Ten Great Religions Part 6

The sagacity of M. Saint Martin, who was for a long time the colleague of M. Quatremere, has pointed out in a note worthy of his erudition, another special proof, which is by no means to be neglected.

"Amongst the various arguments," he says, "that might be urged in favor of the legitimacy of the monument, but of which, as yet, no use has been made, must not be forgotten the name of the priest by whom it is said to have been erected. The name _Yezd-bouzid_ is Persian, and at the epoch when the monument was discovered it would have been impossible to invent it, as there existed no work where it could have been found. Indeed, I do not think that, even since then, there has ever been any one published in which it could have been met with.

"It is a very celebrated name among the Armenians, and comes to them from a martyr, a Persian by birth, and of the royal race, who perished towards the middle of the seventh century, and rendered his name ill.u.s.trious amongst the Christian nations of the East." Saint Martin adds in the same place, that the famous monument of Si-ngau-Fou, whose authenticity has for a long time been called in question from the hatred entertained against the Jesuit missionaries who discovered it, rather than from a candid examination of its contents, is now regarded as above all suspicion.

Chapter III.

Brahmanism.

-- 1. Our Knowledge of Brahmanism. Sir William Jones.

-- 2. Difficulty of this Study. The Complexity of the System. The Hindoos have no History. Their Ultra-Spiritualism.

-- 3. Helps from Comparative Philology. The Aryans in Central Asia.

-- 4. The Aryans in India. The Native Races. The Vedic Age. Theology of the Vedas.

-- 5. Second Period. Laws of Manu. The Brahmanic Age.

-- 6. The Three Hindoo Systems of Philosophy,--the Sankhya, Vedanta, and Nyasa.

-- 7. Origin of the Hindoo Triad.

-- 8. The Epics, the Puranas, and Modern Hindoo Worship.

-- 9. Relation of Brahmanism to Christianity.

-- 1. Our Knowledge of Brahmanism. Sir William Jones.

It is more than forty years since the writer, then a boy, was one day searching among the heavy works of a learned library in the country to find some entertaining reading for a summer afternoon. It was a library rich in theology, in Greek and Latin cla.s.sics, in French and Spanish literature, but contained little to amuse a child. Led by some happy fortune, in turning over a pile of the "Monthly Anthology" his eye was attracted by the t.i.tle of a play, "Sacontala,[30] or the Fatal Ring; an Indian Drama, translated from the original Sanskrit and Pracrit. Calcutta, 1789," and reprinted in the Anthology in successive numbers. Gathering them together, the boy took them into a great chestnut-tree, amid the limbs of which he had constructed a study, and there, in the warm, fragrant shade, read hour after hour this bewitching story. The tale was suited to the day and the scene,--filled with images of tender girls and religious sages, who lived amid a tropical abundance of flowers and fruits; so blending the beauty of nature with the charm of love. Nature becomes in it alive, and is interpenetrated with human sentiments.

Sakuntala loves the flowers as sisters; the Kesara-tree beckons to her with its waving blossoms, and clings to her in affection as she bends over it. The jasmine, the wife of the mango-tree, embraces her lord, who leans down to protect his blooming bride, "the moonlight of the grove." The holy hermits defend the timid fawn from the hunters, and the birds, grown tame in their peaceful solitudes, look tranquilly on the intruder. The demons occasionally disturb the sacrificial rites, but, like well-educated demons, retire at once, as soon as the protecting Raja enters the sacred grove. All breathes of love, gentle and generous sentiment, and quiet joys in the bosom of a luxuriant and beautiful summer land. Thus, in this poem, written a hundred years before Christ, we find that romantic view of nature, unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and first appearing in our own time in such writers as Rousseau, Goethe, and Byron.

He who translated this poem into a European language, and communicated it to modern readers, was Sir William Jones, one of the few first-cla.s.s scholars whom the world has produced. In him was joined a marvellous gift of language with a love for truth and beauty, which detected by an infallible instinct what was worth knowing, in the mighty maze of Oriental literature. He had also the rare good fortune of being the first to discover this domain of literature in Asia, unknown to the West till he came to reveal it. The vast realm of Hindoo, Chinese, and Persian genius was as much a new continent to Europe, when discovered by Sir William Jones, as America was when made known by Columbus. Its riches had been acc.u.mulating during thousands of years, waiting till the fortunate man should arrive, destined to reveal to our age the barbaric pearl and gold of the gorgeous East,--the true wealth of Ormus and of Ind.

