India: What can it teach us? Part 23

Philosophy in India is, what it ought to be, not the denial, but the fulfilment of religion; it is the highest religion, and the oldest name of the oldest system of philosophy in India is V e d a n t a, that is, the end, the goal, the highest object of the Veda.

Let us return once more to that ancient theologian who lived in the fifth century B.C., and who told us that, even before his time, all the G.o.ds had been discovered to be but three G.o.ds, the G.o.ds of the _Earth_, the G.o.ds of the _Air_, and the G.o.ds of the _Sky_, invoked under various names. The same writer tells us that in reality there is but _one_ G.o.d, but he does not call him the Lord, or the Highest G.o.d, the Creator, Ruler, and Preserver of all things, but he calls him a t m a n, THE SELF. The one atman or Self, he says, is praised in many ways owing to the greatness of the G.o.dhead. And then he goes on to say: "The other G.o.ds are but so many members of the one atman, Self, and thus it has been said that the poets compose their praises according to the multiplicity of the natures of the beings whom they praise."

It is true, no doubt, that this is the language of a philosophical theologian, not of an ancient poet. Yet these philosophical reflections belong to the fifth century before our era, if not to an earlier date; and the first germs of such thoughts may be discovered in some of the Vedic hymns also. I have quoted already from the hymns such pa.s.sages as[338]--"They speak of Mitra, Varu_n_a, Agni; then he is the heavenly bird Garutmat; _that which is and is one_ the poets call in various ways; they speak of Yama, Agni, Matari_s_van."

In another hymn, in which the sun is likened to a bird, we read: "Wise poets represent by their words the bird who is one, in many ways."[339]

All this is still tinged with mythology; but there are other pa.s.sages from which a purer light beams upon us, as when one poet asks:[340]

"Who saw him when he was first born, when he who has no bones bore him who has bones? Where was the breath, the blood, the Self of the world? Who went to ask this from any that knew it?"

Here, too, the expression is still helpless, but though the flesh is weak, the spirit is very willing. The expression, "He who has bones"

is meant for that which has a.s.sumed consistency and form, the Visible, as opposed to that which has no bones, no body, no form, the Invisible, while "breath, blood, and self of the world" are but so many attempts at finding names and concepts for what is by necessity inconceivable, and therefore unnamable.

In the second period of Vedic literature, in the so-called Brahma_n_as, and more particularly in what is called the Upanishads, or the Vedanta portion, these thoughts advance to perfect clearness and definiteness. Here the development of religious thought, which took its beginning in the hymns, attains to its fulfilment. The circle becomes complete. Instead of comprehending the One by many names, the many names are now comprehended to be the One. The old names are openly discarded; even such t.i.tles as Pra_g_apati, lord of creatures, Vi_s_vakarman, maker of all things, Dhat_ri_, creator, are put aside as inadequate. The name now used is an expression of nothing but the purest and highest subjectiveness--it is a t m a n, the Self, far more abstract than our E g o--the Self of all things, the Self of all the old mythological G.o.ds--for they were not _mere_ names, but names intended for something--lastly, the Self in which each individual self must find rest, must come to himself, must find his own true Self.

You may remember that I spoke to you in my first lecture of a boy who insisted on being sacrificed by his father, and who, when he came to Yama, the ruler of the departed, was granted three boons, and who then requested, as his third boon, that Yama should tell him what became of man after death. That dialogue forms part of one of the Upanishads, it belongs to the Vedanta, the end of the Veda, the highest aim of the Veda. I shall read you a few extracts from it.

Yama, the King of the Departed, says:

"Men who are fools, dwelling in ignorance, though wise in their own sight, and puffed up with vain knowledge, go round and round, staggering to and fro, like blind led by the blind.

"The future never rises before the eyes of the careless child, deluded by the delusions of wealth. _This_ is the world, he thinks; there is no other; thus he falls again and again under my sway (the sway of death).

"The wise, who by means of meditating on his _Self_, recognizes the Old (the old man within) who is difficult to see, who has entered into darkness, who is hidden in the cave, who dwells in the abyss, as G.o.d, he indeed leaves joy and sorrow far behind.

"That Self, the Knower, is not born, it dies not; it came from nothing, it never became anything. The Old man is unborn, from everlasting to everlasting; he is not killed, though the body be killed.

"That Self is smaller than small, greater than great; hidden in the heart of the creature. A man who has no more desires and no more griefs, sees the majesty of the Self by the grace of the creator.

"Though sitting still, he walks far; though lying down, he goes everywhere. Who save myself is able to know that G.o.d, who rejoices, and rejoices not?

"That Self cannot be gained by the Veda; nor by the understanding, nor by much learning. He whom the Self chooses, by him alone the Self can be gained.

