The Religions of India Part 17

These Fathers (Manes), although of different sort than the G.o.ds, are yet divine and have many G.o.dly powers, granting prayers and lending aid, as may be seen from this invocation: "O Fathers, may the sky-people grant us life; may we follow the course of the living" (x.

57. 5). One whole hymn is addressed to these quasi-divinities (x. 15):

Arise may the lowest, the highest, the middlemost Fathers, those worthy of the _soma_, who without harm have entered into the spirit (-world); may these Fathers, knowing the seasons, aid us at our call. This reverence be to-day to the Fathers, who of old and afterwards departed; those who have settled in an earthly sphere,[35] or among peoples living in fair places (the G.o.ds?). I have found the gracious Fathers, the descendant(s) and the wide-step[36] of Vishnu; those who, sitting on the sacrificial straw, willingly partake of the pressed drink, these are most apt to come hither....

Come hither with blessings, O Fathers; may they come hither, hear us, address and bless us.... May ye not injure us for whatever impiety we have as men committed.... With those who are our former Fathers, those worthy of _soma_, who are come to the _soma_ drink, the best (fathers), may Yama rejoicing, willingly with them that are willing, eat the oblations as much as is agreeable (to them). Come running, O Agni, with these (fathers), who thirsted among the G.o.ds and hastened hither, finding oblations and praised with songs. These gracious ones, the real poets, the Fathers that seat themselves at the sacrificial heat; who are real eaters of oblation; drinkers of oblation; and are set together on one chariot with Indra and the G.o.ds. Come, O Agni, with these, a thousand, honored like G.o.ds, the ancient, the original Fathers who seat themselves at the sacrificial heat....

Thou, Agni, didst give the oblations to the Fathers, that eat according to their custom; do thou (too) eat, O G.o.d, the oblation offered (to thee). Thou knowest, O thou knower (or finder) of beings, how many are the Fathers--those who are here, and who are not here, of whom we know, and of whom we know not. According to custom eat thou the well-made sacrifice. With those who, burned in fire or not burned, (now) enjoy themselves according to custom in the middle of the sky, do thou, being the lord, form (for us) a spirit life, a body according to (our) wishes.[37]

Often the Fathers are invoked in similar language in the hymn to the "All-G.o.ds" mentioned above, and occasionally no distinction is to be noticed between the powers and attributes of the Fathers and those of the G.o.ds. The Fathers, like the luminous G.o.ds, "give light" (x. 107.

1). Exactly like the G.o.ds, they are called upon to aid the living, and even 'not to harm' (iii. 55. 2; x. 15. 6). According to one verse, the Fathers have not attained the greatness of the G.o.ds, who impart strength only to the G.o.ds.[38]

The Fathers are kept distinct from the G.o.ds. When the laudations bestowed upon the former are of unequivocal character there is no confusion between the two.[39]

The good dead, to get to the paradise awaiting them, pa.s.s over water (X. 63. 10), and a bridge (ix. 41. 2). Here, by the gift of the G.o.ds, not by inherent capacity, they obtain immortality. He that believes on Agni, sings: "Thou puttest the mortal in highest immortality, O Agni"; and, accordingly, there is no suggestion that heavenly joys may cease; nor is there in this age any notion of a _Gotterdammerung_.

Immortality is described as "continuing life in the highest sky,"

another proof that when formulated the doctrine was that the soul of the dead lives in heaven or in the sun.[40]

Other cases of immortality granted by different G.o.ds are recorded by Muir and Zimmer. Yet in one pa.s.sage the words, "two paths I have heard of the Fathers (exist), of the G.o.ds and of mortals," may mean that the Fathers go the way of mortals or that of G.o.ds, rather than, as is the usual interpretation, that mortals have two paths, one of the Fathers and one of the G.o.ds,[41] for the dead may live on earth or in the air as well as in heaven. When a good man dies his breath, it is said, goes to the wind, his eye to the sun, etc.[42]--each part to its appropriate prototype--while the "unborn part" is carried "to the world of the righteous," after having been burned and heated by the funeral fire. All these parts are restored to the soul, however, and Agni and Soma return to it what has been injured. With this Muir compares a pa.s.sage in the Atharva Veda where it is said that the Manes in heaven rejoice with all their limbs.[43] We dissent, therefore, wholly from Barth, who declares that the dead are conceived of as "resting forever in the tomb, the narrow house of clay." The only pa.s.sage cited to prove this is X. 18. 10-13, where are the words (addressed to the dead man at the burial): "Go now to mother earth ...

she shall guard thee from destruction's lap ... Open wide, O earth, be easy of access; as a mother her son cover this man, O earth," etc.

