ORIENTAL RELIGIONS. "Out from the heart of Nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old ; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below, The canticles of love and woe." R. W Emerson 1 •Oriental Religions AND THEIR RELATION TO UNIVERSAL RELIGION BY SAMUEL JOHNSON INDIA r L J H H A W Y UN I VKilsi r V OF V .vLIFUliN. BOSTON JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY 1S73 -^ Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872. b7 SAMUEL JOHNSON, 111 the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. THIRD EDITION. cambridgr: press of john wilson and son- CONTENTS. Page INTRODUCTORY i -♦o*- INDIA. I. RELIGION AND LIFE. I. The Primitive Aryas 39 XL The Hindu Mind 57 III. The Hymns , 87 IV. Tradition '. . 153 V. The Laws 169 VI. Woman 203 VII. Social Forms and Forces 237 -*o^ II. RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. I. Vedanta 305 II. Sankhya 375 III. The Bhagavadgita 411 IV. Piety and Morality of Pantheism 441 V. Incarnation 4S3 VI. Transxmigration 513 VII. Religious Universality 555 VI CONTENTS. III. BUDDHISM. Paeje • T. Speculative Principles 579 II. Nirvana 619 III. Ethics and Humanities . 639 IV. The Hour and the Man 683 V. After-Life in India 711 VI. Buddhist Civilization 735 VI I. Ecclesiasticism , 769 INTRODUCTORY. M UK A l^"^ i INTRODUCTORY. 'THHE pages now offered as a contribution to the Natural History of Religion are the The stand- outgrowth of studies pursued with constant p°'"^- interest for more than twenty years. These studies have served substantially to confirm the views pre- sented in a series of Lectures, delivered about that number of years since, on the Universality of Relig- ious Ideas, as illustrated by the Ancient Faiths of the East. So imperfect were the sources of positive knowledge then accessible, that I chose to defer publi- cation ; and such increase of light has been constantly flowing in upon this great field of research ever since, that I have continued to defer my report thereon, in view of the existing state of scholarship, until the present moment, when such reasons are comparatively without force. Engaged for many years in the public presentation of themes and principles of the nature here illustrated, I cannot but note that a trustworthy statement of what the non-Christian world has to offer to the eye of thoroughly free inquiry, in mat- ters of belief, is more and more earnestly demanded ; that in the present stage of religious questions it is indispensable ; and that the sense of inadequacy felt by all who have thoughtfully approached the subject, in a degree which none but themselves can compre- 2 INTRODUCTORY. hend, should no longer prevent us from performing our several parts in' this work. I need hardly add that the response to this demand is already admirable on the part of liberal thinkers in Europe and America. To them the present contribution is dedicated, in cor- dial appreciation of their spirit and their aim. It has been a labor not of duty only, but of love. I have been prompted by a desire of combining the testimony rendered by man's spiritual faculties in different epochs and races, concerning questions on which these facul- ties are of necessity his court of final appeal. I have written, not as an advocate of Christianity or of any other distinctive religion, but as attracted on the one hand by the identity of the religious sentiment under all its great historic forms, and on the other by the movement indicated in their diversities and contrasts towards a higher plane of unity, on which their ex- clusive claims shall disappear. It is only from this standpoint of the Universal in Religion that they can be treated with an appreciation worthy of our freedom, science, and humanity. The corner-stones of worship, as of work, are no longer to be laid in what is special, local, exclusive, or anoma- lous ; but in that which is essentially human, and therefore unmistakably divine. The revelation of God, in other words, can be given in nothing else than the natural constitution and culture of man. To be thoroughly convinced of this will of itself forbid our imposing religious partialism on the facts pre- sented by the history of the soul. Yet it should perhaps be stated that the following outline of what I mean by the idea of Universal Relig- ion, although prefatory, represents no purely a ■p7'iori assumption, but the results to which my studies have INTRODUCTORY. 3 led me, as well as the spirit in which they have been pursued. Man's instinctive sense of a divine origin, interpreted as historical derivation, explains his infantile TheWstor- dreams of a primitive "golden age." In this ^cai process. crude form he begins to recognize his inherent rela- tion to the Infinite and Perfect. But while, as his happy m3'thology, these dreams have an enduring symbolic value, they no longer stand as data of posi- tive history or permanent religious belief. And the same fate befalls the claims of special religions to have been opened by men in some sense perfect from their birth, and to possess revelations complete and final at their announcement. All these ideas of genesis are transient, because they contradict the natural processes of growth. • We come to note, as they depart, a pro- gressive education of man," through his own essential relations with the Infinite, commencing at the lowest stage, and at each step pointing onward to fresh ascen- sion ; an advance not less sure, upon the whole, for the fact that in special directions an earlier may often surpass a later attainment, proving competent, so far, to instruct it.^ And this progress is as natural as it is divine. It proceeds by laws inherent and immanent in humanity ; laws whose absoluteness affirms Infinite Mind as impli- cated in this finite advance ttf to mind, and then hy means qf?nmd; laws whose continuous onward move- ment is inspiration. If this be true, the distinction hitherto made between ^ I insist on the indispensableness of the infinite element to every step of evolution, because I find this nowise explicable as creation of the higher by the lower. The very idea of growth involves more than mere historical derivation. Genesis is a constant mys- tery of origination. And an ascendir.g series is to be accounted for by what is greater not less, than its highest term. 4 INTRODUCTORY. " sacred " and " profane " history, interpret it as we will, vanishes utterly and for ever. " Profane his- tory " is a misnomer. The line popularl}" drawn between Heathenism and Christianity as stages respec- tively of blindness and insight, of guess-work and authority, of " nature " and " grace," is equally unjust in both directions, because unjust to man himself. In all religions there are imperfections; in all, the claim to infallible or exclusive revelation is alike untenable ; yet, in all, experience must somehow have reached down to authority and up to certitude. In all, the intuitive faculty must have pressed beyond experience into the realm of impalpable, indemonstrable, inde- finable realities. In all, millions of souls, beset by the same problems of life and death, must have seen man's positive relations with the order of the universe face to face. In all, the one spiritual nature, that makes possible the intercourse of ideas and times and tribes, must have found utterance in some (Eter- nally valid form of thought and conduct. The difference between ancient and modern civiliza- Ancientand tlou is not to bc explained by referring to r^es'^f Christianity, whether as a new religious ideal civilization, or Hfc grafted into the process of history, or as the natural consummation of this process. The Chris- tian ideal is but a single force among others, all equally in the line of movement. Civilization is now definitely traceable to a great variety of influences, among which that of Race is probably the most prominent ; its present breadth and fulness being the result of a fusion of the more energetic and expansive races ; while the freedom and science, which are its motive power, have found in the manifold ideals of the Christian Church on the whole quite as much hindrance as help. INTRODUCTORY. 5 But, apart from the causes of difference between ancient and modern conceptions of life, the fact itself may be described as simply the natural difference be- tween the child and the man. This transition is not marked in either case by sudden changes in the nature of growth, nor by the engrafting of new faculties, nor by special interferences of the kind called " supernat- ural," whatever that may mean, but is gradual and normal. Reflection supplants instinct, and, with the self-consciousness which brings higher powers and bolder claims, enters the criminality of which the child was less capable. In the child there was more than childishness ; for his whole manhood was there in germ. The leaf needs no special miracle to become a flower ; nor does the child, to become a man. The whole -process of growth is the miracle, — product of a divine force that transcends while pervading it. The history of Religion follows the same law. There is no point where Deity enters ; for there is no ^.^^^j^^jj point w^here Deity is absent. There is no need of thenam- of divine interference, where the \e\'y law by which all proceeds is itself divine. It is as tenderly faithful to minutest needs at the beginning as at any later staoj-e of o-rowth. Whatever forms may arise, they require neither fresh legitimation nor explanation, since their germs lay in the earlier forms, their finest fruit encloses the primal seeds, and history, when read backward, is discerned to have been natural prophecy. Thus there are differences of higher and lower in the forms of revelation ; but there is no such thing as a revealed religion in distinction from natural religion. So, too, spiritual and physical difler ; but natural can be opposed to spiritual only in a very restricted and 6 INTRODUCTORY. questionable sense. Any distinction thus indicated must lie within the limits of each and every religion taken by itself. It cannot mark off one positive relig- ion from another, still less one from the rest; since, whatever meanings be given to these terms, every such religion will be found to have its own spiritual and natural sides, if any one has them. Christianity is nevertheless constantly opposed, as False pre- a " Spiritual" religion, to the earlier faiths, as tensions set i ,7 ' r ,^ up for Chris- merely natural ones ; as ii there were some tianity. esscutlal coutradictiou to truth and good in our human nature, which was abolished by the advent of Jesus. The history of religion, so far from teach- ing such a schism between the human and the divine, — or this bridging over at a certain epoch of a gulf which, by its very definition, was impassable, — de- monstrates the exact contrary, — a substantial unity of God and Man beneath all outward alienations. It points to perfection in the laws of human nature, under all the varj'ing phases of human character ; to con- stitutional health unshaken by the diseases incident to growth ; to moral and spiritual recuperation, as human as the vices that required it; to divine iaimanence, under finite conditions, from the beo;inninof onwards. Universal Religion, then, cannot be any one, cx~ wher is the ^^^^•^^*'^^6^» 0^ tlic great positive religions of Universal thc world. Yct it is really what is best in each and every one of them ; purified from baser inter-mixture and developed in freedom and power. Being the purport of nature, it has been ger- minating in every vital energy of man ; so that its elements exist, at some stage of evolution^ in every great religion of mankind. If any belief fails to abide this test, the worse for its INTRODUCTORY. 7 claims on our religious nature. " If that were true which is commonly taken for granted," wrote Cud- worth/ "that the generality of the Pagan nations acknowledged no sovereign muncn, but scattered their devotions amongst a multitude of independent deities, this would much have stumbled the nattirality of the divine idea ; " an effect equivalent, in his large and clear mind, to disproval of the divineness itself. As distinctive Christianity was in fact but a single step in a for ever unfolding process, so those Riahtsofthe earlier beliefs are disparaged when they are ^^^^^ Faiths. made to point to it as their final cause. They stand, as it has stood, in their own right ; justified, as it ha's been, by meeting, each in its own day and on its own soil, the demands of human nature. They point forward, but not to a sing^le and final revelation enterinof history from without their line, and reversins^ at once their whole process in its new dealing with their attained results. They point forward ; but it is with the proph- ecy of an endless progress, which no distinctive name, symbol, authority, or even ideal, can foreclose. They are misrepresented, when they are held to be mere " forerunners " or " types " in the interest of a later faith, which has in fact entered into the fruit of their labors, and in due season transmits its own best to the fresh forces that are opening up a larger unity, and already demandinof a new name and a broader ■J o communion. They are misrepresented, when, to con- trast them* with what is simply a successor, they are called " preparations for the truth of God." The exi- gencies of Christian dogma have required that they should even be described as mere " fallacies of human reason," tending inevitably to despair; a charge re- ^ Preface to Intellectual System of the Universe. 8 INTRODUCTORY. futed alike by the laws of science and the facts of history, since man never did, and never can, despair. Prejudices of this nature, inherent, it would seem, in the make-up of a distinctive religion, which forbid its disciples to render justice to other forms of faith, are rapidly jnelding to the larger scope and freer method of inquiry peculiar to our times. Every historical religion embodies the sacred person- Misrepre- ality of man ; announcing his infinite relations sentation of .^. .. ^y. . them. to hie, duty, destmy. Yet it has been an al- most invariable instinct of the Christian world to ignore this presence of the soul in her own phases of belief, and to hold " heathenism " to be her natural foe. How- ever non-Christian morality and sentiment may have harmonized with what is best in the New Testament, it has seldom been accorded the name of revelation. Although there is always a comparatively intelligent orthodoxy, which assents to the idea of a divine im- manence in all ages, yet the divinity thus recognized being, after all, "///^ Christ ^'^ — and moreover the Christ of especial tradition, — and, further still, this Christ in a merely preliminary^ and provisional form, — there can be but little freedom in such appreciation of the faith or virtue extant in non-Christian ages. A mode of pre- senting these, not unlike that of the early apologists of the Church* is common even with writers of the so- called liberal sects ; while, with the more exclusive ones, to praise the heathen being regarded as despoil- ing Christianity, it is an easy step to the inference that Christianity is exalted by referring heathenism to the category of delusions and snares. And it is not too much to say, upon the whole, that the most affirmative treatment of the older religions would hardly suffice to adjust the balance fairly, and to place them on their INTRODUCTORY. 9 real merits before the conscience of a civilization which has, until very recently, expended almost all its hospi- tality on the claims of Christianity alone. ^ Many of those who write in the interest of denomi- national efforts have trained themselves to shrink from no assumptions in the line of their purpose ; while others are blinded by its logic to the most patent facts of his- tory. It has been common to deny boldly that moral and religious truth had any positive existence for the human mind before the Christian epoch ; to assume that the Sermon on the Mount actually introduced into human nature that very love and trust to whose pre- existing power in the hearts of its hearers it could itself have been but an appeal. As if ideal principles could have been imported into man by a special teacher, or be traced back to some moment of arrival, like commercial samples or inventions in machinery ! So powerful is a traditional religious belief to efface the perception that every moral truth man can apprehend must be the outgrowth of his own nature, and has al- 1 We may mention, as in striking contrast to this general record of Christendom, such works as Dupuis' Origmes de Tons les Cidies, Constant's De la Religion, Creuzer's Synibolik, Duncker's Geschichte des Alierthnnis, Cousin's Lectures and Fragments on the History of Philosophy, Denis' Theories et I dees Morales datis PAfitiquite, Quinet's Genie des Religions, Michelet's Bible de VHumanite, Menard's Morale avant les Philosophes, Mrs. Child's Progress of Religious Ideas, and R. W. Mackay's Prog- ress of the Intellect. To these, in the special field of Oriental Literature, we must add the Shemitic studies of Renan and Michel Nicolas ; "and those of Abel Remu sat, Riickert, Lassen, Roth, and Miiller, on the remoter Eastern races. All of these are distinguished from the mass of writers on this theme by a spirit of universality, which proves how far the scholarship of this age has advanced beyond the theologicaJ narrowness of Bossuet, the critical superficiality of Voltaire, and the hard negation of the so-called rationalistic schools of Lobeck and Voss. But it is to be observed that these scholars are still reputed heretical, and stand in disfavor with distinctive Christianity in exact proportion to their historical impartiality. Of unequalled significance are Lessing's Treatise on the Education of the Hutnan Race, and Herder's Ideas of a Philosophy of Man; works of marvellous breadth, freedom, and insight, to which, more than to any other historical and literary influences, we must assign the parentage of modem thought in this direction. Heine finely says of Herder, that, "instead of inquisitorially judging nations according to the degree of their faith, he regarded humanity as a harp in the hands of a great master, and each people a special string, helping to the harmony of the whole." , lO INTRODUCTORY. ways been seeking to reach expression, with greater or less success. Until very recently it was the most confident com- monplace of New England preaching that all positive belief in immortality came into the world with Jesus. And it is still repeated, as a fact beyond all question, that no other religion besides Christianity ever taught men to bear each other's burdens, or preached a gospel to the poor. Nor has there been wanting a somewhat discredit- able form of special pleading, for the purpose of reducing the claims of heathenism to the smallest pos- sible amount; a grudging literalism, a strict construc- tion, or a base rendering, of ancient beliefs; which would prove every apparent spiritual perception a phantom of fancy or blind hope, or else a mirage reflected from the idealism of the present on the back- ground of the past. Resolving the fair imaginations and delicate divinations of the childlike races into mockery betrays, however, far more scepticism in the critic than in the race he wronofs. The same disposition has often arisen from philosophical prej- udice. Thus the desire of Locke to disprove the notion of innate ideas led him to a degree of unbelief in this direction, which has had noticeable effect on subsequent thought. But we have yet to mention one of the worst effects of traditional religion on the treatment of history. It is still held consistent with Christian scholarship to deny moral earnestness and practical conviction to the noblest thinkers of antiquity, in what they have af- firmed of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man. They were " theorists, not believers ; " " talked finely about virtues, but failed to apply them ; " "gave INTRODUCTORY. II no such meanings to their great words as we give to them ; " were " aristocrats in thought, whispering one doctrine to their disciples, and preaching another to the people ; " and so on. All of which is not only ex- aggerated or false in details, but in its principle and method utterly destructive of historical knowledge. Substantially, too, it amounts to rejecting all founda- tion for morality in the nature of man, and the constant laws of life. Critics of this temper have not now the doctrinal excuse of Calvin, who ascribed the apparent virtues of the heathen to hypocrisy ; and Dugald Stewart was hardly more wanting than they must be in the true spirit of scholarship, when be met the first modern revelations of Oriental wisdom with the charge that the Sanskrit lancfuaore was a mere recent invention of the Brahmans, and Sanskrit literature an imposture. The larire historical relations of the Roman Catholic Church have permitted its scholars to gather up the spiritual wisdom of the heathen, though in the interest of its own authority.^ But even this appreciation, such as It was, the Reformation included in its sweeping malediction upon a "Church of mere human tradi- tions." And Protestantism, with few exceptions, has continued to show, in Its treatment of non-Christian piety and morality, the narrow sympathies incident to a self-centred and exclusive movement of reaction, and to an attitude inherentlv sectarian. When other grounds of depreciation failed, there remained the presumption that all such outlying truth must have be.en carried over into Pagan records by Christian or Hebrew hands. In its origin, doubtless, this idea was the natural out""rowth of Christian en- thusiasm, and the sign of a geniality and breadth in the * See especially Lamennais, Essai sur Vhtdiffcrence en Matiire de Religion. 12 INTRODUCTORY. religious consciousness which was reaching out every- where to find its own. But there was also a dogmatic interest in the development of these claims ; and this foreclosed the paths of fair inquiry. Just as the i\lexan- drian Jews referred Greek philosophy to Moses (some of them even resorted to pious frauds to prove it) , so un- der the exigency of their creeds of depravity and natural incapacity, of atonement, incarnation, and mediation, Christians have been impelled to trace all ancient piety to their own records ; to imagine late interpola- tions or communications with Jewish doctors or Chris- tian apostles, in explanation of what are really but natural correspondences of the religious sentiment in different races. And when for such imputed influence there could not be found even the shadow of a historical proof, w^ell-reputed writers in all times have not been wanting, who dared to affirm it without hesitation upon -purely a priori grounds.^ A common method of dealing with the relative claims of positive religions is illustrated in a recent writer,- whose extensive reading is almost nullified for the purposes of comparative theology and ethics by the absolutism of his authoritative creed. He beoins with affirming that "Christianity will tolerate no rival; that they who wish to raise a tabernacle for some other master must be warned that Christ, and Christ alone, ^ Thus Hyde (a.d. 1700) supposes that the Persians must have been converted from idolatry by Abraham, and that their fire-altars have been imitations of that of Jerusalem ; and a writer in the BibliotJieca Sacra (1S59) attributes the Avesta to the prophet Daniel, and declares that the Peisians must have borrowed their notion of a Messiah from the " revealed religion of the Hebrews." Another instance of the ^me kind is the attempt, not very scrupulously conducted, to derive the moral jihilosophy and spiritual faith of Seneca from St. Paul, so thoroughly defeated by Hilgenfeld {Zeitschr. d. IViss- Theol. 185S). * Hardwick, Christ and other Masters, i. pp. 39, 43. Examples of the extreme inca- pacity of this learned writer to render justice to pre-Christian beliefs may be found on pages 333 and 336 of the first volume. INTRODUCTORY. I3 is to be worshipped;" and proceeds to state the hmlts of his recognition of character in the theory that '" the most effectual way of defending Christianity is not to condemn all the virtues of distinguished heathens, but rather to make them testify in its favor," — not at all, be it observed, in their own. All of which reminds us of St. Augustine's sa3ang, that whatever of truth the Gentiles taught should be " claimed by Christians from its heathen promulgators, as unlawful possessors of it, just as the Hebrews spoiled the Egyptians ;" a process of historical justice still extensively practised by the Church. It is not surprising that appreciative Orientalists should be moved to enter their protest with some warmth acjainst audacities like those here mentioned. "The reaction from extravagant theories goes too far," exclaims Max Miiller, " if every thought which touches on the problems of philosophy is to be marked indis- criminately as a modern forgery ; if every conception which reminds us of Moses, Plato, or the Apostles, is to be put down as necessarily borrowed from Jewish, Greek, or Christian sources, and foisted thence into the ancient poetry of the Hindus." Friedrich von Schle- gel at the outset of Oriental studies, as well as Muller at a later stage, found it necessary to reprove this dis- position among Christian scholars. Yet he himself does not hesitate to use Oriental errors to point an appeal to Christianity as " affording the only clew to principles too lofty to have been elicited by human reason." ^ It is time the older religions were studied in the light of their own intrinsic values. They are at Their inde- once spontaneities of desire and faith, and ele- ^^^."'^^"^ ''^'. * India?i Literature.^ B. iii. ch. iv. 14 INTRODUCTORY. ments in an indivisible unity of growth, which in- cludes at each stage natural guarantees of all that has since been or shall yet be attained. We should go back to them now, in the maturity of science, with something of the tenderness we feel for our own earliest intuitions and emotions ; with a reverent use, too, of those faculties of imagination and contempla- tion which are our real way of access to essential rela- tions and eternal truths. For the race as for the individual, — " The child 's the father of the man ; And we could wish our days to be ^ound each to each by natural piety." The first universal principle of religion is that all Ideal eie- g^Q^t belicfs havc .their ideal elements; just as ments. jj^ ^]-^g natural world the bud is not a bud merely, but the guarantee of a flower. And it is these with which we are mainly concerned, as pointing to fulfilments beyond themselves, in a future that will not be mortgaged to any names, nor to any claims. They are that promise in the first belief, which the last cannot fulfil alone ; the dream which only their mutual recognition can interpret. And it becomes us to find in our own experience the secret which explains how they have met the problems of ages and answered the prayers of generations. Illustrations of these ideal elements, high-water marks of ancient faith, readily suggest themselves. The religious toleration prevailing in China from very early times is not fairly estimated when it is shown to have lacked that deep moral earnestness and spiritual dignity which distinguish the highest forms of modern religious liberty in Europe or America. INTRODUCTORY. I5 The question for our religious philosophy is, whether it is not of essentially the same nature ; a germ out of which that highest freedom might come by pure force of the familiar laws of social and scientific growth, by the intercourse of races and the intimacies of diverse beliefs; whether it has not, even on its own ground, reached a point of development, in certain instances or certain respects, which makes these our greater out- ward opportunities look less than we thought them ; and whether it may not hold elements of moral value whereof our culture needs the infusion. Similarly with the self-abneof-ation of the Buddhist. It is not that perfect devotion of the human powers to social good which would involve the best culture and the larofest practical efficiency. Neither is this, we may add, the quality and extent of the same virtue, even as illus- trated and taught in the Christian records. But to suppose that there would be need either of miraculous re-enforcement or essential change, to unfold Buddhis- tic self-denial into the best morality and piety known to our time, would be to ignore the fact that it has shown itself fully equal to these in the spirit of practical benevolence, and in ardent zeal for an ideal standard of purity and truth. In the same way, an implicit germ of Monotheism, even in the "element-worship" of the early Aryans, fully guarantees progress into the pure and definite Theism of the best Indo-European minds ; and shows the assumption of a divine deposit of this central truth with the Shemitic Hebrew^s alone, for dis- tribution to the rest of mankind, to be entirely ground- less and gratuitous. Thus the cardinal virtues and beliefs belong not to one religion,' but to all religions; and the diversities of form into which each of these ideals is broken by differences of race and culture do 1 6 INTRODUCTORY. not affect its essential identity in them all. We every- where find ourselves at home in the world's great faiths, through their common appeal to what is nearest and most familiar to us in solving the great central facts and relations with which the soul is for ever called to deal. Everywhere we greet essential meanings of the unity of God with man, of fate and freedom, of sacri- fice, inspiration, progress, immortality, practical du- ties and humanities, just as we everywhere find the mysteries of birth and death, the bliss of loving and sharing, the self-respect of moral loyalty, the stress of ideal desire. It will be found, in following the course of these studies, that all those forms of moral and spiritual per- ception which are wont to be regarded as peculiar gifts of Christianity are visible through the crude social conditions of the old Asiatic communities ; in such brave struggle, too, for growth as demonstrates not only their vitality under those conditions, but also the fact that they fulfil functions inherent and constant in the nature of man. Such are the recognition of ultimate good through transient evil ; of spiritual gain through suffering and hindrance ; of freedom through accept- ance of divinely natural conditions ; of love, beyond a thought of constraining law ; of the rightful authority of the soul over the senses ; of the sacredness of con- science, and of somewhat immutable in its decrees ; of the inevitableness of moral penalty, and the beauty of disinterested motive ; of invincible remedial energies in the spiritual universe ; of Divine Fatherhood and Human Brotherhood, and Immortal Life. Our advantage over older civilizations will thus be Wherein sccu to cousist not, as is generally imagined, lies our ad- . ^ . ^ , . , , vantage. 1^^ souic ncw lorcc, miused mu-aculously, or INTRODUCTORY. I7 Otherwise, by the Christian religion ; but in some- thing of a quite different nature. It is found, in fact, in tlie immense special development of the under- standing ; of the faculties of observation and the forces of analysis ; in the advancement of science, and tlie fusion and friction of races ; and, finally, in the wealth of practical material opened to all. So impressive is this growth of the understanding, and the sciences thereon dependent, that writers like Buckle go to the extent of inferring that morality and religion, on the other hand, as being the comparatively "unchanging factors" in history, have had "no influence on prog- ress." But this is to reduce history to a sum in arithmetic. History is a living process. Its factors are dynamic, and are not to be pulled apart like dead bones or a heap of sticks. These ethical forces are "unchanging," only in the sense of being constant and unfailing; and the mental growth, which clears their vision and develops their practical capacities, in fact enables them to exert an ever-increasing influence, a completer fulfilment of their own ideal. And so, in holding the vantage of modern civiliza- tion io lie specially in the sphere of the understanding, I do not overlook the force with which the manifold ideals of Christian belief have wrought, like other and older ones, at its vast looms of productive power. But I note also how perfectly these variations in the relig- ious ideal of Christianity correspond with and depend on the steps of intellectual progress ; how analogous they are to those of other religions ; and finally, a point of no light import, how little what is broadest and best in our civilization has to do with what is distinctive in Christian faith, — namely, its exclusive concentration on Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ. It is, moreover, pre- 2 l8 INTRODUCTORY. cisely in its moral and religious aspects that the Chris- tendom of eighteen centuries can claim least practical superiority to the older civilizations. I have sought to bring into view a law of progress, Spiritual ^^ which the most important transitions in Reaction, rcligious history find their true explanation. I refer to Sfirittial Reaction. It is mainly from habitual disregard of this familiar law in its broader aspects that such transitions have been referred to special divine interference with the natural processes of history. It is commonly supposed that natural growth in things moral and spiritual can proceed only in a direct line. When a divine life appears in a degenerating age, this theory requires the inference that, natural human forces having become effete and exhausted, a miraculous interference, like the "creation of new species " in the old theory of biology, had become necessary. What else should stop the downward ten- dency of " unaided nature "? Such is the usual method of accounting for Jesus of Nazareth and his religion ; such the principle of historical construction which is assumed throughout the growth of Christian dogma : — the Christ and his gospel were a new spiritual species. So far as Jesus is concerned, this theory in fact rests on a very superficial survey of the condition of man- kind at his birth ; since his ethical and spiritual faith had their tap-roots within his native soil, and followed a line of strong democratic and spiritual tendencies in that age. Yet it is also true both of the Roman Empire as a whole, and of the old faiths that were perishing in its bosom, that social and religious life had, on the whole, become fearfully degenerate. Grant this to the fullest extent possible, yet "miraculous inter- INTRODUCTORY. IQ ference" need not be assumed in explanation of the revival. For there is a law of self-recovery by reaction, in mind as well as in matter; different indeed from that, as developing not an equivalent, but a new and greater force. It has been described as " forbidding that vicious ideas or institutions shall go so far as their principle logically demands." ^ It strikes back individuals and nations from degeneracy. It restrains excess in the passions with timely warnings. And it shows us each historic period hastening to an extreme in some special direction, only that the next may be forced into doing justice to a different and balancing class of energies, and so in good time all faculty be liberated into free play. This natural law of reaction is quite as essen- tial and constant as the law of steady linear growth ; though perhaps, when clearly apprehended, it will be found to be but a more interior and less obvious form thereof. It is not only essential to the explanation of primitive Christianity in its relation to the degeneracies of the epoch, but thoroughly competent to that end. It is adequate to prove the phenomenon a sign not that the spiritual forces of human nature had become ex- hausted, but that they were exhaustless, since even suppression only nerved them to unprecedented vigor. Of course this natural solution of religious progress does not exclude personal or social inspiration, Inspiration. in any rational sense of the word. It leaves to relifrious orenius, as to intellectual, its own unfathomed mystery, its immediate insight, its spontaneity, its en- thusiasm, its fateful mastery of life and of men. It leaves unquestioned the fact that there is an element in the present instant which the past cannot explain. * Guizot, History of Civilization. 20 INTRODUCTORY. Nay : it affirms the constancy of this transcendence and of this primacy in the instantaneous fact of spirit- ual perception. It recognizes the special energy of intuition in the saint and the seer. But it implies that religious genius also has its con- ditions, and inspiration its laws ; and it demands that in this respect they be placed in the same line with intellectual and poetic genius, even if in advance of them. They are not less purely human than these, either in their original source, or in the law of their appearance. The energy of all these forces in the early Oriental world has seemed to me a very noble illustration of their universality. And I may add that we need not be surprised to find, amidst the weaknesses of spiritual childhood, certain superiorities also, incident to that stage, in the qualities of imagination, intuition, and faith, over maturer civilizations. In point of moral earnestness and fidelity also, it admits of serious question whether what we Religions ••• judged by Call thc highcst form of civilization is an ad- eir ruits. ^^j^^g upou the phascs of faith it has been accustomed to contemn. Admitting the clearer light in which science has revealed the laws of social prog- ress, it would be difficult to prove that races in this »espect far behind us are in any degree our inferiors 'II those qualities of the heart and the conscience which (oad to the faithful service of what one worships, and the honest practice of what he believes. I venture the prediction that we shall yet learn of the Oriental ' nations many lessons in moral simplicity and integrity. Nothing could be more unfortunate for those who wish to exalt Christianity by comparison with Heathenism than to rest their argument on what they call "judging INTRODUCTORY . 2 1 religions by their fruits." A distinguished orator has said, "My answer to Buddha is India, past and pres- ent." It would be as reasonable for a Buddhist to say, "My answer to Christ is Judaism, past and present;" for India I'cjcctcd Buddha, as Judaism did Christ. What India is and has been, the Western world will probably be better able to state half a century hence than it is now. But if the power of a specific religion is shown in its ability to mould a civilization into the image of its own moral and spiritual ideal, what shall be said of one whose results after eighteen centuries of preaching and instituting our orator must charac- terize by saying that no one would know its Founder if he came among us to-day ; that there is no Christian community at all ; and that Christianity goes round and stamps every institution as a sin? We need not give too literal a construction to expressions whose substantial meaning is justified by the facts. What we would note is that these admissions concerniniif the practical fruits of Christianity are made by its noblest disciples ; and that they virtually confess its inadequacy to meet the actual demands of social progress. Nevertheless, its religious ideal is still confidently presented as all productive, and final. Here is evi- dently some misunderstanding of the origin of these nobler demands. It is in fact not the Christ-ideal at all, as is here imagined, but an advancing moral standard, due to many new causes, that now criticises the institutions in question. Such institutions were in fact unmolested by definite Christian precepts or prohibitions for many ages. Our reformer's inspiration is indeed as old as Christianity, — nay, more than that,, as old as heroism and love ; but its practical present resources lie in 22 INTRODUCTORY. science and liberty, and even represent the triumph of secular interests over distinctively religious opposition. And every fresh task of the reformer is made con- ceivable only through the accomplishment of the last. How then can it have been evolved solely out of the faith and virtue of eighteen centuries ago? It is not the fruit of Christianity alone, biit generated by living experience, in the breadth and freedom of modern civilization. On this whole subject of judging religions by their fruits, we are yet to collect the data for a just decision ; since it involves the study of civilizations whose inner movements have hitherto been in great measure sealed from the view of our Western world. Man=Man is the broad formula of historical science, „ . as well as of practical brotherhood. But it Meaning ■*• of natural must uot bc supcrficially interpreted. It does equally. ^^^ mcan thc falsehood and egotism of com- munistic theories, which disintegrate personality and society alike in the name of an unconditioned "equality" which natural ethics nowhere allows. It means that in every age and race, under the varying surface-currents of organization and intellectual condition, you shall find a deep-sea calm, — the same essential instincts and insights, aspirations, tendencies, demands. The first vital problem of historical research is to find the constant factor, the guarantee of immutable and eternal laws, by means of the variables. Its first duty is never to pause at mere negation, nor in- dulge in arrogant disparagement, but to draw from every form of earnest faith or work its witness of im- mutable law and endless good. Not till this is done, can we wisely apply analysis, and interpret the diver- sities of human belief. INTRODUCTORY. 23 The inspiration of modern physical studies is in the universality of their idea and aims. This tine ^, . •^ Universality idealism in the exploration of nature, by lens in physical and prism and calculus, which casts theologies into the background of human interest, is preparing the way for a religion of religions, whose Bible shall be the full word of Human Nature. How opulent the time with encyclopedic survey and comparative sci- ence ! Humboldt's " Cosmos " was representative of the drift of the century : a search for that all-inspher- ing harmony, of which the worlds and ages and races are chords. Humboldt, pursuing the idea of unity through immeasurable deeps of law, with a reverence that is too full of the spirit of worship to need the cur- rent phraseology of religion; Pritchard, tracing the physiological, and Miiller the linguistic, affinities of the human tribes ; Ritter, unfolding the function of *every continent and sea, every mountain range and river basin, in the development of humanity as a whole ; Kirchhoft^ and Bunsen, with their successors, applying spectrum analysis to the rays of every star, till the determination of the "sun's place in the universe" is but a sino;le element in the immeasurable si^rnificance of light now opening before this marvellous instru- ment of research ; Tyndall, making the subtlest phases of force a revelation of poetry and philosophy, and a delight for the general mind, — these, with others not less earnestly pursuing the unities of law, whether wisely or imperfectly interpreting its evolution and defining its higher facts and relations, represent the physical science of our time. How should the spiritual nature fail to be explored by the same instinct ? It is a deepening sense of the unity of human experience, and so of its reliability as 24 INTRODUCTORY. well as dignity, that banishes supernaturalism, affirms universal laws in place of miracle, and bids us rest in them with entire trust; "loving," as the Stoic Aurelius said, " whatever happens to us from nature, because that only can happen by nature which is suitable, and it is enough to remember that law rules all." The growing belief that the stability of law is the guar- antee of universal good, or, to translate it into the language of the spirit, that Law means Love, is the sign that Love, in its practical and universal sense, is itself becoming the all-solving calculus and all-analyz- ing prism of our spiritual astronomy, — the pursuer, diviner, interpreter of Law. And therefore they who disapprove our inevitable , . exodus from distinctive relifjions, upon the In relation ^ ^ *-* *■ to Human- grouud that Organizing good works would be "^* better than reconstructing theology, have very slight comprehension of that which they distrust. It is * the very spirit of humanity that is moving in this relig- ious emancipation ; clearing its own vision, reaching out to consistency and self-respect, and finding its sphere to be, as Herder has said, ''not merely universal as human nature, but properly no less than human nature itself."^ "The object of all religions," sings the Persian Hafiz, " is alike. All men seek their beloved. And is not all the world love's dwelling? Why talk of a mosque or a church?" Hindu teachers have said: "The creed of the lover differs from other creeds. God is the creed of those who love Him ; and to do good is best, with the followers of every faith." " He alone is a true Hindu whose heart is just, and he only a good Mussulman whose life is pure." "Remembei * Philosophy of Many B. viii. ch. v. INTRODUCTORY. 