New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century Part 9

CHAPTER XV

JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF

"Tandem vicisti, Galilaee"

--said to have been uttered by Julian, the Apostate emperor.

[Sidenote: Pantheism does not lead to belief in "the Son of G.o.d."]

Pantheism, it has been said, lends itself to the lead to belief idea of avatars or incarnations of deity, and Hinduism, therefore, is familiar with avatars. Observation contradicts this _a priori_ reasoning, nay, it justifies a statement almost contrary. To the philosopher who is thinking out a pantheistic system, or to the ascetic who is seeking after ident.i.ty of consciousness with the One, the Hindu Avatars are only a part of the delusion, the Maya, in which men are steeped. To a pantheist, holding that his own consciousness of individuality is delusion, born of spiritual darkness and ignorance, the conception of an avatar or concrete presentation of deity as an individual is only still grosser delusion. "The name of G.o.d and the conventions of piety are as unreal as anything else in Maya," writes a modern British apostle of Hinduism, while advocating the realisation of Maya as our salvation.[88]

It does not seem to me justifiable to say that through Pantheism the Indian mind can approach the thought of Christ the Son of Man and the Son of G.o.d. But pantheism, with its allied doctrine of transmigration, may encourage the thought that our Lord was a great jogi or religious devotee, the last climax of many upward transmigrations, and that Christ had attained to the goal of illumination of the jogi, namely, ident.i.ty of consciousness with deity, when he felt "I and the Father are one."

That statement about Our Lord is sometimes made in India.

[Sidenote: The avatars of popular theology.]

It is not through the pantheism of the brahmanically learned and of religious devotees that the Indian mind has come within Christ's sphere of influence, but rather through the beliefs of the mult.i.tude and the new education of the middle cla.s.s. And how, we ask, has Christ been introduced to India by a.s.sociation with the popular beliefs--how, rather, has the attempt been made to do so? The theology of the people begins, as has been already stated, with the Hindu Triad, the three great personal deities, namely, Brahm[=a], Vishnu, and Siva,--Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer respectively. From these and other deities, but particularly from Vishnu, the Preserver, there descended to earth at various times and in various forms, human and animal, certain avatars.[89] Best known of these avatars of Vishnu, the Preserver, are Ram, the hero of the great epic called after him, the R[=a]m[=a]yan; and secondly, Krishna, one of the chief figures of the other great Indian epic, the Mah[=a]bh[=a]rat; and thirdly, Buddha, the great religious teacher of the sixth century B.C. Ram and Krishna have become deities of the mult.i.tude over the greater part of India. Buddha, latest in time of these three avatars, and unknown as an avatar to the mult.i.tude, has not yet been lost to history. Such is the genealogy of certain of the Hindu G.o.ds and their avatars, and the object of setting it forth is to enable us to see how Jesus Christ has presented Himself or been presented to the Hindu people.

[Sidenote: Parallels in Christian and Hindu theology.]

When Christian doctrine was presented to India in modern times, the Christian Trinity and the Hindu Triad at once suggested a correspondence, which seemed to be confirmed by the coincidence of a Creator and Preserver in the Triad with the Creator and the Son, Our Saviour, in the Trinity. The historical Christ and the avatars of Vishnu would thus present themselves as at least striking theological and religious parallels. "On the one hand, learned brahmans have been found quite willing to regard Christ himself as an incarnation of Vishnu for the benefit of the Western world."[90] On the other, Christian missionaries in India have often preached Christ as the one true avatar.[91] The idea and the word _avatar_ are always recurring in the hymns sung in Christian churches in India. Missionaries have also sought to graft the doctrine of Christ's atonement upon Hinduism, through one of the avatars. A common name of Vishnu, the second member of the Triad, as also of Krishna, his avatar, is _Hari_. Accepting the common etymology of _Hari_ as meaning _the taker away_, Christian preachers have found an idea a.n.a.logous to that of Christ, the Redeemer of men.