Ending with the verse quoted above: "May the Fathers hold the pillar and Yama there build thee a seat."[44] The following is also found in the Rig Veda bearing on this point: the prayer that one may meet his parents after death; the statement that a generous man goes to the G.o.ds; and a suggestion of the later belief that one wins immortality by means of a son.[45]

The joys of paradise are those of earth; and heaven is thus described, albeit in a late hymn:[46] "Where is light inexhaustible; in the world where is placed the shining sky; set me in this immortal, unending world, O thou that purifiest thyself (Soma); where is king (Yama), the son of Vivasvant, and the paradise of the sky;[47] where are the flowing waters; there make me immortal. Where one can go as he will; in the third heaven, the third vault of the sky; where are worlds full of light, there make me immortal; where are wishes and desires and the red (sun)'s highest place; where one can follow his own habits [48] and have satisfaction; there make me immortal; where exist delight, joy, rejoicing, and joyance; where wishes are obtained, there make me immortal."[49] Here, as above, the saints join the Fathers, 'who guard the sun.'

There is a 'bottomless darkness' occasionally referred to as a place where evil spirits are to be sent by the G.o.ds; and a 'deep place' is mentioned as the portion of 'evil, false, untruthful men'; while Soma casts into 'a hole' (abyss) those that are irreligious.[50]

As darkness is h.e.l.l to the Hindu, and as in all later time the demons are spirits of darkness, it is rather forced not to see in these allusions a misty h.e.l.l, without torture indeed, but a place for the bad either 'far away,' as it is sometimes said _(par[=a]vati)_, or 'deep down,' 'under three earths,' exactly as the Greek has a h.e.l.l below and one on the edge of the earth. Ordinarily, however, the G.o.ds are requested simply to annihilate offenders. It is plain, as Zimmer says, from the office of Yama's dogs, that they kept out of paradise unworthy souls; so that the annihilation cannot have been imagined to be purely corporeal. But heaven is not often described, and h.e.l.l never, in this period. Yet, when the paradise desired is described, it is a place where earthly joys are prolonged and intensified. Zimmer argues that a race which believes in good for the good hereafter must logically believe in punishment for the wicked, and Scherman, strangely enough, agrees with this pedantic opinion.[51] If either of these scholars had looked away from India to the western Indians he would have seen that, whereas almost all American Indians believe in a happy hereafter for good warriors, only a very few tribes have any belief in punishment for the bad. At most a Niflheim awaits the coward. Weber thinks the Aryans already believed in a personal immortality, and we agree with him. Whitney's belief that h.e.l.l was not known before the Upanishad period (in his translations of the _Katha Upanishad_) is correct only if by h.e.l.l torture is meant, and if the Atharvan is later than this Upanishad, which is improbable.

The good dead in the Rig Veda return with Yama to the sacrifice to enjoy the _soma_ and viands prepared for them by their descendants.

Hence the whole belief in the necessity of a son in order to the obtaining of a joyful hereafter. What the rite of burial was to the Greek, a son was to the Hindu, a means of bliss in heaven. Roth apparently thinks that the Rig Veda's heaven is one that can best be described in Dr. Watt's hymn:

There is a land of pure delight Where saints immortal reign, Eternal day excludes the night, And pleasures banish pain;

and that especial stress should be laid on the word 'pure.' But there is very little teaching of personal purity in the Veda, and the poet who hopes for a heaven where he is to find 'longing women,' 'desire and its fulfillment' has in mind, in all probability, purely impure delights. It is not to be a.s.sumed that the earlier morality surpa.s.sed that of the later day, when, even in the epic, the hero's really desired heaven is one of drunkenness and women _ad libitum_. Of the 'good man' in the Rig Veda are demanded piety toward G.o.ds and manes and liberality to priests; truthfulness and courage; and in the end of the work there is a suggestion of ascetic 'goodness' by means of _tapas_, austerity.[52] Gra.s.sman cites one hymn as dedicated to

'Mercy.' It is really (not a hymn and) not on mercy, but a poem praising generosity. This generosity, however (and in general this is true of the whole people), is not general generosity, but liberality to the priests.[53] The blessings asked for are wealth (cattle, horses, gold, etc.), virile power, male children ('heroic offspring') and immortality, with its accompanying joys. Once there is a tirade against the friend that is false to his friend (truth in act as well as in word);[54] once only, a poem on concord, which seems to partake of the nature of an incantation.