Sir William Jones came well equipped for his task. Some men are born philologians, loving _words_ for their own sake,--men to whom the devious paths of language are open highways; who, as Lord Bacon says, "have come forth from the second general curse, which was the confusion of tongues, by the art of grammar." Sir William Jones was one of these, perhaps the greatest of them. A paper in his own handwriting tells us that he knew critically eight languages,--English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit; less perfectly eight others,--Spanish, Portuguese, German, Runic, Hebrew, Bengali, Hindi, Turkish; and was moderately familiar with twelve more,--Tibetian, Pali, Phalavi, Deri, Russian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, and Chinese.

There have been, perhaps, other scholars who have known as many tongues as this. But usually they are crushed by their own acc.u.mulations, and we never hear of their accomplishing anything. Sir William Jones was not one of these, "deep versed in books, and shallow in himself." Language was his instrument, but knowledge his aim. So, when he had mastered Sanskrit and other Oriental languages, he rendered into English not only Sakuntala, but a far more important work, "The Laws of Manu"; "almost the only work in Sanskrit," says Max Muller, "the early date of which, a.s.signed to it by Sir William Jones from the first, has not been a.s.sailed." He also translated from the Sanskrit the fables of Hitopadesa, extracts from the Vedas, and shorter pieces. He formed a society in Calcutta for the study of Oriental literature, was its first president, and contributed numerous essays, all valuable, to its periodical, the "Asiatic Researches." He wrote a grammar of the Persian language, and translated from Persian into French the history of Nadir Shah. From the Arabic he also translated many pieces, and among them the Seven Poems suspended in the temple at Mecca, which, in their subjects and style, seem an Arabic antic.i.p.ation of Walt Whitman. He wrote in Latin a Book of Commentaries on Asiatic Poetry, in English several works on the Mohammedan and Civil Law, with a translation of the Greek Orations of Isaeus. As a lawyer, a judge, a student of natural history, his ardor of study was equally apparent. He presented to the Royal Society in London a large collection of valuable Oriental ma.n.u.scripts, and left a long list of studies in Sanskrit to be pursued by those who should come after him. His generous nature showed itself in his opposition to slavery and the slave-trade, and his open sympathy with the American Revolution. His correspondence was large, including such names as those of Benjamin Franklin, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Monboddo, Gibbon, Warren Hastings, Dr. Price, Edmund Burke, and Dr. Parr. Such a man ought to be remembered, especially by all who take an interest in the studies to which he has opened the way, for he was one who had a right to speak of himself, as he has spoken in these lines:--

"Before thy mystic altar, heavenly truth, I kneel in manhood, as I knelt in youth.

Thus let me kneel, till this dull form decay, And life's last shade be brightened by thy ray, Then shall my soul, now lost in clouds below, Soar without bound, without consuming glow."

Since the days of Sir William Jones immense progress has been made in the study of Sanskrit literature, especially within the last thirty or forty years, from the time when the Schlegels led the way in this department.

Now, professors of Sanskrit are to be found in all the great European universities, and in this country we have at least one Sanskrit scholar of the very highest order, Professor William D. Whitney, of Yale. The system of Brahmanism, which a short time since could only be known to Western readers by means of the writings of Colebrooke, Wilkins, Wilson, and a few others, has now been made accessible by the works of La.s.sen, Max Muller, Burnouf, Muir, Pictet, Bopp, Weber, Windischmann, Vivien de Saint-Martin, and a mult.i.tude of eminent writers in France, England, and Germany.[31]

-- 2. Difficulty of this Study. The Complexity of the System. The Hindoos have no History. Their Ultra-Spiritualism.

But, notwithstanding these many helps, Brahmanism remains a difficult study. Its source is not in a man, but in a caste. It is not the religion of a Confucius, a Zoroaster, a Mohammed, but the religion of the Brahmans.

We call it Brahmanism, and it can be traced to no individual as its founder or restorer. There is no personality about it.[32] It is a vast world of ideas, but wanting the unity which is given by the life of a man, its embodiment and representative.

But what a system? How large, how difficult to understand! So vast, so complicated, so full of contradictions, so various and changeable, that its very immensity is our refuge! We say, It is impossible to do justice to such a system; therefore do not demand it of us.

