The Religions of India Part 1

The Religions of India.

by Edward Washburn Hopkins.

PREFATORY NOTE

The growing interest both in this country and abroad in the historical study of religions is one of the noticeable features in the intellectual phases of the past decades. The more general indications of this interest may be seen in such foundations as the Hibbert and Gifford Lectureships in England, and the recent organization of an American committee to arrange in various cities for lectures on the history of religions, in the establishment of a special department for the subject at the University of Paris, in the organization of the Musee Guimet at Paris, in the publication of a journal--the _Revue de l'Histoire des Religions_--under the auspices of this Museum, and in the creation of chairs at the College de France, at the Universities of Holland, and in this country at Cornell University and the University of Chicago,[1] with the prospect of others to follow in the near future. For the more special indications we must turn to the splendid labors of a large array of scholars toiling in the various departments of ancient culture--India, Babylonia, a.s.syria, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Phoenicia, China, Greece, and Rome--with the result of securing a firm basis for the study of the religions flourishing in those countries--a result due mainly to the discovery of fresh sources and to the increase of the latter brought about by exploration and incessant research. The detailed study of the facts of religion everywhere, both in primitive society and in advancing civilization, and the emphasis laid upon gathering and understanding these facts prior to making one's deductions, has succeeded in setting aside the speculations and generalizations that until the beginning of this century paraded under the name of "Philosophy of Religion."

Such has been the scholarly activity displayed and the fertility resulting, that it seems both desirable and timely to focus, as it were, the array of facts connected with the religions of the ancient world in such a manner that the summary resulting may serve as the point of departure for further investigations.

This has been the leading thought which has suggested the series of Handbooks on the History of Religions. The treatment of the religions included in the series differs from previous attempts in the aim to bring together the ascertained results of scholarship rather than to make an additional contribution, though the character of the scholars whose cooperation has beep secured justifies the hope that their productions will also mark an advance in the interpretation of the subject a.s.signed to each. In accord with this general aim, mere discussion has been limited to a minimum, while the chief stress has been laid upon the clear and full presentation of the data connected with each religion.

A uniform plan has been drawn up by the editor for the order of treatment in the various volumes, by following which it is hoped that the continuous character of the series will be secured.

In this plan the needs of the general reader, as well as those of the student, for whom, in the first place, the series is designed, have been kept in view. After the introduction, which in the case of each volume is to be devoted to a setting forth of the sources and the method of study, a chapter follows on the land and the people, presenting those ethnographical and geographical considerations, together with a brief historical sketch of the people in question, so essential to an understanding of intellectual and religious life everywhere.

In the third section, which may be denominated the kernel of the book, the subdivisions and order of presentation necessarily vary, the division into periods being best adapted to one religion, the geographical order for another, the grouping of themes in a logical sequence for a third; but in every case, the range covered will be the same, namely, the beliefs, including the pantheon, the relation to the G.o.ds, views of life and death, the rites--both the official ones and the popular customs--the religious literature and architecture. A fourth section will furnish a general estimate of the religion, its history, and the relation it bears to others. Each volume will conclude with a full bibliography, index, and necessary maps, with ill.u.s.trations introduced into the text as called for. The Editor has been fortunate in securing the services of distinguished specialists whose past labors and thorough understanding of the plan and purpose of the series furnish a guarantee for the successful execution of their task.

It is the hope of the Editor to produce in this way a series of manuals that may serve as text-books for the historical study of religions in our universities and seminaries. In addition to supplying this want, the arrangement of the manuals will, it is expected, meet the requirements of reliable reference-books for ascertaining the present status of our knowledge of the religions of antiquity, while the popular manner of presentation, which it will be the aim of the writers to carry out, justifies the hope that the general reader will find the volumes no less attractive and interesting.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: In an article by the writer published in the _Biblical World_ (University of Chicago Press) for January, 1893, there will be found an account of the present status of the Historical Study of Religions in this country.]

CHAPTER I.--INTRODUCTION.

SOURCES.--DATES.--METHODS OF INTERPRETATION.--DIVISIONS OF SUBJECT.

SOURCES.

India always has been a land of religions. In the earliest Vedic literature are found not only hymns in praise of the accepted G.o.ds, but also doubts in regard to the worth of these G.o.ds; the beginnings of a new religion incorporated into the earliest records of the old.

