Brahma consists in doing penance and in abstinence. Yama, once a celestial divinity, now becomes the G.o.d of the lower world, where he who disobeys Brahma is tormented after death. Immortality consists in returning to Brahma; but is the portion only of the perfectly G.o.dly Brahmin, while the rest of mankind can rise to this perfect state only after many painful new births. The Brahmin, in the exclusive possession of religious knowledge, reads and expounds the Vedas (knowledge), exalted to infallible scripture, and on them constructs his doctrine.

Thus the once vigorous, natural life of the Indians gave place to a conception of the world which repressed the soul, and annihilated man's personality. The many-sidedness of the earlier theology resolved itself into the abstract unity of an impersonal All, and thus the glory of nature pa.s.sed by unmarked, as nought or non-existent, and lost its charm. At the same time, the old heroic sagas were displaced by legends of saints, and the heroic spirit of the olden epic by an asceticism which repressed the human, and before whose power even the G.o.ds stood in awe. With Brahminism the religion lost its original and natural character, and became characterized by a slavish submission to a priesthood, which abrogated the truly human.

_c. The Speculative Systems._

The doctrine of the Brahmins occasioned the rise of various theological and philosophical systems. To these belong, first, the "Vedanta," (end of the Veda) or the dogmatic-apologetic exposition of the Veda. This contains (1) the establishment of the authority of the Veda as holy scripture revealed by Brahma, and also of the relation in which it stands to tradition; (2) the proof that everything in the Veda has reference to Brahma; (3) the ascetic system, or the discipline. To explain contradictory statements in the older and later parts of the Veda, Brahminical learning makes use of the subtleties of an harmonistical method of interpretation. Second, the "Mimansa" (inquiry), devoted to the solution of the problem, How can the material world spring from Brahma, or the immaterial? According to this system, there is only one Supreme Being, Paramatma, a name by which Brahma himself had been already distinguished in Manu's book of law. Outside of this highest _Being_, there is nothing real. The world of sense, or nature, (Maya, the female side of Brahma), is mere seeming and illusion of the senses. The human spirit is a part of Brahma, but perverted, misled by this same illusion to the conceit that he is individual. This illusion is done away with by a deeper insight, by means of which the dualism vanishes from the wise man's view, and the conceit gives place to the true knowledge that Brahma alone really exists, that nature, on the contrary, is nought, and the human spirit nothing else than Brahma himself. Third, the "Sankya" (criticism) originating with Kapila, in which, in opposition to the "Mimansa," the individual being and the real existence of nature, in opposition to spirit, is laid down as the starting-point, and the result reached is the doctrine of two original forces, spirit and nature, from whose reciprocal action and reaction upon each other the union of soul and body is to be explained. Is this union unnatural, then the effort of the wise man should be to free himself, through the perception that the soul is not bound to the body, from the dominion of matter. In this system, there is no room for an infinite being, for, if a material world exist, then must G.o.d be limited by its existence, and therefore cease to be infinite, that is G.o.d. The Sankya philosophy here came in conflict with the orthodox doctrine of the Brahmins, and prepared the way for Buddhism.

_d. Buddhism._

Against Brahminism Buddhism arose as a reaction. Siddharta, son of Suddhodana, the King of Kapilavastu, of the family of the Sakya, (about 450 B.C.) moved by the misery of his fellow-countrymen, determined to examine into the causes of it, and, if possible, to find means of remedying it. Initiated into the wisdom of the Brahmins, but not satisfied with that, after years of solitary retirement and quiet meditation, penetrated with the principles of the Sankya, he traversed the land as pilgrim (Sakya-muni, Sramana, Gautama) and opened to the people of India a new religious epoch. The tendency of the new doctrine was to break up the system of caste, and free the people from the galling yoke of the Brahminical hierarchy and dogmas. While in Brahminism man was deprived of his individuality, and regarded only as an effluence from Brahma, and tormented by the fear of h.e.l.l, and by the thought of a ceaseless process of countless new births awaiting him after death, whence the necessity of the most painful penances and chastis.e.m.e.nts, Sakya-muni began with man as an individual, and in morals put purity, abstinence, patience, brotherly love, and repentance for sins committed above sacrifice and bodily mortification, and opened to his followers the prospect, after this weary life, no more to be exposed to the ever-recurring pains of new birth, but released from all suffering to return to Nirvana, or nothingness. While Brahminism drew a distinction between man and man, and with hierarchical pride took no thought of the Sudra or lower cla.s.s of the people, and limited wisdom to the priestly caste, Sakya-muni preached the equality of all men, came forward as a preacher to the people, used the people's language, and chose his followers out of all cla.s.ses, even from among women. Both of these opposed systems are one-sided. In Brahminism, G.o.d is all, and man, as personal being, nothing; in Buddhism, man is recognized as an individual, but apart from G.o.d, while in both systems, the highest endeavor is to be delivered from, according to Brahminism a seeming, according to Sakya-muni a really existing individuality, the source of all human woe, and to lose one's self either in Brahma or in the Nirvana.