25 Him who has seen numberless Mahomets, Vishnus, Sivas, come and go, and who is not found by one who forgets or turns away from the poor." " The common standpoint of the three rehgions," say the Chinese, "is that they insist on the banishment of evil desire." The Chinese Buddhist priest prays at morning that the music of the bell which wakens him to his matins "may sound through the whole world, and that every living soul may gain release, and find eternal peace in God." ^ The Buddhist Saviour^ vows "to manifest himself to every creature in the universe, and never to arrive at Buddhahood till all are delivered from sin into the divine rest, receiving answer to their prayers/' What else, or wherein better, is the claim of the Christian or the Jew? It is so far from beini:^ true that the effort to lift religions to a common level is antagonistic to the humanities of the age, that these humanities could not possibly dispense with such an effort. It is their natural expression. It is the demand not so much of comparative science even, as of instant social dut\^. Is it not quite time that the excuses which religious caste has constantly furnished for treating the heathen as lawful prey of the Christian in all quarters of the globe were finally refuted, by bringing to view the unities of the religious sentiment, and the ethical brotherhood of mankind? Is it not time that claims of exclusive revelation ceased, w^hich can only flatter this spirit of caste ? Fourier tried to circumnavicfate the cjlobe of human "passions," that he might show how it could be regu- lated for the utmost good of all : surely a magnificent ^ Catena of Buddhist Scriptures. ^ Avalokitiswara. 26 INTRODUCTORY. aim, however be3^ond any man's accomplishment, and whatever his mistakes of method. A similar idealism testifies to the same inspiration in all leading move- ments of modern thought. It is the humanitarian instinct that guarantees them : it is this instinct that forbids their falling away from the very principles that make them colossal in stature and infinite in reach. Hence the new sciences of mind, theories of progress, analyses of social function, brave and broad claims of equal opportunity for the races and the sexes. Let us be assured that Liberty, Democracy, Labor Reform, Popular Progress, are to reach beyond the assertion of exclusive rights or selfish claims into full recognition of universal duties ; that liberty is not to stop in license, nor democracy in greed and aggres- sion, nor progress to be earned through bloody retri- butions alone. And this humanitarian instinct, which impels each private current towards the universal life, is not only recreating literature and art, but changing the heart of scholarship also. It demands an ideal culture, that shall give breadth and freedom to our philosophy of life. It culls the choicest thouo-ht of all time. It would nurse every child at the breast of that oldest wisdom of love which Jesus confessedly but repeated as the substance of the Hebrew Law and Prophets, and which in them was but the echo of all noble human experience from the beginning of time. It transmutes that one mother's blood which flows through the veins of all ages to practical nerve and manly sinew of present service. It will discern the fine gold in all creeds and rites, which gave them en- during currency. It will read in sphynx and pyramid, in prehistoric bone heap and sculptured wall, in Druid INTRODUCTORY. 2'J Circles and Greek Mysteries, and Shemitic Prophe- cies and the antique Bibles and Codes, the varied hieroglyph of man's assurance of Deity, duty, and immortality. It will trace through all transforma- tions of faith the eternal right of man's ideal to re- interpret life and nature, and to change old gods for new. Even so decided an opponent of naturalistic religion as Guizot bears witness to the constructive spirit of this aspiration to a larger synthesis of faith. "What gives the modern movement against Christianity its most formidable character," he says, " is a sentiment which has found heroes and martyrs, the love of truth at all risks, and despite of consequences, for the sake of truth and for its sake alone." If such a spirit as this is "formidable" to Christianity, could there be stronger proof that the time for that free culture which it demands is fully come? The scholar must identify himself with the social reformer, and demonstrate brotherhood out of Duty of the the old Bibles and the stammering speech of Scholar. primitive men. It is his duty to show that the human arteries beat everywhere with the same royal blood. It is his duty to help break down the strongholds of theological and social contempt, and refute the pre- tences by which strong races have ever justified their oppression of the weak. He may avail himself of Comparative Philology, or Comparative Physiology, or of any other branch of ethnological science. The materials are at last abundant, the laborers in these harvests equal to his utmost need. But if all these resources should prove inadequate ; if the language, physical organization, and social condition of any race, should all appear to invite the contempt of 28 INTRODUCTORY. Christian nations, there is still left the testimony of the religious sentiment. The essential unity of man does not rest on physiological, but on psychological grounds. A true philosophy of History will know how to reconcile this identity in the substance with phases of progressive development. But no theory will serve, which fails to recognize it as real in every one of these phases. Formulas are as dangerous as they are fascinating. Thus Hegel, compelled by his formal logic, regards the Oriental religions as merely repre- senting man in the undeveloped state of non-distinc- tion from nature ; in other words, in pure bondage to the senses. And so, as elsewhere, his philosophical generalization plays into the hands of theological prej- udice. It tells but half the truth. It ignores the fact that man himself was the soul of these earlier faiths. There were incessantly noble reactions which pro- tested against such bondage as he describes, and justified human nature, as genius and intuition and free self-consciousness, even in the crude experience of its earlier children ; although men had not yet learned to analyze the mysteries of subject and object, Being and Thought. Let us be admonished by the hint of the old Buddhist poet : — "The depths of antiquity are full of light. Scarce- ly have a few rays been transmitted to us. We are like infants born at midnight. When we see the sun rise, we think that yesterday never was." The opening of China to the Western nations, and Religious of the West to Chinese emigration and labor, revolution ^^^ eveuts as momentous in tiieir relii^Ious as approach- o ing- in their commercial and political bearings. INTRODUCTORY. 29 Taken in connection with revolutions in Japan indi- cating the growth of a liberal policy, and with the rapid disclosure of the field of Hindu literature and life during the past half century, they announce a new phase in the education of Christendom. It is as cer- tain that the complacent faith of the Christian Church in itself as the sole depositary of religious truth is to be startled and confounded by the new experience, as that the fixed ideas of that huge population which swarms along the great river-arteries of China, and heaps flowers in the temples of' spirit-ancestors, and bows at shrines of Confucius and Fo, are to be as- tounded at the immense resources of the " outside bar- barians," and their peculiar worship of Mammon and Christ. The time has arrived, in the providence of modern social and industrial progress, for a mutual interchange of experience between the East and the West, for which neither was prepared, but which is quite indispensable to the advancement of both forms of civilization. In their natural impatience to count these unknown millions as converts to Christian theolop:y, the ^, *-'•' Not an ec- Churches but feebly comprehend the serious- ciesiasticai ness of the situation. Dreams of denomina- ^pp^'''""''^ tional trophies won in these realms of Pagan night, where the tidings of salvation by the power or the blood of Christ are to come as a lonor-desired dawn of day, will probably prove illusory. Missionary zeal has been but a poor spell to conjure with. All its auguries and exorcisms have failed. The real oppor- tunity and promise is of another kind. The w^orld of religion is wider than Christendom has apprehended, and it is undoubtedly destined to widen in the sight of man as much as the world of population and trade. 30 INTRODUCTORY. Christianity, as well as Heathendom, is on the eve of judgment. It is to discover that it has much to learn as well as to teach. I firmly believe that in making the worship of Jesus as "the Christ" — which, more than any essential difference in moral precept or religious intuition, forms its actual distinction from other religions — a prescriptive basis of faith, it will strike against a mass of outside human experience so overwhelming as to put beyond doubt the futility of pressing either this or any other exclusive claim as authoritative for mankind. I have written in no spirit of negation towards aught that deserves respect in its faith or its purpose ; in no disparagement of what is eternally noble and dear to man in the life of Jesus ; but with the sincere desire to help in bridging the gulf of an inevitable transition in religious belief, and in pointing out the better foundations already arising amidst these tides that will not spare the ancient foot- holds and contented finalities of faith. And in this spirit it is, that, after such serious study of the Re- ligions of the East, their bibles and traditions, as has been possible, without direct acquaintance with the Oriental languages, — through the labors of scholars like Lassen, Schlegel, Weber, Rosen, Kuhn, Wilson, Burnouf, Bunsen, Spiegel, Riickert, Miiller, Legge, Bastian, our own Whitney, and of many others, render- ing such direct acquaintance comparatively needless, — I have reached the conviction that these oldest relig- ions have an exceedingly important function to fulfil in that present transformation of the latest into a purer Theism, which is still irreverently denounced as infi- delity. The mission of Christianity to the heathen is not only for the overthrow of many of their religious peculiarities, but quite as truly for the essential mod- INTRODUCTORY. 3I ification of its own. The change from distinctive Christianity to Universal ReHgion is a revohition, com- pared with which the passage from Judaism to Chris- tianity itself was trivial. Here is the practical situation. Christendom is henceforth to face those older civilizations out x^e sima- of which its own life has in large measure *'°"- proceeded, and on which its reactions have hitherto made scarcely any impression. Brought into intimate relations with races whose beliefs are more obstinate than its own, and even more firmly rooted in " super- natural " claims, it will be obliged to drop all exclu- siveness and absolutism, defer to the common light of natural religion, and do justice to instincts and con- victions that have sustained other civilizations through longer periods than its own. The movement is not retrograde, but in the direct line of our own American growth ; a promise of science and a consequence of liberty. It can be regarded as a return to bygone systems only by those whose own feet cling too closely to special traditions to venture on testing what lies beyond them. As well think it makes no difference whether one goes to China with Agassiz in a Pacific steamer, or as a Middle Age monk across the sands of Gobi. The new wisdom makes and finds all the old life new. A richer and deeper synthesis beckons us, of which telegraph and treaty are but symbols. There are divine recognitions in that grasp of broth- erly hands which will soon complete the circuit of the physical globe. Scholars have not been wanting who bring us hints of this large communion from the Scriptures of the East. Here and there a thouo-htful traveller or a liberal missionary has noted the brighter facts, that 32 INTRODUCTORY. tell for human nature, and explain the social perma- nence and enduring faith of these strange civilizations. Even from the Catholic Church, as v^e have already said, have come many w^illing tributes, how^ever per- verted to the support of its own claims, to the idea that revelation has in no w^ise been confined to one person, race, or religion. But the strongest evidence has failed of its due effect thus far, because the prac- tical interests of society had not compelled attention to these distant fields. At last their immensity, as well as actuality, becomes a fact of common experi- ence ; and the ethics of Confucius and the piety of the Vedas are to stand as real and positive before the mind of Christendom as the mercantile and political inter- ests that give dignity to this opening of the great gates of the Morning Land. " Ex Orient e Lux 1 " Light from the East once The Prom- morc ! As it came to Greece in the " Sacred ise. Mysteries " with the Dorians and the Pytha- goreans and the Chaldaic Oracles ; to Alexandria in Philo and Plotinus ; to Europe in Judaism and Christianity ; to the Middle Ages by the Crusades, in floods of legend and fable, the imaginative lore that was itself an education of the ideal faculty, and pre- pared the way for modern liberty and aesthetic cul- ture, — so now again it comes to modern civilization through literature and commerce and religious sym- pathy ; and, as ever before, wdth a mission to help clear the sight and enlarge the field of belief. Chris- tendom will not become Buddhist, nor bow to Confu- cius, nor worship Brahma ; but it will render justice to the one spiritual nature which spoke in ways as yet unrecognized, in these differing faiths. It will learn that Religion itself is more than any positive INTRODUCTORY. ^3 form under which it has appeared, and rests on broader and deeper authority than can ever be confined in a prescribed ideal. The reHgious sentiment demands freedom from its own exclusive venerations, that it may recognize principles in their own validity, and instead of revolving in endless beat around some pivotal personality, some fixed historic name or sym- bol, front directly the spiritual laws and facts which man has ever sought to recognize and express, and find them ample guaranties of growth, and ministers of good. These bearings of the present work on questions now uppermost in the reliixious conscious- ^ ^ _ ^ Limits and ness are summed up in the outset, not in Purpose of order to forestall the reader's judgment on the "'^ ^"^"'^y- field of inquiry before him, but in justice to that inde- pendent attitude towards distinctive religions, which is demanded alike by science, philosophy, and human- ity, enforced by the results of historical study, and recognized by religion itself as a new birth of in- tellectual freedom and spiritual power. While our criticism must point out deficiency of this universal element, and hostility to it, wherever they appear, yet the substantial spirit and motive of these studies is not polemical nor even theological. As far as they go in regions of research whose immensity the largest scholarship does but open (and of these I would be understood as but aspiring to sketch the general out- line) , they would record the ethical and spiritual im- port of those older civilizations, whose seats were in India, China, and Persia previous to the Christian epoch ; with such light from their later forms and results as may be required for their appreciation. I would emphasize in them whatever may encourage 3 34 INTRODUCTORY. respect for human nature, while hiding none of their darker features ; which indeed do but illustrate the common inadequacy of all past forms of faith in view of our new and still advancing ideals, and so must the more commend religion to the forward step and aim. Ill-understood beliefs and institutions, whereof we ourselves are not without representative forms, I would trace to their roots in the spontaneities of spirit- ual being, and make as clear as I may the essential identity of human aspirations, under conditions of ex- perience and in stages of progress the most diverse. Finally, within these limits of inquiry, I would note directions in which the differing civilizations may help to supply each other's defects ; and, in sum, endeavor to bring the old antipodal races now practically at our doors under that light of free and fair inquiry which justice to them and to the common good requires. INDIA. RELIGION AND LIFE. -oo^^eio*- I. THE PRIMITIVE ARYAS. THE PRIMITIVE ARYAS. ^ I ^Hx\T elevated region in Central Asia extending -^ from the Hindu Kuh to the Armenian The Aryan mountains, which is now known as the pla- Homestead, teau of Iran, is entitled to be called in an important sense the homestead of the human family. It was at least the ancestral abode of those races which have hitherto led the movement of civilization. Its position and structure are wonderfully appropriate to such a function ; for this main focus of ethnic radiation is also the geographical centre of the Eastern hemi- sphere. " There, at the intersection of the continental axes, stands the real apex of the earth." ^ And its borders rise on every side into commanding mountain knots and ranges, that look eastward over the steppes of Thibet and the plains of India, westward down the Assyrian lowlands towards the Mediterranean, north- ward over the wide sands of Central Asia, and south- ward across Arabia and the Tropic Seas. " Where else," demands Herder, with natural enthusiasm, if not with scientific knowledge, " should man, the summit of creation, come into being?" Whatever answer be given to this still open question, the sym- bolism of the majestic plateau points, we may suggest, 1 Reclus, The Earth. 40 RELIGION AND LIFE. to higher human meaning than that of the mere his- torical beginning of the race. The languages and mythologies of nearly all the great historic races, in their widest dispersion, point back to these mountain outlooks of Iran. Hindu, Persian, Hebrew, Mongol, kneel towards these vener- able heights, as their common fatherland ; a primeval Eden, peopled by their earliest legends with gods and genii, and long-lived, happy men. The homes of ancient civilization rose around their bases, as under the shadow of a patriarchal tent; and there they were gathered to the dust. The drift of forty centu- ries of human history lies amidst their recesses, and strewn over the spaces which they enclose ; attesting what storms and tides of life have preceded our own ; vestiges of aspiration and achievement hid in pre- historic times ; relics of old religions ; inscriptions in mysterious tongues ; local names, whose vague ety- mological affinities suggest startling relations between widely separated ages and races. The highways of the oldest commerce strike across this plateau, and out from it on either side ; and caravan tracks of im- memorial age hint the lines of those primitive migra- tions that issued from its colossal gates. We seem to be contemplating a marvellous symbol of the unity of the human race and of its movement in history ; born out of the mystic intimacy of Nature with its inmost meaning. Of the primeval life of races on this grander Ararat we know but little. Why indeed should we call it primeval? It is but a step or two that history or sci- ence can penetrate towards any form of human life that would really deserve that name. Should we gain much by knowing the crudest human conditions, after THE PRIMITIVE ARYAS. 4I all? It is said that there are tribes in Thibet that glory in believing themselves descended from apes.^ Darwinians would probably be content to glory in merely getting sight of the process, if that could be found. But even if we should come upon traces of it, whether in Thibet or elsewhere, would it show the origin of man, as mind; that is, as Man f This is a mystery involved in every step of mental evolution ; in the fact of thinking, now ; and we cannot account for this evolution by any previous steps. We shall hardly find the source of our personality by tracking it backward and downward into noucfht. I do not even enter here into the question, whether the eastern or the western edge of the great plateau was first peopled : or whether Armenia or Bactria was the earliest centre of ethnic radiation. The oldest Bibles "belong to the modern history of the race." What are patriarchal legends, what is Balkh, " mother of cities," what is Ararat or Belur-Tagh, what are Aryas or Shemites, what is Adam or Manu, — to him who explores the pathless, voiceless ages of prehistoric man? There is no respect of persons or places in that silence of unnumbered centuries that shrouds the infancy of the soul. It suffices to say that in 'the dawn of history we find the Hindus descendincj from these heiijhts of Central Asia to the South ,^ the Iranians to the West, and the Chinese to the East. Let us turn to that focus of movement, of which we know the most, — to the Bactrian Highlands, at the north-eastern extremity of Iran, nestlinor under the multitudinous heights of the Belur-Tagh and Hindu ^ Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta. * See proofs and authorities in Muir's Sanskrit Texts^ ii- 306-322. 42 RELIGION AND LIFE. Kuh. They who have penetrated farthest into these mountain ranges report that the silent abysses of the midnight sky with its intensely burning stars, and the colossal peaks lifting their white masses beyond storms, impress the imagination with such a sense of fathomless mystery and eternal repose as no other region on earth can suggest. The mean altitude of these summits of Himalaya, the Home of Snow, is lof- tier than that of any other mountain system in the w^orld ; and their mighty faces, unapproachable by man, over- look vast belts of forest which he has not ventured to explore. From one point Hooker saw twenty snow peaks, each over twenty thousand feet in height, whose white ridge of frosted silver stretched over the whole horizon for one hundred and sixty degrees. Here are splendors and glooms, unutterable powers, im- penetrable reserves, correspondent to that spiritual nature in whose earlier education they bore an es- sential part. Here is the mythological Mount Meru of the Hin- dus, — "centre of the seven worlds, and seed-vessel of the Universe." Here are Borj and Arvand, the celestial mountain and river of the Persians. Here perhaps is the Eden of the Semites. " Kashmir," says the Mahabharata, " is all holy, inhabited by saints." Here is the plateau of Pamer, regarded throughout Asia as the "dome of the world." "Men go to the North," say the Brahmanas, "to learn speech." Here Manu, the Hindu Noah, led by a fish through the deluge waters, comes to shore on a mountain-top, and when they subside descends to people the South- ern land.^ Here the Greeks saw an ideal climate, allowing every variety of product, wondrously fecund * Satapatha Br^hmana. THE PRIMITIVE ARYAS. 4^ in plants, animals, and men ; and guarded from intru- sion by mysterious tribes and halt-human creatures, with marvellous powers over the hidden treasures of the earth. ^ It was the great unwritten Bible of Asia, the free field of imas^ination and faith. Here was Balkh, in Oriental tradition the "Mother of Cides," the starting-point of culture, the birthplace of the Zoroastrian fire. Here are sacred lakes and mystic fountains, the immemorial resort of pilgrims from every quarter of the East. The Chinese Buddhists say that a lake on the summit of the Himalaya is the origin of all the rivers of the world. And in fact, from the mountain system of which this region is the centre, the great rivers of Asia descend on every side, — the Oxus, the Yaxartes, the Yang-tze-kiang, the Brahma- pootra, the Indus, and the Ganges. Again we cannot but recognize an impressive symbol of the wealth and scope of human nature ; and not less of its love of broad divergence into special forms, made kindred by far-reaching supplies of one inspiration, ever flowing from central springs. It is in a spot so rich in spiritual suggestion that we are to seek our earliest data for the Natural TheWit- History of Religion. What ^tere the resources "^^^• of human nature at that remote epoch when the ances- tors of the principal modern races dwelt on these high- lands of Central Asia ? It is only of the Indo-European family — comprising the historical Hindus, the Per- sians, and the various races of Europe, excepting Jews, Turks, Basques, Finns, and Magyars — that we can render a positive answer. And even of this pre- eminent family of nations we cannot speak from data afforded by the ordinary forms of testimony. For we * Curtius, Strabo, Ptolemy. 44 RELIGION AND LIFE. have here to do with a period far antecedent, not only to the oldest Bibles of mankind, but even to the very notion of such a thino- as the transmission of knowl- edge. But in these prehistoric deeps, where even the half-blind guides of mythology and tradition fail, we greet a fresh source of scientific certainty. It seems as if the infancy of man became but a starless night, in respect of all those dubious guides by whose aid we penetrate the past, in order that the pure testimony of language, alone illuminating it, might make his divine origin unmistakable. For language is, as the oldest faith and the latest science unite to declare it, an inspira- tion. It is no arbitrary invention, like the steam engine or the cotton gin ; no mere imitation of natural sounds ; but the natural result of a perfect correspondence be- tween the outward organ and the inward processes, which must have material expression . Its testimony pro- ceeds from no interested witnesses, from no treacherous prejudices, from no play of imagination, but from the certainties of organic law. Men do not invent names for things of which they have no idea. A people puts its character and its history into its language, without hypocrisy and without reserve. It is a spon- taneous creation. ■ The ^'^ Word" has always been re- cognized as the fittest syrnbol of truth, as the purest manifestation of deity. This unimpeachable witness it is, that testifies of man in an antiquity where no other is possible. And the most primitive fact we know of his nature is thus a certain unconscious honesty^ that discloses his inner life without disguise. It is by the testimony of Language that the nations called Aryan or, more properly, Indo-European, are THE PRIMITIVE ARYAS. 45 brouo'ht into a sincrle class and referred to a common origin.^ And the next step has been, to recover out of the mass of words or roots common to the lan- guages of these nations as much as possible of the primitive language spoken by the parent race in its prehistoric antiquity previous to dispersion into many branches.^ The best philological scholarship of the age has been employed upon this reconstruction. It may fairly be said that we are able already to look directly in upon the character and condition of these hitherto unknown ancestors of the Hindu and the Per- sian, of the Greek and the Roman, the Celt and the Teuton. No achievement of modern science is more brilliant or more marvellous. It is the result of a comparative Philology as subtile as the calculations of Astronomy. It has evoked from human data hitherto unintelligible the substance of a lost language and a forgotten race, as astronomers have applied the strange perturbations of the solar system to effect the discovery of hidden planets. It is not over-conhdent to claim positive certainty for the general result here stated. Enough is already achieved in this held to justify its most skilful explorers in claiming for it the name of Linguistic Palaeontology.^ ^ See especially the researches of Bumouf and Bopp. - We do not mean that Pictet, Eichhotf, Schleicher, Kiihn, Pick, and other scholars, have succeeded in reconstructing the language actually spoken by the original Indo- Europeans, out of the radicals afforded by this comparison of tongues. But their re- searches, though of very unequal value, have resulted in bringing into view a large number of the ideas and objects which that language was used to designate. 3 Pictet, Origi7tes Indo-Europcenes^ or Les Aryas Primitifs. See also Spiegel's Avesta, II., Emleit. cxi.-cxv. ; A. Kuhn in Weber's hidiscke Studien, I. 321-563 ; Las- sen's Indische Alterthumsktmde, I. 527; Miiller, Science 0/ Laiigiuiges, 234-236; Duncker, Gesfh. d. Alterthiims, III. q ; Schoebel, Rccherches siir la Religion Prem. de la Race Indo-Europ. (Paris, 1S6S) ; Whitney, Study of Language (Lect. V.); Mu:r, Sanskrit Texts, II. ; Fick, Worterbiich d. Indog. Sprache. 46 RELIGION AND LIFE. The common name by which the Indian and Iranian The Testi- (oi* Pci'sian) branches of this great family des- mony. ignated themselves was Aryas (in Zend, Air- yas) ; a title of honor/ which now, after thousands of years, returns, in scientific nomenclature, to justify their self-respect by the magnificent record of Euro- pean civilization. The first fixed datum for our prime- val people is therefore their name. It further appears from these researches that the Aryas lived in fixed habitations, kept herds, and tilled the soil. They occupied a diversified region, richly watered and wooded, and highly metalliferous ; its climate, flora, and fauna corresponding with the de- scriptions of Bactriana which have come down to us from the Greek geographers, and which are confirmed by modern travellers.^ It was cold enough to stir the blood and to make them number their years by win- ters. Their houses were roofed, and had windows and doors.' Barley, the grain of cool climates, was their commonest cereal. Their wealth was in their cattle. Names for race, tribe, family relations, property and trade, for the inn, the guest, the master, the king, were all taken from words which desio-nated the herd. They called dawn the " mustering time of the cows ; " evening, the "hour of bringing them home." They had domesticated the cow, the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog. The cow was the " slow walker ; " the ox, " the vigorous one ; " the dog was " speed ; " the wolf, "the destroyer." They used yokes and axles and probably ploughs ; wrought in various metals ; spun and wove ; had vessels made of wood, leather, terracotta, and metal ; and musical instruments of ^ Compare Greek ape,rr], valor, and German ehre, honor. 3 Pictet, I. 35-42. THE PRIMITIVE ARYAS. 47 shells and reeds. They counted beyond a hundred. They navigated rivers in oared boats ; fought with bows, clubs, bucklers, lances, and swords, in battle chariots and to the sound of trumpets and conchs. They besieged each other in towns; employed spies, and reduced their enemies to some kind of servitude, of which we know not the extent. Domestic relations rested on sentiments of affection and respect. There are no signs of polygamy. Patri- archal absolutism was tempered by natural instincts. Father meant " the protector ; " mother, " the former and disposer ; " brother, " the supporter ; " and sister, "the careful," or "the consoling, pleasing one." The primitive names of these forms of relationship have been transmitted with sli<2["ht chancre throuo-h most branches of the Indo-European race even to the pres- ent day. And thus the closest domestic ties not only became, as common speech, the symbols of an ethnic brotherhood, which time and space are bound to guard and expand, but were sealed also to immortal mean- ings for the moral nature by the oldest testimony of mankind. And the affirmations of conscience, the words of the Spirit, were not less clearly pronounced, in other directions.^ The Aryas had clear conceptions of the rights of property and definite guarantees for their protection. These guarantees were based on ownership of the soil where the family altar stood, concentrating the sentiment of piety. We see at how early a period men recognized the natural dependence of those necessary conditions of social order, the family and ^ Kuhn, in Weber's hid. Studien, I. 321-363; Lassen, I. 813; Muller, Oxford Essays for 1856 ; Weber, Lecture on /W/a (Berlin, 1854) ; Muller, Science of Language^ 236; Pictet, II. 716. 48 RELIGION AND LIFE. the home, on fixed and permanent ownership of land. Communistic schemes have never yet suc- ceeded, among the Indo-Europeans, in overcoming this instinctive wisdom, which loyally maintains the Family, the Home, and private Property in Land as mutually dependent factors of civilization. And we may infer from the sacredness attached by the Hindus, Greeks, and Romans to bounds, whether by stones, or by ploughed trenches, or by vacant spaces, — each famil}^ thus marking off its real estate from its neighbors, — that this reverence for property limits was also a trait of the older race of which they were the branches.^ The Aryas had formalities for transactions of ex- change and sale, for payment of wages, and for the administration of oaths. All the essential elements of social order were evidently present in this primitive civilization, the cradle of historic races. Law was designated by a word which meant right. The notion of justice was associated with the straight line, sug- gestive of directness and impartiality. Transgression meant falling off, and oath constraint.^ Their psychological insight surprises us. They seem to have distinguished clearly the principle of spiritual existence. Soul was not merely vital breath, but thinking being. Thought was recognized as the essential characteristic of man, the same word designating both. For four thousand years man has been called "the thinker." For consciousness, will, memory, the Aryas had words that are not traceable to material symbols. They even made a distinction, it is believed, between concrete existence and abstract * See De Coulanges, La Cite Antique, B. i. ch. v. ' Pictet, Les Aryas Primiti/s, II. 237, 427, 435, 456. THE PRIMITIVE ARYAS. 49 being ; ^ a germ of that intellectual vigor which has made the Aryan race the fathers of philosophy. Their language abounded in signs of imaginative and intui- tive processes. They believed in spirits, good and evil;^ and their medical science consisted in exor- cising the latter kind by means of herbs and magical formulas. There are no signs of an established priesthood, nor of edifices consecrated to deities. But terms relating to faith, sacrifice, and adoration, are so abundant as to prove a sincere and fervent religious sentiment. The similarity of meaning in numerous words descriptive of divine forces has seemed to " point to a primitive monotheism, more or less vaguely de- fined."^ Yet the Aryas had probably developed a rich mythology before their* separation into different branches.* They had also firm belief in immortality and in a happy heaven for those who should deserve it,^ beholding the soul pass forth at death as a shape of air, under watchful guardians, to its upper home. Some of these inferences of linguistic palaeontology may require further evidence to give them scientific certainty. But there are other features in the picture of Aryan religious life which admit of no dispute. The word Div^ designating at once the clear light of the sky, and whatsoever spiritual meanings these simple instincts intimately associated therewith, has endured as the root-woi'd of worship for the whole Aryan race : in all its branches the appellatives of Deity are waves of this primal sound, flowing through 1 Pictet, II. 539-546, 749. 2 Developed afterwards in the Yatus and Rfilishasas of the Veda, and in correspondent evil spirits of the Avesta. Pictet, I. 633. 3 Ibid., 720, 690. « Ibid., 689. 6 Ibid., 748. 50 RELIGION AND LIFE. all its manifold and changing religions with the serene transcendence of an eternal law. Again, it has been shown ^ that the whole substance of Greek mythology is but the development, with ex- quisite poetic feeling, of a primitive Aryan stock of names and legends, recognizable through comparison with the Hymns of the Hindu Rig Veda, where they are found, in simpler and ruder forms. In these early yet secondary stages of their development, they rep- resent the daily mystery of solar movement, the swift passage of dawn and twilight, the conflict of day with night, of sunshine with cloud, of drought with fertiliz- ing rain, the stealthy path of the breeze, the rising of the storm wind, the wonder-working of the elements, the loss of all visible forms at night only to return with fresh splendors in the morning. This old Aryan religion of intimacy with the powers of air and sky has in fact been aptly called a meteorolatry . And recent scholarship has applied much ingenuity as well as insight, in bringing all Vedic names and legends under the one title of "solar myths," using the word in the wide descriptive sense just indicated. And there can be no doubt that they all are more or less intimately related to natural phenomena, though pro- ceeding primarily, it is none the less true, from moral and spiritual experiences in their makers, as all mythology must do. But what we have now to observe is that the amount of this mythologic lore, inherited by both the Asiatic and European branches of the Aryan race, warrants our ascribing very great productive capacity, both aesthetic and religious, * Especially by the recent researches of Muller. See Cox's Manual of I^Iythology for a popular summary of these. Also the valuable articles of Mr. John Fiske, in the At- lantic Monthly for 1871. THE PRIMITIVE ARYAS. 5 1 to their common ancestors, the mountain tribes of Central Asia. And, acrain, names and traditions, found alike in the Indian Veda and the Iranian Avesta, indicate that these unknown fathers of our art, science, and faith, must have venerated a mountain-plant, and used its sap as a symbol of life renewed through sacrifice ; ^ that they believed in a human deliverer, who, after saving men from destruction, had reorganized their reviving forces for social growth ; ^ in a human-divine guardian of the world beyond this life ; ^ and in a true Aryan hero who slew the serpent of physical and moral evil.^ And so we learn how early and how cordial was man's prophetic sense of his proper unity with the Order of the Universe, the ideal which it is the main business of all our religion and science to make good. I add another fact of equal significance. The thought that those patient domestic animals, which gave milk, and bore burdens, and were in other ways indispensable to man, deserved a better lot than they were apt to receive, and that the kind treatment of. them was a religious duty, is common to both the Aryan races, and redounds not to their own honor only, but to that of their common progenitors, from whom it must have descended.^ Finally, we may infer from the testimony of the ^ The Soma (Zend, haonta), or Asclepias acida. The haoma was perhaps a different plant, yet must have nearly resembled it. 2 F/;«rt (Iran.) and il/(z«?^ (Ind.). They have common functions as mythical beings, and descend alike from Vivasivat (Zend, Vivaughvat). See Lassen, I. 517- ' Varna (Ind.) and Vohumano (Iran.)- Schoebel points out the curious transference of functions between the four personages just mentioned, in consequence of the separation of the Iranian and Indian branches of the family. * Trita (Ind.) and Thraetona (Iran.). 5 Roth, in Zeitschr. d Deutsch. Morg. Gesellsch-, XXV. 7. 52 RELIGION AND LIFE. two related bibles that the oldest Aryas found God in all the forms and functions of Fire ; that they had great faith in prayer, as intercourse with Deity in purity and simplicity of trust ; and that they were endowed with qualities that help to explain a certain emphasis on sincerity and abhorrence of falsehood, equally characteristic of the precepts of these old ethnic scriptures, and of the reputation of the early Persians and Hindus among the Western races of antiquity. The sacred Fire, kept kindled on the domestic altar, as the centre of religious sentiment and rite, and as consecrating all social, civil, and political relations, is found to be a common heritage of all Aryan races. Its flame ascended from every household hearth, v^atched by \h.Qfitris, or fathers, alive and dead, of this primitive civilization. Modern scholars have traced its profound influence, as type and sacrament of the Family, in shaping the whole religious and municipal life of ancient Greece and Italy. ^ Not only are the words we now use to designate domestic relations and religious beliefs explained by the radicals of this primitive Aryan tongue, but even our terms for dwellings, rivers, mountains, and na- tions,^ are in like manner associated with these patri- archal tribes. So much are we at home among the prehistoric men. The largest part of our knowledge of the ancient Aryas has been reached through Lan- guage alone. The fleeting words of a people have become its most endurin^_close of the last century ; and, if their writings had been known a century earlier, they would certainly have created a new epoch." ^ Aryabhatta, their greatest J astronomer and mathematician, in the fourth century determined very closely the relation of the diameter of a circle to the circumference, and applied it to the measurement of the earth. ^ They invented methods also for solving equations of a high degree. In the time of Alexander they had geographical charts ; and their physicians were skilful enough to ' win the admiration of the Greeks. Their investiga- tions in medicine have been of respectable amount and value, lending much aid to the Arabians, the fa- thers of European medical science, especially in the study of the qualities of minerals and plants.* In much of their astronomy they anticipated the Arabi- ans ; their old Siddhantas, or systematic treatises on the subject, indicating a long period of previous familiar- ity with scientific problems. And in such honor did they hold this science that they ascribed its origin to Brahma. They made Sarasvati, their goddess of num- bers, the parent of nearly a hundred children, who were at once musical modes and celestial cycles.^ They gave names to the great constellations, and noted the motions of heavenly bodies three thousand * Lassen, II. 1140. * Weber, Voriesungen^ p. 238. * Lecture on India' " Creuzer, Relig. de VA ntiq., p. 261. * Lassen, XL 1138-1146. THE HINDU MIND. 67 years ago. The Greeks appear to have derived much aid from their observations of eclipses, as well as to have been in some astronomical matters their teach- ers. Lassen mentions the names of thirteen astron- omers distinofuished in their annals. A Siddhanta declares that the earth is round, and stands unsupported in space. The myth of successive foundations, such as the elephant under the tortoise, is rejected for good and sufficient reasons in one of these works, as in- volving the absurdity of an endless series. " If the last term of the series is supposed to remain firm by its inherent power, why may not the same power be supposed to reside in the first, that is in the earth itself ? " 1 Aryabhatta appears to have reached by independ- ent observations the knowledge of the earth's move- ment on its axis ; ^ and to have availed himself of the science of his time in calculating the precession of the equinoxes and the length of the orbital times of planets.^ Especially attractive to Hindu genius were Grammar and Philosophy. They alone among nations . ^ . Grammar. have paid honors to grammarians, holding them for divine souls, and crowning them with mythical glories. Panini in the fourth century B.C. actually com- posed four thousand sutras, or sections, in eight books, of grammatical science, in which an adequate termi- nology may be found for all the phenomena of speech.* * Siddhanta Siromani, quoted by Muir, IV. 97. * Colebrooke (Essay II.) quotes his words: "The starry firmament is fixed: it is the earth which, continually revolving, produces the rising and setting of the constellations." 3 See Lassen, II. 1143-1146. Also, Craufurd, Ancient and Modern India, ch. viii. The views of Lassen and Weber as to the origin and age of Hindu astronomy are criticised by Whitney, whose opinions are entitled to very high respect. These criticisms, however, do not affect the substance of what is here stated. * Lassen, II. 479. 68 RELIGION AND LIFE. His works have been the centre of an immense Htera- ture of commentation, surpassed in this respect by the Vedas alone. No people of antiquity investigated so fully the laws of euphony, of the composition and derivation of words. "It is only in our own century, and incited by them," says Weber, "that our Bopp, Humboldt, and Grimm have advanced far beyond them." 1 The Hindu Grammar is the oldest in the world. The Nirukta of Yaska belongs probabl}- to the seventh century B.C., and quotes older writings on the same subject.