And later, when, about 300 B.C, Megasthenes was in India, the descendants of those first theosophists are still discussing, albeit in more modern fashion, the questions that lie at the root of all religion. "Of the philosophers, those that are most estimable he terms Brahmans ([Greek: _brachmanas_]). These discuss with many words concerning death. For they regard death as being, for the wise, a birth into real life--into the happy life. And in many things they hold the same opinions with the Greeks: saying that the universe was begotten and will be destroyed, and that the world is a sphere, which the G.o.d who made and owns it pervades throughout; that there are different beginnings of all things, but water is the beginning of world-making, while, in addition to the four elements, there is, as fifth, a kind of nature, whence came the sky and the stars.... And concerning the seed of things and the soul they have much to say also, whereby they weave in myths, just as does Plato, in regard to the soul's immortality, judgment in h.e.l.l, and such things."[1]

And as India conspicuously is a country of creeds, so is its literature preeminently priestly and religious. From the first Veda to the last Pur[=a]na, religion forms either the subject-matter of the most important works, or, as in the case of the epics,[2] the basis of didactic excursions and sectarian interpolations, which impart to worldly themes a tone peculiarly theological. History and oratory are unknown in Indian literature. The early poetry consists of hymns and religious poems; the early prose, of liturgies, linguistics, "law,"

theology, sacred legends and other works, all of which are intended to supplement the knowledge of the Veda, to explain ceremonies, or to inculcate religious principles. At a later date, formal grammar and systems of philosophy, fables and commentaries are added to the prose; epics, secular lyric, drama, the Pur[=a]nas and such writings to the poetry. But in all this great ma.s.s, till that time which Muller has called the Renaissance--that is to say, till after the Hindus were come into close contact with foreign nations, notably the Greek, from which has been borrowed, perhaps, the cla.s.sical Hindu drama,[3]--there is no real literature that was not religious originally, or, at least, so apt for priestly use as to become chiefly moral and theosophic; while the most popular works of modern times are sectarian tracts, Pur[=]nas, Tantras and remodelled worldly poetry. The sources, then, from which is to be drawn the knowledge of Hindu religions are the best possible--the original texts. The information furnished by foreigners, from the times of Ktesias and Megasthenes to that of Mandelslo, is considerable; but one is warranted in a.s.suming that what little in it is novel is inaccurate, since otherwise the information would have been furnished by the Hindus themselves; and that, conversely, an outsider's statements, although presumably correct, often may give an inexact impression through lack of completeness; as when--to take an example that one can control--Ktesias tells half the truth in regard to ordeals. His account is true, but he gives no notion of the number or elaborate character of these interesting ceremonies.

The sources to which we shall have occasion to refer will be, then, the two most important collections of Vedic hymns--the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda; the Brahmanic literature, with the supplementary Upanishads, and the S[=u]tras or mnemonic abridgments of religious and ceremonial rules; the legal texts, and the religious and theological portions of the epic; and the later sectarian writings, called Pur[=a]nas. The great heresies, again, have their own special writings. Thus far we shall draw on the native literature. Only for some of the modern sects, and for the religions of the wild tribes which have no literature, shall we have to depend on the accounts of European writers.

DATES.

For none of the native religious works has one a certain date. Nor is there for any one of the earlier compositions the certainty that it belongs, as a whole, to any one time. The Rig Veda was composed by successive generations; the Atharvan represents different ages; each Br[=a]hmana appears to belong in part to one era, in part to another; the earliest S[=u]tras (manuals of law, etc.) have been interpolated; the earliest metrical code is a composite; the great epic is the work of centuries; and not only do the Upanishads and Pur[=a]nas represent collectively many different periods, but exactly to which period each individually is to be a.s.signed remains always doubtful. Only in the case of the Buddhistic writings is there a satisfactorily approximate terminus a quo, and even here approximate means merely within the limit of centuries.