Then the similarity of the names, _Christ_ and _Krishna_, chief avatar of Vishnu, could not escape notice, especially since Krishna, Christ-like, is the object of the enthusiastic devotion of the Hindu mult.i.tude. In familiar speech, Krishna's name is still further approximated to that of Christ, being frequently p.r.o.nounced _Krishta_ or _Kishta_. In the middle of the nineteenth century the common opinion was that there was some historical connection between Krishna and Christ, and the idea lingers in the minds of both Hindus and Christians. One is surprised to find it in a recent European writer, formerly a member of the Indian Civil Service. "Surely there is something more," he says, "than an a.n.a.logy between Christianity and Krishna worship."[92]

Much has been made by the late Dr. K.M. Banerjea, the most learned member of the Indian Christian Church of the nineteenth century, and something also by the late Sir M. Monier Williams, of a pa.s.sage in the Rigveda (x. 90), which seems to point to Christ. The pa.s.sage speaks of Purusha (the universal spirit), who is also "Lord of Immortality," and was "born in the beginning," as having been "sacrificed by the G.o.ds, Sadyas and Rishis," and as becoming thereafter the origin of the various castes and of certain G.o.ds and animals. A similar pa.s.sage in a later book, the _T[=a]ndya Br[=a]hmanas_, declares that "the Lord of creatures, Praj.a.pati, offered himself a sacrifice for the devas"

(emanc.i.p.ated mortals or G.o.ds). Of the parallelism between the self-sacrificing Praj.a.pati, Lord of creatures, and the Second Person in the Christian Trinity, propitiator and agent in creation, we may hear Dr. Banerjea himself: "The self-sacrificing Praj.a.pati [Lord of creatures] variously described as Purusha, begotten in the beginning, as Viswakarma, the creator of all, is, in the meaning of his name and in his offices, identical with Jesus.... Jesus of Nazareth is the only person who has ever appeared in the world claiming the character and position of Praj.a.pati, at the same time both mortal and immortal."[93]

[Sidenote: These parallels ineffective.]

[Sidenote: Christ Himself attractive.]

But it must be confessed that these parallels, real or supposed, between Christianity and Hinduism have not brought Christ home to the heart of India. In themselves, they only bring Christianity as near to Hinduism as they bring Hinduism to Christianity. Uneducated Hindus feel that the two religions are balanced when they have Krishna and Christians have Christ. Educated Hindus, as we shall see, are employing some of these very parallels to b.u.t.tress Hinduism. Far be it from me, however, to depreciate the labours of scholars and earlier missionaries who have thus established links between Hindus and Christians, and have thus at least brought Christ into the Hindu's presence. To Indian Christians also such reasoning has often been a strength, furnishing as it were a new justification of their baptism into Christianity; for looking back they can perceive the finger of Hinduism itself pointing the way. But had no other influence been exerted on the Indian mind, one could not say what I now say, that Christ Himself is the feature of Christianity that has most powerfully moved men in India. The person of Christ Himself has been the great Christian dynamic. I am now speaking of educated India, the India that is not dependent solely upon the preacher for its religious ideas and feeling.

[Sidenote: Christianity identified with Britain and therefore unpopular.]

[Sidenote: The anti-foreigner instinct.]

The grand new political idea in India is the idea of nationality, and one of its corollaries is the championing of things Indian and depreciation of things British. The strong anti-British bias among the educated is one of the noteworthy and regrettable changes in the Indian mind within the last half-century. It is not surprising then that all over India the influence of Christ and of Christianity is lessened from the identification of Christianity with the British. For a native of India to accept the British religion is to run counter to the prevailing anti-British and pro-Indian feeling; it is unpatriotic to become a convert to Christianity. "Need we go out of India in quest of the true knowledge of G.o.d?" wrote a distinguished Indian litterateur a few years ago.[94] All that feeling is of course in addition to the instinctive hostility to things foreign that has been nowhere stronger than in self-contained India--self-contained between the Himalayas and the seas.

The exclusiveness of caste is based upon that feeling. The statement of the late Rev. M.N. Bose, B.A., B.L., a native of Eastern Bengal, regarding his youth [1860?] is: "I had a deep-rooted prejudice against Christianity from my boyhood.... At this time I hated Christianity and Christians, though I knew not why I did so."[95] We find the instinctive hostility more bluntly expressed in China in the cry that drops spontaneously from the opening lips of many Chinamen, as their greeting, when they unexpectedly behold a European. The involuntary e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n is: "Strike the foreign devil."

[Sidenote: Christ reverenced; Christians disliked.]

In the first part of the nineteenth century, along with the great development of modern missions, and of modern education, we may say that Christ came again to India. The national and anti-British feeling had not then arisen to interpose in His path, but, coming as an alien, His name evoked great hostility. The popular mood was _Christianos ad leones,_ as many incidents and witnesses testify. Now, in spite of the old anti-foreign hostility and the new currents of feeling, a remarkable att.i.tude to Christianity--far short of conversion, no doubt--is almost everywhere manifest. There is a profound homage to its Founder, coupled with that strong resentment towards His Indian disciples. Christ Himself is acknowledged; His church is still foreign and British. Resentfully ruled by a Christian nation, but subdued by Christ Himself, is the state of educated India to-day. In spite of His alien birth and in spite of anti-British bias, Christ has pa.s.sed within the pale of Indian recognition. Indian eyes, focused at last, are fastened upon Him, and men wonder at His gracious words. Again I direct attention to a significant event in Indian history--the incoming of an influence that will not stale, as mere ideas may. "Is there a single soul in this audience," said the Brahmo leader, the late Keshub Chunder Sen,[96] to the educated Indians of Calcutta, mostly Hindus, "who would scruple to ascribe extraordinary greatness and supernatural moral heroism to Jesus Christ and Him crucified?"