^ In whatsoever concerns the study of words and forms of thought, the Hindus have always been at home ; anticipating the Greeks, and accomplishing more at the outset of their career than the Semitic race did in two thousand years. Yet not more than the Semites are they inclined to pure history. There are, it should seem, no reliable Hindu annalists. The only sources of important historical information are the records of roj'al endowments and public works preserved in the temples, and the inscriptions on monuments and on coins, fortu- nately discovered in large numbers, and covering many periods otherwise wholly unknown. The scattered Brahmanical Chronicles of several kingdoms are but dvnastic lists and mea^^re allusions. The Buddhists, on the other hand, have made a really serious study of history, though even they have not had enough of the critical faculty to distinguish fact from legend. It is only by careful study, and comparison with Greek, Chinese, and other testimony, that their voluminous records can be made to yield the very great wealth of historical truth they really contain. There are in fact * Lecture on India (Berlin, 1854), p. 28. * Reuan, La7igues Shnitiquesy 365. THE HINDU MIND. 69 only two general histories of India from native sources ; one quite recent, and the other dating from the four- teenth century. A most valuable Indian chronicle is, however, the Buddhist Mahavansa, which gives a more complete and trustworthy account of Ceylon, reaching; from the earliest times down to the last century, than we possess of any other Oriental State except China. 1 For determining chronology, there are as yet few landmarks ; both Brahmans and Budd- hists making free use of sacred and mystic numbers, with whose multiples they strive to express a haunting sense of interminable space and time. But though the mythology of the latter deals in extravagances beyond all parallel, they far surpass the Brahmans in serious historical purpose, in observation of human affairs, and in the taste for recording actual events.^ Their earliest Sutras are of great value in the inves- tigation of an epoch of which we have scarcely any other record. This superiority as chroniclers is due in part to their freedom from caste ; a system whose theoretic immobility and practical lack of motive, either for the backward or the forward look, forbid the growth of a historic sense. They differ from the Brah- mans also in a deeper interest in the hiunan foj- its ozvn sake. A philosophy which wholly absorbs man in Deity cannot allow that independent value to the details of life, the recognition of which is an indispensable condi- tion of historical study. How to escape the flow of transient events, and know only the Eternal One, was the Brahmanical problem ; and it would seem quite incompatible with even observing the details of posi- 1 Lassen, II. 13, 16. ' Of the services of Buddhist literature to the geographical and historical study of India, see a just recognition iu St. Martin's Gcographie du Veda (Introd.), Paris, iS6o. 70 RELIGION AND LIFE. tive fact, not to speak of tracing the chain of finite causes and effects. It is only remarkable that the Brahmans should have shown any capacity whatever in this direction. Especial notice is therefore due to the opinion of a thoroughly competent scholar that they have not indulged in conscious invention, and the falsification of facts, to such extent as would justify European writers in casting stones at them on this account.^ The historic sense is indeed by no means wanting, at least in certain directions. We are told that, in every village of the Panjab, the bard, who fills in India the place which in Europe is taken by the "Herald's Ofiice," can give the name of every pro- prietor who has held land therein since its foundation, many hundreds of years ago, and that the correctness of these records is capable of demonstration. ^ It would, in fact, be far from becoming, in the present state of Sanskrit studies, to deny that the Hindus have' ever written genuine history. The destructive effect of the climate of India on written documents is of itself a discouragement to literary pursuits, and to the preservation of records. Yet we cannot overlook their natural propensity to ofthe ^^^^^^ ^^ limitation by positive facts, and to the contempia- objectivc authority of details. This was not tiveeement. Q^yjj^g^ ^g jj^ ^ great dcgrec with the Semites, to intensity of passion and the worship of auto- cratic caprice, but to a stronger attraction tozvards ■pure thought. Whatever they may have accomplished in astronomy and medicine, an ideal generalization was always easier to them than observation. The * Lassen, II. 7. ' Gvi&vi's Rajahs 0/ the Panjab, p. 494. THE HINDU MIND. 7 1 Hindu has, after all, effected little in the purely prac- tical sciences ; almost as little as the Hebrew did in ancient times, and in his distinctively Semitic capac- ity. But while the Hebrew failed here by reason of his defective appreciation of natural laws, and his appetite for miracle and sign, the Hindu, belonging to a family in which the scientific faculty is supreme, failed for a different reason ; namely, his excessive love of abstraction and contemplation. This enfee- bled the sense of real limits. His imagination spurned the paths of relation and use. It dissolved life into intellectual nebula, and then tried to create the worlds anew, weaving ideal shapes and movements in phan- tasmal flow, out of this star-dust of thought. Its boundless desire to bring the universe under one conception, and make it flow forever from Mind as the perfect unity and sole reality, by contemplative disci- plines alone ^ — though one-sided and ill-balanced, was yet a magnificent aspiration in days when practical and social wisdom was in its infancy. Limit, the true balance of ideal and actual, fate and freedom, divine and human, — limit, which is not limitation, but har- mony and order and justice of the parts to the whole, — this, the inspiration of Greek genius, the Hindu did not know. Compare his art with the Egyptian and the Greek. Egyptian sculpture is a phiin prose record of actual life ; or else it binds the idea within fixed types, which are conventional, and, though often grandly serene, everywhere mechanically repeated and allegorically defined. Greek sculpture demon- strates the capacity of the Human Form for every aesthetic purpose, embodying divine ideas therein with pure content and noble freedom. Here CEdipus has solved the riddle, and pronounced the answer, — 72 RELIGION AND LIFE. Man. But in Hindu Art you see mythological fancy overpowering real life ; and, instead of the actual human form, a boundless exaggeration and reduplica- tion of its parts, a deluge of symbolic figures, gathered from every quarter and heaped in endless and stupen- dous combinations, the negation of limit and of law.^ Every thing here is colossal. This aspiration to enfold the Whole cannot find images vast enough to satisfy its purpose. It excavates mountains, piling chambers upon chambers through their depths, tor mile after mile of space. ^ It carves them into mon- strous monolithic statues of animals and gods. It brings the elephant to uphold its columns, and stretches their shafts along the heavy vaults of Ellora and Karli, like the interminable spread of the banyan trunks in its tropical forests. Its temples represent the universe itself; gathering all elements and forms around cen- tral deity, yet seldom pausing to bring out of these forms the artistic beauty of which they are individ- ually capable. Intellectual abstraction — as of mind fascinated by the vague sense of cosmic wholeness, and not yet definitely constructive — excluded Art, except in the one grand, all-enfolding form of iVrchi- tecture. And here sculpture is involved ; yet not as with the Greek, in separate freedom, but adherent to the whole edifice, and absorbed in it, save in the instances of a few special forms of statuary. The contemplative element did not fail at last to itssignifi- engulf outward forms, and even human per- sonality, to an extent elsewhere unparalleled. cance ^ See Kiigler's Kunst^eschichte^ p. 121 ; Renan in Nott's Indigenous Races, p. X03 ; Ramee, Hisi- de V Architecture, vol. i. 2 There are forty series of caves in Western India ; and at Ellora the architecture extends more than two miles. THE HINDU JVIIND. ^3 But we should say that these facts had not yet reached their real values for the mind, rather than that the values themselves were denied. At the least we are allured by the sense of an immeasurable scope in these mystical aspirations to unity with God, which bears witness of genuine intuition. Here abides an illimitable Whole, instead of the manifold symbols of special faith, that have come to stand out, for our sharper Western understanding, in mutually exclusive and even hostile attitudes, plainly enough needing to recognize some higher unity, even though it were by suorcrestion of the Hindu dream. To appreciate the results of these contemplative tendencies, we must recall the old Aryan worship of the clear Light of Day. It seems to have given place, in the development of Hindu thought, to its exact opposite, of which the gloom of the Forest and the Cave would be a truer sj^mbol. But it is in fact not lost. It is transformed into an inward representa- tive and analogue, becoming a worship of the serener Light of Meditation. It is this divinity, which with full confidence in its power to pass through and dis- solve all possible barriers, is here invoked to illumine mystic depths, whether of matter or mind, which the outward sunlight cannot pierce. This aspect of Hin- duism must not be forgotten, ^vhen, in order to see its true embodiment, we endeavor to picture to our- selves those sunless caves of Ellora and Elephanta ; where columns and symbolic statues loom dim and colossal through a silent abyss, and only the mystical imagination finds play, losing itself in its own hover- ing phantoms ; those deeps where all shape is spell- bound, and all action dream ; where puny, awe-struck men light up some little patch of lifeless wall with 74 RELIGION AND LIFE. feeble torches, or wake some little space around them with half-whispered words, — a wizard gleam, a stealthy sound, — and all is dark again and still. To make these profound sepulchral recesses of nature and art endurable, light must have shone through V them from an Invisible Sun. The Hindu thinker found Deity most near to him, TheLan- ^^^t as Pcrsou uor as visible Shape, but as guage. Word, the S3^mbol of pure thought, in his own ^ marvellous Sanskrit. It was in language, the most purely intellectual, most nearly spiritual, of all human products, — and we might almost say it was in language \ only, — that he showed absolute mastery in constructive work. With pious zeal he perfected and transmitted this, the express image of his ideal life. He wrought it out in love and faith and patience, in the depths of mind, far back in antiquity, without aid from abroad ; and then slowly developed or decomposed this divine "Word" into many popular dialects, — still holding '^ its purest form sacred and inviolable.^ "Speech, melodious Vach," says the Rig Veda, "was queen of the Gods ; generated by them, and divided into many portions."^ So grew up this typical language, if not the norm of Indo-European speech, yet the centre and hearth of this brotherhood of tongues ; reveal- ing their several resources through the wealth of its radical forms and structural aptitudes. Its rich grammatical elements are combined, with unequalled simplicity of law. It is pre-eminent among languages * The Sanskrit was the vernacular tongue of Northern India in early times. It began to die out in the ninth centiir)' B.C. In the sixth it was no longer spoken. In the tliird it became a sacred language ; and by the fifth of the Christian era was established as such throughout India. (See Benfey, in Muir's Sanskrit Texts, II. 143) Muir has carefully traced it back to Vedic times, and shown that the oldest hymns were composed in the every-day speech of their authors. « R. v., VIII. 89, 10; X. 125. THE HINDU MIND. 75 in creative faculty, in flexion al and verbal develop- ment ; full of terms descriptive of intellectual and spiritual processes ; deficient only in those which re- late to practical details. The profound thirst of the Hindu mind for unity is indicated in its wonderful synthetic power of fusing radical words into com- . posites ; so great, that a Sanskrit verse of thirty syllables may be made to contain but a single word. Its makers gave it a name which means -perfected^ _ and not perfected only, but adorned; for to them Beauty was in tlie Word of the Mind, not the Work of the Hand. This was their Kosmos. They created it by pure force of native genius, and as in sport; when, and in how long a time, we know not. We know only that it was too near and too dear to their hearts to need letters for its transmission. It is a ma- ture product when w^e first find it in the oldest Vedas, which w^ere preserved without an alphabet for ages, in the memory alone. At last came writing. Then as sound had been " God's music," so letters became the chords thereof.^ The Sanskrit letters are not transformed picture-signs, but something more ab- - stract and intellectual. They are phonetic, symbols of articulate sounds. Infinite was the toil the Hindu grammarians for thousands of years expended in de- — veloping the laws of euphonic structure ; drawing from this fine and facile tongue of theirs as from a perfect instrument, with what has been called a "pro- found musical feeling," harmonious assonances more ^ regular and delicate than the Greek. They referred its primal sounds to the organs by which they were severally shaped. And, with a presentiment of sci- entific truth, they sought to divine an essenUal relation, 1 Karma Mimansa. 76 RELIGION AND LIFE. existing in the nature of things, between the sounds of words and the objects they represented.^ They went so far as to trace back the whole langj^uaore to about fifteen hundred root-words, to all of which they ascribed distinct meanings. EichhofF enumerates nearly five hundred of these in his Indo-European Grammar, fully illustrating the clear light they throw upon the comparative etymology of this whole family of languages.^ But it was not till the Buddhist reaction that the uses of writing were recognized. The Brahmanical laws indicate contempt of this instrument for the diffusion of truth. Was their opposition based partly on the fact of its democratic tendencies, as was that of the Christian Church afterwards to the invention of printing? Recent writers have described the Hindus as icrno- „ . , rant and wasteful, careless to better their con- Practical andphysi- ditiou, lackiug in comprehension of the uses cal interests. r rr' quite equal to those of .Western Europe.^ Nor must we do injustice to the genius that ma,y show itself in the very use of crude conditions. The Hindu woman, working up raw cotton into thread for the incompar- able muslins they call " running waters " or " webs of woven air," with no other instrument than a fish-bone, a hand roller, and a little spindle turning in a bit of shell, is at- all events an artist, endowed with the rare gift of making the most of simplest and nearest . materials. The above unfavorable report is certainly exaggerated.' But enough of truth remains in it to indicate that there are drawbacks in the qualities of this race to steady progress in practical directions, ^ without impulse from abroad. The Hindu mastered many physical uses. Yet he was, on the whole, disinclined to the labor of devel- oping them. His passive temperament was unsuited for material progress, having little curiosity and little zeal for conflict with reluctant nature. The caste- system was an exponent of his dislike of movement. His favorite games are dice and chess ; the latter his own invention, his typical gift to all civilized races ; and both answering to the combination of a passive body with a speculative mind. The pivot of most Hindu philosophy has been the pure unreality of phenomena. It was as if this busy brain, debarred from social construction, teeminij with thouorhts it "^ Speeches before the British India Society {\Z-yf-\o). 78 RELIGION AND LIFE. could not liberate into the world of action, had de- clined to accept all external tests of validity whatever. And the history of its metaphysical speculation proves in many ways that man cannot live by Thought alone. It is not implied that these tendencies shape the whole current of Hindu thought. We do not forget how the people of India have gloried in their great epochs of wide literary culture. We do not forget that twice at least, in their history, all the rays of Oriental learning, science, and song were gathered into a focus of free energy, — at the brilliant courts of Vikramaditya, the companion of poets, and Akbar, the " Guardian of Mankind." We do not forget the opportunity constantly open, on this great mustering ground of nations, for the friction of races and the sympathy of religions. Nor can we overlook that passionate love of the Hindus for dramatic personation, — the sign of a wide scope of the imaginative and sympathetic faculties, — which ha^ shown such pro- ductivity in their literature, and makes the social delight of every village in the lanci. The results of excessive abstraction and contempla- tion, even in India, are equally far from encouraging the widely held belief that these mental habits are de- void of noble uses. The reactions to realism that were involved in their natural processes of development will claim our admiration. And we are especially to study the splendid capacity, philosophical and relig- ious, — or both, since the two in Oriental life are substantially one, — which was brought out in the endeavor to live by Thought alone. It should seem that personal energy belongs of right Force of |-q ^|-^g Hiudu, as a member of that Indo-Euro- Physical Nature. pcan family of nations, in whom a vigorous THE HINDU MIND. 79 practical genius, whether as Persian, Greek, Ro- man, or Teutonic, appears to be inherent and irre- pressible. How is it that, in his case, the old Ar3^an manliness and vigor have yielded to enervation, and the instincts of liberty and progress comparatively failed? Though the extent of this failure has been greatly overstated, there is truth enough in the pre- vailing estimate to mark an exceptional fact, which requires explanation. It is doubtless an extreme illus- tration of the power of cliniaiic conditions. In every other instance Aryan migration has been westward or north-westward : in this alone it has been southward. ■ The dreamy and passive element obtained mastery only after the tribes had penetrated the whole breadth of Northern India from the Indus eastwards, and settled in the sultry valle}^ of the Ganges ; where to this day it is scarcely possible to rear children of English blood, without annual migrations to the cooler hills. 1 Montesquieu has suggested,^ as one cause of the general absence of practical energy and free progress in the Asiatic races, the fact that Asia has not, like Europe, — and we may add America, — a temperate zone open in all directions, w^here races of equal force can enter into free mutual relations, whether of collision or of combination. Her tribes are brought together only by sharp transitions of climate ; and easy conquests by superior physical vigor are followed by rapid enervation of the con- querors, whose movement, from obvious causes, has usually been from the mountains to the plains. The descent of the Aryans into a tropic wilderness, where the invigorating alternations of summer and winter * See Jeffrey's British Army in htdia, Appendix. » Esprit cUs Lois, XVII. 3. 1/ 8o RELIGION AND LIFE. were wanting, and every day renewed the same be- wildering luxuriance of leafage, blossom, and fruit throughout the year, was subject to these transforming conditions. We should naturally expect that these hardy mountaineers, sweeping down from their cool eyries in the Hindu Kuh and Kashmir, into a land wherein " the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that had a heavy dream, A land where all things always seemed the same," — would lose intellectual muscle and nerve. The colos- sal unity and simplicity of movement in the natural world would be reflected in their mental processes ; and an atmosphere heavy with perfumes would lull them to rest in mystical reverie. We may easily exaggerate these forces, as well as the enervation we adduce them to explain. Por- tions of India have a cool and bracing atmosphere ; and the tribes that occupy the higher levels are vigor- ous, active, and enterprising. But the climate of the lowlands, where Hindu culture has had its centre, although modified by the wind and rain of the wet season, is in all essential respects determined by the tropical heats. A colossal vegetation covers this rich alluvion, through which enormous rivers flow from the Himalaya to the sea, enclosed between vast moun- tain ranges on the north and lofty plateaus on the south. An almost vertical Sun, whose beams have ever held the Hindu's love and awe, — all the more strongly because relied on to smite the sensitive head of the invading Englishman, while they have been slowly transforming the texture of his own dark skin till it ceased to suffer from their shafts, — has proved master THE HINDU MIND. 8l of the very movement of his thought, and disposed it to the languor of contemplation and the melting pas- sivity of dreams. Yet that Aryan vitality, which in the North turned to Teutonic sinew and in the West to Persian and intellectual Hellenic nerve, even here wrought its special ^^^^"^^'"".^ wonders. Its brain, self-centred, enclosed in suits, tropical forests and under all-mastering heats, and without the fine stimulation from climate and the inter- mingling of vigorous races which the Greek enjoyed, nevertheless became an immensely productive force. And the fact tends to show that, while climatic or other ph3^sical conditions modify original spiritual forces, they are not adequate to explain civilizations, nor to supply the inspiration which sustains and directs them. The elements which characterize the later develop- ment of Hindu mind were, as we shall see, present in its infancy. The solitude and heat of the Indian wil- derness gave it no new forces, but subserved a certain original ethnic personality, its special essence ; some of whose qualities indeed they forced into excessive action, thereby provoking the others to bring out their latent strength in energetic reactions. Such historical results as these have an important bearing on the phi- losophy of development, by • which modern science seeks to interpret the growth of man. They illustrate the truth which all evolutionists affirm, that no histor- ical changes require to be explained by creative inter- ference with the natural order. But they also tell against the tendency which prevails, in many scien- tists of this class, to mistake the physical conditions of phenomena for their productive cause, and to ignore forces, inexplicable by such conditions, which work in every step of the process, involving the -precedence 6 82 RELIGION AND LIFE. aiid creativity of mind, and constituting spiritual stcb- stance; more or less enduring forms of which appear in race, in personality, and in the constancy and wis- dom of natural law. As it is not incapacity, so it is by no means pure enervation that we note in the passive quality of Hindu temperament. It is rather, as one has well defined it, an " inclination towards repose ; " a constant reference to coming rest, alike in things material and spiritual, as the consummation of endeavor and the end of strife ; explicable in part by the recurrence of a sultry, relaxing season, as the predestined end of the climatic 3^ear, and the most salient fact of its monotonous round. This is of course compatible with a degree of active energy. The religion of Brahman and Buddhist alike was aspiration to repose ; yet its disciplines were pursued with incomparable energy and zeal. "If the Hindus are not enterprising," says Lassen, "they are industrious, w^ierever they have real labors to perform. They show much power of endurance, and bear heavy burdens with patience. And they avoid toils and dangers more from a dislike to have their quiet disturbed, than from want of courage ; a quality in which they are well known to be in no way deficient." ^ The freedom and force of self-conscious manhood could hardly be expected of a people who were mi- grating further and further into tropical lowlands and wildernesses. The keen goads of the mountain air were forgotten. Lassitude crept over the will and re- laxed the practical understanding, till they seemed to lie buried in the helplessness of dreams, confounded with this overwhelming life of physical nature ; and 1 Lassen, I. pp. 411, 412. THE HINDU MIND. 83 their place came to be defined by the philosopher as that stage in human development where man as yet knows not that he is other than the world in w^hich he dwells. But, if we look more closely, we shall find that the facts are not wholly as they have seemed, and that the severity of the Hegelian formula is far from fairly representing them ; since man is not here as an embrvo in the womb of nature, but as livinor force that reacts upon it, though with little help from the practical understanding. And, if we listen atten- tively, we become assured that even the somnambulism of the soul may be inspired ; hearing from these dreamers, also, who at least have faith in their dream, not a few of those accents " of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost." III. THE RIG VEDA. '• I have proclaimed, O Agni, these thy ancient hymns ; and new hymns for thee who art of old. These great libations have been made to Him who showers benefits upon us. The Sacred Fire has been kept from generation to generation." — Hytnn of VisvA- niitra. THE HYMNS. TT is not yet determined at what period the Aryas •^ descended into the plains of India ; whether Antiquity of moved by one impulse or in successive waves *'^^ Hymns. of immigration ; whether impelled by disaster or desire.^ While their religious traditions indicate a march of conquest, those of agriculture, on the other hand, as embodied in the extensive organization of the village communes, have been supposed to point with greater probability to a peaceful colonization. ^ Their earliest footprints at the base of the Himalayas are effaced. It is even, doubtful whether their name means " men of noble race " or tillers of the earth. ^ The etymology which derives it from roots {ar, or ri) that signify niovement^'^ is at least finely sugges- tive of the destiny of their race. It is pleasant too to trace, however dimly, a primitive association of labor with dignity and success, and to note that the name assumed by this vigorous people for themselves served also for their gods.^ In later times it was applicable to the Vaisyas, or third caste, who consti- ^ Lassen, hidische A Iterthutnskunde, I. 515 ; Mliller, in Bunsen's Philos. of History ^ I. 129 ; Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. ii. ; Ludlow's Brit. India, L 37. * Maine, Village Cotnmunities in the East and IVest^ p. 176. ' Miiller's Science of La7iguage, L 23S; Lassen, I. 5; Pictet, I. 28; Weber, Indisch* Studien, I. 352. Sclioebel considers it the title of the family chiefs, or patriarchs. * Pictet, I. 29. See the Lexicons of Roth and Burnouf. » Rig Veda, V. 2, 6 ; IL 11, 19. 88 RELIGION AND LIFE. tuted the mass of the community.^ Dates are uncer- tain in this remote antiquity. There are signs that, as early as twelve centuries before our era, the Aryas were not only a powerful people spread along the banks of the Indus, making obstinate resistance with trained elephants to the Assyrian invaders, but had even reached the mouths of the Ganges on the extreme east of India. ^ The whole intermediate country lies before us in the half-light of a heroic age, the scene of epic and doubtless historic wars, of tribe with tribe and dynasty with dynasty. But we have a record more precious than many precise facts and dates. We have the sacred song (Veda, or wisdom^) of these otherwise silent genera- tions. The Rig Veda, oldest of the four Hindu Bibles, — the other three are mainly its liturgical develop- ment,* — is a collection of about a thousand Hymns ("Mantras," dorn of mind) composed by different Rishis, or seers — not one of which can have orig- inated later than twenty-six hundred, and few of them later than three thousand years ago. These initial syllables of Hindu faith are probably the devo- tions of still earlier times. ^ They appear to have been composed in that part of north-western India now called the Panjab, whose wide slopes descend sea- ward between the upper Indus and the Jumna ; a land always famous for the spirit and grace of its free ^ St. Martin, Geographie dti Veda^ p. 84 : Miiller, ut supra. 2 Ktesias: Duncker, Gesch. d. Alterth., II. 18. * From the root vid^ to know; Greek, ol6a ; Lat., video ; Germ., wissen; Eng., wit^ wisdom. * "The Rig Veda,'''' says Manu, " is sacred to the gods: the Yajur relates to man; the Santa., to the manes of ancestors." The Atkarva consists, mainly, of formulas for use in expiations, incantations, and other rites. ^ Miiller's Sansk. Literal. ., 481, 572 ; Whitney, in Chr. Exam., 1861, p. 256 ; Wilson's Introd. to Rig Veda; Duncker, II. 18 ; Koeppen, Relig. d. Buddha, I. 12; Colebrooke's Essays, I. 129 ; Lassen, I. 749. THE HYMNS. 89 tribes, having its outlook on soaring mountains and limitless snow-reaches ; a land of picturesque hill ranges and of redundant streams, whose rushing waters these children of Nature loved to celebrate in their sacred songs. We possess this Rig Veda in precisely the state, down to the number of verses and syllables, in which it existed centuries before the Christian era.^ It prob- ably represents the earliest distinctly expressed phase of religious sentiment known to history.^ There is not the slightest sign of a knowledge of writing in the whole collection.^ In all ancient literature, there is no parallel to this inviolable transmission of " sacred text," and the veneration with which men are wont to regard such protection from the vicissitudes of time may be more justly claimed for this the oldest of Bibles, than for any other in the world. And the respect deepens when we reflect that these Hymns are outcomes of a yet remoter Past ; Pre-vedic that they point us beyond themselves to mar- Religion. vellous creative faculty in the imagination and faith of what is otherwise wholly inaccessible, the childhood of Man. They present a language already perfected without the aid of a written alphabet ; ^ a literature already preserved for ages in the religious memory alone ! They sing of older hymns which the fathers sang,— of "ancient sages and elder gods." They 1 Miiller and Whitney, ut supra; Colebrooke, in Asiatic Researches, VIII. 481; Craufurd's Ancient and Modern India, ch. viii. ^ ^ Miiller, 557. * Miiller (497, 528) finds no sign of writing in ancient Hindu history. Whitney (Chr. Exam., 1861) thinks it may have been employed, though not for higher literary purposes. * The language of the Rig Veda differs in many respects from the later Sanskrit, the learned language of its commentators. " Its freedom is untrammelled by other rules than those of common usage." Muir's Sanskrit Texts, II. 223 ; Whitney, in Journal of Amer. Orietital Society^ III. 296. •pO RELIGION AND LIFE. were themselves old at the earliest epoch to which we can trace them. Their religion, like their language, was already mature when they were born. Do not seek in them the beginning of the religious sentiment, the dawning of the Idea of the Divine. Their deities are all familiar and ancestral. It is already an inti- mate household faith, which centuries have endeared. " This is our prayer, the old, the prayer of our fa- thers."^ "Our fathers resorted to Indra of old : they discovered the hidden light and caused the dawn to rise ; they who showed us the road, the earliest guides." "Now, as of old, make forward paths for the new hymn, springing from our heart." " Hear a hymn from me, a modern bard."^ As far back as we can trace the life of man, we find the river of prayer and praise flowing as naturally as it is flowing now. We cannot find its beginning because we can- not find the beginning of the soul. The earliest religion is one with the maturest in this TheVedic Tcspcct : that it records itself in the details of People. lifg^ And these primitive Hymns have been called the "historical" Veda, so real is the picture they give of the Aryas after their descent into India. They are described as a pastoral and to some extent agricultural race, divided into clans, and often en- gaged in wars of ambition or self-defence.^ Their ene- mies, designated as Dasyus, or foes,* and Rakshasas, or giants,* are unquestionably the aborigines of North- ern India, and are described as of beastly appearance, 1 /?. v., III. 3g, 2; I. 48, 14. 2 Muir's Sanskrit Texts^ III. 220-230. 8 It has been suggested that the hymns contain traces of an opposition between a peace- ful, and a warlike element within the old Aryan community, ancestors perhaps of the priestly and soldier castes, respectively. Wheeler, Hist, of India^ II. 439. * Muir. See also Bunsen's Philos. 0/ History, I. 343. THE HYMNS. pi every way abominable, and even mad. They are sometimes represented as magicians, who withhold the rain in the mountain fastnesses ; and identified mythologically with darkness and drought. They are declared to be living without prayers or rites, or any religious faith ; charges which go further to prove the devotion of the invaders to their own belief, than the atheism of the tribes they despised. The extreme religious sensitiveness of the Aryas is attested by the frequency with which these charges of godlessness are repeated, in the strongest terms of indignation as well as contempt ; feelings which point perhaps to barbarous practices abhorrent to their own purer faith. Their social ideas indicate primitive relations and pursuits. Their political institutions very closely resembled those of the Homeric Greeks. Their names for king meant father of the house and herdsman of the tribe. Their public assemblies they called "cowpens," and war was "desire of cattle." They prayed for larger herds, for fleet horses, broader pastures, and abundant rain; for nourishing food ; for valor and strength ; for long life and many children ; for protection against enemies and the beasts of the wild. This infantile human nature nevertheless adored the Light. The dawn and the decline of The wor- Day, and the starlit Night that hinted in its Lig^,° splendors an unseen sun returning on a path behind the veil, were dear to its imagination and its faith; and Fire, in all its mysterious forms, from the spark that lighted the simple oblation, and the flame that rose from the domestic hearth, to that central orb, in which the prescience of their active instinct saw, so long ago, an all-productive cosmic energy, ^ was every- * See Hjanns quoted by Burnouf, Essai sur le Veda, ch. xv. 92 RELIGION AND LIFE. where one and the same, alike mysterious, alike divine. And this vital fire of the universe was ever within call, stooping to human conditions, respondent to theii need and will ; at once a father and a child ; born when the seeker would, out of dark wombs in herb and tree ; waiting there to kindle at the touch of his hand, when he rubbed the two bits of wood, or turned the wheel of his fire-churn, — as if his busy fingers reached through the bright deeps on high, and brought life at their tips, kindred life, fresh from the central flame. ^ In the imagery of the hymn, they are " the ten brothers, whose work, one with the prayer, brings forth the god." The worshipper, plying them with power, "plants the eye of Surya in the sky, and disperses the delusions of darkness." ^ Thus early in the history of religion the act of Its creative worship is blcudcd with a sense of creative ^hetk° faculty. Man is here dimly aware of the meaning, truth that he makes and remakes his own con- ception of the divine ; that the revealing of deity must come in the natural activity of his human powers. This prophetic instinct thrilled within him, at each spark he drew from the splinter's cleft to kindle his altar-fire, so long before science had secularized his mastery of nature in lightning-conductor and electric jar. There was more in this delight than the mere satis- faction of physical necessities. With every upward dart of flame from the dark wood, the god was new born ; a mystery of answered prayer and expanded oblation. So the omnipotence of the child's dream ^ So the North-American tribes. Brinton {.Myths of the New World, p. 144) quotes a Shawnee prophet as saying: "Know that the life in your body and the fire on your hearth are one, and both from the same source." « ie. F., v. 40; X. 62. THE HYMNS. 93 was the first regenerator of the heavens and the earth. The out-goings of the morning shone with the cour- age and strength of his inward day.^ Such was the religious rite of the old Vedic fami- lies. Each had its altar and its sacred Fire. The family hearth was the first "holy of holies;" and the flame kept burning in every household was the sign of perpetuity for all powers that bound men in social relations. And not for the Vedic families alone. The Romans and the Greeks also made the hearth the centre of religious faith and rite ; and so the word Hestia, or Vesta (the altar), originally signifying the fixed -place for the family hearth-flame, came to rep- resent the divine mother, to whom all deities bent the knee with the old filial reverence for that flame, at the hearth of the world. Vesta, or womanly purity, was worshipped in the "ever-living fire," which meant the inviolability of the family, and the sacred meaning that invests its transmission of human life.^ In the later age of the Hindu epics, the rites of a whole people in honor of their king are still performed with the primitive instruments of these joyful oblations : not only mortar and pestle for crushing the Soma plant, but the two pieces of wood for kindling the altar fire.^ This original delight in producing the element 1 Pillon i^Les Religions de PIfide, in L^Annee Philosophique for iS6S) traces the tyranny of the priesthood in later times to this Vedic faith in tlie power of prayer and sacrifice to bring forth and sustain the god. "It is not man, but the priest, that thus creates the divine, in those early sacrifices; and this naturally developed itself into the divinity of the Brahman." But the writer seems to forget that the priesthood, as a distinct class, was not then conceived of as masters of this simple rite. And the feeling of creative power involved in it belonged to the self-confidence of the religious sentiment, was its natural faith, its wonder at the work of its own hands- That its prestige came to be con- centrated in the worship of the priest as such was due to other causes, tending to narrow and ritualize the religious life of the Hindus; to such, among others, as ecclesiastical organization, climate, and, later, passivity of temperament. * Cicero, Pro Domo, § 41. 8 Ramayana, II. ch Ixwiii. 94 RELIGION AND LIFE. which animates the world, and in preserving its pure and helpful forces, is retained in all religions of the Indo-European race. It is consecrated in myth and rite, and fable and spell. Its vestiges are in the legend of Prometheus, civilizer of men through this secret of power ; in the Roman Vestal Fire ; in the lighting of the sacred lamps in Christian churches ; and in the . "need-fires " to remove evil and cure disease, familiar to the Germanic tribes.^ The races of the New World also guarded the sacred element with the same loyalty, and renewed it by the same primitive method of friction which the Aryas of the Veda em ploy ed.^ Man could not forget that pregnant dawn of revela- tion, the discovery of his own power to rekindle the life of the universe. From first to last, what sic^nificance he has read in Primitive Light ; as element of nature, as vision of the Symbolism. gQ^| j Tlic symbol is for ever dear. And it was as symbol, not as mere material element, that it had religious homage in the early ages. It is true that developed symbolism requires the separation of the thing from what it represents, and the choice of it as representative ; and this can hardly belong to Vedic experience. But we must remember that there must be an early stage of tinconsciotis S3aTibolism, — a sense of help, beauty, power in the elements," already obscurely suggesting the intimate unity of nature with man ; the condition and the germ of all later develop- ment in this direction. And this is what we find in the Veda. ,. . From the first stages of its growth onwards, the <■ * Kelly's Indo-European Folk-Lore, ch. ii. ' Compare Brinton, p. 143 ; Prescott's Pern^ I. 107 ; and Domenech's Deserts of America, II. 418. THE HYMNS. 95 spirit thus weaves its own environment : nature is for ever the reflex of its life. And what but an un- quenchable aspiration to truth could have made it choose Light as its first and dearest symbol, reach- ing out a child's hand to touch and clasp it, with the joyous cry, "This is mine, mine to create, mine to adore ! " That instinctive cry predicts not only the whole light-loving mythology of the Indo-European races, and its free play through the heavens and the earth, but the concentration of the ripest intelHgence on Light in all forms and in all senses, physical, moral and spiritual. That primitive pursuit of a cosmic fire centred in the sun was indeed natural divination : it struck the path which science was ever afterward to trace through the subtle forms and processes of force, paying an ever nobler homage to solar light and heat. It is interpreted across thirty centuries by Tyndall's song of science to this centre and source of living powers.^ That wonder and joy over the first kindling of the flame is an earnest of the rapture which has ever celebrated Light as type of spiritual resurrection. That infantile thrill at generating the "eye of Surya " is a crerm of man's mature consciousness that knowl- edge is power. And that fearless clasp on the ele- mental fires predicts the full trust in Nature, which at last affirms her, against all implications of. dogmatic theology, to be not the spirit's darkness, but its day. Such prophecy was in that primal attraction to the Light. Well might its priest and poet sing at morn- ing, his face to the rising sun : " Arise ! the breath of our life has come ! The darkness has fled. Light ^ Heat as Mode of Motion^ pp. 455-4'>9' 96 RELIGION AND LIFE. advances, pathway of the Sun ! It is Dawn that brings consciousness to men : she arouses the Hving, each to his own work : she quickens the dead. Bright leader of pure voices, she opens all doors ; makes manifest the treasures ; receives the praises of men. Night and Day follow each other and efface each other, as they traverse the heavens : kindred to one another for ever. The path of the sisters is unending, com- manded by the gods. Of one purpose, they strive not, they rest not; of one will, though unlike. They who first beheld the Dawn have passed away. Now it is we who behold her ; and they who shall behold her in after-times are coming also. Mother of the gods, Eye of the Earth, Light of the Sacrifice, for us also shine ! "^ The old Vedic deities all centre in this purest of the Iranian and clcmcnts. In this, as in many other respects, Indian. their affinity with the Avesta-deities of the Ira- nians is so striking as to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the two races were originally one. Of this primitive unity we have already spoken. ^ A sharp discordance seems to have struck into it ; and the two sections of the Aryan family, moving in different direc- tions, are found using the same mythological names in opposite and hostile meanings. The gods of the one are the evil spirits of the other. But the antagonism touches the names only. The worship of the Light stands unchanged for both. Unchanf^ed in essence. Yet there was a diff'erence in the application of this common symbol to express the inward' experience. While the Iranians converted * Rig Veda, I. 113; Muir. 2 Lassen, I. 527, 529; Bunsen, Philos. Hist., I. 130; Schoebel, Richerches sur la Religion Premiere de la Race hido-Europeeiie, Paris, 18C8. THE HYMNS. 