The History of Antiquity Volume Iv Part 27

[688] "Dhammapadam," v. 270.

[689] Schlagintweit, "Buddhism in Tibet," p. 191 ff.

[690] "Dhammapadam," v. 20, 94, 181, 412. Cf. v. 267.

[691] Koppen, "Relig. des Buddha," s. 411. The supernatural powers of the Arhats are mentioned in the inscriptions of Ac.o.ka, and the ordination service of the cramanas forbade them to boast falsely of supernatural powers. Koppen, _loc. cit._ s. 413.

[692] Koppen, _loc. cit._ s. 358 ff.

[693] "Dhammapadam," v. 300.

[694] _Supra_, p. 339, 357. Koppen, _loc. cit._ s. 63-118.

[695] Burnouf, "Introduction," p. 381. Koppen is undoubtedly right in regarding the worship of relics as older than the worship of images. The worship of relics and pilgrimages was in vogue when Ac.o.ka became a convert to Buddhism, but nothing is there said of the worship of images.

I do not think it a certain fact that there were no images in the grottoes of Buddhagaya which date from Ac.o.ka and his grandson Dacaratha; sockets and niches for images are found there (Cunningham, "Survey," 1, 46), and the images may have been removed later; it is more decisive that in the transference of Buddhism to Ceylon, nothing is said of the transportation of images, though we do hear of relics. Rajendralala Mitra ("Antiq. of Orissa," p. 152), concludes from Panini, who as we have seen lived, according to M. Muller and La.s.sen, in the second half of the fourth century B.C., that at that time there were little idols of Vasadeva, Vishnu, civa, and the Adityas. We may a.s.sume that the worship of images came into vogue towards the end of the third century, and afterwards rose rapidly.

[696] Burnouf, "Introd." p. 170.

[697] Burnouf, "Introd." p. 180, 195, 262.

[698] This date would be fixed if the pa.s.sage in Clement of Alexandria: "The Indians who follow the doctrines of b.u.t.ta, whom they regard with the greatest reverence as a G.o.d," certainly came from Megasthenes.

Megasth. fragm. 44, ed. Muller.

[699] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 132, 139.

[700] This is the Mahastupa of king Dushatagamani of Ceylon. La.s.sen, _loc. cit._ 2, 426, 454.

[701] Koppen, "Relig. des Buddha," s. 402, 430.

[702] "Dhammapadam," v. 44, 235, 237.

[703] "Dhammapadam," v. 105.

[704] Koppen, _loc. cit._ 235 ff.

[705] "Dhammapadam," v. 392.

[706] Koppen, _loc. cit._ s. 554 ff.

[707] "Dhammapadam," v. 230.

[708] "Dhammapadam," v. 141.

[709] Koppen, _loc. cit._ s. 320, 489 ff.

[710] "Dhammapadam," v. 251, 202.

[711] "Dhammapadam," v. 186, 199.

[712] "Dhammapadam," v. 134, 320, 197.

[713] "Dhammapadam," v. 106, and at the beginning.

[714] "Dhammapadam," v. 70; _supra_, p. 170 f.

[715] "Dhammapadam," v. 177, 306, 224.

[716] "Dhammapadam," v. 161, 173, 223.

[717] "Dhammapadam," v. 332. Koppen, _loc. cit._ s. 472.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE REFORMS OF THE BRAHMANS.

A doctrine coming forward with so much self-confidence and force as Buddhism, touching such essential sides of the Indian national spirit, and meeting such distinct needs of the heart and of society, could not but react on the system which opposed it, which it fought against and strove to remove, _i.e._ on Brahmanism. We cannot suppose that the Brahmans looked supinely on at the advances of Buddhism. The accounts which we received from the Greeks about the various forms of worship dominant about the year 300 B.C. among the Indians (p. 424) show us that the Brahmanic heaven and the order of the world did not remain untouched; that there had crept in considerable variations from the ideas which the ancient sutras mention as current among the Brahmans at the time of the appearance of the Enlightened. We can confidently conclude that this change in the Brahmanic idea of G.o.d--important as we shall find it to be, and accomplished in part unconsciously and in part with a definite purpose--was brought about through Buddhism, by the inward value of the new doctrine, the struggle it entered into with Brahmanism, the necessity of opposing and checking its advances.