Less on account of his doctrine, in which there is found neither a G.o.d nor a personal immortality, than on account of the universal character of his words and of his life, Sakya-muni continued in honor after his death, as the benefactor of the people and as the Buddha, the wise, pre-eminently; and afterwards was deified, and took his place in the ranks of the recognized G.o.ds as their superior. Thus there arose in Buddhism, by a departure from the doctrine of the master, a new polytheism. This was afterwards, through the influence of the Brahminical priestly caste, suppressed in India, but spread over other parts of Asia, to the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and also to China.

_e. Later modification of Brahminism in connection with the worship of Siva and Vishnu._

While Brahminism saw itself menaced by the steadily increasing influence of Buddhism, the former nature-religion, dispossessed by the Brahmins, a.s.serted its rights in the worship of Siva in the valleys of the Himalaya Mountains, and in that of Vishnu on the banks of the Ganges.

Siva is the Rudra of the Veda, the boisterous G.o.d of storms, the giver of rain and growth. Vishnu is the same divinity among other races, conceived under the influence of a softer climate in a modified form as the blue sky. Both divinities, originally belonging to different parts of India, were afterwards taken, first Vishnu, and then also Siva, into the theological system of the Brahmins, and formed with Brahma, but not until the fourth century after Christ, the trimurti, according to which the one supreme being Parabrama is worshiped in the threefold form of Brahma the creating, Vishnu the sustaining, and Siva the destroying power of nature. To this later period of Brahminism belongs also the alteration of the old epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, by which the heroes Rama and Krishna are represented as avatars, that is incarnations or human impersonations, of Vishnu. In this also there is evidently an effort to bring the deity, conceived as the abstract One, into closer union with man, an effort which is likewise visible in the later Yoga system of the Brahmins, in which, by the admission of Buddhistic elements, the visible world is recognized as real, the old rigid asceticism mitigated, Vishnu represented as the soul of the world, and immortality taught as a return of the individual soul to Brahma.

2. THE WEST ARIANS, IRANIANS.

[THE BACTRIANS, MEDES, PERSIANS.]

The ancient religion of the Bactrians in the period before Zoroaster was patriarchal, and consisted in the worship of fire, as the beneficent power of nature, and of Mithras, the G.o.d of the sun, combined with that of the good spirits (Ahuras), among which were Geus-Urva (the spirit of the earth), Cpento-mainyus (the white spirit), Armaiti (the earth, or also the spirit of piety), and of the hero-spirits Sraosha, Traetona, which as light and darkness are distinguished from Angro (the black spirit).

Later, as it seems, the theology and worship of the neighboring nomadic Arya penetrated to these nations, and caused a religious conflict which ended with the migration of Arya to the south. At this period Zarathustra[2] (Zoroaster) came forward under the Bactrian priest and King Kava Vistaspa, as defender and reformer of the religion of the fathers against the encroachments of a strange doctrine. The Devas (Zend, Dews) or the G.o.ds of the Indian Veda appear with Zarathustra as evil spirits. Not Indra, but the hero Traetona, wages war with Ahi (Zend, Azhi), while the kavis, or priests, are attacked by him as deceivers and liars. From the belief in good spirits (Ahuras, i.e., the living, and Mazdas, i.e., the wise), the ancient genii of the country, Zarathustra developed the belief of one highest G.o.d, Ahura-Mazda (Ormuzd, Greek, [Greek: Osompzes]), a doctrine which he received by divine inspiration through the mediation of the spirit Srasha. Ahura-Mazda, surrounded by the Amesha-Spenta (Amshaspands), or the holy immortals, not until later reduced to seven, is the creator of light and life. The hurtful and evil, on the contrary, is non-existence (akem), and in the oldest parts of the Avesta, the Gathas, which go back to Zarathustra and his first followers, is not yet conceived as a personal being. First in the Vendidad, written after Zarathustra, does Angro-mainyus (Ahriman), or the evil one, with his Dews, although subordinated to Ahura-Mazda, gain a place in the Iranian conception of the universe, as the adversary of Ahura-Mazda, and as the cause of evil in the natural and spiritual world. From these conceptions there was developed in the later Parsism the system of the four periods of the world, each of three thousand years, in the book "Bundehesh." In the first period, Ahura-Mazda appears as creator of the world and as the source of good. The creation, completed by Ahura-Mazda in six days by means of the word (Honover), is in the second period destroyed by Angro-mainyus, who, appearing upon the earth in the form of a serpent, seduces the first human pair, created by Ahura-Mazda. In the third period, which begins with the revelation given to Zarathustra, Ahura-mazda and Angro-mainyus strive together for man. After this follows, in the fourth period, the victory gained by Ahura-Mazda.

Sosiosh (Saoshyas), the deliverer already foretold in the Vendidad, appears. The resurrection of the dead, not taught by Zarathustra or in the Vendidad, takes place. The judgment of the world begins; the good are received into paradise and the sinners banished to h.e.l.l. At last, all is purified, and Angro-mainyus himself and his Dews submit themselves to Ahura-Mazda, whose victory is celebrated in heaven with songs of praise.