"The Self chooses him as his own. But he who has not first turned away from his wickedness, who is not calm and subdued, or whose mind is not at rest, he can never obtain the Self, even by knowledge.

"No mortal lives by the breath that goes up and by the breath that goes down. We live by another, in whom both repose.

"Well then, I shall tell thee this mystery, the eternal word (Brahman), and what happens to the _Self_, after reaching death.

"Some are born again, as living beings, others enter into stocks and stones, according to their work, and according to their knowledge.

"But he, the Highest Person, who wakes in us while we are asleep, shaping one lovely sight after another, he indeed is called the Light, he is called Brahman, he alone is called the Immortal. All worlds are founded on it, and no one goes beyond. _This is that._

"As the one fire, after it has entered the world, though one, becomes different according to what it burns, thus the One Self within all things, becomes different, according to whatever it enters, but it exists also apart.

"As the sun, the eye of the world, is not contaminated by the external impurities seen by the eye, thus the One Self within all things is never contaminated by the sufferings of the world, being himself apart.

"There is one eternal thinker, thinking non-eternal thoughts; he, though one, fulfils the desires of many. The wise who perceive Him within their Self, to them belongs eternal life, eternal peace.[341]

"Whatever there is, the whole world, when gone forth (from Brahman), trembles in his breath. That Brahman is a great terror, like a drawn sword. Those who know it, become immortal.

"He (Brahman) cannot be reached by speech, by mind, or by the eye. He cannot be apprehended, except by him who says, _He is._

"When all desires that dwell in the heart cease, then the mortal becomes immortal, and obtains Brahman.

"When all the fetters of the heart here on earth are broken, when all that binds us to this life is undone, then the mortal becomes immortal--here my teaching ends."

This is what is called Vedanta, the Veda-end, the end of the Veda, and this is the religion or the philosophy, whichever you like to call it, that has lived on from about 500 B.C. to the present day. If the people of India can be said to have now any system of religion at all--apart from their ancestral sacrifices and their _S_raddhas, and apart from mere caste-observances--it is to be found in the Vedanta philosophy, the leading tenets of which are known, to some extent in every village.[342] That great revival of religion, which was inaugurated some fifty years ago by Ram-Mohun Roy, and is now known as the Brahma-Sama_g_, under the leadership of my n.o.ble friend Keshub Chunder Sen, was chiefly founded on the Upanishads, and was Vedantic in spirit. There is, in fact, an unbroken continuity between the most modern and the most ancient phases of Hindu thought, extending over more than three thousand years.

To the present day India acknowledges no higher authority in matters of religion, ceremonial, customs, and law than the _Veda_, and so long as India is India, nothing will extinguish that ancient spirit of Vedantism which is breathed by every Hindu from his earliest youth, and pervades in various forms the prayers even of the idolater, the speculations of the philosopher, and the proverbs of the beggar.

For purely practical reasons therefore--I mean for the very practical object of knowing something of the secret springs which determine the character, the thoughts and deeds of the lowest as well as of the highest among the people in India--an acquaintance with their religion, which is founded on the Veda, and with their philosophy, which is founded on the Vedanta, is highly desirable.

It is easy to make light of this, and to ask, as some statesmen have asked, even in Europe, What has religion, or what has philosophy, to do with politics? In India, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, and notwithstanding the indifference on religious matters so often paraded before the world by the Indians themselves, religion, and philosophy too, are great powers still. Read the account that has lately been published of two native statesmen, the administrators of two first-cla.s.s states in Saurash_t_ra, Junagadh, and Bhavnagar, Gokulaji and Gauri_s_ankara,[343] and you will see whether the Vedanta is still a moral and a political power in India or not.

But I claim even more for the Vedanta, and I recommend its study, not only to the candidates for the Indian Civil Service, but to all true students of philosophy. It will bring before them a view of life, different from all other views of life which are placed before us in the History of Philosophy. You saw how behind all the Devas or G.o.ds, the authors of the Upanishads discovered the atman or Self. Of that Self they predicated three things only, that it is, that it perceives, and that it enjoys eternal bliss. All other predicates were negative: it is not this, it is not that--it is beyond anything that we can conceive or name.