India has been a land of mystery from the earliest times. From the most ancient days we hear of India as the most populous nation of the world, full of barbaric wealth and a strange wisdom. It has attracted conquerors, and has been overrun by the armies of Semiramis, Darius, Alexander; by Mahmud, and Tamerlane, and Nadir Shah; by Lord Clive and the Duke of Wellington. These conquerors, from the a.s.syrian Queen to the British Mercantile Company, have overrun and plundered India, but have left it the same unintelligible, unchangeable, and marvellous country as before. It is the same land now which the soldiers of Alexander described,--the land of grotto temples dug out of solid porphyry; of one of the most ancient Pagan religions of the world; of social distinctions fixed and permanent as the earth itself; of the sacred Ganges; of the idols of Juggernaut, with its b.l.o.o.d.y worship; the land of elephants and tigers; of fields of rice and groves of palm; of treasuries filled with chests of gold, heaps of pearls, diamonds, and incense. But, above all, it is the land of unintelligible systems of belief, of puzzling incongruities, and irreconcilable contradictions.

The Hindoos have sacred books of great antiquity, and a rich literature extending back twenty or thirty centuries; yet no history, no chronology, no annals. They have a philosophy as acute, profound and, spiritual as any in the world, which is yet harmoniously a.s.sociated with the coa.r.s.est superst.i.tions. With a belief so abstract that it almost escapes the grasp of the most speculative intellect, is joined the notion that sin can be atoned for by bathing in the Ganges or repeating a text of the Veda. With an ideal pantheism resembling that of Hegel, is united the opinion that Brahma and Siva can be driven from the throne of the universe by any one who will sacrifice a sufficient number of wild horses. To abstract one's self from matter, to renounce all the gratification of the senses, to macerate the body, is thought the true road to felicity; and nowhere in the world are luxury, licentiousness and the gratification of the appet.i.tes carried so far. Every civil right and privilege of ruler and subject is fixed in a code of laws, and a body of jurisprudence older far than the Christian era, and the object of universal reverence; but the application of these laws rests (says Rhode) on the arbitrary decisions of the priests, and their execution on the will of the sovereign. The const.i.tution of India is therefore like a house without a foundation and without a roof. It is a principle of Hindoo religion not to kill a worm, not even to tread on a blade of gra.s.s, for fear of injuring life; but the torments, cruelties, and bloodshed inflicted by Indian tyrants would shock a Nero or a Borgia. Half the best informed writers on India will tell you that the Brahmanical religion is pure monotheism; the other half as confidently a.s.sert that they worship a million G.o.ds. Some teach us that the Hindoos are spiritualists and pantheists; others that their idolatry is more gross than that of any living people.

Is there any way of reconciling these inconsistencies? If we cannot find such an explanation, there is at least one central point where we may place ourselves; one elevated position, from which this mighty maze will not seem wholly without a plan. In India the whole tendency of thought is ideal, the whole religion a pure spiritualism. An ultra, one-sided idealism is the central tendency of the Hindoo mind. The G.o.d of Brahmanism is an intelligence, absorbed in the rest of profound contemplation. The good man of this religion is he who withdraws from an evil world into abstract thought.

Nothing else explains the Hindoo character as this does. An eminently religious people, it is their one-sided spiritualism, their extreme idealism, which gives rise to all their incongruities. They have no history and no authentic chronology, for history belongs to this world, and chronology belongs to time. But this world and time are to them wholly uninteresting; G.o.d and eternity are all in all. They torture themselves with self-inflicted torments; for the body is the great enemy of the soul's salvation, and they must beat it down by ascetic mortifications.

But asceticism, here as everywhere else, tends to self-indulgence, since one extreme produces another. In one part of India, therefore, devotees are swinging on hooks in honor of Siva, hanging themselves by the feet, head downwards, over a fire, rolling on a bed of p.r.i.c.kly thorns, jumping on a couch filled with sharp knives, boring holes in their tongues, and sticking their bodies full of pins and needles, or perhaps holding the arms over the head till they stiffen in that position. Meantime in other places whole regions are given over to sensual indulgences, and companies of abandoned women are connected with different temples and consecrate their gains to the support of their worship.

As one-sided spiritualism will manifest itself in morals in the two forms of austerity and sensuality, so in religion it shows itself in the opposite direction of an ideal pantheism and a gross idolatry.