"That incarnation of the Divine Love, the lowly Son of man," writes another, even while he is rejoicing over the revival of Hinduism.[97]

CHAPTER XVI

JESUS CHRIST THE LODESTONE

"And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself."

--ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL, xii. 32.

[Sidenote: Instances of Indian homage to Christ, and dislike of His Church.]

[Sidenote: Bengal.]

[Sidenote: Bombay.]

[Sidenote: Madras.]

Interesting phases of that divided mind--homage to Christ, resentment towards His disciples--may be found on opposite sides of the great continent of India. In Bengal, a not-infrequent standpoint of Br[=a]hmas in reference to Christ is that _they_ are the true exponents of Christ's spirit and His teaching. Western Christian teachers, they say, are hidebound by tradition; and the ready-made rigidity of the creeds of the Churches is no doubt a factor in the state of mind we are describing.

Looking back as far as to 1820, we see in _The Precepts of Jesus_, published by the founder of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j, that standpoint of homage to Christ and dissent from accepted views regarding Him.

Ill.u.s.trative of that Br[=a]hma standpoint, we have also the more recent book, _The Oriental Christ_, by the late Mr. P.C. Mozumdar, the successor of Keshub Chunder Sen. But the att.i.tude is by no means limited to Brahmas. "Without Christian dogmas, cannot a man equally love and revere Christ?" was a representative question put by a senior Hindu student in Bengal to his missionary professor. In South India, Mahomedans sometimes actually describe themselves as better Christians than ourselves, holding as they do such faith in Jesus and His mother Mary and His Gospel. The case of Mahomedans is not, of course, on all fours with that of Hindus, since Mahomedans reckon Christ as one of the four prophets along with their own Mahomed. In Bombay province, on the other side of India from Bengal, we find Mr. Malabari, the famous Pa.r.s.ee, pupil of a Mission School, doubting if it is possible for the Englishman to be a Christian in the sense of _Christ's Christianity_, the implication being that an Indian may. What element of truth is there in the idea, we may well ask? From Indian Christians, be it said, we may indeed look for a fervency of loyalty to Christ that does not enter into our calculating moderate souls; and from India, equally, we may look for that mystically profound commentary on St. John's Gospel which Bishop Westcott declared he looked for from j.a.pan. But to return. About Mr.

Malabar! himself, his biographer writes: "If he could not accept the dogmas of Christianity, he had imbibed its true spirit," meaning the spirit of Christ Himself. "The cult of the Asiatic life" is the latest definition of Christianity given by a recent apologist of Hinduism, one of a small company of Europeans in India officering the Hindu revival.

Crossing India again and going south, we find the late Dr. John Murdoch, of Madras, an eminent observer, adding his testimony regarding the homage paid to the Founder of Christianity. "The most hopeful sign," he writes, "is the increasing reverence for our Lord, although His divinity is not yet acknowledged."[98] And of new India generally, again, we may quote Mr. Bose, the Indian historian. "The Christianity [of North-western Europe] is no more like Christianity as preached by Christ than the Buddhism of the Thibetans is like Buddhism as preached by Gautama." Take finally the following sentences from a recent number of a moderate neo-Hindu organ, the _Hindustan Review (vol._ viii. 514): "Christ, the great exemplar of practical morality ...; the more one enters into the true spirit of Christ, the more will he reject Christianity as it prevails in the world to-day. The Indians have been gainers not losers by rejecting Christianity for the sake of Christ."[99]

[Sidenote: Desire to discover Christian ideas in Hindu Scriptures.]

[Sidenote: Christ and Krishna set alongside.]