We have shown above how the subordination of the G.o.ds to Brahman and the great saints, the degradation of the ancient deities, must have aroused especially in the people the need of living divine powers. Thus forms. .h.i.therto little noticed in the series of the ancient deities became prominent, in which the people, conforming to the change in their instincts and the new demands of the heart, recognised the ruling and protecting powers of their life, and which they invoked especially as helpers and benefactors. These forms were Vishnu, the G.o.d of light, who even in the Veda is extolled for his friendly feeling to man, and civa, the mighty G.o.d of the storm-wind. In Vishnu the people found the spirit of the beneficent and uniform nature of the district of the Ganges; in civa, the lord of the storm-swept summits of the Himalayas, the ruler of mountains. Each was equally in their eyes the life-giving, sovereign power of nature. The system of the world-soul had left the G.o.ds a place little to be envied in the series of the emanations of Brahman, and had thrust back nature to a distance; the favour which Vishnu and civa found among the people showed the Brahmans that the worship of real and living deities was indispensable, that the life of nature could not be entirely excluded from the forms of the deities. To overcome the tide of popular feeling in the direction of Vishnu and civa, and the doctrine of Buddha at one and the same time, was a victory which the Brahmans could the less hope for, as the tendency towards a more personal supreme Being than Brahman was not unknown in their own schools, so far as these were not devoted to strict meditation and philosophy. Thus the Brahmans followed the movement excited within the circle of the ancient religion; they aimed at satisfying both the nation and themselves by the worship of more personal living G.o.ds. In one place Vishnu, in another civa, was adopted into the system of the Brahmans (p. 326, 330), which in this way underwent a very essential change and a.s.sumed an entirely novel point of view.

If the adoption of Vishnu into the Brahmanic system in the form given to him by the people on the Ganges, who reproduced in the epithets ascribed to the G.o.d their own quiet sensuous nature, was to be efficacious, he could not be allowed to play the unimportant part to which the Brahmans had condemned the ancient G.o.ds; they must make him the centre of heaven in the place of the feeble personal or impersonal Brahman; he must become the living lord of nature and the world. From the indications of the Brahmans quoted above, we may draw, though in wavering lines, a sketch of the gradations through which by a gradual elevation Vishnu obtained the precedence even over Brahman. Brahman finally became the quiescent, Vishnu the active, substance of the world. The latter contains the former, and is therefore the higher power. Vishnu personifies the world-soul; but he also comprises the whole life of nature; he takes the place of the sun-G.o.ds Surya, Savitar, Pushan, and even the place of Indra, who has to offer sacrifice to him, and purify himself before him,[718] until at length in the revisions of the Epos he is regarded no longer as the quiescent cause but as the active lord of nature, and of the whole life of the spirits, and is elevated to be the creator and governor of the universe. In him, the lord of all beings, so we are told in the Mahabharata, all beings are contained as his attributes, like precious stones on a string; on him rests the universe existent and non-existent. Hari (Vishnu) with a thousand heads, a thousand feet, a thousand eyes, gleams with a thousand faces; the G.o.d, pre-eminent above all, the smallest of the small, the widest of the wide, the greatest of the great, supreme among the supreme, is the soul of all; he, the all-knowing, all-observing, is the author of all; in him the world swims like birds in water.[719] Vishnu is without beginning and without end, the source of the existence of all beings. From the thousand-armed Vishnu, the head and the lord of the world, all creatures sprang in the beginning of time, and to him all return at the end of time. Hari is the eternal spirit, glittering as gold, as the sun in a cloudless sky. Brahman sprung from his body, and dwells in it with the rest of the G.o.ds; the lights of the sky are the hairs of his head. He, the lotus-eyed G.o.d, is extolled by the eternal Brahman; to him the G.o.ds pray.[720]