97 the phenomena of nature into signs of moral conflict, the Indians, on the other hand, made them the divine reflex of simple social instincts and practical pursuits. We see here a happy confidence in these nearest ele- ments of experience, rising to the form of religious trust. It is coextensive with the tasks and the de- sires ; and there was, moreover, suflicient self-respect in this primitive sense of natural order to claim freely for human interests the sanction of an intimate relation to all vast, unfathomable forces in the Universe. So early was man, the purport of nature, at home in its mysteries. Titanic Powers have tenderly waited on the processes of his growth, and taken the signifi- cance his childish purpose craved. This lord of the manor rules it from his birth. The Horse and the Cow, the nomad's earliest help- ers and sustainers, are the earliest symbols of xhepasto- his poetic faith. The clouds are the " herds ''^^ Symbols. of the sky;" "the many-horned, moving cattle, in the lofty place, where the wide-stepping Preserver shines." "When the dawns bring rosy beams, then these ruddy cow^s advance in the sky." Vritra (the enveloper), or Ahi (the serpent), en- camped on the mountains, withholds their bounty. Indra, as the lightning, pierces this foe with his gleaming spear, and milks the nourishers of man. Down go the drops to the sea "like kine." Ahi lies felled by the bolt, under his mother, " like a dead cow and her calf, and the floods go joyfully over him." The streams are the "herds of the earth." The sum- mer drought is Ahi's work, who has driven them to the mountain caves, or castles, and holds them bound. Indra follows, and sets them free. His thunder is "like a cow lowing for her calf." Swift as thought, 98 RELIGION AND LIFE. the winds (Maruts), "born among kine, strengthened with milk," attend him. "With their roaring they make the rocks tremble, they rend the kings of the woods ; and men hear their talk to each other, as they rush on, with awe." The clouds are their "spot- ted deer, the lightnings their bright lances : " they are "heroes, ever young, that bring help to man." Indra smites down Vritra as " an axe fells the woods ; breaks down the castles (of cloud) ; hollows out the rivers ; splits the mountain in pieces like a shard." And therefore the singers "bring their praises to heroic Indra, as cows come home to the milker." Ushas,^ the morning light, is now a "maiden, like the dun heifer;" now twin youths, Asvins,^ on fleet steeds; now a "stately spouse, who steps forth, awak- ening all creatures, stirring the birds to flight, and man to his toil." Sarama, the dawn, creeps up the sky, seeking right and left for the bright herds, whom the night has stolen, and hidden in its caves. "As mares bring up their new-born foals, so the gods bring up the rising sun." Savitri^ is the risen sun. "Bright- haired, white-footed steeds draw him along his ancient upward and downward paths, the paths without dust, and built secure ; the wise, the golded-handed, bounte- ous Sun." He is himself "a steed, whom the other gods follow with vigorous steps." Agni,^ Fire, is the "herdsman's friend, bright in the sacrifice, and slays his foes." He is the child ^'' of the two pieces of wood rubbed together, hidden in the cleft between them ; brought to birth by 1 From wf, to bum ; Gr., lywf; Lat, «r" o ' Vedic wor- ever sin we may have committed, O Indra, let ship. us obtain the safe light of day : let not the long dark- ness come upon us." "Preserve us, O Agni, by knowledge, from sin ; and lift us up, for our work and for our life." "Thou leadest the man who has followed wrong paths to acts of wisdom." "Deliver us from evil " is the constantly recurring prayer.^ "The gods are not to be trifled with." "They are with the righteous : they know man in their hearts." 1 Ji. v., X. 82. 2 Ibid., I. 164, 4. 8 Ibid., X. Si, 4. * Ibid., X. 72, 2. 5 Ibid., I. 115, 6; II. 27, 14; I. 36, 14; I. 35. I20 RELIGION AND LIFE. "They behold all things, and hear no prayers of the wicked." "May I, free from sin, propitiate Rudra, so as to attain his felicity, as one distressed by heat finds relief in the shade ! " "I have committed many faults, which do ye, O gods, correct, as a father his ill-behaving son. Far from me be bonds, far be sins." "May our sins be removed," or "repented of" is the burden of a whole hymn.-^ What rude tribes, unused to self-examination, may have meant by the terms here translated " sinning " and " repenting," may not be easy fully to determine. We may readily overesti- mate their moral aspirations. But we shall err even more seriously if we recognize in their hymns nothing better than the desire to buy material advantages from their deities, or the fear of losing these advantages, or of suffering outward penaltits at their hands. ^ It is very clearly a sense of wrong-doing from which the worshipper is seeking relief. It is conscience that pricks him, the rebuke of his moral ideal. Because the evil he thinks or does offends himself, therefo7'e he holds it an offence to the All-discerning. Its penal- ties, w^hether inward distress or outward failure and loss, — and both kinds, as will hereafter be noticed, are confessed, — he construes as signs of its opposi- tion to a rectitude to which he aspires. It is purity of heart, it is peace with the conscience, that these prayers pursue. Their simple confessions of weak- ness and ignorance are laden with earnest feeling. " I do not recognize if I am like this : I go on per- plexed in mind."^ "O Agni, thou art like a trough in the desert, to one who loners for thee."^ 1 R. F., VII. 32, 9; VIII. 13, is; II- 33,6; 11.24,5; 1-97. 2 For this kind of criticism, see Hardwick, Christ and other Masters., I. 182, and even Wilson's Lectures at Oxford (1840), p. 9, 10. 8 R. v., I. 164, 37. 4 Ibid., X. 4, I. THE HYMNS. 121 The moral law is eminently embodied in Varuna. His name, kindred with the Greek Oiiraiios Yzmn^-.^h^ and the Zend Varena — from var^ to veil or "'°''^^ ^'""'• surround — remands us to the outermost confines of the universe. ■• He is essentially the Limit, which en- folds the thought of these simple natures, and protects it from being bewildered and oppressed by the myste- ries of immensity. He is the measurer of depths, whose wise ordinances round them in. His world is farthest space. His calm unswerving legislation is the safety of all beings and forms. '^ His worship ex- presses man's instinctive sense of natural law, of the bands that cannot be loosed. He is adored as framer and sustainer of the everlasting order of the world ; who appointed the broad paths of the sun, prepared from of old, free from dust, well-placed in the firma- ment; who holds the stars from wandering, and keeps the streams from overfilling the sea. " The constella- tions, visible by night, which go elsewhere by day, are his inviolable works." " Wise and mighty are his deeds who has Stemmed asunder the wide firmaments. He lifted on high the bright heavens : He stretched apart the starr}^ sky and the earth, and made great channels for the days."^ He is calm and immovable, the Aryan Fate: inevitable things are "his bonds."* Night, with its mysterious deeps and steadfast orderly watches, is his special realm ; and he it is who brings back the sun to his place, to reappear after passing invisibly through the heavens. Thus the world was instinctively felt to be stanch with orderly cycles, long before the conception of law could be fully formed. * Lassen, I. 758. 2 R. v., VIII. 42. 8 Ibid , V. 85 ; VII. 86, 87 : I. 24, 10. * Roth, Die Jidchsten G'dtter d. A rischen Vdlker {Zeitsckri/t d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Cesellsch., VI. 72). 122 RELIGION AND LIFE. But in this physical order was reflected also the divine law which shone in the conscience, and pro- claimed eternal decree against moral disobedience. " By day, by night, there is said one thing. The same is spoken to me by my own conscious heart." ^ This unseen Eye of the Night " beholds all that has been and all that will be done."^ To Varuna the darkness shineth as the light. It is he who is of- fended at the evil-doer, who is satisfied only when the sin is put away. " Desirous of beholding thee, I ask what is my offence." ^ A later hymn from the Atharva Veda says of him, " If one stand or walk, or hide, the great Lord sees as if near; he knows what two whisper together ; he is there the third. He who should flee beyond the sky would not escape Varuna. He hath counted the twinklings of the eyes of men."* He is " merciful to the evil-doer, and takes away Deliverer siu, cxtricatiug man from its bonds. "^ This from evil, morality is plainly not the bondage of an in- exorable physical necessity, nor the 'blind fear of a wrathful judge. It has sight of a divine compassion, that spares and restores. 1. " Let me not yet, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay. Have mercy, Ahnighty, have mercy ! 2. " If I go along, trembling, like a cloud driven by wind, have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! 3. " Through want of strength, thou Strong One, have I gone to the wrong shore. Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! 4. " Thirst came on the worshipper, in the midst of the waters. Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! 5. '^ Wherever we men, O Varuna, commit an offence before the 1 I^. y., I. 24, 12. 2 Ibid., I 25, II. 3 Ibid., VII. 86. * Muir, v. p. 53 ; Muller, C/i//'S, I. p. 41. 6 7^. ^.^ yil. 87; I. 25, 21. THE HYMNS. 1 23 heavenly host ; wherever we break thy law through thoughtlessness, have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! " ' Similar trust in forgiving love inspires the prayers to all the Vedic gods. They are all called by the names Saviour and Father. It has been said that " we look in vain in the Vedas for penitential psalms, or hymns commemorat- . ^ ^ ^ Aryan sense ing the descent of spiritual benefits."^ This of moral is true only if we take these expressions in ^^ ' their Semitic meaning. In most Hebrew piety, the sentiment of moral obligation, yielding much fruit of sublimity and tenderness, is yet more or less an over bearing despotism.' Its austere and jealous God tends to paralyze the worshipper's freedom with dread of having done, or of being about to do, something that trenches upon exclusive and sovereign claims. Hence an intensity of contrition, and a disposition to dwell on what is called the " malignity " of sin, amount- ing, in the ultimate phases to which Christian the- ology has developed it, to a demand for self-contempt and even self-abhorrence as the first condition of piety ! Now it is certain that nothing like this will be found in the Vedic or any other religion of Aryan orig^in. But it is not to be inferred that such religions do not rest on moral and spiritual foundations. If they know nothinof of these moral aci^onies, so liable to narrow and enslave the mind, they are not for this reason incapable of recognizing the inevitable penalty, and the need of divine renewal, involved in evil think- inij and ie^noble livino-. On the other hand, the gods are not jealous of the liberties of their w^orshipper. They cordially beckon him on every side, and make the world a genial 1 R. v., VII. 85. « Hardwick, I. iSi. 124 RELIGION AND LIFE. climate for all his energies. If there is danger lest this entire spontaneity should relax the authority of conscience, there is at least implied in it a guarantee of freedom and progress indispensable to conscience itself. It does not dwell mournfully and hopelessly on the past, nor on the enormity of offence ; but passes readily on to greet fresh opportunity, accepting the future as still its friend. This moral elasticity and ready recovery of self-estimation, this good under- standing between the conscience and a happy devel- opment of all human powers, is the needful corrective of a despotic moralism in religion and culture, which Semitic earnestness has mingled with its better gifts to the inward life of man. The Hymns to Varuna, which have suggested these TheAdi- remarks concerning a common criticism upon tyas. reliofions of non-Semitic oricjln, are not the only illustrations of the Vedic conscience. Varuna is one of Seven Adityas, or Everlasting Ones.^ These are the " Children of Aditi," who is "The Unlimited, Immortal Light Beyond." Sleepless, beholding all things, far and near, evil and good, the innermost thoughts of men, — irreproachable protectors of the universe, haters of 'falsehood, punishers of sin, yet forgivers too, and abandoning none, they "bridge the paths to immortality, and uphold the heavens for the sake of the upright."^ And to them the herdsman prayed that he might escape the vices that were " like pitfalls in his path;" calling on them to spread their protection over him, " as birds spread their wings over their young." ^ Of these the nearest to Varuna is Mitra, " the Friend'' J Roth, ut supra, Zeitschr. d. D. M. G., VI. 69 ; Muller's Ri^ Veda, I. Notei, p. i^j. 2 R. v., II. 27. 8 Ibid., VIII. 47- 2- See Muir, V. 57. THE HYMNS. 1 25 " Neither is the right nor the left hand known to us, neither what is before nor what is behind. O givers of our homes, may I, weak and afraid, be guided by you to the light that is free from fear. Far or nigh, there can come no harm to him who is in your leading." ^ Though called '^ children of the light," these Im- mortals are not to be confounded with the Their spirit- heavenly bodies : they are not mere phases of uaimean- the Sun, as the later Puranas have been sup- '"^' posed to represent them. They were conceived as the unseen support and background of his radiance. Their light was of the spirit. Their very names have moral and religious. import, born of the conscience and the heart. They mean Friend, Protector, Beholder, Sympathizer, Benefactor, Giver without Prayer.^ They preserve from the evil spirits, or druhs, that follow the sins of men." The oldest Aryan faith centres in these Shining Ones. The x\dityas are, in fact, radiant witnesses that the visible heavens have always been recognized as the symbol of a Higher Light, through which the soul lies for ever open to infinite wisdom, justice, and care. In all ancient religion there is no name more in- teresting than that of Aditi, the " mother " ^he mother of the Aryan gods. To maternity all deities °^ ^^^ sods. pay reverence ; and to the bosom of its infinite ten- derness man must refer his w^hole conception of the divine. "Aditi," says Max Miiller, "is the earliest name invented to express the Infinite, — the visible in- finite. A-diti is the unbound, unbounded, one might almost sav, the Absolute. It is a name for the dis- tant East, the Dawn, — but more. Beyond the Dawn; and in one place the Dawn is called the ' Face of 1 R. v., II. 27, II, 13. > Roth, ut supra. 126 RELIGION AND LIFE. Aditi.' In her cosmic order she is The Beyond, the unbounded realm beyond earth and sky." Beyond Aditi, however, was Daksha, literally " the powerful." *'She, O Daksha, who is thy daughter; after her, the gods."^ Yet Daksha is also said to be born of Aditi. 2 And here it must be noted that this phrase- ology of descent does not indicate chronological suc- cession, but ideal relation ; just as we may say, with equal truth, that light is the child of power, and that power is the offspring of light. ' Yet there can be no doubt that this reaching forth to an all- embracing Life beyond and behind special forms of deity, — an ultimate in which the two conceptions of love and power, under the symbols of male and female, are combined in the interchangeableness of Daksha and Aditi at the fountain of being, — is but a typical expression of the whole religious experience of the Vedic poets.- For we find the same unlimited capac- ity invoked, in each and every deity, to reach out beyond itself, with a care and a power that should absorb all the rest. The study of the Rig Veda has revealed the The earliest ^^^^t that tlic carlicst apothcosis of which we apotheosis, havc rccord was a form of homage to virtue. Some of the hymns are addressed to deified men, who had attained their divinity through beneficent work. 3 They are the "dexterous, humble-minded artisans of the gods."^ The miracles ascribed to them indicate what was then thought godlike in con- duct. They had restored their parents to youth ; an act typical, to the Oriental mind, of all social virtues. 1 Mulder's Rig Veda, I. p. 230, 237; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, IV. 10-13. 2 R. v., X. .72, 4, 5- • N^ve, My the des Ribhavas ; Roth, Brahma und die Brahmanen, in Zeitsch. d. Morg. Ges., I. 76. * /?. F, v. 42, i2(WiIson). THE HYMNS. 1 27 They had made a chariot for the dawn, that daily blessings might be brought to all men. They had multiplied sacred vessels for the service of the gods. They had created, or brought back to life, cattle for the poor.-^ Their name, Ribhavas, formed from that most fruitful of Aryan roots, which indicates upward movement, points to aspiration and growth. It is closely related to the Greek Orpheus, both names sym- bolizing the arts of orderly and rhythmic construction ; and to the German Elfen, denoting the busy, service- able elves.2 To these divine helpers, who seem to have been in some respects identical with the_^//r/5, or ancestral fathers of families, especially in their beneficence, prayers were addressed for the same blessinofs which the older deities bestowed. Thus the gfood man ascends to heaven, and stands amoni^ the gods. The stars of the generous shine in the firmament : they partake of immortality.*'^ They are like the AsVins, those divine physicians, who enabled the lame to walk, the blind to see; who restored the aged to youth, were guardians of "the slow and weak," relieved burns with snow, cured cattle, sowed fields, and delivered sailors from storms.* This instinctive recognition of the divine in the hu- man gave shape to the Vedic idea of a Future xhe Future Life. The first man who had passed through ^'^^• 1 R. F., IV. 33, 35, 36; v. 31, 3- * See Kelly's Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 19. ' R- v., X. 88, 15. (See Maury, Croyances, &c., 147.) Even if, as Neve suppose?, the multiplication of the goblets for worship, as well as the other services to the gods ascribed to the Ribhavas, signify that they " extended the pomp and importance of the religious ritual," and represented the tendency to priestly organization in those early times, it will be none the less true that they were exalted to divinity for acts held in grateful remembrance as serviceable to men. That they were merely priests, or beloved for merely vicarious and official acts, the whole account of them in the Rig Veda disproves. * See Muir, V. 242, and R. V., I. 116-120. For remarks on the relations of the Ribhus and Pitris to the bright spirits or elves of the Teutonic mythology, see Kelly's Indo-Europ. Folk-Lore, p. 19. 128 RELIGION AND LIFE. death waited, enthroned in immortal light, to welcome the good into his kingdom of joy.^ This " Assembler and King of Men " in another life had himself been hu- man, and knew all human needs. Death was thus Yama's kindly messenger, "to bring them to the homes he had gone before to prepare for them, and which could not be taken from them." ^ It was far in Varu- na's world of perfect and undying light, in the " third heaven," in the very "sanctuary of the sky, and of the great waters," and in the bosom of the Highest Gods. Thither the fathers had gone, and " the earth, the air, and the sky were underneath them ; " and thither the children were following, each on his own appointed path.^ That which men desire is the attainment of good in the world where they may behold their parents and abide, free from infirmities, " where the One Being dwells beyond the stars." ^ The morning and evening twilight, the gloaming in which darkness mingles with light, were the " outstretched arms of death," the two watchful dogs of Yama, guiding men to their rest.^ The poet sang the in- evitable longing, and the assurance that has for ever come with it. " There make me immortal, where action is free, and all desires are fulfilled."^ And age after age the simple tribes repeated the Hymn. And while the mourners for the dead, in their rude symbolism of mingled faith and fear, set a stone between themselves and the grave, and placed the clog upon the feet that were to move no more, and 1 Roth, in Zeitschr. d. D. M. G., IV. 426 ; R. V., X. i, 14. 2 R. v., IX. 113, 7- 3 Hymns in R. K, X. * R. v., X. 82, 2. ^ Muller's Science of Language^ II. 496. 8 Rig Veda Burial Hymns ^ translated by Muir, Sansk. Texts., II. 468, and by Whit- ney, Bib. Sac.., 1859; Roth, D. M. G., II. 225; IV. 428. THE HYMNS. ' 1 29 look the bow from the nerveless hands, placing in them — in token of Nature's bounty and protecting care — portions of the body of the goat or cow, their trustful ritual made appeal to the Earth to " receive him kindly, and cover him with her garment as a mother her child ; " to the Fire-gods, to " warm by their heat his immortal part;" and to the Guide of Souls, " to bear him by his sure paths to the world of the just." To the body it said, " Go to thy Mother, the wide-spread, bounteous, tender Earth. I lay the covering on thee : may it press lightly ; thou feelest it not. Pass, at thy will, to the earth or sky." And to the spirit, " Go thou home to the fathers, on their ancient paths : lay aside what is evil in thee : guarded by Yama from his sharp-eyed sentinels, by right ways ascend to the farthest heaven, if thou hast de- served it, and dwell, in a shining body, with the gods. May the fathers watch thy grave, and Yama give thee a home." ^ "Let him depart," it is some- times added,- "to the mighty in battle ; to the heroes who have laid down their lives for others, to those who have bestowed their goods on the poor."^ "Wash the feet of him who is stained with sin," says the Atharva ; " let him go upward with pure feet." And so, amidst prayers, libations of water, and purifying fires, the loved were sped on their unseen way ; and death was conquered, in these rude children of Nature, by an unquestioning trust in the eternal validity of virtue, in the fidelity of the departed, in 1 Miiller's Transl. of Burial Hymns, in Zeitschr. d- D. M. G., IX. [Appendix], and Whitney, ut supra. The tender invocation, " may it press Hghtly," was a part of the burial rite of the Greeks and Romans also. Eurip., Alcesi., 463; Juvenal, VII. 207. 2 R. v., X. 154. 9 130 RELIGION AND LIFE. the care of a Providence as wide as their thought of being, or their need. The honor paid by such childHke instincts of grati- tude and trust to the souls of parents at their graves was the natural bond of these simple tribes with an unseen world and future life. The Sraddha, or offer- ing of rice-cakes to his father's spirit, is the first duty of the Hindu son ; and it has descended from remotest antiquity. This oldest religion of filial piety appears in all branches of the Aryan race. " So great," says Cicero, " is the sanctity of the tomb. Our ancestors have desired that those who departed this life should be held as deities." ^ Plato says : " Let men fear in the first place the gods above ; next, the souls of the dead, to whom in the course of nature it belongs to have a care of their offspring."^ The Latin " Dii Manes " and the Greek " Theoi Chthonioi " correspond perfectly to the Vedic Pitris, blessed div- inities who watch over their descendants, and expect their tribute of holy rites. The Pitris were in fact fathers of families, and represent the religion of those patriarchal times when the family, isolated and self-sustained, was the centre of social life and the foundation of all law and rite. Whether the body was buried or burned, the garment The spirit- of th^ spirit was to be fire, " the bright armor uai body. Qf Agni." ^ Of course it cannot here receive the symbolic meaning which it holds in the mature relig- ious imagination, in the poetry of the later mystics. But it would be equally wrong to take it in a merely gross and material sense. In fact, we detect in it the natural * De Leg., II. 22. So Eurip., Alcest. *' Stant manibus arae: " Virgil (III. 64). * Laws, XI. 8. * R. v., X. 14, 8 ; 16, 4. So, in the later epic belief, the perfect men, the great sages, cast off their old bodies and ascend in new ones of a splendor like the sun, and in chariots of fire. THE HYMNS. * I3I germ of all ideas, Christian or other, of a sj^iritual body; a blending of sense and soul; a clinging of the imafjination and the affections to the familiar organs through which life has been manifested, as if still existing or destined to resume existence, even after they have turned to dust. Vedic Hymns not only exhort the fire " not to burn nor tear the body," but even invoke the fathers to " rejoice in heaven with all their limbs." Even the gods themselves have material enjoyments. Here it is the deep natural in- stinct of respect for life, that attributes permanence and power over death even to its corporeal exponents. But the maturer doctrines of a glorified spiritual body and a corporeal resurrection spring originally from the same instinct. They betray the same confused perception of the relations of the physical with the moral. And if this is not gross materialism in the .Christian dogma, neither is it so in the Vedic hymn. Of the same nature, and equally common among early races of the Aryan stock, is the apparent inconsis- tency of treating the departed spirit as if shut up under ground, and dependent on food provided at the grave by living relatives, while it is at the same time invoked as moving in a freer sphere, and addressed as con- scious of their veneration and love.^ The moral aspect of Vedic immortality points to the same respect for life and its uses. The spirit immortal in his armor of fire was not to live for self: he ^^^^• was to protect the good, to attend the gods, and to be like them.^ Such is the immortal function of the ^it?'is, as intimated in the hymns, which represent 1 Juvenal, VII. 207 ; Eurip., Alcest., 463,993-1003 ; Helene, 962 ; Virgil, y£"«., III. 67; Cic. Tusc.Ques., I. 16; Ow'id's Meiam. \_Orph. and Euryd.\ X. 1 S5 2 Roth in D. M. C, I. 76; IV. 428; R. V., X. 15. 132 RELIGION AND LIFE. them as altogether happy therein. "They have adorned the sky with stars, placed darkness in the night and light in the day." Even when drinking up the libations of their worshippers, as if to satisfy phys- ical thirst, they are busy in offices of guardianship. Their immortal life is none other than the actual life of the best men. " On the path of the fathers, there are eight and eighty thousand patriarchal men, who turn back to the earthly life to sow righteous- ness and to succor it." * " He who gives alms goes to the highest heaven, goes to the gods." ^ " To be kind to the poor is to be greater than the great there." ' We find the same belief among the Greeks. "The souls of the dead," says Plato, reproducing the oldest faith of his race, "incline, like the gods, to the care of the orphans and the destitute : they are kind to those who act justly, but angry with those who act otherwise."'^ Vedic futurity has its heaven, but no very distinct No Inferno, traccs of a hell.^ Not that sins are without their penalties. This would be impossible in Varuna's world. "The Drubs, 'powers of evil,' follow the sins of men, binding as with cords." ^ But these simple hymns are natural outpouring of the trust, rather than of the fears or hates, of the poet. Their divinity is mer- ciful, and loves to efface the marks of transgression. And the yearnings of the heart to brighten and warm the shadows of futurity leave no room for that sternness 1 R. v., X. 15 : Yajnavalkya, III- 186.. 2 R. v., I. 125, 5. 6. " See Miiller, Chips^ I. 46. * Laivs^ XI. 8. 8 The same is true of the oldest Chinese Scriiitures, or " Kings." The Veda has two or three inUmations of an abyss of darkness. Muir V. 312. a i?. K., VII. 61, 5; 59, 8. THE HYMNS. I33 of judgment which would blacken them with its own spirit of avenging wrath. ^ The theological hell of civilized races has been w^orked up with a refined vin- dictiveness, and a morbid exaggeration of moral evil under the name of organic " sin," that does not shrink from staining the eternity of God with blind inexora- ble hate. But this systematized ferocity in judicial logic comes from the perversion of developed mind and conscience. The childish familiarities of rude races with their gods are not so audacious and irreverent as this ; and if they lack the constraints of its infernal terrors, they escape also their fearfully demoralizing power. Here is a period of pure spontaneity in man's ex- perience, before he had begun to brood over sponta- the hideous fantasy of everlasting woe ; and ^^^^y- we are glad to note how far the good impulses of. Nature have sped him without the goads of that dismal lore. We hail the simplicity of these moral and spiritual instincts, so frank and direct, like the opening eyes of a child, or the movement of his limbs at play. This entire confidence in immortality was based on an intui- tive trust in the continuity of life, and in destiny pro- portioned to the bes.t desires. It associated itself with filial and parental love, a firm belief in the continued interest of ancestors, who had entered Varuna's world beyond death. " Give me, O Agni, to the great Aditi, that I may again behold my father and my mother." 2 ^ In the early teaching of Buddhism, there seems to have been a similar effect, arising from the intensity of sympathy and pity. Among certain savage races, as the Kamska- dales and the North American Indians, there is no definite idea of a hell. 2 R. v., I. 24, 2. 134 RELIGION AND LIFE. | i Such reliance on the demands of the affections is prophetic of immortaHty in its highest meaning. It comports, too, with the genial sense of present reahties which predominates in these Hymns. Yet this very quahty has perhaps led to an impression that they indi- cate but faint belief in 2i future existence. -The constant ! tributes to the pitris, for example, have been repre- | sented as ^^ merely an expression of grateful remem- brance."^ Such estimates fail of justice to that instinct of continued existence which would naturally be de- veloped by a healthful confidence in life itself. It is earnest and deep in the Vedic poets, for the very rea- \ son that it is so closely associated with the affections. Every god and every good act, it would seem, was the promise of "immortality." The sense of living, the feeling of real import in | actual, present experience, must have been very in- i tense in such a race as the Vedic Aryans. And this ; is ever the germ and the guarantee of all genuine i sight in the direction of a future life. In the Rig Veda ; it is perfectly pure and simple : it has not a trace of the later schemes of transmigration, wi'th their elaborate j ingenuity of fear ; nor of ascetic disciplines bartering 1 comfort in this life for bliss in another. This relicr- ion is just the inborn impulse to believe, to aspire ; 1 the natural search that finds the hand it feels after, be- i cause it is this very hand that moves it to feel. " The | belief in the immortality of the soul," says Burnouf, ! "not naked and inactive, but living and clothed with a I glorious body, was never interrupted for a moment : it | is now in India what it was in those ancient times, and even rests on a similar metaphysical basis." ^ j * Wheeler's /Twi'iyry (?/■ /w^/rt, II. 436. ] 2 Le Veda, p. i86. \ THE HYMNS. I35 Here is as yet no idolatry nor organized priesthood, no ecclesiastical nor mediatorial authority. The Simplicity Ar3'ans had risen beyond the fetichism which ofUfeand is found in the lowest races to be without these ^^'^^^'p- elements/ to a stage which dispensed with them through higher insight. The parent, as transmitting the mysterious life principle, was the centre of religion. Each householder was as Arya, capable of immedi- ate relation with the family deities ; was priest and psalmist in one : and rites were still domestic.^ There is no trace of the burning of widows, no prohibi- tion of their marrying again. The filial instincts were the basis of a social order as yet innocent of castes.^ The marriage relation had its sacramental rites; and polygamy, though not absent, was excep- tional.^ We are still farther from the barbarous custom of polyandry, which appears more distinctly in the epics, and of w^hich a trace is discovered in but one Vedic hymn.^ A delicate sense of the significance of family ties is indicated in the words chosen to represent them, -phe sexes — words which remain in all Aryan tongues to ^'i"^^- testify of this line instinct in the childhood of the race.^ The sexes are on the same level, and the Vedic idea of their mutual relations strongly reminds us of that which prevailed in the old Germanic tribes.^ The marriage rite by joining hands and walking round the 1 See instances in Lubbock's Origin of Civil izatio7i. 2 Wilson's Introd. to Rig Veda; Burnouf, p. 226. •^ Haug, Brahma uiid die Brahmaneu, affirms, contrary to the opinion of most schol- ars, that the castes existed in an organized form in the oldest Vedic times. At most, how- ever, his illustrations seem to prove only that germs of these distinct orders of society were visible in the early rituals. His principal authority, R. V., X. 90, is generally regarded as of late origin. See Muir's effective reply to this theory of Haug and Kern, in Sanskrit Texts, II. 457- Wilson, R. V., II. xi. * Muir, v. 457. • s Wheeler's Hist, of India^ II. 502. 6 Burnouf, Le Veda^ ch. vii. T Weber's hid. Stud., V. 177 ; Pictet, Orig. Indo-Europ., II. 338. 136 RELIGION AND LIFE. hearth does not seem to imply either a " natural " or "ordained" supremacy of the male over the female.^ Husband and wife were equal in the household, and at the altar of sacrifice.^ Woman cares for the sa- cred vessels, prepares the oblation, often composes the hymn. There are references, perhaps symbolical, to the mother of the altar fire, who gathers the Soma, and holds it in her bosom as a babe ; ^ to the sacred mothers, who adorn this child of the sky.* There are hymns descriptive of domestic affection, and breathing the sentiment of love. The union of hus- band and wife is likened to the " embrace of Indra by the hymn." The sun follows the dawn as a man a woman ; and the dawn is like " a radiant bride." "As a loving wife shows herself to her husband, so does she, smiling, reveal her form ; moving forth to arouse all creatures to their labors." "All life, all breath, is in thee, O Dawn, as thou ascendest. Rise, daughter of heaven, with blessings ! " ^ The religion of labor is honored in harvest hymns. The husbandman prays that " the ploughshare may cut the earth with good fortune." The phj^sician blesses his healing herbs, and hints, with a touch of humor, that it is not a bad thing to cure the sick, and make monev, at one stroke.^ A democratic instinct has play in this Vedic community of functions, in which " the purohita could till the earth or pasture flocks, as well as crush the Soma or kindle the sacred fire." <" Some hymns have serious moral purport, and record Ethics. ^he effects of vicious habits on personal and domestic happiness, in descriptions which have 1 Pictet, Orig. Indo-Europ., II. 338. 2 Weber, Vorlesungeti, pp. 37, 38 ; Miiller, Satisk. Lit., p. 28. R. V,, IX. 96. 8 H. v., v. 2, I, 2. 4 Ibid., II. 33, 5. fi Rig Veda, II. 39, 2 ; I. 1, 23 ; X. 43, 1 ; I. 48, 92. c R. y., X. 97. Roth , in D. M. G., XXV. ^ Burnouf, Essaisurle Veda, p. 227. THE HYMNS. 1 37 lost none of their truth for human nature by the lapse of three thousand years. The gambler " finds no comfort in his need : his dice give transient gifts, and ruin the winner : he is vexed to see his own wife, and the wives and happy homes of other men." Rudra is entreated not to "take advantage, like a trader^ of his worshippers." " Men anoint Savitri with milk, when he makes man and wife of one mind." Here too are philanthropic sayings : — " I regard as king of men him who first presented a gift." " The wise man makes the giving of largess his breastplate." " The bountiful suffer neither want nor pain." " The car of bounty rolls on easy wheels." " He who, provided with food, hardens his heart against the poor, meets with none to cheer him. Let every one depart from such an one : his house is no home." " Let the powerful be generous to the suppliant : let him look to the long path." "For riches revolve like wheels: they come now to one, and. now to another." " He who keeps his food to himself has his sin to himself also." ' And here finally is a quaint benediction from the later Atharva Veda, which sounds like an echo of this simpler domestic age : — " I perform an incantation in your house. I impart to you con- cord, with delight in each other, as of a cow at the birth of her calf. Let not brother hate brother, nor sister sister." ^ Of the Vedic sacrifices, we cannot speak so posi- tively. Yet, so far as we can see, there was Meaning of the same frankness and simplicity in these sacrifice. as in other matters. Sacrifice is always from the highest to the lowest, from the earliest to the latest form, in some sense the consecration of one's best and dearest possession to his ideal. Even in the 1 R v., X. 107, 117 (Muir). 2 jith. Ved., III. 30. 138 RELIGION AND LIFE. lowest tribes this cannot be the mere reluctant service of fear, or atonement of sin : gratitude, trust, and love, must mingle in these primal relations with the invisible. And the very sincerity of the instinct involves search- ing for the mysterious and even the noble qualities of things, beyond their mere barter price; an effort to discover their representative values ; in other words, an ideal aim. And so the Aryan offered these three gifts : the vedicsacri- f^ci^it^ whosc juices promised new life to all ^^^^- inactive powers ; clarified butter^ as choicest gift of his herds and his simple art, just as the He- brew offered his corn and wine ; and, above all, fire, as the purest of elements, the light and life of nature and of man. These his best he brought with awe,^ not only as his own choice, but as themselves par- taking of the divinity, to whom he yielded them as to their natural source and home. He had chosen them because he saw divineness in them ; for nothino- less than a god could meet his desire. In the sacrificial act he stood their ministrant ; to further, not to destroy, their life. It was meant not onl}^ to effectuate their saving power towards himself, but also to second their own inmost purpose, and inspire the divinity with the joy of finding his own ; speeding the inherent good- will that nestled within them to its fulfilment in the bright track of the altar flame. The offering, this bright Agni, was thus a radiant messenger, swift to bring the earthly blessing and the divine society, and wincred with freedom and delii^ht. Do we not note here in its early form that intuition, which makes the saint or martyr see his own powers transfigured, by the ideal to which they have been dedicated, as his 1 Rig Veda, I. 91 ; VI. 47 ; VI. 16, 42. THE HYMNS. 139 best gift? Such meaning was hinted in Soma, symbol of life given for the good of men, to quicken them to "immortality." It is the vital fire of the universe poured out through the mystery of death in the plant, to resurrection in the flame. "It generates the great light of day, common to all mankind."^ This covering up of destruction by consecration, this absorption of the death involved in sacri- Human fice by the life it is to effect, this belief in the sacrifices. exaltation of the victims above all loss, through satis- faction of the divine affinities within them, — is for- ever the significant fact in the sacrificial impulse, under whatever name it appears. Even its darkest forms are interwoven with this redeeming instinct. This is our key to the painful fact that at some time or in some form human sacrifice has been the custom of almost every race of men.^ It has everywhere been regarded, to a greater or less extent, as an exaltation of the victim, a fulfilment of his best desire ; as his sublime opportunity of representing the affections of the worshippers, the atonement of their sins, or the assurance of their hopes. Thus the Nicaraguans believed that only such as offered themselves on the funeral piles of the chiefs would become immortal. ^ The Aztec victim was held to be the favorite of the god ; and every gift and honor was lavished on him in preparation for his exalted destiny. We are told of a Mexican king who devoted himself with many of his lords to sacrificial death, to efl^ace the dishonor of an insult ! * The Khonds regard their chosen human victims as divine, rear them with utmost tenderness, 1 Ri^ Veda, IX. 6i. 2 The sad record is summed up in Baring Gould's work on the Origin of Religiout Belief ch. xviii. See also Mackay's Progress of the Inteliect, vol. ii. * Brinton's Myths, &c., p. 145. * Prescott's Mexico, I. 84. 140 RELIGION AND LIFE. and teach them that a noble destiny awaits themJ The choice of such victims as were free from blemish, as well as most precious and honored, whether of beast or man, in the rites of Baal, Moloch, or Zeus, is sufficient evidence that the fate was believed to be essentially a blessing. In the Ramayana, the hermit Sarabhanga, believing himself desired by Brahma for his heaven, only defers self-immolation till Rama's coming. Having seen this incarnation, he is content, and " hastens to cast off his body as a serpent his slough." He prepares a funeral pile, enters the fire, and being burned, arises as a youth from the ashes, bright as flame. ^ The burning of widows with their husbands, prac- tised under Brahmanical rules, and not yet quite extinct, was not only commended by the hope of re- joining the lost, but even desired as a crown of glory in the eyes of the assembled people. It was also a deliverance from the doom to sohtary asceticism, or to new repulsive relations for securing male descend- ants to the deceased. Mutual attachment alone would have made sati quite natural under these circum- stances.^ It has been estimated that five-sixths of the women who undergo it are moved by devotion to their affections.^ The actual spirit of this rite lifts it high among those forms of martyrdom which have grown out of ignorant notions of duty, whether Pagan or Christian. Women have been seen seated in the flames, lifting their joined hands as calmly as if at ordinary prayer.^ Ibn Batuta reports, in the four- teenth century, that the woman was usually surrounded 1 Mrs. Spier's India, p. 21.' 2 Ramayana, B. III. * See Wheeler's Hist, of India., II. 116, and Arnold's Life of Dalkousie, II. 316. * Arnold, II. 314. ^ Life of Elphinstone, I. 360. THE HYMNSj^ ^' ^ \' ^4* / by friends who gave her commtssiona t'o spirits cli^- parted, while she laughed, played, xyv danced, down to the moment of being burnt. And the Dabistan tells us it is " not considered right to force a woman into the fire." In the Mahabharata, two widows of a raja dispute for the privilege, one pleading that she was the favor- ite wife, the other that she was the first and chief. Herodotus mentions the custom of the Thracians to select the best beloved wife for this honor, to the grief of the rest.i And the Norse Sagas refer to widows who, like Nanna, the wife of Baldur, insisted on following their dead husbands and sharing their destiny.^ If, then, human sacrifice existed among the Vedic Aryans, it must have been regarded as an . . ^ . . . . In the Veda. exaltation oi the victim ; and to a greater ex- tent than we can now realize accepted by him as such. Even in the later Puranas, this barbarous rite, which had become a part of the established worship of Siva, is found still penetrated by such beliefs ; and without them would surely have been a far more cruel super- stition than it was. Siva declares the victim to be " even as himself." Brahma and all the deities " assemble in him, and be he ever so great a sinner he is made pure, and gains the love of the universe." ^ That such sacrifices were ever offered by the Vedic Aryans is by no means clear ; and the supposed notices of this,' as well as of the "Horse Sacrifice," in the Hymns and the Brahmanas, are very uncertain histor- ical data ; * while sacrifices destructive of life in any 1 Herod., V. 5. 2 Keyser, Private Life of the N'orthmen, p. 42. ' Kalika Purana, As. Res.., vol. v. * See, on one hand, Colebrooke (I. 61, 62); Wilson, in As. four., XVII.; Roth, in 142 RELIGION AND LIFE. form seldom appear in the Rig Veda."^ There is nowhere any mention of human sacrifices, in dis- tinct ter^ns, in the whole Rig Veda ; and the only evidence for even an allusion to them rests on an inference from the later form of one old Vedic legend. Sunahsepa, afterwards the centre of this sacrificial tale, is in the Vedic Hymn itself simply a prisoner, bound and in deadly peril, who is delivered through his prayer to Varuna, as Master of life and death. And so the poet sings, "May He, the far-ruling One, hear us without wrath, taking not away our life. This they say to me day and night ; this my own heart teaches me. He whom the fettered Sunahsepa sought in prayer, Varuna our' King, shall us also free."^ There is no necessary allusion here to a sacrificial rite ; and the only ground for supposing such refer- ence is in the mythic story found in the later Aitareya Brahmana ; ^ in which Sunahsepa is the son of a starving Brahman, and bought for a price, to be offered to Varuna, as substitute for a certain prince, who, having been devoted from his birth, is taking this method to ransom himself from the doom. Here also Varuna acts the part not of a destroying, but of a preserving God, which is his natural function in old Hindu faith. For again and again he defers exacting his claim to the prince's life, and when Sunahsepa is Weber's Ind. Stud., II. 112. On the other, Miiller's strongly expressed suspicions, Satisk. Lit., 41Q, and Weber's additional illustrations to confirm them, in Zeitschr. d. D. M. G., XVII I. 262. Of the two Vedic Hymns concerning the Horse Sacrifice, "one at least," says Burnouf, " is certainly symbolical ; " and Weber himself has shown {ut supra, p. 276) that the long list oi persons of every class, enumerated as victims in the Vayasaneyi Sanhila, must certainly be, in part if not altogether, of a similar character. 