But that Self, that Highest Self, the Paramatman, could be discovered after a severe moral and intellectual discipline only, and those who had not yet discovered it were allowed to worship lower G.o.ds, and to employ more poetical names to satisfy their human wants. Those who knew the other G.o.ds to be but names or persons--_personae_ or masks, in the true sense of the word--pratikas, as they call them in Sanskrit--knew also that those who worshipped these names or persons, worshipped in truth the Highest Self, though ignorantly. This is a most characteristic feature in the religious history of India. Even in the Bhagavadgita, a rather popular and exoteric exposition of Vedantic doctrines, the Supreme Lord or Bhagavat himself is introduced as saying: "Even those who worship idols, worship me."[344]

But that was not all. As behind the names of Agni, Indra, and Pra_g_apati, and behind all the mythology of nature, the ancient sages of India had discovered the atman--let us call it the objective Self--they perceived also behind the veil of the body, behind the senses, behind the mind, and behind our reason (in fact behind the mythology of the soul, which we often call psychology), another atman, or the subjective Self. That Self too was to be discovered by a severe moral and intellectual discipline only, and those who wished to find it, who wished to know, not themselves, but their Self, had to cut far deeper than the senses, or the mind, or the reason, or the ordinary Ego. All these too were Devas, bright apparitions--mere names--yet names meant for something. Much that was most dear, that had seemed for a time their very self, had to be surrendered, before they could find the Self of Selves, the Old Man, the Looker-on, a subject independent of all personality, an existence independent of all life.

When that point had been reached, then the highest knowledge began to dawn, the Self within (the Pratyagatman) was drawn toward the Highest Self (the Paramatman), it found its true self in the Highest Self, and the oneness of the subjective with the objective Self was recognized as underlying all reality, as the dim dream of religion--as the pure light of philosophy.

This fundamental idea is worked out with systematic completeness in the Vedanta philosophy, and no one who can appreciate the lessons contained in Berkeley's philosophy, will read the Upanishads and the Brahmasutras, and their commentaries without feeling a richer and a wiser man.

I admit that it requires patience, discrimination, and a certain amount of self-denial before we can discover the grains of solid gold in the dark mines of Eastern philosophy. It is far easier and far more amusing for shallow critics to point out what is absurd and ridiculous in the religion and philosophy of the ancient world than for the earnest student to discover truth and wisdom under strange disguises.

Some progress, however, has been made, even during the short span of life that we can remember. The Sacred Books of the East are no longer a mere b.u.t.t for the invectives of missionaries or the sarcasms of philosophers. They have at last been recognized as historical doc.u.ments, ay, as the most ancient doc.u.ments in the history of the human mind, and as palaeontological records of an evolution that begins to elicit wider and deeper sympathies than the nebular formation of the planet on which we dwell for a season, or the organic development of that chrysalis which we call man.

If you think that I exaggerate, let me read you in conclusion what one of the greatest philosophical critics[345]--and certainly not a man given to admiring the thoughts of others--says of the Vedanta, and more particularly of the Upanishads. Schopenhauer writes:

"In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life--it will be the solace of my death."[346]

I have thus tried, so far as it was possible in one course of lectures, to give you some idea of ancient India, of its ancient literature, and, more particularly, of its ancient religion. My object was, not merely to place names and facts before you, these you can find in many published books, but, if possible, to make you see and feel the general human interests that are involved in that ancient chapter of the history of the human race. I wished that the Veda and its religion and philosophy should not only seem to you curious or strange, but that you should feel that there was in them something that concerns ourselves, something of our own intellectual growth, some recollections, as it were, of our own childhood, or at least of the childhood of our own race. I feel convinced that, placed as we are here in this life, we have lessons to learn from the Veda, quite as important as the lessons we learn at school from Homer and Virgil, and lessons from the Vedanta quite as instructive as the systems of Plato or Spinoza.

I do not mean to say that everybody who wishes to know how the human race came to be what it is, how language came to be what it is, how religion came to be what it is, how manners, customs, laws, and forms of government came to be what they are, how we ourselves came to be what we are, must learn Sanskrit, and must study Vedic Sanskrit. But I _do_ believe that not to know what a study of Sanskrit, and particularly a study of the Veda, has already done for illuminating the darkest pa.s.sages in the history of the human mind, of that mind on which we ourselves are feeding and living, is a misfortune, or, at all events, a loss, just as I should count it a loss to have pa.s.sed through life without knowing something, however little, of the geological formation of the earth, or of the sun, and the moon, and the stars--and of the thought, or the will, or the law, that govern their movements.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 260: On the early use of letters for public inscriptions, see Hayman, _Journal of Philology_, 1879, pp. 141, 142, 150; Hicks, "Manual of Greek Historical Inscriptions," pp. 1 seqq.]

[Footnote 261: Herod, (v. 59) says: "I saw Phenician letters on certain tripods in a temple of the Ismenian Apollo at Thebes in Boeotia, the most of them like the Ionian letters."]

[Footnote 262: Munch, "Die Nordisch Germanischen Volker," p. 240.]

[Footnote 263: Herod. (v. 58) says: "The Ionians from of old call ???? d?f???a?, because once, in default of the former, they used to employ the latter. And even down to my own time, many of the barbarians write on such diphtherae."]