When Vishnu unveils himself to Arjuna at his prayer, and shows himself in his real form, in which no man had yet seen him, he is seen reaching up to the sky without beginning, middle, or end, with many heads, eyes, and arms, uniting in himself thousands of faces; all G.o.ds, animals, and serpents are to be seen in him; Brahman shows himself in the lotus-cup of the navel of Vishnu.[721]

Thus did the Brahmans place Vishnu on the throne of Brahman; Brahman, impersonal and personal, pa.s.sed into him. These pictures are attempts to represent the creative power, the supreme G.o.d, the world-soul, the cause which sustains and comprises all, as a sensuous union of all divine shapes, of all the forms of the world into one frame. The worship offered to this supreme deity consisted in definite prayers, which had to be spoken at morning, midday, and evening; in offerings of flowers, and fruits, and libations of water.[722]

What attracted the people to the doctrine of Buddha was obviously, to no inconsiderable extent, the fact that the highest wisdom and goodness were personified in Buddha; that there was again mercy and grace, on earth, if not in heaven; that the king's son had become a mendicant in order to alleviate the sorrows of the world. The Brahmans, therefore, had to prove that love and pity existed in their heaven; it was of importance for them to show the people that the G.o.ds, whom the adherents of the old religion worshipped, had compa.s.sion for men, and knew how to help them, that even among them the divine wisdom and perfection had a.s.sumed a human shape out of love to mankind. If the Brahmans had so long taught that man could make himself into G.o.d by meditation, penance, and sanct.i.ty, why should not the G.o.ds have made themselves into men? The new G.o.d of the land of the Ganges was a gentle and helpful deity; his government of the world and beneficent acts were not only shown in the life of nature, and in the light which he sent daily, or the purifying water which he sent yearly in the rainy season, and the inundation of the Ganges, but also in the fortunes of men. The Brahmans obtained historical points of connection for the new G.o.d, and re-established a personal and living relation, which had been entirely lost in the Brahmanic system, between man and the G.o.ds, by representing Vishnu as gracious even in past days, as descending from heaven from time to time, and walking on earth for the help of men. From motives of this kind or because the conception of the beneficent acts of Vishnu came into the foreground, because they wished to see and believed that they saw his influence operating everywhere, there came the result that the achievements of the heroes which in the Epos are the centres of the action, Krishna and Rama, were transferred to the G.o.d Vishnu, and these heroic figures were supposed to be appearances of the G.o.d, so that by degrees a number of incarnations (_avatara_) are ascribed to Vishnu, in which he visited earth and did great deeds for men. According to this new system it was Vishnu who a.s.sisted the Brahmans to their supremacy, and therefore consecrated it, who taking the bodily form of Paracurama annihilated the proud races of the Kshatriyas (p. 152). Thus the Brahmans transformed the G.o.d of beneficent nature, when they adopted him into their system, into the founder of the Brahmanic order of the world, a pattern of Brahmanic sanct.i.ty and virtue, and thus they sought to close the path against any counter-movement. In this way Vishnu appeared in the light of a perpetual benefactor, constantly a.s.suming the human form anew, whenever mischief, evil, and sin had got the upper hand, in order to remove them, and then to reascend into heaven. "Whenever justice falls asleep and injustice arises, I create myself," are the words of Vishnu in the Bhagavad-gita; "for the liberation of the good and the annihilation of the evil I was born in each age of the world."[723]