1 Wilson's Introd., xxiv. 2 R. v., I. 7, I, 12; V. 1,2,7. ' See Miiller's Sansk. Lit., p. 40S; Weber's /«^. Stud., II. 112. The mjih of a sacri- fice of Purusha, the Spirit, by the gods (/?. V., X. 90), believed by Haug to prove the existence of human sacrifice in the oldest time, is regarded by Muir as of late origin. Records of ^<^.-/ A ^^wi V* w. iiumansacri* THE HYMNS. I43 bound in his stead, at the altar, answers his prayer, as in the older legend, with deliverance, bidding him "praise the gods and so be free." ' Here, however, it is plainly implied that men were sometimes offered up in these ^^5^-Vedic ages of the Brahmanas. The same ages record ah substitution of the horse for man as a sacrificial '^^' victim ; then of the ox for the horse ; then succes- sively of the sheep, the goat, and lastly of the earth and its products.^ These mythic intimations of what was perhaps historic fact derive strength from anal- ogous legends recorded of other races ; as that of the ram substituted for Isaac in the Hebrew story, and of the hind received for Iphigenia, by Diana, in the Greek. Manetho relates that Amasis, King of Egypt, abolished the sacrifices of Typhonic men at the tomb of Osiris, and substituted wax figures; and Ovid, that images made of bulrushes were thrown into the Tiber in place of the old sacrifices of living beings. Many Greek heroes are credited with abolishing this barbar- ity, as Cecrops, Hercules, Theseus. And to Krishna in the Mahabharata myth, who punishes it as a crime to have offered victims to Siva, corresponds the histor- ical Mexican monarch, who delivered Anahuac from similar rites. These analogies, however, do not prove that the custom in India went back, as Haugf has in- . . . Results. sisted, to Vedic times. Such testimonies, if mythologic, may but prove a consciousness of the in- herent cruelty of such forms of worship, and the desire to find far back in antiquity an authority for discon- tinuing them. They would thus testify to a germ of progress, even in stages of social decay. That human 1 A itareya Brdhtnana, as quoted by Miiller. 144 RELIGION AND LIFE. sacrifices were offered in later periods of Hindu his- tory is certain ; but there may well have been an earlier age w^hen they had not yet an existence, as there was for that noble Toltec civilization on the West- ern continent, whose pure and simple religion was all engulfed in the sanguinary institutions of the Aztecs. And there is much in the character of Vedic civiliza- tion to make us hesitate, in the present state of the evi- dence, to believe that it could have mingled immolation of men with its simple offerings of the product of the dairy and the plant of the field. The Vedic gods were indeed believed to approve the Different dcstructlou of the evil-doer who oflended their forms of hu-^^ig aud rcsistcd their claims; and to slay man sacn- ^ ^ •' fice. "godless Dasyus" was an acceptable service. But this desire to find a religious sanction for inflict- ing extreme penalties on real or imagined crime is manifestly to be distinguished from the desire to please the deity by bestowing on him a human victim purely as an oblation. The national gods of the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Norseman, were appealed to in the same way, as fully disposed to destroy their ene- mies, and to accept for service such revenges as the worshipper chose to inflict in their name, on his own. Substantially the same spirit is ascribed to the Chris- tian God in the doctrine of eternal punishment, which is simply a refinement of the belief that deity would fain deal inexorably with its foes, though carried over into the other life and from physical to eternal woe. It appears frequently in the New Testament,^ and ap- parently comes from the lips of Jesus, ^ as well as from the intolerant disciple he rebukes. But incomparably * Matt. XXV. 41, 46; Romans ix. 17-23; i Tim. i. 20; Apocalypse, /««?';«. * Matt. X. 33; xii. 32; xxiii. 33; xviii. 17, 18, 35; xxv. 41. THE HYMNS. 1^5 the worst form of the inference that God is pleased by the severest punishment of crime is to be found in those bloody inquisitions upon the persons of heretics and witches, in which Christian ages have certainly surpassed all others in human history. Many in- stances in Hebrew annals, mistaken for human sacri- fices,^ were of this characters The}' were in fact barbarous -penalties inflicted on actual or supposed criminals: such as "hewing" hostile kings in pieces, and " hanging up " law-breakers or tyrannical fami- lies "before the Lord," and "consecrating" one's self to Him, by putting to the sword those who had relapsed into idolatry. They were simply the earlier analogues of modern Christian rejoicings over barbar- ous massacres of the heathen in India and Algeria, and of Christian arguments for the death penalty as based on a commandment of God. In all these cruel atone- ments, the victim is held to \i^ -paying the -penalty for his sins; and they differ very decidedly from human sacrifices in the proper sense, such as Jephthah's offer- ing of his virgin daughter, or the abominations of Baal worship,^ or the dreadful Chereni, devoting to death men "not to be redeemed;"^ or, we may add, the Chris- tian " atonement," which is of essentially similar nature, — a death of the best to satisfy divine justice for the sin of the worst. In the former or simply primitive class of sacrifices, the Vedic age of course abounded ; though there is no evidence of special cruelty in their warfare, or special barbarism either in dealing with offenders, or in grati- fying personal revenge. Of distinctive human sacri- fice there seems on the whole to be no positive proof. 1 Numbers, xxv. 4, 13; xxi. 2 ; i Sam. xv. 33 ; 2 Sam. xxi. 9; Exod. xxxii. 27, 29. See Mackay, Progress of the Intellect^ II. 456. 2 Psalm cvi. 38; Ezek. xx. 31. 3 Levit. xxvii. 28. 10 146 RELIGION AND LIFE. It is said in a Hymn in praise of Vishnu that " men Free bear- worship him, offering him their libation face ing towards to face."^ And Asrni is ever a " companion " the gods. . ^ . . . and "confidant." We note with especial inter- est this cordial freedom in the bearing of the early Aryans towards their gods. Deity was the " gracious, well-beloved guest " of the householder's altar and hearth, invited to find home there, to give and receive ; praised among the people as their " food and dwell- ing," reverenced as a " kinsman " and " friend." ^ So the Greeks addressed the gods standing, and some- times prayed sitting. The Homeric heroes converse freely with the Olympians, whose human interests are as profound and absorbing as their divine ; are in fact one and the same thing with these. And this was not due to irreverence, or to a low ideal of the divine. It was partly a form of childlike confidence, and partly a manly self-respect, to which slavishness was unknown and impossible. While the religious sentiment is yet untaught by science, this freedom is a strong defence ; and wherever in such epochs it does not exist, there must be grovelling fear before the phantoms of the religious fancy ; and thence that blind intolerance and savage cruelty which befit the spiritual slave. It is one of the grand compensations for all er- Ourdebtto I'ors iuvolvcd iu pol3'theism, that it consulted Polytheism, individual liberty far more than the stern exclusiveness and absolute will of monotheism. Its principle has been finely stated to be the " independ- ence of forces." '"^ The soul protects its own right to grow in every direction, by creating a divine balance of powers ; the basis of which is. in its instinct of » R. v., X. I, 3. 2 Ibid., IV. I, 20; VI. 16, 42; VI. 2. 7, 8; I. 31, 10. • Menard, La Morale avant les Philosophes, p. 94. a THE HYMNS. 1 47 -• equal justice to all. And thus while the religion of the monotheistic Semites, wherever it has followed its native instincts, has proved ungenial to many forms of growth, that of the polytheistic Aryans has been a hearty tolerance, inviting the full expansion of human nature. But for Greek liberty and culture, Hebrew concentration on the Unity of God, descending through its Christian modifications, would, with all the purity of its spiritual ideals, have been to the modern world a legacy of moral bondage and intellectual death. The early error had its truth, which saved us from that one-sided and narrow view of another truth, which would make it error. Faith in many gods was in fact a recognition of that manifoldness of expression by which the divine really becomes human ; and there- fore, in the beautiful and orderly path of human evolu- tion, it has not been wanting ; so that we know how to worship The One in fulness of free opportunity and integrity of culture. The keys of progress were not committed to any single race or religion. Greek and Jew alike were inspired ; alike heard eternal truths, and bore divine messages to the generations whose day was to be more liberal for the mingled light of this twofold dawn. The Semite has sought to preserve the principle of authority in the divine ; the Aryan, that of development in the human. Only the maturer reason of man could learn the true mean- ing of both these principles and their unity in Uni- versal Religion. The Hebrew, or Christian, and the Aryan Bibles are very unlike each other. The resemblance of the praises of Indra or Varuna to the praises of Jehovah goes, after all, but a little way. Even the Gospel of John, with all its Alexandrian inspiration, is touched 148 RELIGION AND LIFE. only at certain points with the creative religious im- agination of the Aryan mind. Semitic ardor has warmed and illumined many of the dark passages of nature and life. But the Rishis also, lovers and searchers of the Light, " saw " what they sang. The debt we owe to the prophets and psalmists of Jehovah, and to the Christian ideal, we are not likelv to over- look or to undervalue. But we do need to be reminded of other historical obligations and affinities. The monotheist, whether of Athens, Rome, or Palestine, was not the sole parent of our modern faith. The plastic susceptibility which secures it from permanent intolerance, opening broad paths of experience in every direction, comes, so far as it depends on the past, of o\xx polytheistic affinities and descent. Our liberty and our science, the sense of free communion with God and Nature through principles, ideas, laws, — are in the line of the Veda rather than of the Thora or the Gospels. These Aryan children feel no separation from God through their thirst to know. To them deity is not apart from man, but in him, revealed in the free play of his own energies. They look straight at the facts with their own eyes, not as aliens, and under ban ; no sense of a " fall " comes in between to dis- able the natural sight, nor is miracle made to dispar- age the familiar facts of life ; no exclusive incarnation limits the divine meaning of Nature as a whole ; no external authority judges or supplants free thought, aspiration, pursuit of truth. The modern spirit recog- nizes its own features here in their infancy. This is plainly the inextinguishable spark that has flamed at last into our free arts and sciences and beliefs, and shines with steady radiance in the civilization that issues in such diverse types of universality as Goethe THE HYMNS. \ i^p and Humboldt and Emerson. And for the germs of. this our larger opportunity, which guarantees wisdom and gladness to man's present and future thought ; of his genial outlook upon life as a home, and his fearless hospitality to its forces and laws ; of the home-born courage tp use all faculties and open all paths ; of the assurance that we are not slaves of prescription, whether to person, creed, or distinctive religion, but natural heirs to universal truth ; of the self-respect whose religion is rational, and the liberty whose ideal is endless progress, — we must go back to the frank Aryan herdsman, inviting his gods to sit as guests beside him on his heap of Kusa-grass. IV. TRADITION. ! TRADITION. " \ ND Brahma said to Manu, * Divide the Veda, O •^^^ Sage ! The age is changed ; the strength, the fire is gone *down ; every thing is on the path of decay.' " This passage from the Vayu Pm-ana shows us that the later Hindus were not without perception of the causes w^hich brought three ritiiahstic Script- ures out of the simple Rig Veda Hymns. The spontaneity of a germinant faith greets us only to disappear. We are to pass from primitive Limits of Aryan piety along a track, such as every re- degeneracy. ligion has seemed fated to tread ; wherein we should find bitter discouragement, as being led ever further from the promise of the morning, were not every lapse the guarantee of a coming self-recovery of human nature, the nobler for the depth of the apparent fall. We shall see this social equality exchanged for the complex hierarchy of caste ; this liberty of private worship for the despotism of an official priesthood ; this inspiration for the pedantic echoes of past reve- lations, themselves regarded as but mediators of a yet older gospel, — those same manly Hymns which we have just now admired as made to rebuke, not to compel, a servile fear. We shall see this genial practical vigor yield to expiatory sacrifices and the 154 RELIGION AND LIFE. terrors of transmigration ; this freedom of the moun- taineer to the enervation of dreamers among tropical banyans and palms. In a word, we shall note a two- fold degeneracy, caused by the forces of Ecclesiastical Organization and Physical Nature. But this is by no means a full account of the process ; and that we may deal fair measure in our interpreta- tion of it, we must be able to enter into the spirit of these remote civilizations, as we would enter into the inner life of a new personality, to do it justice for its own sake. At the outset then, let us appreciate that Worship ^. , of Tradition, which lies at the" root of Ori- Onental -^ ^ ' ^ worship of ental faith. It is not to be judged by the t epast. patent vices of modern traditionabls;;?, whose preference of outworn, lifeless finaUties to an ever-open spirit of inquiry is not a foundation of faith, but a form of unbelief. This is a trailing shadow, flowing away from the living substance of worship. But, whatever else was wanting to it. Oriental veneration for the Past was at least a fervent and supreme faith. That pro- found absorption in religious sentiment which we saw in the Veda is typical of the whole mind of these Eastern races. Their tradition-worship was a rude form of reverence for the Eternal : it was awe before everlastingness. They built their temples and hewed out their caves and their rock statues on a scale that should symbolize this awe. It was because the religious books, rites, legends, hymns, seemed as old as the stars and streams and patriarchal trees, and memory w^ent not back to their becrinning's, that thev were held sacred. Their permanence belittled the fleeting lives, the vanishing dreams and deeds of men : it did not minister to their vanity, but to their humility. Man TRADITION. , 155 could have had things so ancient and so stable, only of God. If the hoary head was believed the patri- archal chrism, the visible sign of divine appointment to the oldest priesthood, much more should God be present in words white with the love and awe of un- told generations ; words which could no more come to death than they could be traced back to any mortal birth. The earliest sense of immortality came, as we have seen, in the feeling of a continuous existence traceable through the. ^itris or progenitors, and in the aspiration to become one with them in their inviolable home ; for the serene silence of the past in which they dwelt was a fit shrine to hold the moral and spiritual idealism of their descendants. "The pitris," according to this faith, "are free from wrath, intent on purity, without sensual passion ; primeval divini- ties, who have laid strife aside. "^ It was a worship founded in gratitude, the apotheosis of the tenderest sentiments. "A parent's care in producing and rear- ing children," says the law, "cannot be compensated in a hundred years." ^ This authority of ideal love and duty penetrated all worlds. Even the gods could not turn recreant to the past, and forsake their duties to progenitors, without penalty : they were even in- voked by the priests, in sacrifice, by the names of their special ancestry.^ Under such conditions, Bibliolatry deserves a cer- tain respect. As these old Vedic Hymns, „ ■t J ^ Reverence in process of time, came to be collected, ar- for the ranged, and enlarged into Samaveda and Yajur- veda for purposes of ritual service, we note indeed the failure ci inspiration, and the growth of ecclesias- 1 M>MV, CXI. 192. 2 Ibid., II. 227 • MuL.e , SaTtskrit Literature, p. 386. 156 RELIGION AND LIFE. ticism ; yet there is something tender as. well as noble in the faithfulness with which the Hindu cherished them as " reminiscences of a former state ; " ^ as " words heard from above," ^ committed to him by a long line of ancestors, who still sought him with yearning care, and who were cherished with the whole strength of his affections ; their primitive Sanskrit the very lan- guage of God ; their syllables so full of virtue that they needed not to be uttered or even understood, only silently whispered in the heart ; yet every one of them laden with ineffable meanings, which endless commentaries souorht in vain to exhaust ; laden with Brahmanas, Upanishads, Sutras, Puranas ; literally a thousand schools of biblical science founded on their mooted texts; wells of theology, literature, science, legisla- tion, for ever brimming, let never so much be drawn ofT from ap;e to agre.^ It is but a childish thouo^ht of everlastingness : but this child is Humanity ! Then how colossal that outgrowth of the intuition, how utter that faith, how prodigal that toil in its service ! And if age be indeed venerable, surely there was better ground for such Bibliolatry than for any other that has ever existed. What records, what institutions, can be called time-hallowed by the side of these? When Solon boasted of the antiquity of Greek wisdom, the old priest of Sais led him through the sepulchral chambers, showed him the tombs of a hundred dynas- 1 The Veddfiia. ^ Manu. 3 Manu (XII. 94-102) declares the Vedas "an eye giving constant light, not made by man, nor to be measured ty his powers. All that has been, is, or shall be, is revealed by them ; all creatures are sustained, all authority is imparted, all prosperity given, by the knowledge of these, which burns out the taint of sin, and makes one approach the divine nature though he sojourns in this low world." — "Brahma has milked out of them three holy letters, — A. U. M. ; three mystic words, — Earth, Sky, Heaven ; three sacred meas- ures of verse, — the Gayatri : and tliese immutable things, the essence of this wisdom that was from the beginning, shall be sanctity and salvation to him who ceaselessly utters them with faith." II. 74-84. TRADITION. 157 ties, recounted to him the annals of nine thousand 3'ears, and admonished him that he was but a child, that there lived no aged Greek. " You have no re- mote tradition, O Solon, nor any discipline that is hoary with age." What must the pandits of Benares think of the Christian missionary, who would supplant their veneration for the Sanskrit Vedas by claiming that divine guardianship has transmitted his Greek or even his Hebrew Scriptures? Wherein is his advantage? Is not evc7'y Bible a cup that holds what the drinker wills? "Every one who pleases," says the Dabistan, " may derive from the Vedas arguments in favor of his particular creed, to such a degree that they can support by clear proofs the philosophical, mystical, unitarian, and atheistical systems ; Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Fire-worship, the tenets of the Sonites or Shiites ; in short, these volumes consist of such ingen- ious parables and sublime meanings, that all who seek may find their wishes fulfilled."^ A mature, self-conscious generation cannot compete with races of instinctive faith, upon their own ground, without making itself more childish than they. Its own liberty to inquire and grow is what represents, in a nobler way, that very authority of age which tradi- tion-worsliip but dimly divined. Nature is older than ritual or Bible, and the personality of Man more ven- erable, even with years, than all his " special revela- tions." We cannot forsake the insight nor the tasks of the man for the unquestioning credence of the child. But in the child we none the less admire a tender respect for age. We recognize the "trailing cloud of glory ; " a filial instinct towards eternity ; an inborn sense of our affinity with imperishable life. ^ Dabistan-, ch. II. 2. 158 RELIGION AND LIFE. To the unfolding consciousness of the race as of the ^ individual, the first great mystery is memory. its divine All dear and honored things pass into one fuuction. giient but living fold, and there await the call that evokes them from their sleep. There death is incessantly overcome, and swallowed up in resur- rection. In this light of endless preservation and renovation the fact of immortality is first revealed. Megasthenes tells us that no monuments were erected in India to the dead, because the people believed that their virtues would make them immortal in the memory of posterity. We are far away now from those days when man bent in natural wonder before this experi- ence of renewal. The memory is, for us, one of many faculties, into which our science has analyzed the mind, and with which we have grown but too familiar as human instruments to venerate them as mysteries of power. But to the awakening soul it was the wonder of wonders, the power of powers. It might well be, as it was, the earliest purely spiritual deity of the hu- man race. It was the only preserver of man's " winged words," the only conductor between his past and his future ; and its stupendous achievements were at once result and warrant of the reverent culture it received. For many centuries the treasures of human experi- ence, of hymn, meditation, and ritual, accumulating from remotest time, were in its keeping alone ; and the immense deposit was transmitted more faithfully than by the later devices of writing and printing. The prophet was "the rememberer," the "bearer on" of an ancient message. Never to forget was the most sacred and tender duty. The Greeks preserved Homer in their memory alone for four hundred years. Down to the time of Buddha there is no positive evidence of TRADITION. 159 a written Sanskrit. Veda does not mean Scriptures, does not mean Bible, or Book at all, but, more spiritu- ally. Wisdom. The Hindus know no dearer name for it than " Words remembered from the beginning." Through indefinite ages this whole literature "was transmitted in this invisible way, by means of inces- sant mnemonic practice,^ and guarded from the dese- crating hand of the penman, even after the introduction of writing, by stern prohibitions as well as by traditional contempt. And it has been finely suggested that the ample satisfaction afforded to every need of intellectual and religious communication, by their splendid culture of the memory, may have prevented the early Hindus from inventing a written alphabet ; an achievement which other races, such as the Chinese, Egyptians, and Hebrews, owed to their inability to mature this more intellectual instrument. ^ In Plato's Egyptian myth in the Phasdrus, the god who invents letters as a medicine for memory is told that he is doing detri- ment to the mind, by teaching men to remember out- wardly by means of foreign marks, instead of inwardly, by their own faculties. We can at least admire the fine economy of Nature, in opening the resources of this faculty in men, while as yet science had not se- cured other means of preserving and transmitting thought. How should we ever, in this age of discon- tinuous reading and ephemeral journalism, — chopped feed for ruining these powers, — come to realize, as Miiller has well suggested, how vast they are? Thus even Oriental worship of tradition has its own proper root in human nature, and its noble germs also * See Miiller's account of such exercises in Hindu schools, Sansk. Lit., p. 504. * Pictet, II. 558. l6o RELIGION AND LIFE. of future dignities ; nor had those children of memory turned their faces, like our religious traditionalists, coldly and unbelievingly to a dead Past. And so, when we see the Hindu slowly elaborating his minute ritualism ^ in that still life alono^ the Oriental rit- ° uaiisman Gaugcs, tweuty-five hundred years ago, until ideal. j^g j^^^ transferred, out of his brooding thought of the Everlasting, its inviolable permanence into all works and ways, we cannot permit any superstition or puerility involved in it to hide the fact that it brings also its incentives to respect for human nature. That hypocrisy and sanctimony were quite as possible in this as in any other religious form, is palpable ; but the essence of Oriental ritualism was certainly reality. The absorbed ascetic, girt with sacrificial cord, gesticu- lating before animals and plants, bowing to his platter, walking round it, wetting his eyes, shutting his nos- trils and mouth by turns, muttering spells as in a dream, performing his three suppressions of the breath, whispering the three sacred letters, pronouncing at intervals the three holy words and measures,^ is to nature, reason, and common sense, in many ways, an unedifying . spectacle ; yet, as compared with much modern formalism of a less detailed and visible sort, he will compel a serious moral esteem. '"These Hindu gesticulations," says Professor Wilson,^ " are not subjects of ridicule, because reverentially prac- tised by men of sense and learning." That quaint writer, James Howell, the contemporary of Sir Thomas Browne, whom he in many ways resembled, tells us frankly : " I knock thrice every day at heaven's gate, * See the microscopic regulation of times, rites, food, and auguries detailed in the first book of Yajnavalkya's Law Code, and the fifth of Manu. 2 Manu, II. 74. 8 Essays on Hindu Religion^ II. 57. TRADITION. l6l besides prayers at meals, and other occasional ejacu- lations, as upon the putting on of a clean shirt, wash- ing my hands, and lighting the candles. And as I pray thrice a day, so I fast thrice a week," &c. These quaint devotions, somewhat in the Oriental spirit, may help us to distinguish the idea which its round of observances sought to embody, from the formal- ism of mercantile piety that pays off a business-like God at a fixed rate, in days, words, and rites ; set- ting apart for this exalted Personage, a Church, a Bible, an abstract morality, that it may keep its houses, trades, politics, and practical prudence for quite other dedications. Oriental ceremonial was at least essen- tially an effort to cover the zvhole of life with divine relation. It was recognized that the primacy of relig- ion did not cease at some given point, where men may have chosen to draw the line. That is not relig- ion whose outward law and set plan fastens on us like a thumb-screw, is endured as penance, and gladly thrown off to escape the pain and awkwardness of its constraints. Relations which are afhrmed in theory to be unnatural, and shown in practice to be so by systematic evasion, have certainly little to do with either faith or freedom. Behind the dreary ceremonialism of the old relig- ions, there is the aspiration of an ideal. The despot- ism of priestcraft does not explain such phenomena as the requirements of Burmese law, that a priest when eating shall inwardly say, " I eat not to please my palate, but to support life ; " when dressing, " I put on these robes, not to be vain of them, but to conceal my nakedness ; " and in taking medicine, " I desire recovery, only that I may be the more diligent in II 1 62 • RELIGION AND LIFE. devotion."^ That minute regulation of the form, whether inward or outward, in which we should find the death not of spontaneity only, but of sincerity, must be taken in connection with the permanent habit of the Oriental mind, which in each individual was itself, more or less, a constant reproduction of the original meaning of the precept. The instinctive demand for enduring things required that the whole of life should reflect divine unchangeableness, from the largest relations to the least. There must be nothing hurried, erratic, impulsive : all must be fixed and serene, an image of brooding deity. Human action had surer determination than the impulses of the moment. Fate was the dearest of divinities to these contemplative minds, because it expressed this idea of ah unalterable path, and satisfied this instinctive yearn- ing for absolute devotion to the religious ideal. Where reason has not yet come to its sure revolt against im- plicit faith, men move in the chains of habit, which they themselves have forged, with slight sense of bondage, and without the moral degradation which always enters with enforced conformity. There is freedom in spontaneity, even of Religious Form. It is generally allowed that the Oriental races wear their robes of ceremony, whether in worship Its freedom- . • i i i or in manners, with real ease, and even a strange grace, in spite of endless petty elaboration. "There is more civility and grace among all classes in India," we are told, " than in corresponding classes in Europe and America."^ This is because their 'etiquette is spontaneous, without doubleness and self- rebuke in the person, a wholeness, a genuine faith. ^ Malcom, Travels in Btir^nah. * Allen's hidia^ p. 483. TRADITION. • 163 Manners are here a part of religion, and common actions grow punctilious from an instinctive sense of accord with the ideal form. There is, I doubt not, a kind of freshness and even freedom in the Hebrew boy, as he binds the thongs of his tephillin seven times round his wrist, and thrice round his finger, and repeats the formularies over every bit of food, and at sight of every change that passes over the face of Nature, and on the "enjoyment of any new thing. "^ For the Hebrew still retains in some measure the infantile faith in forms as the natural body of piety, and in piety which clothes the whole of life in a time-hallowed ritual. It is not Form as such that is ungracious, constrained, or undevout, but forms that do not express the life in its unity and integrity. In the instinctive ease and freedom of Oriental routine there is even an image, not so faint as to be insignificant, of that perfect liberty of the wise and just person, whose every act is unconditional, inevitable, precise as the planet's sweep. " Slight those who say, amidst their sickly healths, Thou livest by rule. What doth not so, but man ? Houses are built by rule, and commonwealths. Entice the hasty sun, if but you can, . From his ecliptic hne : beckon the sky ! Who lives by rule then, keeps good company." There is a self-idolatry of passions and cupidi- ties, a failure of respect for great social and moral traditions of civihzation, on which order and culture, as .well as purity and decency stand, that would remand us to infinitely worse barbarism than all the tradition- worship of the older races combined. 1 See InstructioTts in the Mosaic Religiotu, from the German of Johlson (Philadelphia, 1830), p. 112. 164 ' RELIGION AND LIFE. The ritualism of Eastern devotees is of course not the intelligent freedom of living according to universal laws of culture and use. But at least the ease, preci- sion, and minute perfection of both, flow alike from free surrender of the whole life to the ideal faith ; though this faith be ever so different in the two cases, and though in the one case the principle itself be but germinant, in the other mature. When we recognize therefore that in all the history The protest 0^ rcligious forms there is nothing like Hindu of thougiit. j-j^^^ligj-Q {q-^- complexity, thoroughness, and rigor, we really concede to this people a certain pre- eminent integrity in fls religious conviction. We have here in fact a great, all-surrounding abstract idea, admitting no exception, no evasion, no com- promise, no practical limit. It is the first product of that pure brain-work which makes the inward life of the Aryans of the Ganges. In their clime of beat- ing suns and towering forests, one element of the old Iranian energy made vigorous protest against the forces of physical nature, — the intellectual element. It would create after its own vast aspiration, even though it were in idea only. Of the manifold beauty and wealth of which this dream-life was capable, the whole history of Hindu poetry, from the Vedas to the Puranas, is the impressive record. In philosophy and religion, the contemplative faculty produced yet more marvellous results. Its grasp on pure ideas was ex- traordinary, and its faith in living by them absolute. It was bound to take the whole of life into its mighty impulse to create and rule. It was bound to construct all forms of action in the image of its own eternity ; a world whose very freedom should be in the absolute- ness of its sure and perfect ways. So that in the TRADITION. 165 absence of that struggle with practical conditions and for visible uses which educates us to independence and progress, ritualism, all-pervading and all-ordain- ing, became the natural language of its ideal ; the more so in proportion as it sought to organize itself in a Brahmanical or other ecclesiastical communion. For how insignificant and impotent would the indi- vidual come to appear, seen through this absorbing vision of everlastingness. Heart-deadening asceticism was but a natural result. But let us remember that all real self-abnegation, though it may fail of due bal- ance from the practical and social energies, none the less truly involves the substance of practical virtue. And its upward aim surely deserves our thoughtful study, as an element of universal religion, however the mist of dreams rolled in between it and the goal it sought. V. THE LAWS. THE LAWS OF MANU. "XT 7HEN Vedic inspiration ceased, there came ages ^^ of organized traditional religion. To Growth of the Mantras, or Hymns ofseers, succeeded the ^""f^^'^^^" ^ -J cal institu- Brahmanas, or theological homilies about the tions. hymns ; explanations of the sacrifices and rituals, definitions of faith, directions for efficacious use of formulas in prayer. They are the work of a priestly class, gradually formed by the development of the old patriarchal or family religion into close clans or fraternities, with distinct functions in the ritual ; and dealing for the most part, naturally enough, in quite spiritless pedantry and verbiage, ringing changes on " revealed texts " with superstitious and pompous verbal commentary, after the manner of biblical func- tionaries everywhere. Miiller has traced this tradi- tionalism even in the latter part of the Vedic period, busily at work arranging and combining the hymns for ceremonial purposes.^ Gradually priestly author- it}^ became elaborated in the caste-system, and ex- pressed itself in ideals of legislation. These were based in part on natural wants of the social organiza- tion, and in part on the logic of the religious idea, as 1 Sansk. Lit.^ p. 456. There were more than twenty of these old clans, out of which sacerdotal families were developed. 170 ■ RELIGION AND LIFE. traditionally received, and developed by its represen- tative class. Doubtless there were many such codes, emanating from different priestly schools and fellow- ships;^ but their ecclesiastical compilers could hardly have possessed the means of imposing them upon the population of India. It is probable therefore that they were carried into practice only in so far as they really embodied popular customs and beliefs. Their devel- opment, too, must have been very slow ; and many ages must have elapsed before so vast an edifice of rules and relations could have been constructed, even in theory, as we find presented, with a serene and simple absolutism, as if by universal consent of gods and men, in the Dharmasastra of the Manavas, com- monly called the Laws of Manu. This serene self-assurance, in fact, rested upon pub- lic recognition. Law itself, we must remember, was originally but the mandate of religious sentiment, and the oldest legislation was everywhere honestly as- cribed to the gods ; for these ruder ages heard secret whispers of an eternal truth, on the acceptance and right following of which depends the life of the latest and freest states. It is still undetermined at what period the theolog- ical, moral, political, and social ideal of the Code of Brahmanical schools became embodied in this code. It has been usual, ever since its trans- lation by Sir William Jones, in 1794,^ to place it next in antiquity to the three oldest Vedas, as one of the few great landmarks of Hindu literature ; and most Orientalists have dated it somewhere between the eighth and thirteenth centuries before the Christian ^ Parishads and Charanas. See Miiller, Sansk. Lit. * The version here used. THE LAWS OF MANU. I7I era.^ Yet other recent scholars find the evidences of this great antiquity inadequate, and hold its date to be altogether unknown, the most eminent of these being Max Miiller. It is certain that Greek authors, from the time of Alexander, agree that Hindu courts appealed to no written codes ; though Lassen may be correct in his suggestion that their references are to special occa- sions only, and do not prove that such written laws were not in existence. It must be allowed, too, that legislative codes depend on the current use of writing ; and this cannot be traced back in India beyond the age ascribed to Buddha. True, a wonderful develop- ment of the memory supplied the place of books ; and as the Vedic hymns were preserved by oral tradition alone for centuries, so, doubtless, were definite social customs and rules. But a code so elaborate as this, embodying the whole Brahmanical system in its de- veloped form and full application to all branches of human conduct, would imply a common understand- ing of relations and duties for which zvritte^i docu- • 1 This is the view of such eminent authorities as Lassen and Burnouf, as well as of Koeppen in his very thorough investigations into the history of Buddhism ; and Weber's exhaustive researches into the literature of India result in the judgment that it is the oldest of the numerous Hindu Codes. The groui^ds of this general agreement are given by Duncker, Geschichte d. AUertkmns, II. pp. 96, 97. The followmg is a summary: The oldest Buddhist Sutras describe a more developed stage of Brahmanism in many respects than this code, and must therefore have a later origin : yet they are traceable far back beyond the Christian era. It is probably cited in the Buddhist legends and in the Mahab- harata. It is cognizant of only three Vedas, while the Buddhist Sutras are acquainted with the latest Veda also. It contains no allusion to Buddhism by name, and makes only general reference to rationalists who denied the Veda, as was in fact done by many schools previous to Buddha. It knows nothing of the worship of Siva, familiar to Buddhist Sutras ; nothing of that of Vishnu-Krishna, — its only allusion to Vishnu being in a pas- sage of doubtful antiquity, and this after a purely Vedic manner, — nothing finally of the epic -heroes, while it freely mentions kings famous in the Vedic age. Finallj', its geo- graphical knowledge extends no farther than the Vindhya Mountains, though the Aryans had conquered much of Southern India long before our era. See Lassen, I. 800; Bur- nouf, Introd. a VHist. dii Boiiddhistne, p. 133 ; Koeppen,, I. 38; Weber, Vorleszmgen, p. 242-244. Wilson, Introd. to Rig Veda, places it as early as the fifth century B.C. 172 RELIGION AND LIFE. ments appear absolutely necessary. And the use of such documentary form for systems or ideals of jurispru- dence was not likely to have been undertaken in India, until a comparatively late period ; both because of the general dislike for written teachings and because all authoritative priesthoods are disinclined to limit them- selves to defined and recorded rules. Such self-limi- tation came, doubtless, only when it could no longer be resisted, and may have been compelled by the ad- vance of Buddhism. Yet even these considerations would not greatly diminish the supposable antiquity of the Code, at least in its main elements. That in its present form it represents a gradual growth of the Brahmanical ideas, and contains additions belonging to very different periods, is more than probable, es- pecially from the confused and contradictory elements in its legislation. At all events, it alludes to earlier codes, whose elements are doubtless incorporated into this, the fullest and most perfect in form of all that are yet known to us.^ Of these Indian codes, early and late, there would seem to be no end. Stenzler enu- merates forty-seven law-books by different authors, besides twenty-two special revisions ; the codes of Manu and Yajnavalkya only being now practically accessible to us.^ Most of these books, however, are metrical versions, based on older texts. Both these codes define the extent of their territorial validity by calHng themselves the "law of the land (Aryavarta) where dwells the black gazelle." It was thus admitted that a portion of the peninsula lay out- side their jurisdiction. Whatever antiquity may be ascribed to Manu, or however late the orio;in of its to 1 Sten:£ler, in Weber's Indische Studien, I. 336, 237. THE LAWS OF MANU. 1 73 present form, it is difficult to find the age when it can have had practical recognition by any large portion of the people of India. It is in fact but the Law Code of the Manavas, one of the old Brahmanical fellow- ships founded on common guardianship of sacred texts, and is valuable mainly as embodying what was un- doubtedly Orthodox Brahinanism in its most vigorous age, as well as a vast number of the recognized usages and institutions of ancient Hindu life. And there is reason for believing, in accordance with what is stated by Mr. Maine to be the opinion of the best scholars, that " it does not as a whole represent a set of rules ever actually administered in Hindustan, but is an ideal picture of what, in the view of the Brahmans, ought to be the Law." ^ As further evidence of a later origin than the Brah- manas, we may observe that the Manava-Dharma- sastra belongs to the class of writings defined by the orthodox Hindus as Smriti, or tradition, in distinction from Sruti, or revelation. It is difficult to explain this fact, except upon the supposition that a 7Jiore recent date was ascribed to it than to the Brahmanas, which, as we know, by reason of their antiquity were held to be verbally inspired. For it represents Manu as receiv- ing the eternal rules of justice from Brahma himself, and as delivering them to the ten great rishis, who reverently address him as master of all divine truth. '-^ Notwithstanding this inferior position, the Brahman- ^ Ancient Law, p. i6. See Sykes, Polit. Condition of A7tc. India, Journal R. As. Soc, 1851, VI. ; Afinah of Rural Bengal, p. 104. The Code of Manu is nominally the law of the Burmese empire. But we are told that every monarch alters it to suit himself, and that it is null for all practical purposes, being never produced or pleaded from in courts. Malcom, Travels in Burinah, Notes, IV. 2 Introduction to Manu. \^ I'J^ RELIGION AND LIFE. ical commentators have not failed to recognize its immense value as authority in whatever relates to their traditional faith. And they labor earnestly to prove, not quite true to their bibliolatry here, that Manu's knowledge of the Vedas gave him equal claims with their authors ; yet they bring the testimony of Vedic text itself, that " whatever Manu said is me-dicine."^ Of all Institutes of Government, this, to the Brah- manical tribes, was the consummate and sacred ame. ^^^^^^j.^ Mauu signifies Thought. The word is kindred with the Latin juens^ as also with nian^ and indicates the honor paid by the Aryan race to the in- tellectual nature.- The name thus expressive of divine intelligence revealed in the human, was ap- plied by the Hindus to the mythical first man and first king, as to many other imaginary rishis in prime- val legend.^ The Institutes called by his name are in twelve books of metrical sentences, covering all branches of speculation and ethics, of public and pri- vate life. The first reveals a Cosmogony ; the second and third re^xulate Education and Marriacj^e as duties of the first and second stages of Hindu culture ; the fourth treats of Economics and Morals ; the fifth, of Diet and Purification, also of Women ; the sixth, of Devotion, or the duties of the third and fourth stages ; the seventh, of Government and the Military Class; the eighth, of Private and Criminal Law ; the ninth, of the Com- mercial and Servile Classes ; the tenth, of Mixed Classes and Regulations for Times of Distress ; the 1 See quotations in Miiller, p. 89. 