Another phase of that same divided mind, acknowledging Christ and resenting Indian discipleship, may be perceived in the willingness to discover Christian ideas in Hindu Scriptures, and Christ-like features in Hindu deities and religious heroes. To express it from the Indian standpoint,--they see Christ and Christianity bringing back much of their own "refined and modernised." In a sense, as a Bengali Christian gentleman put it, Christ and Christianity have become the accepted standards in religion.[100] Again we quote from the same page of the _Hindustan Review_: "A revival of Hinduism has taken place.... It [Christianity] has given us Christ, and given us n.o.ble moral and spiritual lessons, which we have discovered anew in our own Scriptures, and thereby satisfied our self-love and made our very own." We have mentioned how missionaries used to find the doctrine of the atonement in the name of the Indian G.o.d Hari; the argument has now in turn been annexed by Hindus, and employed as an argument in their favour. Within the last twenty years, there has been a great revival of the honouring of Krishna among the educated cla.s.ses in Bengal and the United Provinces. Krishna has set up distinctly as the Indian Christ, or as the Indian figure to be set up over against Christ. A Krishna story has been disentangled from the gross mythology, and he has become a paragon of virtue,--the work of a distinguished Bengali novelist. I mean no sarcasm. From the sermon of a Hindu preacher in a garden in Calcutta in 1898, I quote: "The same G.o.d came into the world as the Krishna of India and the Krishna of Jerusalem." These are his words. From the catalogue of the Neo-Krishnaite literature in Bengal, given by Mr. J.N. Farquhar of the Y.M.C.A., Calcutta, it appears that since 1884 thirteen Lives of Krishna or works on Krishna have appeared in Bengal. Many essays have appeared comparing Krishna with Christ. There have been likewise many editions of the Bhagabat Gita, or Divine Song, the episode in the Mahabharat, in which Krishna figures as religious teacher. It may be called the New Testament of the Neo-Krishnaite. Perhaps the most striking of these Neo-Krishnaite publications is _The Imitation of Sri-Krishna_, a daily-text book containing extracts from the Bhagabat Gita and the Bhagabat Puran. The t.i.tle is, of course, a manifest echo of "The Imitation of Christ," which is a favourite with religious-minded Hindus. The _Imitation of Buddha_, likewise we may observe, has been published. About "The Imitation of Christ" itself, we quote from a Hindu's advertis.e.m.e.nt appended to the life of a new Hindu saint, Ramkrishna Paramhansa. "The reader of 'The Imitation of Christ,'" it says, "will find echoed in it hundreds of sayings of our Lord Sri-Krishna in the Bhagabat Gita like the following: 'Give up all religious work and come to me as thy sole refuge, and I will deliver thee from all manner of sin.'" The notice goes on: "The book has found its way into the pockets of many orthodox Hindus."

[Sidenote: Christ and Chaitanya of Bengal.]

From Krishna we turn to Chaitanya, surname Gauranga, the fair, a religious teacher of Bengal in the fifteenth century, who is also being set up as the Christ of Bengal, in that he preached the equality of men before G.o.d and ecstatic devotion to the G.o.d Krishna. A Christ-like man, indeed, in many ways, Chaitanya was, and the increased acquaintance of educated Bengal with Jesus Christ naturally brought Chaitanya to the front. The new cult of Chaitanya and his enthronement over against Jesus Christ are manifest in the t.i.tles of two recent publications in Bengal, the first ent.i.tled, _Lord Gauranga, or Salvation for all_, and the other, _Chaitanya's Message of Love_. Chaitanya and his two chief followers, it should be said, were called the great _lords_ (prabhus) of the sect, but the t.i.tle "Lord Gauranga" is quite new, an echo of the t.i.tle of Jesus Christ. With regard to the new power of Christ's personality, it should be noted that the author of _Lord Gauranga_ strongly deprecates the idea that his desire is to demolish Christianity, or other than to extend the kingdom of Jesus Christ. He declares that Jesus Christ is as much a prophet as any avatar of the Hindus, and that Hindus can and ought to accept him as they do Krishna or Chaitanya. This is in accord with the spirit of Hinduism--namely, the fluidity of doctrine, and the free choice of guru or religious teacher, as set forth in a previous chapter--although it is still an advanced position for a Hindu to take up publicly.

[Sidenote: Eccentric manifestations of the power of Christ's personality.]

Could we observe the course of evolution down which a species of animals or plants has come from some remote ancestry to their present form, with what interest would we note the specific characteristics gathering strength, as from generation to generation they prove their "fitness to survive"! The whole onward career of the evolving species would seem to have been aimed at the latest form in which we find it. Yet quite as wonderful phenomena as the species that has survived are the many variations of the species that have presented themselves, but have not proved fit to survive. One species only survives for hundreds of would-be collaterals that are extinct. The religious evolution that we have been observing is the growing power of Christ's personality in New India; and now, as further testimony to its power, a number of collateral movements, similarly inspired yet eccentric and hardly likely to endure, attract our attention. In these eccentric movements the power of Christ's personality is manifest, and yet it appears amid circ.u.mstances so peculiar that the phenomena in themselves are grotesque.