In the Epos, as has been observed, Vishnu took the form of a dwarf in order to rescue the world from the Asura, Bali. According to the Vishnu-Purana, he had, even before the creation of the world, taken the form of a boar in order to raise the earth out of the waters. In the Matsya-Purana, beside three heavenly incarnations as Dharma, a dwarf, and a man-lion, he underwent seven earthly incarnations in consequence of a curse, as is strangely a.s.serted, which an Asura had p.r.o.nounced upon him, when Vishnu had slain the Asura's mother in order to aid Indra against him.[724] The Bhagavata-Purana ascribes twenty incarnations to Vishnu; as creator, a boar, tortoise, fish, man-lion; as a sacrifice, a dwarf; as Paracurama, Rama, Balarama, Krishna, etc.--twice more would he appear on the earth--and then it is added: "But the incarnations of Vishnu are innumerable as the streams which flow down from an inexhaustible lake; all saints and G.o.ds are parts of him."[725]

In order to transform the heroes of the Ramayana into incarnations of Vishnu, vigorous interpolations were required in the body of the poem.

According to the old poem, king Dacaratha offered a horse-sacrifice in order to procure posterity (p. 278). When this sacrifice has been accurately described in all its parts, and we have been informed that the G.o.ds appeared and received each his portion, a second sacrifice is inserted because Dacaratha wished to have a famous son born to him.[726]

While Rishyacringa is advising the king to make this new sacrifice and beginning it, the G.o.ds complain to Brahman that the Rakshasa Ravana of Lanka has subjugated them and made them his slaves; he oppressed the G.o.ds, the Brahmans, and the cows. Ravana's son, Indras.h.i.t, had conquered Indra himself, a victory which Brahman explains to be the consequence of the seduction of a rishi's wife by Indra.[727] Brahman then announces to the helpless deities that Ravana had besought him that he might be invulnerable to Gandharvas, Yakshas, G.o.ds, Danavas, and Rakshasas, and had obtained his request; as he despised men he had not asked to be invulnerable to men, and this favour had not been granted to him. When the G.o.ds with Indra at their head heard this they were delighted. At that moment came the famous Vishnu, with the sh.e.l.l, the discus, the sun's disk, and the club in his hand, in a yellow robe, on the Garuda (his bird), like the sun sitting on the clouds, with a bracelet of fine gold, invoked by the head of the G.o.ds. The G.o.ds fell down before him and said: "Thou art he who removest the sorrows of the distressed worlds. We entreat thee, be our refuge, O unconquerable one." Then they besought him to take upon himself the son-ship of Dacaratha. When changed into a man, he might slay Ravana, the powerful enemy of the worlds, whom the G.o.ds could not overcome. He alone in the hosts of heaven can slay the wicked one. Then Vishnu, the "lord of the G.o.ds, the greatest of the immortals, entreated of all worlds," soothes the G.o.ds, and promises them to slay Ravana, and reign on earth for eleven thousand years.[728]

Meanwhile Rishyacringa at Ayodhya is ready with the sacrifice, and out of the fire there appears a being of a brightness incomparable, clear as a burning flame, strong as a tiger, and his shoulders were as the shoulders of a lion; his garment was red, and his teeth like the stars in heaven; in both hands he held a golden cup, and spake to king Dacaratha: "Receive this draught, Maharaja, which the G.o.ds have prepared; it is the fruit of the sacrifice, let thy fair wives enjoy it; then wilt thou receive the sons for whom thou hast offered the sacrifice."[729] Then Kaucalya bore Rama, the lord of the world, entreated of all worlds, and gained glory by this son of unlimited power, even as Aditi did by the birth of the chief of the G.o.ds, who brandishes the club; and Kaikeyi bore Bharata, who was the fourth part of Vishnu, and Sumitra bore Lakshmana and catrughna, each of whom was the eighth part of Vishnu. This division of Vishnu according to the valour of the sons, and the more or less prominent parts which they play in the poem, is entirely forgotten in the course of it; even Rama himself is entirely uninfluenced by this new introduction; when fighting with magic weapons and arts he feels as a virtuous man and an obedient son.[730] Towards the end of the poem Brahman and the G.o.ds come in order to tell Rama who he is; the original creator of the universe and the worlds, the head of the divine host, whose eyes are the sun and the moon, whose ears are the Acvins. Brahman himself then declares to him: "Thou, O Being of primal force, thou art the famous lord armed with the discus, thou art the boar with one horn, the conqueror of present and future enemies, the true and imperishable Brahman in the middle and at the end. Thou art the supreme order of the world, the bearer of the bow, the supreme spirit, the unconquered, the brandisher of the sword. Thou art wisdom, patience, self-control. Thou art the source of birth, the cause of decay. Thou art Mahendra, the greater Indra; thou performest the functions of Indra. Thou hast formed the Vedas; they are thy thoughts, thou first-born, thou self-dependent lord. Thou art in all creatures, in the Brahmans and the cows; thou sustainest creatures and the earth with its hills; thou art at the end of the earth, in the waters, a mighty serpent which supports the three worlds. The whole world is thy body, Agni is thy anger, Soma thy joy, and I (Brahman) am thy heart."[731] Rama is here identified with Vishnu, and the latter is at the same time set forth as including Brahman and all nature, as the world-soul and a personal G.o.d.