Incantations are rare in the Rig Veda, and appear to be looked upon as objectionable. So in VII. 104 the charge of a 'magician' is furiously repudiated; yet do an incantation against a rival wife, a mocking hymn of exultation after subduing rivals, and a few other hymns of like sort show that magical practices were well known.[55]

The sacrifice occupies a high place in the religion of the Rig Veda, but it is not all-important, as it is later. Nevertheless, the same presumptuous a.s.sumption that the G.o.ds depend on earthly sacrifice is often made; the result of which, even before the collection was complete (IV. 50), was to teach that G.o.ds and men depended on the will of the wise men who knew how properly to conduct a sacrifice, the key-note of religious pride in the Brahmanic period.

Indra depends on the sacrificial _soma_ to accomplish his great works.

The G.o.ds first got power through the sacrificial fire and _soma_.[56]

That images of the G.o.ds were supposed to be powerful may be inferred from the late verses, "who buys this Indra," etc. (above), but allusions to idolatry are elsewhere extremely doubtful.[57]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Compare T[=a]itt. S. VII. 4.2.1. The G.o.ds win immortality by means of 'sacrifice' in this later priest-ridden period.]

[Footnote 2: Ludwig (IV. p. 134) wrongly understands a h.e.l.l here.]

[Footnote 3: 'Yama's seat' is here what it is in the epic, not a chapel (Pischel), but a home.]

[Footnote 4: This may mean 'to Yama (and) to death.' In the Atharva Veda, V. 24. 13-14, it is said that Death is the lord of men; Yama, of the Manes.]

[Footnote 5: It is here said, also, that the 'Gandharva in the waters and the water-woman' are the ties of consanguinity between Yama and Yam[=i], which means, apparently, that their parents were Moon and Water; a late idea, as in viii. 48. 13 (unique).]

[Footnote 6: The pa.s.sage, X. 17, 1-2, is perhaps meant as a riddle, as Bloomfield suggests (JAOS. XV. p. 172). At any rate, it is still a dubious pa.s.sage. Compare Hillebrandt, _Vedische Mythologie_, I. p. 503.]

[Footnote 7: Cited by Scherman, _Visionslitteratur_, p.

147.]

[Footnote 8: Possibly, 'streams.']

[Footnote 9: AV. XVIII. 3. 13.]

[Footnote 10: Compare AV. VI. 88. 2: "King Varuna and G.o.d Brihaspati," where both are G.o.ds.]

[Footnote 11: [Greek: Kerberos](=cabala)=_c[=a]rvara_.

Saram[=a] is storm or dawn, or something else that means 'runner.']

[Footnote 12: Here the fiend is expelled by a four-eyed dog or a white one which has yellow ears. See the _Sacred Books of the East_, IV. p. Ix.x.xVII.]

[Footnote 13: Scherman proposes an easy solution, namely to cut the description in two, and make only part of it refer to the dogs! (_loc. cit_. p. 130).]

[Footnote 14: The dogs may be meant in I. 29. 3, but compare II. 31. 5. Doubtful is I. 66. 8, according to Bergaigne, applied to Yama as fire.]

[Footnote 15: _India_, p. 224.]

[Footnote 17: Barth, p. 23, cites I. 123. 6; X. 107. 2; 82.

2, to prove that stars are souls of dead men. These pa.s.sages do not prove the point, but it may be inferred from X. 68.

11. Later on it is a received belief. A moon-heaven is found only in VIII. 48.]

[Footnote 18: Especially with Ymir in Scandinavian mythology.]

[Footnote 19: _Visionslitteratur_, 1892.]

[Footnote 20: _Henotheism in the Rig Veda_, p. 81.]

[Footnote 21: This religious phase is often confounded loosely with pantheism, but the distinction should be observed. Parkman speaks of (American) Indian 'pantheism'; and Barth speaks of ritualistic 'pantheism,' meaning thereby the deification of different objects used in sacrifice (p.

37, note). But chrematheism is as distinct from pantheism as it is from fetishism.]

[Footnote 22: Some seem to be old; thus Aramati, piety, has an Iranian representative, [=A]rma[=i]t[=i]. As masculine abstractions are to be added Anger, Death, etc.]

[Footnote 23: Compare iv. 50; ii. 23 and 24; v. 43. 12; x.

68. 9; ii. 26. 3; 23. 17; x. 97. 15. For interpretation compare Hillebrandt, _Ved. Myth._ i. 409-420; Bergaigne, _La Rel, Ved._ i. 304; Muir, OST, v. 272 ff. (with previous literature).]

[Footnote 24: _Mbh[=a]_.i. 74. 68. Compare Holtzmann, ZDMG.