Spiritualism first fills the world full of G.o.d, and this is a true and Christian view of things. But it takes another step, which is to deny all real existence to the world, and so runs into a false pantheism. It first says, truly, "There is nothing _without_ G.o.d." It next says, falsely, "There is nothing _but_ G.o.d." This second step was taken in India by means of the doctrine of _Maya_, or _Illusion. Maya_ means the delusive shows which spirit a.s.sumes. For there is nothing but spirit; which neither creates nor is created, neither acts nor suffers, which cannot change, and into which all souls are absorbed when they free themselves by meditation from the belief that they suffer or are happy, that they can experience either pleasure or pain. The next step is to polytheism. For if G.o.d neither creates nor destroys, but only seems to create and destroy, these _appearances_ are not united together as being the acts of one Being, but are separate, independent phenomena. When you remove personality from the conception of G.o.d, as you do in removing will, you remove unity. Now if creation be an illusion, and there be no creation, still the _appearance_ of creation is a fact. But as there is no substance but spirit, this _appearance_ must have its cause in spirit, that is, is a _divine_ appearance, is G.o.d. So destruction, in the same way, is an appearance of G.o.d, and reproduction is an appearance of G.o.d, and every other appearance in nature is a manifestation of G.o.d. But the unity of will and person being taken away, we have not one G.o.d, but a mult.i.tude of G.o.ds,--or polytheism.

Having begun this career of thought, no course was possible for the human mind to pursue but this. An ultra spiritualism must become pantheism, and pantheism must go on to polytheism. In India this is not a theory, but a history. We find, side by side, a spiritualism which denies the existence of anything but motionless spirit or Brahm, and a polytheism which believes and worships Brahma the Creator, Siva the Destroyer, Vischnu the Preserver, Indra the G.o.d of the Heavens, the Sactis or energies of the G.o.ds, Krishna the Hindoo Apollo, Doorga, and a host of others, innumerable as the changes and appearances of things.

But such a system as this must necessarily lead also to idolatry. There is in the human mind a tendency to worship, and men must worship something.

But they believe in one Being, the absolute Spirit, the supreme and only G.o.d,--Para Brahm; _him_ they cannot worship, for he is literally an unknown G.o.d. He has no qualities; no attributes, no activity. He is neither the object of hope, fear, love, nor aversion. Since there is nothing in the universe but spirit and illusive appearances, and they cannot worship spirit because it is absolutely unknown, they must worship these appearances, which are at any rate _divine_ appearances, and which do possess some traits, qualities, character; _are_ objects of hope and fear. But they cannot worship them as appearances, they must worship them as persons. But if they have an inward personality or soul, they become real beings, and also beings independent of Brahm, whose appearances they are. They must therefore have an outward personality; in other words, a body, a shape, emblematical and characteristic; that is to say, they become idols.

Accordingly idol-worship is universal in India. The most horrible and grotesque images are carved in the stone of the grottos, stand in rude, block-like statues in the temple, or are coa.r.s.ely painted on the walls.

Figures of men with heads of elephants or of other animals, or with six or seven human heads,--sometimes growing in a pyramid, one out of the other, sometimes with six hands coming from one shoulder,--grisly and uncouth monsters, like nothing in nature, yet too grotesque for symbols,--such are the objects of the Hindoo worship.

-- 3. Helps from Comparative Philology. The Aryans in Central Asia.

We have seen how hopeless the task has appeared of getting any definite light on Hindoo chronology or history. To the ancient Egyptians events were so important that the most trivial incidents of daily life were written on stone and the imperishable records of the land, covering the tombs and obelisks, have patiently waited during long centuries, till their decipherer should come to read them. To the Hindoos, on the other hand, all events were equally unimportant. The most unhistoric people on earth, they cared more for the minutiae of grammar, or the subtilties of metaphysics, than for the whole of their past. The only date which has emerged from this vague antiquity is that of Chandragupta, a contemporary of Alexander, and called by the Greek historians Sandracottus. He became king B.C. 315, and as, at his accession, Buddha had been dead (by Hindoo statement) one hundred and sixty-two years, Buddha may have died B.C. 477.

We can thus import a single date from Greek history into that of India.

This is the whole.