The form of Krishna goes through the same change in the Mahabharata, though the position, acts and counsels which the old poem ascribed to this hero of the tribe of the Yadavas were often, as we saw, neither honourable nor praiseworthy. Besides his relation to the sons of Pandu, the Mahabharata ascribed to him a long series of earlier achievements.

While yet among the herdmen, he had slain Haya among the forests on the Yamuna, and overcome the mischievous bull which slew the oxen. Then he slew Pralambha, Naraka, Jambha, and Pitha, the great Asura, and conquered Kansa, king of Mathura, in battle. Supported by his brother Balarama, he overcame Kansa's brother, the bold prince of the curasenas.

Jarasandha also, the king of Magadha and of the Chedis, was defeated by Krishna, and the victory over Panchajana who lived in Patala brought him into the possession of his divine sh.e.l.l. This a.s.sisted Krishna in his suit for the daughter of the king of the Gandharas, for no prince was his equal in weapons; he yoked the conquered princes to his bridal car.[732] In the ancient form of the poem, Krishna was the son of the cowherd Nanda, and his wife Yacoda. It is already an alteration of his original position when he is described as a son of Vasudeva and Devaki, who was changed with the child of the herdman's wife. In the Chandogya-Upanishad Krishna is still no more than the son of Devaki.[733] Afterwards, the prayers of the G.o.ds to Vishnu that he would allow himself to be born upon earth, were inserted into the Mahabharata.

Vishnu plucks out two hairs from himself, one white, the other black; these two hairs pa.s.s into two women of the tribe of Yadavas, the two wives of Vasudeva, Devaki and Rohini. From the white hair Rohini brought forth Balarama, and from the black Devaki brought forth Krishna.[734]

Hence Krishna is merely one part of Vishnu, and Balarama another; but of this no further notice is taken; wherever Krishna is treated as a G.o.d in the poem, he is the whole G.o.d. In the other parts of the poem he is no more than a mortal; in the earliest revision he fights his fight with the arms and the blessing of the G.o.ds, of which he would have no need if he were himself the supreme G.o.d; in the last revision he is the supreme G.o.d. Then it is imparted to him that in the beginning of days Brahman, who is the whole world, sprang from the lotus of his navel; that the lords of the G.o.ds proceeded from his body and carry out his commands.[735] Brahman says to the G.o.ds: "Ye must worship this Vasudeva, whose son I, Brahman, the lord of the worlds, am. Never, ye great G.o.ds, can the mighty bearer of the sh.e.l.l, the discus, and the club be regarded as merely a mortal." This being is the supreme mystery, the supreme existence, the supreme Brahman, the supreme power, the supreme joy, the supreme truth. It is the Imperishable, the Indivisible, the Eternal.