Nevertheless, criteria fortunately are not lacking to enable one to a.s.sign the general bulk of any one work to a certain period in the literary development; and as these periods are, if not sharply, yet plainly distinguishable, one is not in so desperate a case as he might have expected to be, considering that it is impossible to date with certainty any Hindu book or writer before the Christian era. For, first, there exists a difference in language, demarcating the most important periods; and, secondly, the development of the literature has been upon such lines that it is easy to say, from content and method of treatment, whether a given cla.s.s of writings is a product of the Vedic, early Brahmanic, or late Brahmanic epochs. Usually, indeed, one is unable to tell whether a later Upanishad was made first in the early or late Brahmanic period, but it is known that the Upanishads, as a whole, _i.e._, the literary form and philosophical material which characterize Upanishads, were earlier than the latest Brahmanic period and subsequent to the early Brahmanic period; that they arose at the close of the latter and before the rise of the former. So the Br[=a]hmanas, as a whole, are subsequent to the Vedic age, although some of the Vedic hymns appear to have been made up in the same period with that of the early Br[=a]hmanas. Again, the Pur[=a]nas can be placed with safety after the late Brahmanic age; and, consequently, subsequent to the Upanishads, although it is probable that many Upanishads were written after the first Pur[=a]nas. The general compa.s.s of this enormous literature is from an indefinite antiquity to about 1500 A.D. A liberal margin of possible error must be allowed in the a.s.sumption of any specific dates. The received opinion is that the Rig Veda goes back to about 2000 B.C., yet are some scholars inclined rather to accept 3000 B.C. as the time that represents this era. Weber, in his _Lectures on Sanskrit Literature_ (p. 7), rightly says that to seek for an exact date is fruitless labor; while Whitney compares Hindu dates to ninepins--set up only to be bowled down again.

Schroeder, in his _Indiens Literatur und Cultur_, suggests that the prior limit may be "a few centuries earlier than 1500," agreeing with Weber's preferred reckoning; but Whitney, Gra.s.smann, and Benfey provisionally a.s.sume 2000 B.C. as the starting point of Hindu literature. The lowest possible limit for this event Muller now places at about 1500, which is recognized as a very cautious view; most scholars thinking that Muller's estimate gives too little time for the development of the literary periods, which, in their opinion, require, linguistically and otherwise, a greater number of years. Brunnhofer more recently has suggested 2800 B.C. as the terminus; while the last writers on the subject (Tilak and Jacobi) claim to have discovered that the period from 3500 to 2500 represents the Vedic age. Their conclusions, however, are not very convincing, and have been disputed vigorously.[4] Without the hope of persuading such scholars as are wedded to a terminus of three or four thousand years ago that we are right, we add, in all deference to others, our own opinion on this vexed question. Buddhism gives the first semblance of a date in Hindu literature. Buddha lived in the sixth century, and died probably about 480, possibly (Westergaard's extreme opinion) as late as 368.[5]

Before this time arise the S[=u]tras, back of which lie the earliest Upanishads, the bulk of the Br[=a]hmanas, and all the Vedic poems. Now it is probable that the Brahmanic literature itself extends to the time of Buddha and perhaps beyond it. For the rest of pre-Buddhistic literature it seems to us incredible that it is necessary to require, either from the point of view of linguistic or of social and religious development, the enormous period of two thousand years. There are no other grounds on which to base a reckoning except those of Jacobi and his Hindu rival, who build on Vedic data results that hardly support the superstructure they have erected. Jacobi's starting-point is from a mock-serious hymn, which appears to be late and does not establish, to whatever date it be a.s.signed, the point of departure from which proceeds his whole argument, as Whitney has shown very well. One is driven back to the needs of a literature in respect of time sufficient for it to mature. What changes take place in language, even with a written literature, in the s.p.a.ce of a few centuries, may be seen in Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. No two thousand years are required to bridge the linguistic extremes of the Vedic and cla.s.sical Sanskrit language.[6] But in content it will be seen that the flower of the later literature is budding already in the Vedic age. We are unable to admit that either in language or social development, or in literary or religious growth, more than a few centuries are necessary to account for the whole development of Hindu literature (meaning thereby compositions, whether written or not) up to the time of Buddha.

Moreover, if one compare the period at which arise the earliest forms of literature among other Aryan peoples, it will seem very strange that, whereas in the case of the Romans, Greeks, and Persians, one thousand years B.C. is the extreme limit of such literary activity as has produced durable works, the Hindus two or three thousand years B.C. were creating poetry so finished, so refined, and, from a metaphysical point of view, so advanced as is that of the Rig Veda.