103. * Minos of Greeks, Menes of Eg>'ptian, Mannus of Germans, Menw of Welsh. See Pictet, II. 621-627. 8 See Ztschr. d. D. M. G., IV. 430; Muller, p. 532. THE LAWS OF MANU. 1 75 eleventh, of Penance and Expiation ; the twelfth, of Transmio-ration and Final Beatitude.^ As the basis of Brahmanical speculation is that self is nothing, and that of their ethics that self- g^sis in self- ishness is hell, so the substance of their juris- abnegation. prudence is a discipline of entire self-renunciation. The theoretic aim of the Manavasastra is the utter suppression of selfish desire. It is absolute despotism ; but a despotism hy the conscience rather than over it; enslavement not of subjects by rulers, but of souls by their religious idea. Manu begins, and Yajnavalkya ends, with reverent ascription of the Law to the Self- existent. Highest and lowest castes alike confess its terrible sanctions, present and future. Its minuteness of legislation is unequalled. If we should judge Oriental prescription by the principles we must apply among ourselves, w^e should say that its regulations, purifica- tions, penances — an endless reach of absurdity — had not left the slightest loop-hole for the self-Ussertion of private reason or will. They are doubtless framed with special regard to the prerogative of the priesthood, as divinely appointed, and as conscious of being the in- telligent and controlling class ; but the legislation was \-dc\N fo7' the priesthood, as well as by it, and demanded of this class as complete self-abnegation as it exacted from the Pariah. The Brahman was fully invested with the duty of concealing its inner meaning from all but such as are worthy to receive it from his sacred lips ; and an appalling secrecy repelled curiosity and ^ The Law Code of Yajnavalkya, probably next in the order of time to Manu, and referred by Stenzler to the period between the second and fifth centuries of our era, covers substantially the same ground with its predecessor, but with much less of detail, and in a style and diction in many respects peculiar to itself. Its speculative contents are different from those of Manu, comprising a curious treatise on the physical birth and structure of man, and a philosophy that strangely combines astrological fancies with mystical. Buddhis- tic, and positive tendencies. It consists of three books only, which have been translated by Stenzler (Berlin, 1849), from whose German version our extracts are taken. 176 RELIGION AND LIFE. repressed ambition in the lay classes. This is their sacrifice. He has also his : to surrender himself, body, mind, and soul, to its ascetic observances ; and faithfully to fulfil its minutest precepts, on penalty of dreadful transmigrations for ages. Thus a master instinct of sacrifice sweeps the whole compass of life and thought. It is because this instinct, however blind, has yet essentially noble elements, that w^e find even a spiritual and social thraldom like caste, though bristling with insensate ceremonies and penalties, alive with the endeavor to subdue selfish desires. We see this alike in the implacable severity with which sensual and brutal appetites are punished, and in the benevo- lence which runs in fine veins and broad arteries through the gloomy organism, forbidding wrath and revenge, binding the heart to the least of sentient creatures,^ and in its way anticipating the tenderness of the modern poet : — " He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small ; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all." ^ We see the same endeavor in the stern disciplines laid upon servants, priests, and kings, a deeper democracy of renunciation beneath the tyrannies of caste ; and in the final aim of the whole to make saints whose motive shall lie in virtue, not in its re- wards ; whose ultimate freedom shall be to lose them- 1 Manu, IV. 238, 246 ; VI. 40, 68. 2 A striking instance of this mixture of superstition with tenderness to the brute world, as a discipline of self-denial, is in the penance prescribed in Manu for having chanced to kill a cow; a creature inviolably sacred for the Hindu, from his sense of her benefits to his fathers in the early nomad days. The offender "must wait for months all day on the herd, and quaff the dust raised by their hoofs ; must stand when they stand, move when they move, and lie down by them when they lie down. Should a cow fall into any trouble or fear, he must relieve her ; and, in whatever heat, rain, or cold, must not seek his own shelter, without having cared for the cows." Manu, XI. 109-116. THE LAWS OF MANU. 1 77 selves in Deity, whose method to " shun all worldly honor as poison, and seek disrespect as nectar,"^ " reposing in perfect content on God alone." ^ And we see it in the creed which inspires all this asceticism, and proves it to have been a living faith, not an en- forced bondage: — "The resignation of all pleasures is better than the enjoyment of them."^ The product of Brahmanical self-renunciation was the Yogi, a creature of penances, purifications, and ascetic feats ; the conventional type of ^ °^" heathen degradation ; whom the law book itself paints as crouching at the foot of a gloomy banyan, his hairs growing over him, and his nails growing in, gazing listlessly on the tip of his nose, or moping along with his eyes fixed on the ground, lest he should unawares destroy some ant or worm ; " waiting release from his body as a servant his wages," yet wishing neither life nor death, and receiving his food from others without asking it, as the due of his austerities for the public good.^ Unpromising enough ; yet the desert monks of Christendom in the fourth century were, as a class, less gentle and thoughtful, and cer- tainly far less cleanly, than these Eastern devotees; while they drew from Christian dogma the same unnatural theory of self-abnegation which the others drew from Hindu caste. And, repulsive as he may be, the Yogi is a specimen, such as these crude social conditions could furnish, of devotion to a purely contemplative ideal. Under all the circumstances even squalid asceticism appears as a positive moral protest. For sensuality must have all the more fiercely beset the temperament of the Hindu, under * Manu, H. 162. 2 Ibid., VI. 43, 34. 8 Ibid., II. 95. * Ibid., VI. 42, 45, 58, 68; Yajnavalkya, III. 45, 62. 12 178 RELIGION AND LIFE. hot suns, amidst a voluptuous physical nature, the more he was devoted to seclusion and meditation ; and these relentless disciplines were in fact a vigor- ous reaction aorainst titanic attractions in the senses. Their very name, tafas^ signifying heat, hints of a torrid climate, in which the moral sense was finding itself severely tried. This virtue is of the passive Hindu quality, lacking self-consciousness and free- dom, a divine instinct struggling against hard con- ditions ; but how complete its command ! Man shall know nothing, and be nothing, apart from the God of his ideal thought ; and in finding Him all things else shall be found. Such is its law and its promise. To escape the finite dream, and the petty limit of self, and to enter into the real and eternal, as a blessed life worthy of all price, is the mystic desire into which all great religions have flowered, each in its own hour and way. The Brahmanical poets certainly knew how to picture their wilderness-life in very attractive colors, even for the civilized mind.-^ The hermitages are described in the Ramayana, as well as by Kalidasa, as surrounded by spacious lawns, well planned and scrupulously neat; frequented by antelopes, deer, and birds, creatures "taught to trust in man; " shaded by fruit-bearing trees; laved by canals, strewed with wild-flowers,* and set with clear pools, where white lilies, symbols of holy living, spread their floating- petals, never wet by their contact with the element beneath, to the clear sky.^ And here the peaceable saints, husbands and wives, purified bodily by con- tinual ablutions, and spiritually by happy meditation on sacred themes, lived amidst supernatural delights ^ Ragh7wafisa^ B. I. ; Sakimiald^ Act I. THE LAWS OF MANU. 1 79 in the society of celestial guests, and received the visits of their admirers with hospitality in their leafy huts ; performing stupendous feats of asceticism with- out physical injury ; multiplying their simple roots and herbs into splendid bouquets, large enough for .armies, with resources beside which those of Hebrew and Christian miracle rnust, to this Oriental imagination, be hopelessly tame. Through the mythological dress, we detect an ideal which could not have failed in some degree to reconcile ascetic life with natural occu- pation and social good. And we, in fact, find that the active virtues are not forgotten. "All honor to the house- The active holder," says the law, " and let him faithfully ^^^^"^^• fulfil his duties." " He who gives to strangers, with a view to fame, while he suffers his family to live in distress, having power to support them, touches his lips with honey, but swallows poison. Such virtue is counterfeit."^ And the purely contemplative life was not allowable till three stages of practical activity had been passed through : the student life ; domestic mar- ried life, or social service of some sort; and anchoret life, a kind of missionary function, to feed the forest creatures, and preach to disciples, — doubtless, like St. Francis, to the fishes and the fowls also. "Low shall he fall who applies his mind to final beatitude, before having paid the three debts, to the gods, the fathers, and the sages ; read the Vedas according to law; begotten a son; and sacrificed, to the best of his power. "2 Then only "shall the twice-born man, ■perceiving his muscles relaxing and his hair turning gray^ leave his wife to his sons, or else, accompanied » Manu, XI. g. « Ibid., VI. 35- l8o RELIGION AND LIFE. by her, seek refuge in a forest, with firm faith and subdued organs of sense." There he is to Hve, patient of extremities, a perpetual giver, benevolent towards all beings, content with roots and fruit, studj'ing what the Vedas teach of the being and attributes of God ; proving his mastery over outward things ; in the hot season by adding four fires to the sun's heat ; un- covered in the cold ; putting on wet garments in rain ; and, if incurably diseased, living on air and water till his frame decays and his soul is united with the Su- preme.^ Thus he advances to the final disciplines of a Sannyasi, whose sole employment is "to meditate on the transmigrations caused by sin and the im- perishable rewards of virtue, on the subtle essence of the Supreme Spirit and its complete existence in all beings." So " his offences are burned away ; " " all that is repugnant to the divine nature is extin- guished ; " " higher worlds are illuminated with his glory," and he is "absorbed in the divine essence."^ Here the balance of the active and passive elements is indeed lost, since the ideal of life is contemplation alone ; but both elements are at all events recognized, and the system in this respect compares very credita- bly with Christian asceticism, by insisting, as that has seldom or never done, on the fulfilment of practical duties as passport to contemplative repose. Far back in the ages, without doubt long before Spirituality, the Christian era, Hindu formalism was met b}'' these trenchant rebukes : — " By falsehood sacrifices become vain ; by pride, devotions. By proclaiming a gift, its fruit perishes." ^ " For whatever purpose a man shall bestow any gift, according to that purpose shall be his reward." * 1 Matm, VI. 1-31. * Ibid., VI. 62, 72, 81. 8 Ibid., IV. 237. * Ibid., 234. THE LAWS OF MANU. l8l "One who voluntarily confesses his sin shall, so far, cast it off: when his heart shall loathe it, the taint then only shall pass away." ^ " Let no man, having committea sins, perform penance, under pre- text of devotion, disguising his crime under fictitious religion : such impostors, though Brahmans, are despised."^ "A man who performs rites only, not discharging his moral duties, falls low : let him discharge these duties, even though he be not constant in those rites." ^ " He who governs his passions, though he know only the Gdyalri, or holiest text, is more to be honored than one who governs them not, though he may know the three Vedas." ^ . Though with Eastern extravagance it is said else- where that "sixteen suppressions of the breath, with the constant repetition of the holy syllables for a month, will absolve even the slayer of a Brahman for his hidden faults,"^ passages like the foregoing cer- tainly imply also that only a repentant spirit could give such efficacy to the form. So this frank confession of bibliolatry — " as a clod sinks into a great lake, so is every sinful act submerged in the triple Veda" — should be taken in connection with such precepts as the fol- lowinof : — " The wise are purified by forgiveness of injuries ; the neghgent of duty, by liberality ; they who have secret faults, by devout medi- tation." ^ " Of all pure things, purity in acquiring wealth is pronounced most excellent ; since he who gains this \vith clean hands is truly pure, not he who is purified with earth and water."''' " Penance brings purification for the Veda student ; patience for the wise ; water for the body ; silent prayer for the secret sin ; truth for the mind : for the soul the highest is the knowledge of God." ® " Let the wise consider as having the quality of darkness every act which one is ashamed of his having done, or doing, or being about to do ; to that of passion, every act by which he seeks celebrity in the world ; to that of goodness, every act, by which he hopes to acquire ' Mann, XI. 229-232. 2 Ibid., IV. 198. ' s ibid., IV. 204. * Ibid., II. 118. 6 Ibid., XI. 249. « ibid., V. 107. ' Ibid., V. 106. 8 Yajji., III. 33, 34. 1 82 RELIGION AND LIFE. divine knowledge, which he is never ashamed of doing, or which brings placid joy to his conscience. The prime object of the foul quality is pleasure ; of the passionate, worldly prosperity ; of the good, virtue." ' "To be a hermit is not to bring forth virtue," adds Yajnavalkya : " this comes only when it is practised. Therefore, what one would not have done to him, let him not do to others."^ "God is Spirit," says the Christian Gospel, "and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Hear the Hindu Law : — " O friend to virtue, that Supreme Spirit, which thou believest one with thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all- knowing inspector of thy virtue or thy crime." " If thou art not at variance with that great divinity within thee, go not on pilgrimage to Gunga, nor to the plain of Curu." ^ " The soul is its own witness, its own refuge. Offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness of men." " The wicked have said in their hearts, ' None sees us.' Yes, the gods see them, and the spirit within their own breasts." * "The wages of sin," says the Christian Bible, "is ^ .^ . death." Quite as distinctly savs the Hindu Retnbution. ^^- ^ -^ Law : — " The fruit of sin is not immediate, but comes like the harvest, in due season. Little by little, it eradicates the man. Its fruit, if not in himself, is in his sons or in his sons' sons."^ " Even here below, the unjust is not happy, nor he whose wealth comes from false witness, nor he who delights in mischief."^ " One grows rich for a while through unrighteousness, and van- quishes his foes ; but he perishes at length from his root up."' "Justice, being destroyed, will destroy ; preserved, will preserve. It must therefore never be violated." * " In whatever extremity, never turn to sin." ^ » Manu, XII. 35-38. • Yajn., III. 65. » Manu, VIII qi, 92- * Ibid., VIII. 84, 85. 6 Ibid., IV. 172, 173. Ibid., IV. 170. T Ibid., IV. 174. « Ibid., Vlil. 15. ^ Ibid., IV. 171. THE LAWS OF MANU. 1 83 " Let one walk in the path of good men, the path in which his fathers walked." ' " Vice is more dreadful by reason of its penalties than death." * "Whosoever," says the New Testament, "shall break one of these commandments, is guilty of all." The Dharmasastra of Manu affirms the same natm-al law of integrity. " If one sins with one member, the sin destroys his virtue, as a single hole will let out all the water in a flask." ^ "Let one collect virtue by degrees, as the ant builds its nest, that he may acquire a companion to the next world. The Future For, in his passage thither, his virtue only will adhere Life. to him. " Single is each man born ; alone he dies, alone receives the reward of his doings. When he leaves his body on the ground, his kindred retire with averted faces, but his virtue accompanies his soul. " Let him gather this, therefore, to secure an inseparable com- panion through the gloom, how hard to be traversed ! " "* " The only firm friend who follows man after death is justice." ° In order to discover what is the stibstance of this Brahmanic ideal, let us note first some of the Humanities, humanities of the Code. " The care and pain of parents in behalf of their children can- not be repaid in a hundred years." ® " Reverence for age is to the young, life, knowledge, and fame." "^ " The old, the blind, the maimed, the sick, the poor, the heavy laden, are to be treated with marked respect, even by the king." ® " Knowledge, virtue, age, even in a Sudra, should have re- spect." ^ The diseased and deformed were avoided in sacri- ficial acts,^^ which concerned only what was physi- 1 Matm, IV. 17S. 2 Ibid., VII. 53. » Ibid., II. 99. 4 Ibid., IV. 239-242. 6 Ibid., VIII. 17. ^ Ibid., II. 227. 7 Ibid., II. 121. 8 Ibid., II. 138 ; VIII. 395 ; Yajn., I. 117. » Yajn., I. 116. 10 Manu, III. 161. 184 RELIGION AND LIFE. cally as well as spiritually unblemished. Yet they were "in no wise to be insulted."^ As Homer pictures the gods going about disguised as beggars and outcasts, to try men's hearts, so, according to Manu, children, poor dependants, and the sick are to be regarded as "rulers of the ether." ^ The blind, crippled, old, and helpless are not to be taxed ; ^ the deaf and dumb, the idiotic and insane, the maimed, and those who have lost the use of a limb, are indeed excluded from inheriting, but must be supported by the heir, without stint, to the best of his power."* On the father's death, the oldest son must support the family, and the brothers must endow their sisters.^ The authority of the householder over his family is almost absolute ; yet he must " regard his wife and son as his own body, his dependants as his shadow, his daughter with the utmost tenderness."^ His pre- scribed prayer is, " that generous givers may abound in his house, that faith and study may never depart from it, and that he may have much to bestow on the needy." ^ " A guest must not be sent away at evening : he is sent by the retiring sun ; and, whether he have come in season or out of sea- son, he must not sojourn in the house without entertainment." ^ The sense of solidarity in social ethics is well worth noticing, as shown in passages like the following : — " The soldier who flees and is slain shall take on himself all the sins of his commander ; and the commander receive all the fruit of good conduct stored up by the other for the future life." " A sixth of the reward for virtuous actions, due the whole peo- ple, belongs to the king who protects them : if he protects them not, a sixth of their iniquity falls on him." ^ » Manu, IV. 141. 2 Ibid., IV. 184. 3 ibid., VIII. 394. * Ibid., IX. 202. c Ibid., IX. 104-118. 6 Ibid., IV. 185. ^ Ibid., III. 259. 8 Ibid., III. 105. Ibid., VII. 94; VIII. 304. THE LAWS OF MANU. 185 r The Brahman's decalogue not only commands con- ■ tent, veracity, purification, coercion of the senses, resistance to appetites, knowledge of scripture and of the Supreme Spirit, but abstinence from illicit gain, avoidance of wrath, and the return of good for evil.^ Forced contracts are declared void.^ Transfer of property must be made in writ- ing.^ Royal gifts are to be recorded on permanent tablets.^ There are laws against slander, peculation, intemperance, and dealing in ardent spirits ; laws pun- ishing iniquitous judgments, false witness, and unjust imprisonment ; laws providing for the annulment and revision of unrighteous decrees ; enforcing the sacred- ness of pledges and the fulfilment of trusts ; justly dividing the responsibilities of partners ; dealing se- verely with conspiracies to raise prices to the injury of laborers ; laws which either forbid gambling alto- gether, or discourage it by regulative drawbacks ; laws declaring persons reduced to slavery by violence free, as well as the slave who has saved his master's life, or who purchases his own freedom.^ Penalty becomes merciless in dealing with crimes which involve the greatest mischief, such as arson, counterfeiting coin, and selling poisonous meat.^ The king shall " never transgress justice." " It is the essence of majesty, protector of all created things, and eradicates his whole race," if he swerves from duty.'' " He shall forgive those who abuse him in their pain : if through pride he will not excuse them, he shall go to his torment."^ 1 Manu, VI. 91. 2 jbid., VIII. 168; Yajn., II. 89. 8 Yajfi., II. 84. 4 Ibid., I. 317, 31S. 8 Ibid., III. 285; II. 270; Matm, IX. 221; Yajn.^ II. 4, 82,243; 31, 305; 58, 164, 849, 259; Mann, VIII. 211, 230-233; Yajn., II. 199, 182. « Yajn., II. 282, 297. 7 Manu, VII. 13, 14. 28. » Ibid., VIII. 313. l86 RELIGION AND LIFE. " A king," says Yajnavalkya, " should be very patient, experi- enced, generous, mindful of services rendered, respectful to the old, modest, firm, truthful, acquainted with the laws, not censorious, nor of loose habits, nor low inclination, able to hide his weak points, wise in reasoning and in criminal law, in the art of procuring a livelihood, and in the three Vedas." " Higher than all gifts is the protection of his subjects." "The fire that ascends from the people's sufferings is not extin- guished till it has consumed their king, his fortune, family, life." ' " What he has not, let a king seek to attain honestly ; what he has, to guard with care ; what he guards, to increase ; and what is increase let him give to those who deserve it." ^ He shall be "a father of his people."^ He should make war only for the protection of his dominions ; must respect the religion, laws, and even the fears, of the conquered.^ Punishment by military force must be his last resort.* The warrior, " remembering what is due to honor," shall not shoot with poisoned arrows, nor strike the weary, the suppliant, the non-combatant, the sleeping, the severely wounded, the fugitive, the disarmed, nor one already engaged with an opponent, nor one who yields himself captive.^ Civilization has added noth- ing to these humanities of military chivalry. To sum all, "let not injustice be done in deed or in thought, nor a word be uttered that shall cause a fellow-creature pain : it will bar one's progress to final bliss." ^ " He who has caused no fear to the smallest creature shall have no cause for fear when he dies."^ It may not be easy to comprehend the idea of justice Moral which mingled with such precepts as these sanctions. ^\^q cruclties of castc le<]:"islatIon. Yet do not such incompatibilities proceed side by side in the 1 }'4/n., T. 30S-310, 334, 340, 316 2 Mami, VII. 80; Vdj'n., I. 333. 3 Man?i, VII. 168, 170, 20I, 203. * Ibid., VII. 108; Vdj'n., I. 345. ^ Manu, VII 90-93; Vajn., I. 325. " Manu^ II. 161 ' Manu, VI. 40. THE LAWS OF MANU. ' 1 87 laws, theologies, and bibles of all races? For the State as such, the reconciliation of law with love, of government with noble instinct, as yet lies in the future. — We notice that self-interest is suggested as motive for benevolence. This sanction is constantly appealed to in the New Testament also, and even in the Beatitudes of Jesus. But it would be irrational to make this a ground for ascribing such delicac}^ of affection as appears in both Hindu and Hebrew ethics to any other primary cause than noble and hu- mane feeling. Laws may suggest interested motives, and they nmst appeal to sanctions. But Lazv itself springs from the natural instincts of love and care, as well as from social dangers. And so the eternal piety of the heart had its large share in the oldest legislation. With what decision a natural self-respect breaks forth throufjh the slavery of abnegation, the,,, ^ . Self-respect- despotism of custom and law, in such pre- cepts of an older stoicism as these : — " One must not despise himself for previous failures : let him pursue fortune till death, nor ever think it hard to be attained." ' " Success depends on destiny and on conduct : the wise expect it from the union of these ; as a car goes not on a single wheel, so without one's own action the fated is not brought to pass." ^ " All that depends on one's self gives pleasure : all that depends on another, pain." ^ " The habit of taking gifts causes the divine hght to fade." ^ "A behever may receive pure knowledge even fromasudra; and a lesson in the highest virtue even from a chandala ; and a woman bright as a gem even from the basest family. Even from poison may nectar be taken ; from a child, gentleness of speech ; even from a foe, prudent counsel ; even from an impure substance, gold." ' 1 Manu, IV. 137. 2 Yajn,, I. 348-350. 8 Manu. IV. 160. * Ibid, IV. i86. « Ibid., II. 238, 239. l88 RELIGION AND LIFE. It may be asked how much of all this preaching was T. , , f reduced to practice? It is doubtless true, as r^atuie of -r ' Oriental we havc said, that Oriental Codes express codes : their . , . . . . . r i right inter- rather the aspirations and convictions oi the pretation. classcs from which they spring, than actual rules of civil and political conduct. They are vast repositories of national life, of individual ideals, philosophical systems, customs and traditions more or less sacred, laws more or less recognized and carried out. They have also an imaginative form, deal in the superlative and boundless, and must not be too literally interpreted. These considerations apply alike to their good and evil ; and we must guard alike against over-censure and over-praise. But this much may be said. The Greeks who travelled in India centuries before the Christian era were enthusiastic in their admiration of Hindu morals. Thev told of kings, spending the whole day in the administration of justice, of the honesty of traders, and the general dislike of litigation ; of the infrequency of theft, though houses were left open without bolts or bars ; and of the custom of loaning money without seals or witnesses. They praised the truthfulness of the men and the chastity of the women. ^ Whatever deduc- tion must be made from these testimonies for exaf>"G:er- ation and mistakes, they are not without their value. But for us the main import of such precepts is that the human soul recoc^nized the nobility of truth. The sub- ^ ^ ^ ^ -^ ' stance of the justicc, aud lovc througli its own resources, testimony. ^^^ borc witucss to the universality of its own inspiration. There they stand written in their old Sanskrit, or " beautiful speech " as the Hindu called it, pointing back to how much older times than such ^ Arrian, Strabo. See also Duncker, II. 283-287. \ '■' ^ J I- -I /i - THE LAWS OF MAKtT. ^ A /pp ' y" writing we cannot tell. And to affirm/ift^he exQiusive interest of the Christian, or any other " dispensation'jf V'r that they were not deeply felt and bravely lived by ^ men and women even then, were indeed " To sound God's sea with earthly plummet, To find a bottom still of worthless clay." The barbarities of this legislation — and they are many and dark — do not disprove our conclu- ^he darker sions. In all times and civilizations, verities ^^'^^• stand side by side with falsities ; and barbarous laws and customs contradict the best theoretic claims of states. The better moments of a people's life record their natural capacities for good ; and of these their unjust or cruel traditions of law must not be taken as the measure. Would it be fair in some future historian to assert that the American conscience had no better ideal of freedom down to the year 1865 than a slavery basis of representation and a Fugitive Slave Law? It would certainly be more just to say that American history had been throughout, the struggle of the two opposing ideas. Liberty and Slavery, each existing potentially in the consciousness of the age and people, and more or less apprehended by individuals ; and that the laws, so far from showing the stage at which this personal light or darkness had arrived, as a definite point, gave merely the general resultants of the strife with long established and instituted wrong. If then the barbarities of the Hindu Codes were even crimes like those of mature civilization, instead of being, as they to a great extent are, results of childish fears and superstitions, they would still prove nothing against other evidences that a high sense of ethical truth stood side by side with them in the Hindu mind. O />^ 190 RELIGION AND LIFE. In fairness we must note that the beginnings, even „ . of customs which the advance of practical ♦ How inter- -t pretedand intelHgcnce stamps as enormities, are to be explained. /- i«iir • •.•,1 lound m hali-conscious mstmcts, by no means discreditable to human nature. And the legislation we condemn was perhaps the effort actually to modify and control their mis-growth. Whoever the earlier legislators may have been, they were obliged to make the best of existing institutions. What to us are de- fects in their codes may have been timely reforms and remedial restraints. Solon's laws gave political func- tions according to wealth ; thus continuing, to a degree, the old exclusion of the people .as a whole from office. But he was thereby enabled to lift them from a yet more abject position, and to procure them, in compen- sation for such defects, their archons and general assembly, — powerful checks on the aristocratic party. ^ Another arbitrary decree of this great Athenian can- celled just debts, and debased the currency. Yet it delivered the poor from burdens which they could no longer bear, freed them from personal seizure for debt, and produced an abiding respect for the force of contracts.^ ."I made the land and the people free," /' he said ; and Aristotle reaffirms this claim on his behalf. Portions of the Mosaic legislation concerning the Canaanite races, that seem to the last degree cruel and barbarian, were really a limitation to the treat- ment of certain most dangerous enemies alone, of usages previously applied to enemies as such.^ Traces of similar effi3rts at mitigation are observable in many severities of the Hindu Code. The better impulses in which many persistent forms of law, now seen to be inhuman, originated in rude ^ Grote, III. 105. * Deut. xx. 10-18. TV. \ THE LAWS OF MANU. 191 ages, have seldom been recognized by historical inquirers, and scarcely enter into the estimate of heathenism by the Christian world in general. The elder races, for example, were fully and in- tensely convinced of the nature of moral evil ^, ^ •^ ^ _ _ The Ordeal. and the certainty of moral retributions. They were, on the other hand, ignorant of the invariableness of natural laws. These two conditions led inevitably to the use of the Ordeal^ as a means of testing guilt by an appeal to divine interposition. It was simply an effort to find decisions of justice in the ill-understood operations of physical nature ; to prove that the ele- ments were under moral sovereignty. The Sanskrit words for ordeal signify "faith" and "divine test." "The fire singed not a hair of the sage Vatsa, by reason of his perfect veracity." ^ Nature is pledged, in other words, to deal justly, when appealed to. Can Christians tell us why a miracle should not be wrought to save a truthful Vatsa, as well as to punish a lying Ananias ; or why fire and water should not discriminate between the saint and the sinner in the old Hindu courts as well as in the cases of modern reprobates recorded in the " manuals " as drowned or struck by lightning for violating the Christian Sab- bath? But there is in fact a great difference. For while it may have indicated not a little faith and cour- age, in races ignorant of physical laws, to believe that Nature was subordinate to justice, and to trust its cause to her defence, it seems to imply something very unlike either of these qualities to renounce the light of a scientific age in the name of religion, and persistently to cling to the superstitions of an ignorant one. Manu knows only ordeals by fire and water, or by 1 Manu, VIII. 116. 192 RELIGION AND LIFE. touching the heads of one's wife and children with invocations thereon. Other codes add tests by poison and by various processes, — for example, by being weighed twice in scales, drinking consecrated water, toijching hot iron with the tongue. In the trial by carrying a red-hot bar for seven paces, however, leaves were to be wrapped round the hand ; in that by re- maining a certain time under water, the legs of another could be clasped. The seasons of the year for em- ploying the different forms of ordeal were determined with a certain regard to the interests of those who were to undergo them. Women, children, the old, the sick, and the weak were not to be subjected to ordeals by fire, water, or poison, but by the scales only.-^ Yajnavalkya implies that they were not to be used except in cases of great moment.^ The ordeal cannot be called the special barbarism of any one race or religion, though it appears never to have existed in China. The Arab, the Japanese, the wild African, alike defer to its authority.^ The Hebrew husband had his " bitter water of jealousy." And the historian of the Christian Church tells us that she "took the ordeal under her especial sanction," sprinkled its red-hot iron with her holy water, and enacted its cruelties with solemn rituals within her temples.* Down to the twelfth century, it " afforded the means of awing the laity, by rendering the priest a special instrument of Divine justice, into whose hands every man felt that he was liable at any moment to fall."^ And its final abolition was due * For a summary of these laws, see Stenzler, in Zeitsch. d. D. M. G., IX. 661-6S2 ; Manu, VIII. 115; Asiat. Res., I. 389. * Yajn., II. 95. See Stenzler's Itttrodicction, p. vii. 8 See Pictet, II. 457, 458. * Milman, Lat. Christianity, III. v. ^ Lea's Superstition and Force., p. 271. THE LAWS OF MANU. 193 quite as much to the revival of the old Roman law and the rise of the free communes as to the repent- ance of the Church. Personal deformities and diseases are reofarded in Manu as the consequences of sin in the present _ _ ^ Treatment or in a previous life. And the law classifies of physical them according to the sins from which they ^^^^*^^^- proceed. In one passage it declares that the victims are to be despised ; ^ excluding some of them too from the Sraddha, or feast in honor of the dead.^ And this superstition is as wide-spread as the ordeal ; it has, like that, infected the Jew and the Christian, and had a similar origin in the effort to comprehend the mystery of physical evil under a moral law. — The instinctive presumption that it becomes the material world to show allegiance to the moral, is of course, while growing up among ignorant races, the source of a superstitious expectation of miracles. But we must not forget that it is this very instinct to whose develop- ment by science we owe the abolition of every ground for believing or demanding miracles ; its ultimate form being the conviction that natural laws are themselves the desired expressions of universal good. The contempt which Hindu law prescribes towards the physically deformed and diseased is limited within strictly defined lines of conduct ; and towards de- this legislation is evidently an endeavor to ^°^^^y ^"'^ ^ '' disease. modify and restrain, as well as to respect, the crude instinct that physical evil is a punishment for sin. The unfortunate were not to be despised as such. They were to be treated kindly and even with respect.^ They were exempted from public burdens ; and although avoided in the act of sacrifice as being 1 Manu, XL 48, 53. « Ibid., III. 150. » Vdjn., II. 204. 13 J94 RELIGION AND LIFE. blemished, and in the choice of partners for life, prob- ably for physiological reasons, yet they were not to be expelled from society; and, after prescribed rites, could freely associate with other people. There are also sanguinary punishments on the prin- ciple of "eye for eye and tooth for tooth." And Eye for eye. , . , . , , . these are made most repulsive by their connec- tion with the enormous inequalities of caste. This principle, cruel as it seems, forms the basis of all first essays at abstract and ideal justice in the requital of crime. Some of the severest penalties are left to the criminal's own execution, as if falling back on a sup- posed spontaneous recognition of their rightfulness in his own mind.^ And their barbarity cannot be ex- plained on any theory that leaves out of view the fact that their makers had at least an intense abhorrence of the crimes they punished. Adulterers must burn on a bed of red-hot iron. Thieves were to lose the limbs with which they effected the theft. ^ " Where- withal a man hath sinned, with the same let him be punished," recommended itself to these unflinching judges as the maxim of natural right. It was but following out the stern hint of nature in its retribu- tions of sensual excesses. But the law knew how to provide compensations for Sympathies ^^ enduraucc of its barbarities. As if dissat- of the law. isfied with them, and' looking upwards for a way out of these bonds of judgment, it says : " Men who have committed offences, and received from kings the punishment due them, go pure to heaven, and become as clear as those who have done well."^ A similar reaction against the severity of statutes was * Manu, XI. loo, 104. Suicide is one of the commonest forms of penalty in the East. « Ibid., VIII. 372, 334- » Ibid., VIIL 318. THE LAWS OF MANU. 1 95 naturally to be expected in the case of false witness, in view of the tremendous penalties which were at- tached to this crime, both for the present and the future life. And this presumption may help explain* the exceptional fact that falsehood is expressly al- lowed, wherever the death of a person of any caste, who has sinned inadvertently, would be caused by giving true evidence in the courts.^ It would seem as if the affections sought to assert their precedence, in such extreme cases of the conflict of duties, to the demands of literal fact. In the same way we may account for the singular scale of fines and forfeits in commutation of penalties, based, by a crude sense of natural justice, on the principle of eye for eye and life for life. They are not a mere money measure of crime, but the modification of a harsh lex talionis under the influence of the humane sentiments. This relenting indicates the natural character of the Hindus better than the barbarism of the legislation in detail. It is not to be believed that the punishments by branding and mutilation, the expiations by self- torture and suicide, even for minor crimes, were car- ried out with any thing like the precision of our western conformity to written law.^ There is so much contra- diction between different texts, both in spirit and in letter, so much manifest exaggeration, such frequent confusion of law with ethics, and such difficulty of dis- tinguishing between dogmatic statement and positive command, that this natural inference from the general 1 Manti, VIII. 104; Yajn., II. 83, 2 The very ^eat disregard of legal prohibition concerning the use of animal food and the destruction of animal life, by the Brahmans, is described in Heber's JourTial, vol. ii. P- 379- 196 RELIGION AND LIFE. character of the race is not set aside by the text of the Law Book itself.^ Even the history of infanticide and of sati bears infanticide witncss to this natural gentleness of Hindu and Suttee, character. No traces of these customs are found in the Rig Veda, in Manu, or in Yajnavalkya. They are a later growth, partly of tropical enerva- tion, partly of social misery. But nobler elements^ also were involved in the widow's desire to follow her lost husband ; and female infanticide was due to the marriage custom of giving a costly dowry with the bride. ^ Both these barbarities were abandoned at the earliest opportunity afforded by European in- fluence.^ Their rapid extinction in British India was mainly the work of the native chiefs themselves, under the persuasion of men like Ludlow, Macpherson, and Campbell.* Even before British interference, many of these chiefs had endeavored to control them by their own unaided efforts. The natives now gener- ally regard the river sacrifices of children as disgrace- ful ; and sati, since its abolition, is seldom spoken of but with condemnation.^ Later pandits have not hesitated to rule out such Free treat- rcgulatious from the old law;s as did not seem kwrii^iater suitablc to their times, upon the ground that times. they were established for a less advanced age of the world. In the progress of the Hindus came 1 It has been acutely observed (La CiU Antique, chap, xi.) that "the principle of the divine origin of laws in the older codes made it impossible for their subjects definitely to abrogate them." And so the old statutes remained side by side with later ones of a dif- ferent and often humaner tenor. In this way we may partially explain the contradictions with which these codes abound ; though, as we shall see, the rule was not without its exceptions, even in the remote East. 2 See chapter on Rig Veda, p. 140. 8 Elliott's N. W. India, I. 250. * Ludlow's British India, II. 138, 149, 151. ^ Ludlow, II. 149; Buyers's Recoil- of N. India., 132, 235; Allen.p. 418. THE LAWS OF MANU. 1 97 denunciation of many ancient customs. "Among these," says Mr. Wheeler, " may be mentioned the sacrifice of a bull, a horse, or a man; the appoint- ment of a man to become the father of a son by the widow of a deceased brother or kinsman ; the slaugh- ter of cattle at the entertainment of a guest; and the use of flesh meat at the celebrated feasts of the dead, still performed under the name of sraddhas." It is not so much a spirit of cruelty that darkens the pages of this Code as an insatiate self-abnega- supersti- tion, which in many respects is a kind of ^'°''^^^^.^" •^ ■"• . . ^ abnegation. suicide. And, for full answer to all justifica- its lesson. tion of human nature under these aspects, it may seem sufficient to point to their consequences. " Here," it may be said, "is the end of Hindu virtue; here, in Jagannath and his car of human slaughter, in Kali with her sword of human sacrifice, in Mahadeva with his collar of sculls." These deities have been greatly belied. 1 The Hindus certainly became sensualized, — from causes easy to trace. If, however, we should accept the facts as condemnatory of human nature, we must admit that Christianity does not reinstate it, since this religion fell into similar degeneracy, and since its theology still retains this dreadful destructiveness in an ideal form. The records of Christian superstition are more dismal than those of Brahmanical. The fanaticism of the Donatist and the human sacrifice of the Hindu are of kindred nature. It has been well said, that " England and France have pages in their religious history that ought to cause them to be silent, or else to 1 " Instances of victims throwing themselves under the wheels of Jagannath have always been rare, and are now unknown. Nothing could be more opposed to the spirit of Vishnu- worship than self-immolation." (Hunter's Orissa, p. 134-) The great mortality among the pilgnms to this shrine is in fact due to neglect of sanitary conditions. The symbols of destruction in figures of the other deities referred to have more relation to spuits of evil, or to death as such, than to human sacrifice, which has always been infrequent. 