[Sidenote: The Punjab--two have set themselves up as Christ come again.]

[Sidenote: Hakim Singh.]

[Sidenote: Mirz[=a] Ghol[=a]m Ahmad.]

Three of these strange movements let us look at as new evidence of the power of Christ's personality in India. All three occur in still another province than those named, the Punjab, a province _sui generis_ in many ways. Within a generation past, at least two men have arisen, either claiming to be Christ Himself come again, or a Messiah superior to Him.

A third received a vision of "Jesus G.o.d," and proclaimed Him, wherever he went, as an object of worship. Of the first of the three leaders, Sir Alfred Lyall tells us, one Hakim Singh, "who listened to missionaries until he not only accepted the whole Christian dogma, but conceived himself to be the second embodiment [of Christ], and proclaimed himself as such and summoned the missionaries to acknowledge him." It sounds much like blasphemy, or mere lunacy; but in India one learns not to be shocked at what in Europe would be rankest blasphemy; the intention must decide the innocence or the offence. Hakim Singh "professed to work miracles, preached pure morality, but also venerated the cow,"--strange chequer of Hindu and Christian ideas.[101] The second case is the better known one of Mirz[=a] Ghol[=a]m Ahmad, of Q[=a]di[=a]n, who sets up a claim to be "the Similitude of the Messiah" and "the Messiah of the Twentieth Century." As his name shows, he is a Mahomedan, but the a.s.sumption of the name "Messiah" also shows that it is in Christ's place he declares himself to stand. At the same time, his appeal is to his fellow-Mahomedans; for he explains that as Jesus was the Messiah of Moses, he himself is the Messiah of Mahomed. His superiority to Christ, he expressly declares. "I shall be guilty of concealing the truth," he says in his English monthly, the _Review of Religions_, of May 1902, "if I do not a.s.sert that the prophecies which G.o.d Almighty has granted me are of a far better quality in clearness, force, and truth than the ambiguous predictions of Jesus.... But notwithstanding all this superiority, I cannot a.s.sert Divinity or Sonship of G.o.d." He claims "to have been sent by G.o.d to reform the true religion of G.o.d, now corrupted by Jews, Christians, and Mahomedans." Doubly blasphemous as his claims sound in the ears of orthodox Mahomedans, who reckon both Christ and Mahomed as prophets, his sect is now estimated to number at least 10,000, including many educated Mahomedans. Whatever its fate--a mere comet or a new planet in the Indian sky--it indicates the religious stirring of educated India in another province, and the prominence of Christ's personality therein. Mirz[=a] Ghol[=a]m Ahmad himself recommends the reading of the Gospels. As to Christ's death, Mirz[=a]

Ghol[=a]m Ahmad has a theory of his own. The Koran declares, according to Mahomedan expositors, that it was not Christ who suffered on the cross, but another in His likeness. Mirz[=a] Ghol[=a]m Ahmad teaches that Jesus was crucified but did not die, that He was restored to life by His disciples and sent out of the country, whence He travelled East until He reached Thibet, eventually arriving at Cashmere, where He died, His tomb being located in the city of Srinagar.[102] According to the latest report of this reincarnation, he now claims to be at once Krishna come again for Hindus, Mahomed for Mahomedans, and Christ for Christians.

[Sidenote: Chet Ram claimed to be an apostle.]

The third movement is that of the Chet Ramis, or sect of Chet Ram, whose strange history may be found in _East and West_ for July 1905. Chet Ram was an illiterate Hindu, a water-carrier and then a steward in the Indian army that took part in the war with China in 1859-1860. Returning to his native district not far from Lah.o.r.e, Chet Ram, the Hindu, came under the spell of a Mahomedan ascetic Mahbub Sh[=a]h, left all and followed him as his "familiar" disciple. How this relationship between Hindu and Mahomedanism is quite possible in India, we have already explained on pages 163-4; Mahbub Sh[=a]h's strange combination of religious asceticism with the consumption of opium and wine, it takes some years' residence in India to understand. Then Mahbub Sh[=a]h died, and the disciple succeeded the master. According to one account, Chet Ram made his bed on the grave in which his master lay; according to another, for three years his sleeping place was the vault within which his master was buried. It was at this time that he had the vision of "Jesus G.o.d," already referred to, between the years 1860 and 1865. Like Caedmon, he has described his vision in verse--