But all at once light dawns on us from an unexpected quarter. While we can learn nothing concerning the history of India from its literature, and nothing from its inscriptions or carved temples, _language_, comes to our aid. The fugitive and airy sounds, which seem so fleeting and so changeable, prove to be more durable monuments than bra.s.s or granite. The study of the Sanskrit language has told us a long story concerning the origin of the Hindoos. It has rectified the ethnology of Blumenbach, has taught us who were the ancestors of the nations of Europe, and has given us the information that one great family, the Indo-European, has done most of the work of the world. It shows us that this family consists of seven races,--the Hindoos, the Persians, the^ Greeks, the Romans, who all emigrated to the south from the original ancestral home; and the Kelts, the Teutons, and Slavi, who entered Europe on the northern side of the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. This has been accomplished by the new science of Comparative Philology. A comparison of languages has made it too plain to be questioned, that these seven races were originally one; that they must have emigrated from a region of Central Asia, at the east of the Caspian, and northwest of India; that they were originally a pastoral race, and gradually changed their habits as they descended from those great plains into the valleys of the Indus and the Euphrates. In these seven linguistic families the roots of the most common names are the same; the grammatical constructions are also the same; so that no scholar, who has attended to the subject, can doubt that the seven languages are all daughters of one common mother-tongue.

Pursuing the subject still further, it has been found possible to conjecture with no little confidence what was the condition of family life in this great race of Central Asia, before its dispersion. The original stock has received the name Aryan. This designation occurs in Manu (II.

22), who says: "As far as the eastern and western oceans, between the two mountains, lies the land which the wise have named Ar-ya-vesta, or _inhabited by honorable men_." The people of Iran receive this same appellation in the Zend Avesta, with the same meaning of _honorable_.

Herodotus testifies that the Medes were formerly called ????? (Herod. VII.

61). Strabo mentions that, in the time of Alexander, the whole region about the Indus was called _Ariana_. In modern times, the word _Iran_ for Persia and _Erin_ for Ireland are possible reminiscences of the original family appellation.

The Ayrans, long before the age of the Vedas or the Zend Avesta, were living as a pastoral people on the great plains east of the Caspian Sea.

What their condition was at that epoch is deduced by the following method: If it is found that the name of any fact is the same in two or more of the seven tribal languages of this stock, it is evident that the name was given to it before they separated. For there is no reason to suppose that two nations living wide apart would have independently selected the same word for the same object. For example, since we find that _house_ is in Sanskrit _d.a.m.n_ and _Dam_; in Zend, _Demana_; in Greek, ????; in Latin, _Domus_; in Irish, _Dahm_; in Slavonic, _Domu_,--from which root comes also our English word _Domestic_,--we may be pretty sure that the original Aryans lived in houses. When we learn that _boat_ was in Sanskrit _Nau_ or _nauka_; in Persian, _Naw, nawah;_ in Greek, ?a??; in Latin, _Navis_; in old Irish, _Noi_ or _nai_; in old German, _Nawa_ or _nawi_; and in Polish _Nawa_, we cannot doubt that they knew something of what we call in English _Nau_tical affairs, or Navigation. But as the words designating masts, sails, yards, &c. differ wholly from each other in all these linguistic families, it is reasonable to infer that the Aryans, before their dispersion, went only in boats, with oars, on the rivers of their land, the Oxus and Jaxartes, and did not sail anywhere on the sea.

Pursuing this method, we see that we can ask almost any question concerning the condition of the Aryans, and obtain an answer by means of Comparative Philology.

Were they a pastoral people? The very word _pastoral_ gives us the answer.

For _Pa_ in Sanskrit means to watch, to guard, as men guard cattle,--from which a whole company of words has come in all the Aryan languages.

The results of this method of inquiry, so far as given by Pictet, are these. Some 3000 years B.C.,[33] the Aryans, as yet undivided into Hindoos, Persians, Kelts, Latins, Greeks, Teutons, and Slavi, were living in Central Asia, in a region of which Bactriana was the centre. Here they must have remained long enough to have developed their admirable language, the mother-tongue of those which we know. They were essentially a pastoral, but not a nomad people, having fixed homes. They had oxen, horses, sheep, goats, hogs, and domestic fowls. Herds of cows fed in pastures, each the property of a community, and each with a cl.u.s.ter of stables in the centre. The daughters[34] of the house were the dairy-maids; the food was chiefly the products of the dairy and the flesh of the cattle. The cow was, however, the most important animal, and gave its name to many plants, and even to the clouds and stars, in which men saw heavenly herds pa.s.sing over the firmament above them.