198 RELIGION AND LIFE. bring their charges of cruelty against Hindu rites with some humiHty." It has been computed that several millions of persons have been burnt as heretics, sorcer- ers, and witches, in Europe, during the period of Chris- tianity. In Cadiz and Seville alone the Inquisitors burned two thousand Jews in a single year (1481).! It is not desirable to dwell much on this aspect of the subject. But why should all these dark pictures combined make us sceptical concerning the spiritual faculties of man? The self-tortures and the dismal fanaticisms that reach through the long history of his beliefs are not there to prove his moral incapacity : they even teach the very opposite. They are birth-throes, blind and bitter indeed, but none the less genuine, of his divinity. Let us face the worst. There is the Yogi, . crawling in agonizing postures from one end of India to the other, or sitting whole days between scorching fires and gazing at the sun with seared eyeballs and bursting brain. There is the Shaman cutting himself with knives, the Moloch worshipper passing his chil- dren through flames, the Aztec piercing himself with aloe thorns and tearing out the hearts of his kinsmen on the reeking teocalli. There are Stylites on their columns, Flagellants beating themselves through the streets of Christian Europe, and all the mad penances and savage suicides of the Desert Monks. And there is Jesuit Loyola with girdle of briers and merciless iron whip ; his followers giving themselves " as a corpse " into the hands of " Grand Masters," to be used at their absolute will ; — dismal and dreadful in- centives to a contempt of human nature, that almost start the doubt whether its origin be not from some demoniacal Power, doomed to self-annihilation. But ^ Jost, Gesch. d. Judenthums., III. no. THE LAWS OF MANU. 199 other scenes are at command, and to these you hasten that you may recover your respect for hfe. You turn to Christian saints dying serenely on the rack and at the stake ; to the great martyrs of the world's later day, witnesses for truth, liberty, and love ; and stand at last reverently on Calvary before the consummate sacrifice to which you ascribe all this majesty of the soul. You seem to have passed from death to life. "There," you say, " man was on the brute's level: here he becomes a God. A new nature has surely descended on him." But that is impossible, and as needless as it is impossible. You have done injustice to the soul. Can we not read between these dark lines, and discern that the endurance for errors, how- ever dismal and demoniacal, and the endurance for truths, however benignant and divine, have one point in common, and that of utmost significance? Do they not at least assure us that inan will suffer all things for what he believes true and sacred? It is not mere superstitious terror that makes martyrs even to super- stitions. Fear does not explain these extremities of self-sacrifice, these mournful self-crucifixions, — but something that masters fear. They hint of aspiration, they cry for light, they assure progress. They are impossible without a sentiment of awe before duty, and a vision of triumph beyond pain. They are signs, even they, that man has in his very substance, assurance of those spiritual dignities which he has been believed to owe to some supernatural change, or some all-creative element, introduced by Christian and Jewish revelation alone. VI. WOMAN. WOMAN. 'T^HE Dharmasastras are unquestionably no wiser on the nature of woman than the Law , . r \ Spirit of of Moses, or the mythologists of Adam's Fall. Hinduiegis- Manu is as positive as the Christian Apostle ^^^'°^' was, and as the Christian world in general has been hitherto, that man is her appointed head, and that her prerogative is to obey. This theory of the sexes, in spite of age and Scripture, is rapidly vanishing, with all analogous pretensions that "might makes right." And it is of less import now to discuss its evils in this or that form of society than it is to note the remedial forces in human nature which mitigated those evils, even in times when the relative "might" of man was in most respects much greater than it is now. The general status of woman in the East is given in the declarations of the Law books, that she is "unfit by nature for independence," and " must never seek it ; " that " she is never to do any thing for her own pleasure alone ; " that " a wife assumes the very qualities of her husband, as a river is lost in the sea."^ This is our precious modern principle of "feme covert " in its purest essence I — The widow must give herself up to austerities and remain unmarried, 1 ManUi V. 147, 148 ; IX. 3, 22 ; Yaj'n., I. 85. The old Roman Law was similar. See Thierry, Tableau de VEtttpire Rotnainy p. 279. 204 RELIGION AND LIFE. preparing for reunion in the next life ; ^ while the husband could, and should, marry again. ^ As the Hebrew law allowed husbands to put away their wives on the plea of mere "uncleanness," so the Hindu made mere " unkindness," as well as barrenness or disease, sufficient ground for supersedure ; w^hile it exhorted the woman on her part, on pain of bestial transmigrations, to revere even the basest husband as a god.^ The Brahman in later times, like the Hebrew patriarch, might by law have several wives, though of different castes, having claims to preference ac- cording to the order of their classes ; and neither his wife, child, nor slave, could hold any thing as abso- lute property. He could take every thing from either of them or from all.* This was an incident, affecting them all alike, of the old system of patriarchal au- thority. The custom of polyandry, or possession of one wife by several husbands, was also prevalent during the Middle Ages of Hindu history ; originating partly in the necessity of male offspring, as ground of religious hopes as well as source of physical support.^ This was the theory, — easily matched, we may remark, in Western ideas and institutions, even of recent time. But let us observe the counteractions provided by human nature to its worst effects. 1 Maim, v. 157-162. 2 Ibid., V. 167-169; Viijn.t I. 89. 3 Dcut. xxiv. i; Mamc, IX. 81; V. 154; Va/M., I. 77. * Matin, IX. 85 ; VIII. 416. "A woman's properly taken by her husband in distress, or for performance of a duty, he need not restore her." (J ' feciilmm^ or special prop- erty, made up of six different kinds of gifts, and pro- nounced positively hers, could nevertheless be used by the husband in case of distress ; ^ yet a special provision consigns to torment male relations who take unjust possession of a woman's property.^ A wife could not be held liable for the debts of a husband or a son."^ A good wife is to be faithfully supported by her husband, thotigh married against his inclina- tion^ from religious duty.^ A father is forbidden to tacitly sell his daughter by taking a gratuity for giving her in marriage ; ^ and the son is charged to protect his mother after the death of her husband. -^^ Insanity in a husband, impotence, and extreme vice, are held tion of daily food and the superintendence of household utensils " (ix. 1 1), are evidently dictated by the fear of trusting her to her own dispositions, which are regarded as her most dangerous enemies. This diligent protection and preservation of the wife from \ace, which is made so essential a part of his own salvation, savors of a complacency which might have been rebuked, had woman had the making of the laws. Yet, as things were, it must have proceeded from his judgment as to her special needs, and doubtless expressed a real sense of her physical weakness and exposure to rude assaults. For instance, the law commands him, " if he have business abroad, to assure a fit maintenance to his wife while away; for even if a wife be virtuous, she may be tempted to act amiss, if distressed for want of sub- sistence" (ix. 74). 1 Yajn., I. 73. 2 Mami, IX. 81, 82. ^ Yajn., I. 74. * Macnaghten, 61; Yajn.^ II. 117; Ma7m^ IX. 192. ^ Macnaghten, 44. « Ma7iu, III. 52. 7 Yajn., II. 46. » Manu, IX. 95. 9 Ibid., IX. loo. 10 Ibid., IX. 4. 14 2IO RELIGION* AND LIFE. sufficient excuse for aversion on the part of the wife ; which must not be punished by desertion nor depriva- tion of her property.^ And this regard for the weakness of woman could not fail to lead to a certain appreciation of her true strength. Thus, as we have just noted, it is upon her need of protection that Manu bases not only a per- petual wardship, but a most vigilant system of restric- tions and occupations, to preserve her from the perils to which her " natural frailty " was presumed to ex- pose her. But the injunctions to these end in what for this presumption is decidedly a fatal admission ; namely, that those women only are truly secure "who are protected by their own good inclinations." ^ So Rama says, "No enclosing walls can screen a woman. Only her virtue protects her." ^ In fact, a far greater amount of domestic tyranny has been presumed, by those who refjard only Domestic ^ -^ . oppression thc letter of the law, than the facts will war- overstate . j.jjj^^^ q^j-^g seclusion of females which prevails in India, for example, has been regarded as forming part of a despotic system. But it is probably due to other causes, in the main, than marital jealousy and distrust. The Brahmans maintain that it is of Mo- hammedan origin, and was adopted by the Hindus merely in self-defence against foreign brutality.* With both Moslem and Hindu, it may have had its origin in modest reserve ; in that instinctive reverence which penetrates the whole life of Eastern races, and passing in the course of ages, like every thing Orien- tal, into a rigid etiquette.^ The use of the veil by 1 Manu, IX. 79. * Ibid., IX. 12. 8 RUmciyatta. * Wilson, Theatre 0/ the Hindus, Introd., xliii. ; Buyers, Recollect. 0/ India, p. 401. • Do Vera, Pictur. Sketches of Greece and Turkey, p. 270. WOMAN. 211 Persian females seems to have been derived from times when it was regarded as a sign of dignity and social elevation.^ A Buddhist legend illustrates the re- lation of this religion to democratic reform on the subject. The wife of Buddha, it is said, rejected the veil, against the wishes of the court, immediately after her marriage, saying : " Good women need veiling no more than the sun and moon. The gods know my thoughts, my manners, my qualities, my modesty. Why then should I veil my face ? " - It would appear, too, that, in spite of their seclusion, the women of the upper classes exercise as much influence in family affairs as among Europeans.^ In the Hindu epics, women are described as entirely independent in their intercourse and movement, travelling where they will, and showing themselves freely in public, and un- veiled.^ Married women, especially, were perfectly free in India in their social intercourse with the other sex ; ^ and Sakuntala, in the drama, pleads her own cause at the court of King Dushyanta, and even boldly rebukes him. . But these hints of the compensative forces of nature in behalf of woman lead us still farther. Here Recognition were circumstances scarcely suited to demon- of woman. strate her finer spiritual gifts. Yet Hindu law and literature abound in proofs that woman did then, as she now does, compel recognition of these gifts ; al- though it may have been shown then, as it has since been, more by the service of the lips than by the con« duct of life. The ages we are now studying are not those of the 1 Gobineau, Relig. et Phil. d. VAsia Centrale, p. 348. « St. Hilaire. » Prichard, Admin, of India., II. 89. * See Williams, Indian Epic Poetry, p. 57. * Wilson, ut supra. 212 RELIGION AND LIFE. simple Aryan household, where husband and wife, equals in age, in rights, in serviceable industries, hand in hand ministered to the holy fires on their altars and hearths.^ They are ages of southern polygamy and caste; when woman, betrothed in childhood, was in law for ever a child, superseded at her husband's pleasure, forbidden to read the Vedas or to take part in religious rites. In these times, too, the epics reveal the semi-barbarous custom of poly- andry, although this possession of one wife by several husbands must certainly, even in the stormy social conditions which the Mahabharata describes, have been exceptional.^ The Ramayana, indeed, somewhat later, shows pro- found respect for the marriage relation. But even this poem, abounding in manly sentiments towards women, frequently falls into the tone of contempt which their perpetual minority suggested ; as where Rama admonishes Bharata of the duty of a ruler always to treat them with courtesy, while he should disregard their counsel, and withhold from them all important secrets. Yet, under such circumstances as these, observe what the law itself confessed. Not only did it declare " mutual fidelity till death the supreme duty between husband and wife,^ and "virtue, riches, love, the three objects of human desire," to be "the reward of their mutual friendship,"^ and pronounce the woman the highest beatitude of the man."^ It admonished ^ See Manu, IX. 96. • In Manu indeed it is not mentioned, and Brahmanism had little toleration for it. The Himalaya mountaineers explain the custom as necessary for the protection of women during the long absence of their husbands on distant expeditions for trading purposes. Lloyd's Himalayas, I. 255. 8 Manuy IX. loi. * Y&jiu, I. 74. « Manu^ IX. 28. WOMAN. 213 him that " where females are honored the deities are pleased, and where they are dishonored, or made miserable, all religious rites are vain;" while "their im.precation brings utter destruction on the house." ^ The inference that women must therefore be con- stantly supplied with ornaments and gay attire shows that Eastern and Western logic on these matters stands in common need of reconstruction at the hands of woman herself. But the law went deeper than man- ners. In an outburst of Oriental reverence it proclaims a mother to be greater than a thousand fathers.^ In a calmer, didactic mood, it defines the sum of all duty to consist in assiduous service of one's father, mother, and spiritual teacher, as long as they live, holding them "equal to the three worlds and the three Vedas ; " and even commands that the wife of the teacher, if of the same class, shall be treated with the respect shown to himself.^ In the Sraddha, or memorial rite in honor of the pitris, or ancestors, those on the female side must not be forgotten.^ The Swayamvara form of marriage, after free choice of a husband by the maiden, is celebrated by the later poets as well as in the Vedas. ^ And Burnouf has gone so far as to affirm that marriage in India was never a state of servitude for woman. ^ It is certain that, of the four forms of marriage recognized as valid by Manu, neither necessarily involved such subjection ; while, in the Prajapatya form, bride and bridegroom are dis- tinctly enjoined "to perform together their civil and relifjious duties." ^ We have here, it is true, no such testimonies as 1 Ma7itty III. 55-62. 2 Ibid., II. 145. 3 Ibid., II. 210. * Yajn., I. 242; III, 4. 6 R^ v^^ I. 116; Raghuvaniot VI. ^ Essay on the Veda^ p. 213. ^ Manu, III. 27-30. 214 RELIGION AND LIFE. those of Herodotus and Diodorus concerning Egypt, who inform us that in that country it was customary for the husband to obey the wife, and for women to manage business affairs while the men pHed the loom at home.^ Yet Yajnavalkya specifies certain classes of women whose debts their husbands were bound to pay, because dependent on their labor for support.^ And Wilson tells us that all the contempt shown by the Hindus for women was learned by them of their Mohammedan masters.^ The Ramayana shows us King Dasaratha prostrate at the feet of his wicked wife, entreating her to release him from his promise to grant her any boon she might ask. In fact, Hindu literature abounds in amusing illustrations of submis- siveness in husbands to wives as well as in wives to husbands.* The gentleness of Hindu character was favorable to the sway of these subtler forces. This has Influence on '' . t • i public af- been shown on a great scale m political, fairs. mercantile, and domestic life. Women have ruled empires in India, as in Egypt and Assyria, and had their full share in bringing about the frequent wars and revolutions of the petty Hindu States. The Indian epic, like the Greek and the Teutonic, cele- brates feminine control over the military destinies of states, and Kalidasa describes the admirable govern- ment of Ayodhya by a mythic queen. ^ Among the native rulers who have heroically re- sisted foreign invaders, none have shown stronger qualities than Lakshmi Baee, the Rani, or queen, of N^ Jhansi ; whose wonderful generalship held the British 1 Diod., I. 27; Herod., II. 35. « YAJn., II. 48. * Essays on Sanskrit Literature, III. 17. * See Wheeler's India, II. 569-572. " Raghuvama, XIX. WOMAN. 215 army in check ; and who headed her troops in person, dressed as a cavalry officer, and was killed on the field. Sir Hugh Rose declared that the best man on the enemy's side was the Rani of Jhansi.^ Another Rani, Aus Kour, being elevated by the British to the disputed throne of Pattiala in the Panjab, an utterly disorganized and revolted state, "as the only person competent to govern it," is recorded by the historian to have changed its whole condition in less than a year, reducing rebellious villages, bringing up the revenues, and establishing order and security every- where.^ Malika Kischwar, queen dowager of Oude, educated her son, who was dispossessed in 1866, to a knowledge of ancient and modern literature, resulting in his be- coming an author of high repute, and surrounding her and himself with persons of literary distinction. Aliah Bae, the Mahratta queen of Malwa, for twenty years preserved peace in her dominions, devot- ing herself to the rights, happiness, and culture of her people. It was said of her that it would have been regarded as the height of wickedness to become her enemy, or, if need were, not to die in her defence. Hindus and Mohammedans united in prayers that her life might be lengthened. And of so rare a modesty was this great queen, that she ordered a book, which sounded her praises, to be destroyed, and took no notice of the author. Notwithstanding certain precepts, the law has practi- cally allowed women a larger share in the manage- ment of property than the statutes of most Christian nations ; and thev have shown abundant shrewdness 1 Arnold's Dalhotisie, II. 153. ^ Griffin's Rajahs of tJie Panjab., p. 138. 2l6 RELIGION AND LIFE. and tact in trade. "In family affairs, secular or relig- ious, their influence is very great, and almost supreme. Seldom can a man complete any important business transaction, without having settled the matter with his privy council, in the female apartments."^ "As the law in Ceylon," says Tennent, "recognizes the abso- lute control of the lady over the property conve3'ed to her use, the custom of large marriage portions to woman has thrown an extraordinary extent of the landed property of the country into the hands of the females, and invested them with corresponding propor- tion of authority in its management." ^ A recent very careful work on India tells us that " in the family circle, and daily rounds of domestic duties, interests, and enjoyments, the Hindu woman has a field for her sympathies which puts her quite on a level with her sisters of the West."^ Nor have the intellectual capacities of women failed Intellectual of rcspcct. Thcrc are hymns in the Rig Veda recognition, j-jy female rishis.* Malabar boasts seven ancient sages, and four of them were women. The moral sentences of Avyar are taught in the schools, as golden rules of life ; and they certainly deserve the name. Here are a few specimens : — " Honor thy father and mother. Forget not the favors thou hast received. Learn while thou art young. Seek the society of the good. Live in harmony with others. Remain in thy own place. Speak ill of none. Ridicule not bodily infirmities. Pursue not a vanquished foe. Deceive not even thy enemy. Forgiveness is sweeter than revenge. The sweetest bread is that earned by labor. Knowledge is riches. What one learns in his youth is as lasting as if engraven on stone. The wise is he who knows him- self. Speak kindly to the poor. Discord and gambhng lead to ^ Buyers, p. 399. « Christia7tity in Ceylon, p. 157. * Prichard, Admitiistr. of hidia, II. 89. * Weber, Vorlesitngen, 37, 38. WOMAN. 217 misery. He misconceives his interest who violates his promise. There is no tranquil sleep without a good conscience, nor any virtue without religion. To honor thy mother is the most acceptable worship. Of woman the fairest ornament is modesty. " ^ A little Hindu work on " Deccan Poets," by a pandit, Rameswamie (Calcutta, 1829), tells us that Avyar, supposed by some to have been a foundling, was ven- erated as the daughter of Brahma and Sarasvati. She was the child of a Brahman by a low-caste woman, like Vyasa and other great Hindu person- ages, and, though brought up by a singer of the servile class, excelled all her brothers and sisters in learning, and wrote, besides poetry, on astronomy, medicine, chemistry, and geography. The same work mentions many other female poets, among them the daughter of a potter. Though the law prohibited women from teaching the Vedas, we know that priestesses were teachers of princes. We know that there were Brahmanical schools, not unlike the famous Saracen Colleges of the Middle Ages, at which kings, priests, and women united in the enthusiastic study of metaphysical and moral science ; and of the women it is reported that some astonished the masters by the depth and sub- limity of their thought, and that others delivered responses from a state of trance.^ In the Dramas, women always speak in the Prakrit or common dialects, while men use the Sanskrit or "holy" speech. These softer popular dialects derived by decomposition from the Sanskrit are believed by Renan to be special consequences of the female organ- ization, and to prove its independent activity in the ^ From Schoberl's Hindustan in Miniature. 2 Megasthenes, Nearchus in Strabo, XV. ; Weber, 21. 2l8 RELIGION AND LIFE. structure of the language.^ More significant is the fact that the Prakrit, thus proper to woman, and by her means introduced into literature, has gradually supplanted the Sanskrit, and forms the basis of the present spoken languages of India. So that the stamp of female influence is in fact conspicuous in the his- torical development of Hindu speech, as an informing and determining force. It would require a separate volume to render justice to the fine appreciation of womanly qualities Literary zp- -^ -^ j x preciationof in what wc already know of Hindu literature, woman. j^ j^^^ bccu notlccd that, in recognizing these, the poets abandon exaggeration and draw from na- ture.^ Nothing could be more tender and noble than these ideal pictures, covering, too, so wide a range of destiny and desire : the chaste love of Rama and Sita, — her courage, fortitude, and womanly dignity under his unjust suspicions, her mastery of all forms of evil by moral purity and spiritual insight ; the fidelity of Damayanti to her unhappy Nala, tempted by an evil spirit first to play away his crown, and then to flee from her for shame at his beggary, but followed and redeemed at last by that loyalty of love, which thought only of the misery he must endure in ofl'ending against his nobler nature ; the piety of Savitri, controlling fate, charming the god of death himself, by her wisdom and love, into giving back life to her dead husband, and sight to his blind father, with his lost crown, and the glory of his fallen race.^ Equally intuitive is the sense of woman's power to inspire a noble manhood with absolute devotion. The Mahabharata describes ^ De VOrigiiie du La7t^age, Pref. p. 28. 2 Monier Williams, Indian Epic Poetry, p. 54. ' Savitri and Satyavan, Episode of the Mahabharata. WOMAN. 219 the passionate love of Rurus, imploring the gods to restore his Pramadvara, and offering to yield up his own lifetime to be added to hers. " I give thee half my future days, beloved, Light to renew thy life be drawn from mine." * And Kalidasa gives us the tale, wrought out in East- ern traits, of the wasting grief of good prince Adja for his young wife, whom the fall of celestial flowers on her bosom has called away from earth ; pursuing his Indumati through all sweet perfumes and sounds and forms, refusing to turn away his mind or to be comforted, the mighty grief slowly dividing his soul, as a bough will rend the wall into which it grows, until after "wearing through eight years ©f pain, patiently and faithfully for his young son's sake, living on pictures and images of his beloved, and on fleeting transports of reunion, in his dreams," >he freely lays aside the ruined body for an immortal life, with the lost one, and among the gods.^ In Hindu poetic jus- tice the fickleness, unfaithfulness, or harsh suspicion towards true womanly love, which so often recurs in Eastern story, is always visited by remorse, distraction, or despair ; and even where changes of heart are as- cribed to the malevolence of evil powers or the male- dictions of offended saints, they are in no wise freed from these penalties, which teach humility and ttuth, w^hile they honor outraged virtue by proving it be- friended by the eternal laws.^ What European poet knows better than Kalidasa how gracious a soul is born in nature at the touch of woman? Sakuntala, cherishing her plants like a sister, 1 Mahabh., I. ^ '2 Ragkuvansa, VIII. 3 See especially Sakuntala and the Ramayana. 220 RELIGION AND LIFE. " Never moistening in the stream Her own parched Hps, till she had fondly poured Its purest water on their thirsty roots, And oft, when she would fain have decked her hair With their thick clustering blossoms, in her love Robbing them not e'en of a single flower," ^ infuses into them her own affections : the woods, the flowers, the forest creatures, feel her coming and going like the breath of life and the blast of death. , " In sorrow for her loss the herd of deer Forget to browse ; the peacock on the lawn Ceases its dance ; the very trees around Shed their pale leaves like tears, — while they dismiss Their dear Sakuntala with loving wishes." ^ 'J3 " He who would wish her to endure the hardships of penance would attempt to sever the hard wood with the blue leaf of the lotus." She is "the mellowed fruit of virtuous actions in some former birth." — Wild beasts respect the holiness of Damayanti, wandering in the deserts ; the noisy caravan halts, and the rough men beseech for her benediction.'^ TKe poet of the Mahabharata sings the praise of woman like an earlier Schiller. The wife is " man's other half, his inmost friend, source of his bliss, root of his salvation ; friend of the solitary one, consoling hiai with sweet words, in his duties like a father, in his sorrows like a mother." She reproves his neglect of manly duties, and admonishes him of the forgotten God within him, the witness and judge of human deeds. Deserted by her husband, w^ho refuses 'to recognize her, the Sa- kuntala of the epic says with dignity: "Thou, who knowest what is true and what is false, O King ! ^ Williams's translation. ^ ibid. 8 Nala and Damayanti, Episode of the Mahabhctrata, WOMAN. 221 scorning this child of our love, bringest shame on thyself. Thinking, ^I am alone,' thou hast forgotten that beholder from of old, who is in the heart. Doing wickedly, thou imaginest, 'No one knows it is I.' But the gods know, and the witness within thee : sun and moon, day and night, their own hearts, and the justice of God, behold the deeds of men. The spirit that dwells within us judges us hereafter." Sita, the ideal wife in the Ramayana, is Rama's "primeval love," not less tenderly human for being divine. She compels him, by her devotion, to take her with him into his exile in the wilderness, overpowering his reason and will alike by the higher wisdom of love. She rebukes him for his anger against even the Rakshasas, demon foes of gods and men, as un- becoming one who had assumed the consecration of a religious life ; and warns him to subdue the first risings of evil desire, since even a great mind may contract guilt through neglecting almost imperceptible moral distinctions : with which frankness Rama is delighted, and replies, "O Sita, one who is not ad- monished is not beloved. You have spoken becom- ingly, and you are my companion in virtue, and dearer to me than life."^ Fully to appreciate this recognition of womanhood, we must remember that Rama is nothing less than incarnated deity. Even the wife of the demon Ravana, the Satan of the epic, warns him against gratifying his sensual passions on the person of his beautiful captive ; " for he who forces the inclination of a woman shall die an early death, or become the prey of endless disease." The Ramayana likens " the wind that drives away the white lotus from the too thirsty bees " to " the modesty ^ R&mciyana, B. ii. 222 RELIGION AND LIFE. that drives the cov bride from her husband." Sita, on her part, can forgive her cruelest enemies. Saved from their hands, she says, "Why sholild I revenge myself on the servants of Ravana, whom harsh com- mands drove to injure me? What I have suffered pays the penalty for a former life. I would not punish others who are also enforced to evil." What exquisite sense of the fine divination of womanly love is in the picture of Damayanti, surrounded by the gods, who, to deceive her, have all taken the form of her chosen Nala, and mingle in the crowd of suitors, in her father's hall ! " And Damayanti trembled with fear, and folded her hands in reverence before the gods, praying them to resume their immortal shapes, and reveal Nala, that she might choose him for her lord in presence of all. Then the gods wondered at her truth and love, and revealed straightway the tokens of their godhead. And Damayanti saw the four bright gods, and knew they were not mortal heroes ; for there was no sweat on their brows, nor dust on their garments, and their garlands were fresh as if the flowers were just gathered, and their feet touched not the earth. And she saw also the true Nala ; for he stood before her with shadow falling to the ground, and twinkling eyes and drooping garland, and moisture was on his brow, and dust on his raiment. And she went and took the hem of his garment, and threw a wreath of radiant flowers Siround his neck, and thus chose him for her lord. And a sound of wild sorrow burst from all the Rajahs ; but the gods and sages cried aloud, ' Well done ! ' And Nala said, ' Since, O maiden ! j^ou lave chosen me for your husband, in presence of the gods, know that I will be your faithful consort, ever dehghting in your words, and so long as my soul shall inhabit this body I solemnly vow to be thine, and thine alone.' " ' The lamentation of Tara, the wife of Bali, over the dead body of her husband, is as touching and noble as any thing in poetry. 1 Wheeler's History of India, I. 484. WOMAN. 223 "Why lookest thou so dull on thy child, thou, to whom thy children were so dear ? " Thy face seems to smile on me in the bosom of death, as if thou wert alive. " I see thy glory still like sunset on a mountain's head." * As the moral interest of the Iliad centres in the nemesis that follows crime ai^ainst the sancti- ^ Woman the ties of wedded life, so that of the Ram ay ana inspiration centres in the public and private calamities ° ^ ^ ^°^' naturally incident to polygamy. It is the attempt of one of the king's wdves to set aside the rights of the son of another, in the interest of her own offspring, that brings about the exile of Rama, the misery of the people, the death of the unwise, uxorious king him- self, the capture of Sita, and the war for her recovery ; and this last portion of the epic is but a Hindu counter- part of the Trojan war in punishment of the rape of Helen. But while the Greek heroine shares the crim- inality of her captor, the Hindu Sita is the ideal of the faithful wife. The crime which leads on the woes depicted in that other great Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, is a gam- bling match, in which a monarch, made desperate by continual losses, finally plays away his own wife, — an atrocity which is rebuked on the spot by a Brahman, who represents the eternal ethical law ; protesting that Judhishthira "lost himself ho-ior^ he staked his wife, and having first become a slave could no longer have the power to stake Draupadi." Without entering- into definite criticism of all these ideals, I cannot forbear quoting the excellent remarks of Monier Williams in his sketch of Indian Epic Poetry. * Ram&yana, B. iv. 224 RELIGION AND LIFE. ''SIta, Draupadi, and Damayanti," he says, "engage our affections and interest far more than Helen or even Penelope. It cannot be doubted that in these delight- ful portraits we have true representations of the purity and simplicity of Hindu domestic manners in early times. Children are dutiful to their parents and sub- missive to their superiors ; younger brothers are re- spectful - to their elder brothers ; parents are fondly attached to their children, and ready to sacrifice them- selves for their v^elfare ; wives are loyal, devoted, obedient to husbands, yet show much independence of character, and do not hesitate to express their own opinions ; husbands are tenderly affectionate towards their wives, and treat them with respect and courtesy ; daughters and women generally are virtuous and modest, yet spirited, and when occasion requires courageous : love and harmony reign throughout the family circle. It is in depicting scenes of domestic affection, and expressing these feelings that belong to human nature in all times and places, that Sanskrit epic poetry is unrivalled." Reverence for ^notherhood is here carried beyond all other forms of respect for natural ties. The divine sons of Dasaratha, all gods, all bow at the feet of their human mothers. Rama, obliged to go into exile that his father may not break his vow, is indeed un- moved by his mother's unmeasured distress, and can- not concede the claims she founds on the Sastras themselves, to greater respect and obedience than is due even to a father ; yet from his exile he sends messages of profound affection to her, and even to that other wife of his father whose criminal ambition was the cause of his own disinheritance, and bids his WOMAN. 225 brother Bharata pay every form of pious attention to both. The inspiration of these two great epics is indeed nothing: else th.d.nthQ Wo7^l/i of Wo niaji. They, , ^ <3 -^ ^ _ -^ And of my- celebrate her not onl}^ as imparting a divine thoiogy in dignity to every sacrifice for her sake, but as ^^"^^^ conquering all moral evil through her constancy and faith. In this whole cycle cf mythology, it is always woman who destroys the dreaded powers, and revives the energy of good. In the natural symbolism of the Rig Veda, "the divine Night arrives, an immortal goddess, shining with innumerable eyes, scattering darkness with their splendors ; and men come to her as birds to their nests. She drives away the wolf and the thief, and bears them safely through the gloom." ^ And the Dawn arrives, "a daughter of the sky, shin- ing on them like a young wife, arousing every living being to his work, bringing light and striking down darkness ; leader of the days ; lengthener of life ; for- tunate, the love of all, who brings the eye of the god."^ Woman prepares the holy fire. "The great sacred mothers of the sacrifice have uttered praise, and decorate the child of the sky." ^ It is remarkable, in view of the reverence of Hindu life for male offspring, that the later tlieogonies com- bine male and female elements, and treat both sexes as equally necessary to the conccj)tw7i of deity . Crea- tion, in Manu as well ^s in the Upanishads, proceeds from the divine Love or Desire, becoming twain, male and female.^ This co-essentiality of the two, for all manifestation of the absolute, is common to the Hindu, 1 R. v., X. 127. 2 ^. F., VII. 77. ' R. v., IX. 33, 5. Perhaps symbolical expressions, yet not the less significant. * Manu, I. 32 ; BriJiad Up. I. 43 ; Wilson's Essays en Hindu Religion, I. 241, 245. 15 226 RELIGION AND LIFE. Egyptian, and Phoenician religions. The deities are androgynous, whether Brahma-Maya, Osiris-Isis, or Baal-Baut ; or they flow in series of twofold ema- nations through all pantheistic cosmogonies, Oriental, Gnostic, Neo-Platonic, under names not so familiar as even these, — names which it is needless to enumer- ate. In most cases the divine equality of sex is still further represented by the fact that these wives of the deities are also their sisters, and thus co-eternal. It is a striking illustration of that greater breadth of sym- pathy we have already noted in polytheistic and pan- theistic forms of religion, as compared with intensely monarchical, that this cosmooj^onic recoornition of the equality in the sexes was confined to the former class. Thus it is quite unknown to the old monotheistic severity of the Hebrew faith, as well as to the distinc- tively Christian, in its original form, which prefers the masculine alike in its name of God and its choice of Saviour. Only with latest heresy does God, as God, come to stand as " Our Mother." ^ Honor to deity as mother was indeed, both in Hindu and Egyptian wor- ship, ''carried to a point beyond what was rendered to any male function or authority. To Isis, greatest of Egyptian divinities, whose myriad names were woven into this one, the most tender of all, answers the Vedic Aditi, " Mother of all the gods." 2 And not less significant is the fact that in all the The Word oldcrEastcm religions ^Uhc Word''' is feminine. feminine. Thought, lu Its purcst symbol, is thus awarded ^ So it is only in the latet Kabbalistic theology of the Hebrews, subsequent to Greek and Oriental influences on their faith, that we find the first emanation of Deity conceived as "the great Mother." (Sohar. See Bcrthold's Christologia, § 23.) And the Book of the "Wisdom of Solomon," under similar influences, praises its female "cro^itt," as the mirror of the power of God. 2 Herodotus, II. 40; Apuleius, Metatnorphoses. WOMAN. 227 to the physically weaker sex. In India, as Sarasvati, woman is the genius of art, literature, eloquence, — is, in short, " the Word ; " ever the holiest symbol to the Hindu mind. She is thus properl}^ the wife of Brahma. At her festivals, as goddess of learning, all books, pens, and other implements of study, are gathered in the school-houses in India, and strewn with white flowers and barley-blades ; and in the prayer her name is coupled with the Vedas and. all the sacred writings, and her love invoked, as one w^ith that of Brahma, "the great Father of all."^ "Sarasvati," says the Rig Veda, "enlightens all intellects." "The gods made Ila the instructress of men." Vach, or Speech, is "the melodious Qj^ieen of the gods," who says : — " I myself declare this, which is desired by gods and men." " Every man whom I love, I make him terrible. I make him a priest, a seer." " I make him wise." ^ Here is Indra's praise of Lakshmi : — " Thou art mystic and spiritual knowledge. Thou art the phi- losophy of reasoning, — the three Vedas. " Thou art the arts and sciences, thou moral and political wisdom. " The worlds have been preserved and reanimated by thee." ^ " Every book of knowledge," says the Hitopadesa, "which is known to Usanas or Vrihaspati, is by na- ture implanted in the understanding of women." As Durga, it is woman who sla^^s the Satan of the later popular belief, and delivers mankind from the fear of evil ; for which service this goddess is adored by all 1 Wilson's Essays, II. 190. 2 Rig- Veda, I. 3i 12 ; I. 31, 11 ; VIII. 89, 10; X. 125, 5. * Visknu Puratia, I. ch. ix. 228 • RELIGION AND LIFE. deities and saints.^ In the myth of the Kena Upanis- had, it is a woman, Uma, who represents divine knowl- edfje. She is a«shinin£j mediator between Brahma and the gods : none but she is able to reveal to Indra "who it was that had appeared to them, enforcing their adoration, and vanished when they sought to approach too near." The epics also describe Uma as one of the three divine daughters of the great mountain king, Himavat, all of them renowned in the three w^orlds for force of contemplation, for chastity, and for power in expounding divine wisdom.^ And as in the Rig Veda, at the beginning of Hindu religious develop- ment, we have Aditi, "mother of the gods," so in the mystical Puranas, at the end, we have Durga, or Mahamaya, defined as " the eternal substance of the wt)rld, soul of all forms, whom none has power to praise ; by whom the universe is created, upheld, pre- served, into whom it is absorbed at last."^ After eighteen centuries of Christianity, the task of christianit emancipating woman from legal incapacities and Hea- yet rcmaius to be accomplished. Such prog- emsm. ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ actually been made in this direction cannot be laid to the sole account of any distinctive re- ligion. Physical and social science, intellectual culture, and practical necessity have had more to do with it than either Christian belief or that spirit of brotherhood which Christianity has held to be its own peculiar grace. The history of its churches as a whole affords no ground for according them superiority, in this form of justice, to the heathen world. The Hindu law for- bade woman to read the Vedas, or to officiate at holy rites. Christian councils and Popes, echoing the 1 Puranas, quoted in Muir, Sanskrit Texts, IV. 371. * See texts in Muir, IV. 367. ' Ibid., 371 ; Wilson's Essays, I. 247. WOMAN. 229 great Apostle to the Gentiles, have interdicted her not only from assumption of the priesthood, but from speaking in religious assemblies, or administering the rite of baptism.^ Christian legislation has been in many points even more unjust to her than Manu. A law of Justinian concerning deaconesses makes death the penalty for their marrying. What is there in the Hindu code harsher towards females than their exclu- sion by English common law from " benefit of clergy," so that they were put to death for crimes which a clergyman could commit with impunity, and for which a man was simply branded P^ Have Hindu laws prescribed the self-burning of widows ? Eighteen centuries of Christianity elapsed before it ceased burn- ing women at the stake for heresy. Is the absolute authority of husband and father the oldest despot- ism? It survives still in the law of England, which "vests parental rights in the father alone, to the entire exclusion of the mother ; " giving him power not only to remove the children from her during his life, but to appoint a guardian with similar power over them after his death .^ What could be worse than the European principle of " feme covert," the absorption of her legal existence during marriage into that of her husband, still described in the very language of the Hindu Law ? Or what shall we say of the facts that the Ecclesiastical or Canon Law has been the source of woman's severest disabilities ; and that it is only in so far as the secular principle has prevailed over the ecclesiastical that any progress has been made in re- 1 Laodicea; Carthage; Autun (670 a.c); Aix-la-Chapelle (816); Paris (824). The Synod of Orange (441) forbids the ordination of deaconesses. See Ludlow, IVomajis Work in the Church, p. 65. 2 Wendell's Blackstone, I. 445, n. * Westminster Review for Jan. 1872, p. 30. 230 RELIGION AND LIFE. moving tliem ? ^ The persecution of witches in modern Europe has no parallel in Hindu or any other barbar- ism. Many of the legal disqualifications of woman, which have descended from feudalism, make her per- petual wardship among the heathen appear almost respectable in comparison. And on the other hand, as we have seen, an instinc- Treatment tivc rcspect for the scx was not wanting to the ?dTff^ent pi'e-Christian world. It was the command- reiigions. mcut of uaturc. Its roots were in religion, in moral appreciation, in generosity and in love. Judaism and Christianity helped it onward, by their stern protest against polygamy and sensuality, and by sublime ideals of purity and beneficence. But the Church, it must be remembered, was anticipated by a noble movement of Roman law, which steadily transformed the status of woman from almost total bondage into freedom and equality in respect of con- jugal, marital, and proprietary rights. It has been said with truth that Roman jurisprudence gave her " a place far more elevated than that since assigned to her by Christian governments."^ The culmination of liberal tendencies under Christian emperors, as especially shown in the laws of Constantine in her favor, was the issue of a secular movement, which had been penetrating for centuries through the whole mass of Roman legislation. Under Christianity itself, the progress was slow : later emperors undid the work of earlier ones ; and it is admitted even by Troplong that this religion " did not take full possession of civil society till after the older races had been rejuvenated ^ See BlackstoTte, I. 445 ; also Maine's Ancient Law, p. 153. 2 Westm- Rev. for Oct. 1856. WOMAN. 231 by fresh life infused from new sources.^ Without dis- paraging the services of the Church, we must render justice to that far greater help towards the emancipa- tion of woman which came from a different quarter. I mean those Teutonic tribes, to whom a queen was as good as a king, and who gave Rome an empress.^ I mean those free " barbarians," who brought with them a perfect equality of sex in all the domestic and social relations ; with whom the wife was accustomed not to yield up a dowry, but to receive one from the husband, while each formally endowed the other with spear, and steed, and sword, in token of common public duties and claims ; whose women were " fenced with chastity," and "guardians of their own children ; " who held that " somewhat of sanctity and prescience was inherent in the female sex;"^ who entered neither on peace nor on war without consulting the priestess as an oracle ; whose mythology conceived destiny in female forms, whether as Valkyriur or Nornir, at the tree of life or on the field of death ; and whose oldest poem, the Voluspa, was ascribed to a woman, repre- sented as a divinity who unveils the past and future to gods and men. But behind Roman, Christian, and Teutonic helpers, rise the grand Greek ideals of Wisdom and Greece and Maternity, Athena and Demeter, with their ^si'pt. consecration not of thought only, but of earth and air. The inviolability of the family was enthroned in Hera. The awe of all deities beheld Hestia, the earth, as their common mother, and the witness of their most sacred vows. And even behind these stands Egyp- 1 Troplong, Infltience du Christianisme^ p. 218. 