Vasudeva (Krishna) of unlimited power cannot therefore be despised by the G.o.ds, nor by Indra, nor by the Asuras, as merely a man. "He who says that he is only a man, his understanding is perverted; he who despises Krishna will be called the lowest of mankind. He who despises Vasudeva is full of darkness; as also is the man who knows not the glorious G.o.d whose self is the world. The man who despises this great being, who bears crowns and jewels, and liberates his worshippers from fear, is plunged into deep darkness."[736] a.s.sertions and statements of this kind show clearly that at the time of their insertion into the Mahabharata the deification of Krishna was by no means universally recognised.[737]

While a tendency at work within the circle of the Brahmans put Vishnu in the place of Brahman, another impulse was not less eagerly occupied in elevating the old storm-G.o.d Rudra-civa to be the highest deity. In the poem of the Veda the storm-G.o.d wears the plaited hair. He is called Kapardin, _i.e._ the bearer of the locks, an idea no doubt borrowed from the collected clouds driven by the storm. As the old priestly families plaited their hair in different ways (p. 29), and all penitents wore their hair in knots, the storm-G.o.d also became a penitent with the Brahman, and as the divine power resided pre-eminently in penance, and civa was so strong and mighty a G.o.d, he became the greatest of all penitents. The old conception of Rudra a.s.sisted to retain for this mighty deity an angry and destructive aspect; but as rain and fructification also came from the storm civa was placed in relation to procreation. If Vishnu is celebrated in the pa.s.sages quoted from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the same honour is allotted in other parts of the same poems to civa, who is now called Mahadeva, _i.e._ the great G.o.d. He also is the source, the unborn cause of the world, the framer of the all, the beginning of all beings, the shaper of the G.o.ds, the uncreated, imperishable lord, the origin of the past, the present, and the future. He is the highest spirit, the home of the lights, the sky, the wind, the creator of the ocean, the substance of the earth, Brahman itself. But he is also the supreme anger, the creator of the world and its destroyer.[738] He, the all-penetrating G.o.d, is the creator and lord of Brahman, Vishnu, and Indra; they serve him, who extends beyond matter and spirit, who at once is and is not. When by his power he set matter and spirit in motion, civa, the G.o.d of the G.o.ds, the creator (Praj.a.pati),[739] created Brahman from his right side and Vishnu from his left. His attributes could not be set forth in a hundred years. He is Indra, he is Agni, he is the Acvins, he is Surya, he is Varuna.

Nothing is above him, and nothing can withstand his divinity; the heart of the G.o.ds is terrified in the battle when they hear his awful voice; none can endure the sight of the angry bearer of the bow. He has two bodies, and these a.s.sume marvellous shapes. One of the bodies is full of sorrow, the other is gracious. If angry and pa.s.sionate, he is an eater of flesh, blood, and marrow, and then he is called Rudra. When he is angry, all worlds are confounded at the sound of his bow-string, G.o.ds and Asuras are defeated and helpless, the waters are in tumult, and the earth quakes, the mountains sink, the light of the sun is quenched, heaven is torn asunder and veiled in thick darkness.[740] There were three cities of the mighty Asuras which Indra could not overcome. At the entreaty of the G.o.ds that he would liberate the world civa made Vishnu his arrow, Agni the barbs, Yama the feathers, all the Vedas his bow, and the Gayatris (p. 172) his bow-string; Brahman was the leader of his chariot, and he burnt the three cities and the Asuras with the arrow of triple barbs, of the colour of the sun, and glowing like fire, which consumes the world.[741] civa is the soul of all worlds; he dwells in the heart of all creatures, he knows all desires, he is visible and invisible; serpents are his girdle and the skins of serpents his robe; he carries the discus, the club, sword, and axe. He a.s.sumes the form of Brahman and Vishnu, of all G.o.ds, spirits, and demons, of all kinds of men. He laughs, and weeps, and hops, and dances, and sings, and speaks softly, and then again with the voice of a drunkard. Naked, with excited glances, he plays with the maidens.[742]