If, as is generally a.s.sumed, the (prospective) Hindus and Persians were last to leave the common Aryan habitat, and came together to the south-east, the difficulty is increased; especially in the light of modern opinion in regard to the fict.i.tious antiquity of Persian (Iranian) literature. For if Darmesteter be correct in holding the time of the latter to be at most a century before our era, the incongruity between that oldest date of Persian literature and the "two or three thousand years before Christ," which are claimed in the case of the Rig Veda, becomes so great as to make the latter a.s.sumption more dubious than ever.

We think in a word, without wishing to be dogmatic, that the date of the Rig Veda is about on a par, historically, with that of 'Homer,'

that is to say, the Collection[7] represents a long period, which was completed perhaps two hundred years after 1000 B.C, while again its earliest beginnings precede that date possibly by five centuries; but we would a.s.sign the bulk of the Rig Veda to about 1000 B.C. With conscious imitation of older speech a good deal of archaic linguistic effect doubtless was produced by the latest poets, who really belong to the Brahmanic age. The Brahmanic age in turn ends, as we opine, about 500 B.C., overlapping the S[=u]tra period as well as that of the first Upanishads. The former cla.s.s of writings (after 500 B.C. one may talk of writings) is represented by dates that reach from circa 600-500 B.C. nearly to our era. Buddhism's _floruit_ is from 500 B.C.

to 500 A.D., and epic Hinduism covers nearly the same centuries. From 500 to 1000 Buddhism is in a state of decadence; and through this time extend the dramatic and older Puranic writings; while other Pur[=a]nas are as late as 1500, at which time arises the great modern reforming sect of the Sikhs. In the matter of the earlier termini a century may be added or subtracted here and there, but these convenient divisions of five hundreds will be found on the whole to be sufficiently accurate.[8]

METHODS OF INTERPRETATION.

At the outset of his undertaking a double problem presents itself to one that would give, even in compact form, a view of Hindu religions.

This problem consists in explaining, and, in so far as is possible, reconciling opposed opinions in regard not only to the nature of these religions but also to the method of interpreting the Vedic hymns.

That the Vedic religion was naturalistic and mytho-poetic is doubted by few. The Vedic hymns laud the powers of nature and natural phenomena as personified G.o.ds, or even as impersonal phenomena. They praise also as distinct powers the departed fathers. In the Rig Veda I. 168, occur some verses in honor of the storm-G.o.ds called Maruts: "Self-yoked are they come lightly from the sky. The immortals urge themselves on with the goad. Dustless, born of power, with shining spears the Maruts overthrow the strongholds. Who is it, O Maruts, ye that have lightning-spears, that impels you within? ... The streams roar from the tires, when they send out their cloud-voices," etc.

Nothing would seem more justifiable, in view of this hymn and of many like it, than to a.s.sume with Muller and other Indologians, that the Marut-G.o.ds are personifications of natural phenomena. As clearly do Indra and the Dawn appear to be natural phenomena. But no less an authority than Herbert Spencer has attacked this view: "Facts imply that the conception of the dawn as a person results from the giving of dawn as a birth-name."[9] And again: "If, then, Dawn [in New Zealand and elsewhere] is an actual name for a person, if where there prevails this mode of distinguishing children, it has probably often been given to those born early in the morning; the traditions concerning one of such who became noted, would, in the mind of the uncritical savage ...

lead to identification with the dawn."[10] In another pa.s.sage: "The primitive G.o.d is the superior man ... propitiated during his life and still more after his death."[11] Summing up, Spencer thus concludes: "Instead of seeing in the common character of so-called myths, that they describe combats of beings using weapons, evidence that they arose out of human transactions; mythologists a.s.sume that the order of Nature presents itself to the undeveloped mind in terms of victories and defeats."[12] Moreover (_a posteriori_), "It is not true that the primitive man looks at the powers of Nature with awe. It is not true that he speculates about their characters and causes."[13] If Spencer had not included in his criticism the mythologists that have written on Vedic religion, there would be no occasion to take his opinion into consideration. But since he claims by the light of his comparative studies to have shown that in the Rig Veda the "so-called nature G.o.ds,"[14] were not the oldest, and explains Dawn here exactly as he does in New Zealand, it becomes necessary to point out, that apart from the question of the origin of religions in general, Spencer has made a fatal error in a.s.suming that he is dealing in the Rig Veda with primitive religion, uncritical savages, and undeveloped minds. And furthermore, as the poet of the Rig Veda is not primitive, or savage, or undeveloped, so when he worships _Dyaus pitar_ [Greek: Zeus pataer]

as the 'sky-father,' he not only makes it evident to every reader that he really is worshipping the visible sky above; but in his descriptions of G.o.ds such as Indra, the Dawn, and some other new G.o.ds he invents from time to time, long after he has pa.s.sed the savage, primitive, and undeveloped state, he makes it no less clear that he worships phenomena as they stand before him (rain, cloud, lightning, etc.), so that by a.n.a.logy with what is apparent in the case of later divinities, one is led inevitably to predicate the same origin as theirs in the case of the older G.o.ds.

But it is unnecessary to spend time on this point. It is impossible for any sober scholar to read the Rig Veda and believe that the Vedic poets are not worshipping natural phenomena; or that the phenomena so worshipped were not the original forms of these G.o.ds. Whether at a more remote time there was ever a period when the pre-historic Hindu, or his pre-Indic ancestor, worshipped the Manes exclusively is another question, and one with which at present we have nothing to do. The history of Hindu religions begins with the Rig Veda, and in this period the worship of Manes and that of natural phenomena were distinct, nor are there any indications that the latter was ever developed from the former. It is not denied that the Hindus made G.o.ds of departed men. They did this long after the Vedic period. But there is no proof that all the Vedic G.o.ds, as claims Spencer, were the worshipped souls of the dead. No _argumentum a fero_ can show in a Vedic dawn-hymn anything other than a hymn to personified Dawn, or make it probable that this dawn was ever a mortal's name.

In respect of that which precedes all tradition we, whose task is not to speculate in regard to primitive religious conceptions, but to give the history of one people's religious progress, may be pardoned for expressing no opinion. But without abandoning history (i.e., tradition) we would revert for a moment to the pre-Indian period and point out that Zarathustra's rejection of the _daevas_ which must be the same _devas_ that are worshipped in India, proves that _deva_-worship is the immediate predecessor of the Hindu religion. As far back as one can scrutinize the Aryan past he finds, as the earliest known objects of reverence, 'sun' and 'sky,' besides and beside the blessed Manes. A word here regarding the priority of monotheism or of polytheism. The tradition is in favor of the latter, while on _a priori_ grounds whoever thinks that the more primitive the race the more apt it is for monotheism will postulate, with some of the older scholars, an a.s.sumed monotheism as the pre-historic religion of the Hindus; while whosoever opines that man has gradually risen from a less intellectual stage will see in the early G.o.ds of the Hindus only another ill.u.s.tration of one universal fact, and posit even Aryan polytheism as an advance on the religion which it is probable that the remoter ancestors of the Aryans once acknowledged.

A word perhaps should be said, also, in order to a better understanding between the ethnologists as represented by Andrew Lang, and the unfortunate philologists whom it delights him to pommel.

Lang's clever attacks on the myth-makers, whom he persistently describes as the philologists--and they do indeed form part of that camp--have had the effect of bringing 'philological theories' into sad disrepute with sciolists and 'common-sense' people. But the sun-myths and dawn-myths that the myth-makers discover in Cinderella and Red Riding Hood, ought not to be fathered upon all philologists. On the other hand, who will deny that in India certain mythological figures are eoian or solar in origin? Can any one question that Vivasvant the 'wide gleaming' is sun or bright sky, as he is represented in the Avesta and Rig Veda? Yet is a very anthropomorphic, nay, earthly figure, made out of this G.o.d. Or is Mr. Lang ignorant that the G.o.d Yima became Jemshid, and that Feridun is only the G.o.d Trita? It undoubtedly is correct to illuminate the past with other light than that of sun or dawn, yet that these lights have shone and have been quenched in certain personalities may be granted without doing violence to scientific principles. All purely etymological mythology is precarious, but one may recognize sun-myths without building a system on the basis of a Dawn-Helen, and without referring Ilium to the Vedic _bila_. Again, myths about G.o.ds, heroes, and fairies are to be segregated. Even in India, which teems with it, there is little, if any, folklore that can be traced to solar or dawn-born myths. Mr. Lang represents a healthy reaction against too much sun-myth, but we think that there are sun-myths still, and that despite his protests all religion is not grown from one seed.

There remains the consideration of the second part of the double problem which was formulated above--the method of interpretation. The native method is to believe the scholiasts' explanations, which often are fanciful and, in all important points, totally unreliable; since the Hindu commentators lived so long after the period of the literature they expound that the tradition they follow is useful only in petty details. From a modern point of view the question of interpretation depends mainly on whether one regard the Rig Veda as but an Indic growth, the product of the Hindu mind alone, or as a work that still retains from an older age ideas which, having once been common to Hindu and Iranian, should be compared with those in the Persian Avesta and be ill.u.s.trated by them. Again, if this latter hypothesis be correct, how is one to interpret an apparent likeness, here and there, between Indic and foreign notions,--is it possible that the hymns were composed, in part, before the advent of the authors into India, and is it for this reason that in the Rig Veda are contained certain names, ideas, and legends, which do not seem to be native to India? On the other hand, if one adopt the theory that the Rig Veda is wholly a native work, in how far is he to suppose that it is separable from Brahmanic formalism? Were the hymns made independently of any ritual, as their own excuse for being, or were they composed expressly for the sacrifice, as part of a formal cult?

Here are views diverse enough, but each has its advocate or advocates.

According to the earlier European writers the Vedic poets are fountains of primitive thought, streams unsullied by any tributaries, and in reading them one quaffs a fresh draught, the gush of unsophisticated herdsmen, in whose religion there is to be seen a childlike belief in natural phenomena as divine forces, over which forces stands the Heaven-G.o.d as the highest power. So in 1869 Pfleiderer speaks of the "primeval childlike nave prayer" of Rig Veda vi. 51. 5 ("Father sky, mother earth," etc.);[15] while Pictet, in his work _Les Origines Indo-Europeennes_, maintains that the Aryans had a primitive monotheism, although it was vague and rudimentary; for he regards both Iranian dualism and Hindu polytheism as being developments of one earlier monism (claiming that Iranian dualism is really monotheistic). Pictet's argument is that the human mind must have advanced from the simple to the complex! Even Roth believes in an originally "supreme deity" of the Aryans.[16] Opposed to this, the 'nave' school of such older scholars as Roth, Muller,[17] and Gra.s.smann, who see in the Rig Veda an ingenuous expression of 'primitive' ideas, stand the theories of Bergaigne, who interprets everything allegorically; and of Pischel and Geldner, realists, whose general opinions may thus be formulated: The poets of the Rig Veda are not childlike and nave; they represent a comparatively late period of culture, a society not only civilized, but even sophisticated; a mode of thought philosophical and sceptical a religion not only ceremonious but absolutely stereotyped. In regard to the Aryanhood of the hymns, the stand taken by these latter critics, who renounce even Bergaigne's slight hold on mythology, is that the Rig Veda is thoroughly Indic. It is to be explained by the light of the formal Hindu ritualism, and even by epic worldliness, its fresh factors being lewd G.o.ds, harlots, and race-horses. Bloomfield, who does not go so far as this, claims that the 'Vedic' age really is a Brahmanic age; that Vedic religion is saturated with Brahmanic ideas and Brahmanic formalism, so that the Rig Veda ought to be looked upon as made for the ritual, not the ritual regarded as ancillary to the Rig Veda[18]. This scholar maintains that there is scarcely any chronological distinction between the hymns of the Rig Veda and the Br[=a]hmana, both forms having probably existed together "from earliest times"; and that not a single Vedic hymn "was ever composed without reference to ritual application"; nay, all the hymns were "liturgical from the very start"[19]. This is a plain advance even on Bergaigne's opinion, who finally regarded all the family-books of the Rig Veda as composed to subserve the _soma_-cult.[20]

In the Rig Veda occur hymns of an entirely worldly character, the lament of a gambler, a humorous description of frogs croaking like priests, a funny picture of contemporary morals [describing how every one l.u.s.ts after wealth], and so forth. From these alone it becomes evident that the ritualistic view must be regarded as one somewhat exaggerated. But if the liturgical extremist appears to have stepped a little beyond the boundary of probability, he yet in daring remains far behind Bergaigne's disciple Regnaud, who has a mystical 'system,'

which is, indeed, the outcome of Bergaigne's great work, though it is very improbable that the latter would have looked with favor upon his follower's results. In _Le Rig Veda_ [Paris, 1892] Paul Regnaud, emphasizing again the connection between the liturgy and the hymns, refers every word of the Rig Veda to the sacrifice in its simplest form, the oblation. According to this author the Hindus had forgotten the meaning of their commonest words, or consistently employed them in their hymns in a meaning different to that in ordinary use. The very word for G.o.d, _deva_ [deus], no longer means the 'shining one' [the G.o.d], but the 'burning oblation'; the common word for mountain, _giri_ also means oblation, and so on. This is Bergaigne's allegorical mysticism run mad.

At such perversion of reasonable criticism is the exegesis of the Veda arrived in one direction. But in another it is gone astray no less, as misdirected by its clever German leader. In three volumes[21]

Brunnhofer has endeavored to prove that far from being a Brahmanic product, the Rig Veda is not even the work of Hindus; that it was composed near the Caspian Sea long before the Aryans descended into India. Brunnhofer's books are a mine of ingenious conjectures, as suggestive in detail as on the whole they are unconvincing. His fundamental error is the fancy that names and ideas which might be Iranian or Turanian would prove, if such they really could be shown to be, that the work in which they are contained must be Iranian or Turanian. He relies in great measure on pa.s.sages that always have been thought to be late, either whole late hymns or tags added to old hymns, and on the most daring changes in the text, changes which he makes in order to prove his hypothesis, although there is no necessity for making them. The truth that underlies Brunnhofer's extravagance is that there are foreign names in the Rig Veda, and this is all that he has proved thus far.

In regard to the relation between the Veda and the Avesta the difference of views is too individual to have formed systems of interpretation on that basis alone. Every competent scholar recognizes a close affinity between the Iranian Yima and the Hindu Yama, between the _soma_-cult and the _haoma_-cult, but in how far the thoughts and forms that have cl.u.s.tered about one development are to be compared with those of the other there is no general agreement and there can be none. The usual practice, however, is to call the Iranian _Yima, haoma_, etc., to one's aid if they subserve one's own view of _Yama, soma,_ and other Hindu parallels, and to discard a.n.a.logous features as an independent growth if they do not. This procedure is based as well on the conditions of the problem as on the conditions of human judgment, and must not be criticized too severely; for in fact the two religions here and there touch each other so nearly that to deny a relation between them is impossible, while in detail they diverge so widely that it is always questionable whether a coincidence of ritual or belief be accidental or imply historical connection.

It is scarcely advisable in a concise review of several religions to enter upon detailed criticism of the methods of interpretation that affect for the most part only the earliest of them. But on one point, the reciprocal relations between the Vedic and Brahmanic periods, it is necessary to say a few words. Why is it that well-informed Vedic scholars differ so widely in regard to the ritualistic share in the making of the Veda? Because the extremists on either side in formulating the principles of their system forget a fact that probably no one of them if questioned would fail to acknowledge. The Rig Veda is not a h.o.m.ogeneous whole. It is a work which successive generations have produced, and in which are represented different views, of local or sectarian origin; while the hymns from a literary point of view are of varying value. The latter is a fact which has been ignored frequently, but it is more important than any other. For one has almost no criteria, with which to discover whether the hymns precede or follow the ritual, other than the linguistic posteriority of the ritualistic literature, and the knowledge that there were priests with a ritual when some of the hymns were composed. The bare fact that hymns are found rubricated in the later literature is surely no reason for believing that such hymns were made for the ritual. Now while it can be shown that a large number of hymns are formal, conventional, and mechanical in expression, and while it may be argued with plausibility that these were composed to serve the purpose of an established cult, this is very far from being the case with many which, on other grounds, may be supposed to belong severally to the older and later part of the Rig Veda. Yet does the new school, in estimating the hymns, never admit this. The poems always are spoken of as 'sacerdotal', ritualistic, without the slightest attempt to see whether this be true of all or of some alone. We claim that it is not historical, it is not judicious from a literary point of view, to fling indiscriminately together the hymns that are evidently ritualistic and those of other value; for, finally, it is a sober literary judgment that is the court of appeals in regard to whether poetry be poetry or not. Now let one take a hymn containing, to make it an unexceptionable example, nothing very profound or very beautiful. It is this well-known