2 Victoria, " Mother of Camps." See Thierry, Tableau de F Empire Rottiam, p. 189. 8 See Tacitus, De Mor. Gerjn., c. 18, 19, 8 ; Hist.^ IV. 61. 232 RELIGION AND LIFE. tian Isis, Goddess Mother, crowned with her thrones, shielding Osiris with her outspread wings, co-equal ruler of the land during his calamity, and its saviour through her own distress ; tender seeker of the lost divinity of love and truth ; his deliverer from bonds, and his avenger on the powers of evil ; commending even the brute creatures to human (gratitude for their sympathy and help in her beneficent work. How beautiful the myth ! ^ Diodorus gives us an inscrip- tion in which she says what she well might say, "What I have decreed, none can annul." And Apuleius calls her "Nature, beginning of ages, parent of all." ^ Tfiese natural instincts spoke clearly in the Far East also. There was faith in maternity as the India. _ '' root of redemption, long before men bowed at the shrine of a Catholic " Mother of God." When Dante and Dominic beheld the mysteries of hell and heaven through faith in the sanctity of Womanhood, they but made fresh confession of a spiritual need, which in other forms is as surely represented in the old Hindu Epic, Drama, and Sacred Hymn. And when free opportunity and becoming culture shall have been at last achieved for women, and the old contempt for their intellectual capacities shall have everywhere gone to its place, it will be better under- stood that the recognition has been but clearer vision of what could not anywhere have been wholly hid. Recent movements in India for the better education of women, and the recent mission (1870) of the leader of Hindu Theism to England, in the interest of their deliverance from the marital, social, and ecclesiastical ^ See Plutarch's Isis and Osiris. 2 Diod., I. 27; Apuleius, Metatnorph. WOMAN. 233 oppressions of ages, are but the springing of these ancient waters afresh with renewed power. Native Hindu women are being educated for the medical profession, without distinction of caste. Some have already entered on regular practice.^ " In north- western India," we are told, " the pandits are always ready to do their very best to promote the cause of female education." ^ Miss Carpenter, in her recent noble mission for this purpose, found the intelligent Hindus so earnest and so wise in their interest in it, that she was fain, as she tells us, to follow their lead- ing, convinced that the best way for them was to emancipate tliemselves.^ And our hopes are strengthened, when we remem- ber that this contemplative race would naturally be disposed to regard intelligence, by whomsoever mani- fested, as worthy of respect; and that even the des- potism of caste could not wholly exclude the special gifts of woman from hospitality and honor, with a people whom it is but just to call the Brain of the East.4 1 At the school of Dr. Corb^ni in Bareilly, where twenty-eight native girls are now studying. See Victoria Magazitte., April, 1871. 2 Prichard, Administr. of htdia^ II. 73. * Six Montlis in India, I. 78, 80. * The position of Woman in Buddhism will be noticed in the sections relating to that religion. VII. SOCIAL FORMS AND FORCES, SOCIAL FORMS AND FORGES. TT has been usual to ascribe the social system of the Hindus to the deliberate artifices of a origin of priesthood. But the germs of caste are in the ^^^^^• instinctive, not in the self-conscious age of man. Nor can we now accept Niebuhr's sweeping statement that "castes are in all cases the consequence of foreign conquests." Neither theory meets the all-important question : Of what social needs and aspirations is a system_ so general in the early history of nations the natural expression? The religious instincts are as old as the social. The savage makes a fetich of the wooden sticks out Thepnestiy of which he churns his fire ; and the medicine- *^^^^' man listens with awe to the din of his own rattle or drum. The sorcerer makes an image of a diseased person out of earth or grass, and, confounding his own processes with the life of the individual represented, ascribes to this work of his own hands a magical power over the disease. This is the rude beginning of religious mysticism ; and it is but a more refined form of the same " superstition," when the crucifix is believed to possess a divine efficacy in removing the crosses of life and the anguish of death from the human being in whose likeness it is made. But in 238 RELIGION AND LIFE. neither case does the word '* superstition " express the whole truth. To the primitive tribes nature is not merely hunting-ground and pasture, but m3^sterious living Presence of invisible powers. Endless motion and endless rest, brooding stillness, inexplicable sounds, stir strange yearning and awe in these children of the open eye and ear. Who shall solve these mysteries, and draw the secret runes of life and death out of the night and the day ? He whose organization is most sen- sitive to the contact of these subtle forces shall be holy and dear to men. The natural seer is the first recog- nized ruler. The grateful people will live to honor, die to appease him. They will stand afar off, while he talks with gods and spirits for their sake. Moses shall go in among the clouds and lightnings for us. Vasish- tha shall pray for us to Indra, the storm-ruler, to an- nihilate our foes. This interpreter of Nature fulfils all ideal functions, except that of military chief or king. He is magician, astrologer, physician, philosopher, poet, moral leader. And he is eminently sincere. It is his faith and feeling that make him what he is, and give him his power over the people. He is meet- ing their deepest needs as well as his own ; being more plainly impressible than others by those powers which all confess. As yet there is no priestcraft here. And as nature is felt but as a chaos of undistino-uished powers, so society has reached nothing like a hier- archy of classes. A division of labor is in fact just beginning in this instinctive respect for the inspired, or possessed person. Such is the A.ry?in pzirohiia ; such the Hebrew ncibi or roch.^ Both are properly natural seers. The name purohita, meaning one who has charge^ shows how * I Sam. ix. 9 ; Judges xvii. 2 Lassen, I. 795. THE CASTES. 239 closely the sentiment we have described allied itself with the performance of religious rites. As social relations are developed, this class become not only psalmists and singers, btit teachers and counsellors of the king.^ They direct his policy, simply because they are his wisest men. " That king withstands his enemies," says the Rig Veda, " who honors a purohita ; and the people bow before him of their own accord." ^ The seer teaches his wisdom to his children, who follow in his honored paths. They come to have esoteric mysteries ; but it is simply because their re- ligious disciplines as well as natural susceptibilities have put them in possession of physical or psycholog- ical knowledge which the multitude can receive only in parables. By and by the seers become an organization. These hereditary disciplines draw them into closer TheErah- combination for such purposes as grow naturally ™^'^^- out of their public functions ; and we have Levltes, Magi, Brahmans. The Hindu purohltas, thus trans- formed, are bound into chai'anas and -parishads^ schools and associations for definite objects, such as the guar- dianship of formulas and rites, or the study of Vedic hymns. They are divided Into forty-nine gotras^ or families, who trace their descent from the " seven holy rishis," and the mythical or other saints who figure in their traditions ; and these gotras are governed by strict religious and social regulations. Gradually the text becomes more precious than the soul which created it ; and at last Its guardian is holler even than Itself. The freedom and ardor of the Veda hymn are sup- planted by formulas of doctrine, the oracles of Nature ^ 2 Sam. xxiv. 11. 2 R. v., IV. 5, 7, 10. See Roth, in Zeitschr. d. D. M. G., I. 80. 240 RELIGION AND LIFE. by ritual law. A corporate authority grows up, by force of intellectual supremacy and in the name of religion, which favorable circumstances develop into the Brahman caste. The heroic life of the Greek cantons in the older Aryan spirit forbade this distinct separation of a relig- ious class from the rest of the community.^ But the contemplative Hindus, passive, fatalistic, yearning in the lassitude of tropical life for self-surrender to ideal powers, gave full sweep to the caste tendency, and became its typical representatives. Such, substantially, is the history of priesthood in The priest- ^^^ timcs. It bcgius in the natural gravitation hood. Qf power to the wisest and friendliest men. In the Middle Ages, a Martin, an Ambrose, or a Gregory, standing for the weak and oppressed in the name of God, made iron knees and fierce unshorn heads bow down, and do penance for every act of injustice. But where the prophet stood in the morn- ing of a religion, by and by stands the priest, its functionary, inheriting his honors, but not his spirit. It is the destiny of every organized religion. In the Eastern races the degeneration was not arrested by science or political liberty. But, on the other hand, it escaped that sort of ecclesiastical Jesuitism which follows the deliberate refusal to recognize what these teachers bring. For the impulses of nature wrought through the religion, not against it: a real faith, both in priests and people, made devotees and martyrs after its own kind. The other castes likewise begin in certain rude ^ The priest and king were there one and the same person ; and, both in Hellenic and Roman civilization, the political element gradually absorbed the religious into its own cur- rent, shaping it to practical and general uses. THE CASTES. 24I forms of social need. A portion of the tribe be- comes agricultural. It must be defended from ^he other sudden incursions, in its quiet settlement along ^^^^^^ the Ganofes or Nile. The Soldier, as more inde- pendent, and as holding rAore firmly to the traditions of the free roving life, will stand higher in the social scale than the Husbandman. His function is an in- dispensable one : he assumes, with this social pre-emi- nence, the special burden of public defence. He rules not by the might of the strongest, so much as by the need of the strongest. Contempt of labor in the ancient communities was coiuj^arative, not absolute. In all of them there are recognitions of its worth, such as Hesiod's " Works and Days," or the lives of early Romans, like Cincinnatus and Cato. But the labors of the priest and soldier are more prized than those of artisans or tillers of the earth. The pursuits of settled life begin to exist, on mere sufferance by the armed nomad; and they endure only so far as pro- tected by the military class. Again, the handicrafts, as they arise, are subservient to the wants of the agriculturist ; and so we have the natural order of the castes. Veneration for parental disciplines and ex- ample, and the need of an exact transmission of methods, render all employments hereditary. Force of fellowship, tradition, custom, accomplish the rest. Thus society becomes organized by the law's of pre- cedence in public service. In its origin the baleful caste system, which is not confined to Egypt and India, but in some form has appeared in most races at a certain stage of development, was simply an instinc- tive effort for the Organization of Labor. ^ 1 Quinet {Genie des Religiotts) has traced a striking parallel between Hindu castes and the European classes in the Middle Ages, another epoch of social reconstruction. 16 242 RELIGION AND LIFE. Plato himself, in his ideal Republic, supposes classes to have originated in a natural division of labor, and justice to be that adherence of each to its own function vv^hich the general good requires. I cannot doubt that Plato's " justice " is the philosophical statement of a natural ideal, which had much to do with constructing the earlier forms of society. An old Hindu myth gives the following solution of our question. Brahma created a son, and, Hindu ideas -'• oftheori- calling him Brahman, bade him study and ginofcastes. ^^^^^ ^^^ y^^^^ g^^^ fearing the attacks of wild beasts, he prayed for help ; and a second son was created, named Kshatriya, or warrior, to protect him. But, employed as he was in defence, he could not provide the necessaries of life ; and so a third son, Vaisya, was sent to till the soil ; and as, once more, he could not make the tools, and do the other needful service, a youth called Sudra succeeded, and all dwelt together, serving Brahma.^ The Brihad Upanishad says that "Brahma is in all the castes, in the form of each." The law books and the older mythologists deprecate the idea of a violent origin of the system, and affirm that all the castes descend from One God ; the priest proceeding from Brahma's head, the soldier from his arm, the husbandman from his leg, the s'udra from his foot. Buddhist accounts, which describe castes as the consequence of social degeneracy, none the less represent them as having been spontaneous and elective. A discourse attributed to Buddha himself contains a legend of the following purport : — * Creuzer, Relig. de PAntigjtiiS, I. 227. 2 Mann, I. 31 ; Yajnavalkya, III. 126. A passage to similar effect in the Rig Veda (X. 90, 6, 7) is believed to be of later origin than the rest. Miiller's ChiJ>s^ II. 30S. THE CASTES. 243 When outrages on society began, a ruler was elected to pre- serve order, who received for such service a portion of the produce. He was called Khattiyo, or Kshatrya^ as owner of lands, and after- wards Raja, as rendering mankind happy. But his race was origi- nally of the same stock with the people, and of perfect equality with them. Then, by reason of the increase of crimes, the people ap- pointed from among themselves Bahmanas, or suppressors of vice and awarders of punishment, — a class which afterwards became fond of living in huts in the wilderness ; and these were the ancestors of the Bra/wians, who also were therefore originally of the com- ■ mon stock. Other persons, who distinguished themselves as ar- tificers, were called wessa, or Vaisya, while others, addicted to hunting (ludda), became siidras j but all these classes were at first equal with the rest of mankind. Finally, from out of all these classes came persons who despised their own castes, left their habi- tations, and led wandering lives, saying, " I will become samana, ascetic, or priest." Thus the sacerdotal class, being formed from all the rest, does not properly constitute a caste.^ Finally, the Bhagavadglta, giving the philosophy of Brahmanism on the subject, refers these subordinations to differences of natural disposition {guna) among men ; in other words, to moral gravitation.^ This resembles the defences of slavery offered by the later Greeks and modern Americans ; and serves, like these, to demonstrate that the worst institutions are compelled to do homage to a natural sense of right, and must defend themselves by the pretence of justice. But the common idea which all these Hindu authori- ties suggest — the intimation of mythologist, lawgiver, and theorist alike — is that castes were, in their origin, spontaneities of social growth, pursuing, both by di- vine order and human consent, the common good of society. Nor did the common sense and humanity of the people fail to recognize that the separation of ^ This legend, as translated by Turnour, is given in full in Colonel Sykes's Notes on Ancieiit India {Journal of Roy. As. Soc, vol. vi.). 2 So the Vishnu and Vayu Puranas. 244 RELIGION AND LIFE. the classes by absolute difference of origin was it- , self a delusion, and refuse it place in their ideal of history.-^ As far as regards the three upper castes in India, The lowest ^^^ explanation now given seems adequate, castes. g^|- j|- jg ^Q ]^Q noted that the lowest caste was black ; that its name Sudra is not Sanskrit, but desig- nated an indigenous tribe ; and that its caste degrada- tion would thus appear to be the result of conquest by the invading Ar3^ans.^ There are many outcast classes, even lower than the Sudra. These are the product of "mixed marriages," from which, as confusion of the castes, according to the law, all possible evils proceed.^ Doubtless Miche- let's opinion, that the whole relation of the caste system to the aborigines was but an indispensable policy of self-protection on the part of the Aryan tribes against absorption into degraded races, is entitled to some regard in explaining this intense hatred of mixed marriages, which we find throughout the Brahmanical legislation,* Yet there are also ignoble sources of low- caste miseries, and it is plain that priestcraft has had its share in elaborating a system which began in sim- ple instincts of mutual help. 1 Muir has fully established the truth of his statement (Sansk. Texts, I. 160) that "the separate origination of the four castes is far from being an article of belief universally received by Indian antiquity." Abundant passages in the Ramayana describe the earliest or Krita age of man, in which " righteousness was supreme, ' when " the soul of all beings was white ; " when "men were alike in trust, knowledge, and observance;" when " tha castes were devoted to one deity, used one formula, rule, and rite, and practised one duty." And the Bhagavata Purana says {IX. 14, 18) there was formerly but one Veda, essence of speech, one God, and one caste, the triple Veda entering in the Treta, or later and degen- erate age. 2 Unless the Aryan occupation was, as Maine believes, a colonization rather than a conquest. The Rig Veda calls the black skin the "hated of Indra" (IX. 73, 5). Varna^ or caste, may mean color; and the Mahabharata carries out the idea, representing Brahma as having created the Brahman white, the Kshatriya red, the Vais'ya yellow, and the Sudra black. Weber, Vorlesungen, p. 18; Duncker, II. 12, 55 ; Lassen, I. 799. 8 Ma?tu, VIII. 353 ; X. 45. * Bible de V Humanite, p. 40. THE CASTES. 245 The Brahmans must have owed their supremacy to other sources than physical force. In mod- origin of ern Kashmir and the Mahratta country they ^•'f^"^^" •z ./ cai author- still rule by the brain and the pen.^ The ity. Hindu has always believed that his chief power lay in blessing and cursing. According to Manu, " Speech is the weapon by which they destroy their foes."^ The Ramayana makes the priest Vasishtha overcome the Kshatriya VisVamitra by the miraculous power of his staff. In the Rig Veda, both these saints, who became for later times representatives of rival castes, are alike -purohitas ; and the whole third book is ascribed to Visvamitra. No contest of classes had then arisen, and the poet's inspiration was honored without regard to the question whether he was soldier or priest.^ Even were it probable that any such inter- necine conflict between the two orders as that described by the poets in the myth of Parasurama, which ends in the "extermination" of the Kshatriyas, ever really occurred, it is plain that nothing of the kind was possi- ble until the caste system had become fully organized. In no case could it have been the primary source of priestly supremacy. Parasurama himself, in the legend, is a Kshatriya, and destroys his own caste, not merely in the inter- est of Brahmanical revenge for the murdered priestly tribe of Brighu, but also from motives of a personal character, the Kshatriyas having slain his father. It would seem from this that the reference is to a civil war inside the soldier caste.^ Lassen and Roth, upon the whole, regard the con- * Campbell on Ijidian Eth7iology, Jotirnal Bengal Society, 1S66. 2 Mann, XI. 33. s Burnouf, Essai siir le Veda. * Wuttke, Gesch. d. Heidcnth., II. 321 ; Muir, Sansk. Texts, I. ch. iii. ; Mahdbh., Ill, 246 RELIGION AND LIFE. flict of Vasishtha and Visvamitra as a symbolic ex- pression for the victory of Brahmanical organization over the simpler life of Vedic times. Visvamitra, as his name indicates, has always represented the demo- cratic or popular element in Indian faith. -And the outcast races have generally been associated with his family. 1 When this organization of castes was effected, or how far its development ever proceeded, is not easy to determine. A rationalistic and democratic element, of which distinctive Buddhism was but a single ex- pression, seems to have existed in every epoch of Hindu thought ; and this must have constantly hin- dered the growth of Brahmanical authority. The progress of the system must therefore have been slow. A civil war of so barbarous and destructive a charac- ter as the tale of Paras'^urama implies becomes ex- tremely improbable. If, as has been conjectured, the conflict occurred in later Buddhist times ,^ it must still have been of a very different character from that described in the legend ; for the history of Buddhism gives no record of such a conflict in any form. Nor, as matter of fact, were the Kshatriyas "exterminated;" either "three times," as the poet puts it, or even once. Their descendants \ abound in Rajputana and the Panjab, amidst the old- est seats of Hindu civilization. In the epics there are still signs of superiority in the soldier class : the chief- tains often treat Brahmans with contempt, as merce- nary sacrificers. At the marriage of Draupadi,^ the ^ The word z/;'/ means probably to occupy or liold (Greek, OLKng ; Latin, vlais ; Enj;- lish, wick), and indicates the settled householding class ; hence Vaisyas, the agricultural caste, and probably Vishnu, the preserving One. 2 Wheeler's History of India., II. 64 ; Campbell, id supra. « Mahabh., I. •THE CASTES. 247 Rajahs are indignant at being humbled by a Brahman, whom the maiden chooses for her husband in prefer- ence to all her Kshatriya suitors. Manu, indeed, believed to have been himself a Kshatriya, records the names of kings, who perished by reason of not submitting to Brahmanical divi7ie right. But this means only that the spiritual arm claimed and secured mastery over the temporal, in the maturity of both; as it afterwards did in Chris- tendom. Like every thing Hindu, this worship of a priesthood was hewn out of an abstract conception. With Hindu whatever base elements minpcled, to whatever p"^^^^^°°^ o ' ship an ends exploited, the theory was that justice ideal. could be administered only by just men, and that pun- ishment belonged only to the pure.^ As the Egyptian priesthood represented the national idea of absolute duty, and exhorted the king on solemn occasions to the use of his power for the public good,^ so the Brah- man was held to be an " incarnation of Dharma, or Sovereign RigJit ; born to promote justice and guard the treasure of duties."^ The king must appoint a Brahman as chief of his ministers.^ The Brihad declares justice created to rule force (Kshatriya). " Through it the weak shall overcome the strong." Therefore the Brahman was inviolable, world-maker, world-preserver, venerable even to the gods. Hor- rible transmigrations are the penalty for assaulting him, even with a blade of grass, and barbarous pun- ishments for slaying or mutilating him. The grains of dust wet by his blood are counted as years in the atonement of the murderer.^ Down at his feet, and 1 Manu, VII. 30; Yajn., I. 354. ^ J)iod. Sicul. 8 Mami., I. gS, 99. * Ibid., VII. 58, 59. 6 Ibid., IX. 314, 316; XI. 84; IV. 166, 168; Yajn., II. 215. 248 RELIGION AND LIFE. ask forgiveness, if you have confuted him in logic. Let him suffer, and the nation perishes. The sea fails, the fire goes out, the moon dwindles, if his prayers and offerings for the people cease. He is the producer, the healer, the deliverer : the world is but the outcome of the virtue of which he is the visible sign. He may violate every rule of caste without sin, to relieve himself from extremity of distress : though the king die of hunger, the Brahman shall not be taxed, his contribution being already infinite. He is venerable from his birth ; though a Brahman be but ten years old, and a Kshatriya a hundred, the former is the father, and all things are his.^ To invest individuals or classes with an exclusive Its mean- diviuity belougs to all forms of organized ing. religion hitherto prevalent in the world. And it is easy to show, in this worship of the Brahman which is i^.s typical form, of what folly, superstition, and despotism it is capable. But such criticism, how- ever just, does not explain the facts of history. We would recognize that sentiment, in itself eternally valid, which found crude and blind expression in this old absolutism, so as to give it currency with human nature. What it aspired to, in its imperfect way, is in fact achieved only through the mutual stimulation of free, vigorous, practical races. The question w^hich Brahman worship properly suggests is whether he, whom the progress of civilization has shown to be the real goal of that imperfect groping and striving, whether the tj'ite preserver of states and sustainer of worlds, he whose conscience outrajied, whose service stayed or suppressed, is indeed the people's shame ^ Manu, XI. 206; IX. 316; X. 103; II. 135; I. 100. THE CASTES. 249 and loss, — whether the just citizen, the laborer for universal ideas and uses, has at last adequate recogni- tion and respect. Meantime it is well to note how strong an impulse to this natural veneration underlies the most unpromising features of Hindu life. Brahmanical absolutism could not have been the mere device of a body of priests, imposed from with- out on the religious sentiment. Priest and people were alike swayed by a sense of the indispensableness of spiritual help. They comprehend that to bring this is to sustain the world; that social order, custom, inspiration, are derived from this ; that the first of duties is to recognize him who has this to give ; and that to stay this product is to deal destruction to the people. Here, in the crude ore, is the fine gold of an eternal idea, which these latest ages are still engaged in workinof out. Here is at least a sincere effort to divinize spiritual help ; and the Brahman himself was substantially a believing servaiit of the impulse, even while he more or less selfishly directed it to efiect his own supremacy. He wrought out the laws, under a sense of inspira- tion. He bowed his own neck under the yoke „ •^ Responsibu- which he laid on the lower castes. This isityofthe certainly true, w^hatever the alloy of priest- craft in his legislation. The theory being that primi- tive power belonged only to the just, its organ must first master himself.^ As far as the wretched Chandala lay beneath this incarnate god, so far the god himself was beneath the law. Let him violate its precepts or disciplines, he shall be turned into a demon whose food is filth, and whose mouth a firebrand.^ To 1 Manu, VII. 30; Vdjn., I. 354. ^ Manu, XII. 71. 250 RELIGION AND LIFE. neglect them is to make way for his own destruction. Dante's Christian Inferno is prefigured in these penal- ties of Brahmanical sin. "If, as judge, the Brahman shall overturn justice, it shall overturn him : if he extracts not the dart of iniquity from its wounds, he shall himself be wounded thereby."^ If he begs gifts for a sacrifice, and uses them otherwise than for sacri- fice, he shall become a kite or a crow ; ^ if he begs from a low-caste man, he shall become an outcast in the next existence ; and if he marries a low-caste woman, he degrades his family to her caste, and loses his own.^ For his marrying a Sudra woman, the law declares there is no expiation.* Crimes are specified which will change his nature into that of a Sudra in three days.^ The law forbids the king to slay him, even though convicted of all possible crimes.^ Yet it also prescribes his banishment for capital offences, and even declares it permissible to kill him, if he attempts to kill.' If he steals, his fine is eight times that of a Sudra ; and, if he accepts stolen property, he is punished as the thief.^ Care is taken indeed that he shall be able to compound for the severest penalties, by milder penance ; but the recognition of a higher law than his own will is none the less real, nor are his expiations an easy burden. The Brahmanical bed was not made of roses. The demands of asceticism rose in proportion to one's elevation in caste life, and the Sudra is a freeman by comparison, in the matter of ceremonial bonds. ^ Whatever riorhts the Brahman possessed over the lives and property of others, the 1 Manu, Vlir. 15, 12. 2 Ibid., XL 24, 25. s ibid., III. 16, 17. * Ibid., III. 19. B Ibid., X. 92. 8 Ibid., VIII. 380. 7 Ibid., VIII. 350. 8 Ibid., VIII. 337, 340. ° For some curious effects of tliis flict on the relations of the castes, see Ludlow's British India, I. 57. THE CASTES. 25 1 law insisted with energy that he should subdue his passions, be just and merciful, and return good for evil, on penalty of losing all the prerogatives of his birth. He must not gamble, nor sell spirituous liquors, nor indulge any sensual desires. Nor must v^e esti- mate lightly the practical power of these saving pro- visions, and of the religious beliefs from which they sprung. Alexander and his followers found the Indian Gymnosophists " blameless, patient, wise, and just." ^ And the Egyptian priesthood, under analogous disci- plines to the Hindu, seem to have won a like reputa- tion in the ancient world. A very interesting little tract was sent to Hodgson, and communicated by him to the Royal Asiatic Society, in w^iich the Buddhist author confutes the doctrine of the castes out of the mouth of B}'ahmans themselves ; proving, by a great number of examples drawn from their sacred writings, that Brahmanism cannot be a matter of birth nor race, nor wisdom, nor observance of rites. He shows that many leading Brahmanical authorities w^ere from low-caste mothers, that many Sudras have become Brahmans by their austerities ; quotes Manu to the effect that "bad actions wdll change a Brahman into a Sudra, that virtue is better than lineage, and that royalty without goodness is contemptible and worth- less ;" also the Mahabharata, as saying that the signs of a true Brahman are the possession of truth, mercy, self-command, universal benevolence ; and that origi- 1 Megasthenes, for example [De Situ Orbis^ ch. xv.), describes the Brahmans as frugal in living ; avoiding animal food or sensual pleasure : intent oil serious conversation with such as are willing to hear. And Scholasticus, in the fifth century, says of ihem : " They worship God ; never question Providence ; always in prayer turning towards the light, wherever it may be ; live on what the earth spontaneously brings forth ; delight in the sky and woods, and sweet song of the birds ; sing hymns to God, and desire a future life." These philosophers were in fact the highest ideals of the Greeks in morality and religion. See Marco Polo, and the Arabian writers on India ; also Wuttke, 463, 464. 252 RELIGION AND LIFE. nally there was but one caste, the four arising from diversity of rites and vocations. " All men born of woman have the same organs, and are subject to the same wants." ^ These considerations may show the injustice we condhioQ of should do the Hindu caste-system in placing the sudra. [^ q^ ^ mofal Icvel with modern slavery. The Sudras were indeed at the mercy of a fearful system of oppression. Legal penalties for enslaved races were neither more nor less barbarous in the Code of Manu tha,n in the written and unwritten codes of the old Slave States of America. Slittins: of tongues, pouring hot oil into mouths and ears, cutting off lips and branding foreheads, are neces- sary adjuncts of any system which undertakes to make any form of slavery its corner-stone, in old time or new. The thraldom of the Sudra was very distinctly stated. "Though emancipated, he does not become free, since none can divest him of a state which is natural to him."^ He can possess no property as against a Brahman ; ^ and must not accumulate wealth, lest he give trouble to the superior race ! ^ And a kind of colorphobia, too, certainly underlay the old bondage as it did the later. Whether the Sanskrit word for caste (varna) really points to the color of the skin or not, at present a doubtful question,^ it is certain that the lowest caste was black, or nearly so. The indigenous races of India, according to good authority, are negrito.^ As the Dasyas in the Veda are called " black skins," so the Aryas are the "white friends of Indra." It is 1 Transac. of Roy. As. Soc, III. p. 160. 2 Manu, VIII. 414. » Ibid., VIII. 417. * Ibid., X. 129. 5 Muir, II. 374-413 ; Lassen, I. 407-409 ; Duncker, II. 55. In the Rig Veda, varna has the sense of race, tribe, says Sclioebel {Researches, p. 11). • Campbell on Induui Etliiiology, in Jour. Beiig. Soc, 1S66. MITIGATION OF CASTE. 253 an old sin, this preying of the fair skin on the dark ; and, in the overbearing oligarchy of British rule in India, its penalties are falling on the native posterity of those Aryan oppressors. But there is this difference. The Brahman recog- nized a higher law than his own gain. The difference modern slaveholder made his power his law. of Eastern ^^ . . ... , caste and Caste, m its general outlmes, was an outgrowth western of the social and religious faith of the East : slavery. slaveholding denied and affronted the conscience of the West. Caste rested on a belief in reciprocal duties that held every member of the system under rigid responsibilities and restraints : slaveholding rested on mere force and fraud, and the belief in a reciprocity of duties was exceptional and incidental. Man escapes from both systems not by miraculous intervention of Christianity, but by the deeper forces of his own moral and spiritual nature. As these have driven American slavery to self-destruction, so they have in past times counteracted, and continue to counteract, the worst tendencies of Hindu caste. - The military and mercantile classes intervened be- tween the Brahman and the Sudra ; and a qx\^^ys to series of mutual checks pervaded the system, oppression , . , , , . . - . *'. 1 i" the caste which graduated its tyrannies, and mitigated system. their force. "The king is formed," says Manu, ^oy^^ty. "out of the essence of the eight guardian deities, and exercises their functions. He is ordained protector of all classes in the discharge of their several duties."^ In the Ramayana, the king of that model Brahmanical city, Ayodhya, "takes tribute of his subjects, not for his own use, but to return it to them with greater 1 Manu^ V. 96 ; VII. 80, 35. 254 RELIGION AND LIFE. beneficence ; as the Sun drinks up the ocean, to return it to the earth in vivifying rain." ^ " O Bharata," says Rama to his brother, " the tears which fall from those who are unjustly condemned will destroy the children K and the herds of him who governs with partiality."^ By the law of Manu, the king is under a responsi- bility equivalent to his power. The burden of inno- cent blood shed by the courts falls in large measure on him.^ He is commanded to proceed mildly in dealing with offences : first by gentle admonition, then by severe reproof, then by fines, then by inflic- tion of corporeal pain ; and to use severest methods only as a last resort.* All persons are obliged^ to adjust their controversies according to the particular laws of their own order, and by reference to those who are familiar with the interests under question : kindred, fellow-artisans, co- - habitants of villages, may decide lawsuits, and meet- ings for the purpose are entitled judicatories. There are judges appointed by the king also in these courts ; and an appeal lies from these to higher ones, and finally to the king himself. He is exhorted to mild and conciliatory discourse towards litigants. The law codes abound in injunc- tions upon him to adhere to justice by conscientious investigation of the cases brought before his tribunal. He is to appoint a counsellor from the priesthood, who . shall check him if he act "unjustly, partially, or per- \ versely." And the judicial assemblies are subject to the same rules. We are reminded of the official oath of the Egyptian judges not to obey the king if he * Ramayana, B. i. 2 Ibid., B. ii. 8 Manu, VIII. i8. « Ibid., VII. 104; VIII. 129. ^ These rules for the administration of justice are taken from Colebrooke's elaborate Digest of Hindu Law. See Trans, of Roy. As. Soc.y vol. ii. pp. 174-194. MITIGATION OF CASTE. 255 should command them to act unjustly. By Hindu law, the judge who sits silent and does not deliver his real opinion is deemed guilty of deliberate falsehood. The unjust judge is to be fined twice the penalty in- volved in the suit, and shall make good the loss to the injured party. The king shall appoint for the trial of causes only persons who are " gentle and tender rather than austere, and who are wise, cheerful, and disinterested." The -poetic ideal of Hindu royalty is found in Kali- dasa's King Atithi, who, " even when young on the throne, was invincible through the love of his people ; who spoke no vain words, nor recalled what he had given, inconsistent only in this, that, having overturned enemies, he lifted them again from the earth ; seeking only what was practicable, as fire attacks not water, though the wind is its servant to consume the forest ; amassing riches, only because gold gives power to help the unhappy ; loving honest ways even in war ; making travellers as safe as in their own homes ; sending the poorest from his presence enabled to be generous to others, as the clouds come back from their voyages over the sea ; making enemies feel the infec- tion of his virtue."^ The severest caste-laws must have been inoperative, as the numberless contradictions and absurdi- Looseness ties of the code amply manifest. It is certain of the laws. that the cruelties made legal in Manu could never have been inflicted by any physical power which the priesthood could have possessed ; and, as we have seen, it is matter of serious doubt whether this legislation ever had very extended recognition in India. To learn the actual condition of things, we must resort to other wit- ^ Raghuvansa, XVII. 256 RELIGION AND LIFE. nesses. I have already alluded to the testimony of Greeks who visited India before the Christian era, tc the excellence of royal and judicial administration. They report further that the courts judged without reference to any written code whatever ; and such is to a great extent the case at the present time, local usages taking the place of positive written statutes.^ Practically, the lines of caste were always ill- defined, shiftinij like waves of sand blown by Interchange- o j abieness of the wluds of tlic dcscrt ; a constant satire on its pretensions to immobility. Inter-marriage has always been permitted, and some of the mixed classes have been treated with respect. Colebrooke; in a valuable paper on the subject, has described the disintegration of fixed orders in Hindu society, and the breaking down of its " impassable walls " of caste by this subdivision into mixed classes. They were " multiplied to endless variety " at a very early epoch ; so that it seems hardly possible that the division into four distinct classes could have really prevailed in India for any great length of time. The higher castes could, in case of necessity, assume the occupations of the lower ; and the Sudra could not only engage in trades belonging to the class above him, but even "gain exaltation in this world and the next, by performing certain lawful acts of the twice born men." ^ " In fact almost every occupation, though regularly the profession of a particular class, is open to most other classes. The only limitation is in the exclusive right of the Brahmans to teach the Vedas, and perform religious ceremonies."^ ^ Maine, Village Comwiinities^ p. 52. * Mavui X. 81, 96-99, 128 ; Ydjn., III. 3?. * Colebrooke, in Asiatic Researches, vol. v. <9 MITIGATION OF CASTE. 257 One may often, we are told,^ see carpenters of five or six different low castes employed on the same build- ing ; and the same diversity may be observed among the craftsmen in dockyards, and on all other great works. Manu's caste laws are perpetually violated, even those to which the severest penalties are attached. It is well known that the Bengal army has been com- posed of high-caste Hindus, mostly Brahmans, as the Madras army is composed of low-caste men, and a Brahman may even be a private under a low-caste officer ; an assertion of natural democracy as little likely to be relished in India as the authority of a negro general by scions of first families in America, yet equally inevitable in both cases. Men of low castes have been princes and had Brahmans in their service. 2 "The President of the Dharmasabha at Calcutta is a Sudra, while the secretary is a Brahman. Three-quarters the Brahmans in Bengal are servants." •* High-caste cooks are said to be in great demand in the army, and in native families. The rules of Brahmanical purity make it far easier for the high- caste man to become servant to the low, than the reverse.* And this intermixture of caste functions has gone on from very early times, leading to an elaborate chapter of regulations in Manu. Every thing in climate and ethnic constitution tended to favor this system in India ; yet even there the force of justice in human nature has been too strong for it, and shown a transforming energy that is marvellous. Such testimonies suggest that the resort to super- naturalism, either to explain man's past or guarantee his future progress out of the barbarism of caste in * Rickards, India, I. 32. * Allen's India, p. 472. 8 Miiller's Chips, II. 350. < Ludlow, I. 57. 17 * w^ 258 RELIGION AND LIFE. any form, is wholly gratuitous. They have thus a bearing on the adequacy of Natural Religion to the explanation of history, which makes them of great interest in the present state of inquiry on that subject. Strong centrifugal and disintegrative tendencies Democratic havc rcvcaled themselves in the very structure reactions, ^f ^]^q systcm, affording ample proof that the free impulses of nature in which its first foundations were laid refused to yield either to priestcraft or social pride. " Manu's classification never passed in its in- tegrity," sa3''s Mr. Hunter, "beyond the middle land of India. On the east where Lower Bengal begins, caste, as a fourfold classification, ceases. It never crossed the Indus on the west. Beyond this the tribes held all men equal." ^ In Northern India, at the present day, all castes mix socially together, even where separated by religious distinctions, or diversity of functions.^ In the South, Sudras rank next to Brahmans ; and their name has never had the deirrad- ing sense which is given it in Manu's Laws.^ In truth the old doctrine of four distinct castes has no longer a semblance of validity anywhere. The ancient Sudras and Vaisyas are absorbed into the infi- nite diversity of mixed castes, now no longer treated with contempt.* So are the old Dasyus of the Veda. Brahman cultivators are numerous in Western India, and in Oude outnumber all others ; and the chief traders, civil officers, and writers in the Panjab* are descendants of the Kshatriya, or soldier class. "The Vai^ya caste," says Ludlow, "has almost wholly dis- appeared. The Kshatriya (as soldier) exists perhaps * Annals of Rural Bengal, pp. 102, 104. 2 Campbell, p. 136. ' * See Monier Williams's LecUire ott the Study of Sanskrit- * Campbell on Indiun Ethnology. DEMOCRATIC REACTIONS. 259 only among the Rajputs of the north-western frontier ; the Sudra, scarcely anywhere but among the Yats and Mahrattas. Only the Brahman holds his ground ; and beneath him a chain of castes, varying almost infinitely in number according to locality, seldom less than seventy, and averaging a hundred. In Malabar are enumerated three hundred."^ And of the Brahmans Wilson tells us that " they have universally deviated from their original duties and habits ; " that " as a hier- archy they are null ; as a literary body, few, and meet with slender countenance from their countrymen ; " that " they have ceased to be the advisers of the peo- ple ; " and that " various sects have arisen which denounce them as impostors." ^ The gosains and fakeers have succeeded to the old Brahmanical sway, and generally contemn these subordinations of the ancient system, which one reformer after another has assailed, from Gotama Buddha to the present day. The most national religious festival in India, that of Jagannath in Orissa, has always rejected caste. "No on^ in India," says Max Muller, "is ashamed of his caste ; and the lowest Pariah is as proud and anxious to preserve his own as the highest Brahman. Sudras throw away their cooking vessels as defiled, if a Brah- man enters the house." ^ Sir H. Elliott, in his valuable work upon the races of North-Western India, sup- plies conclusive evidence on the failure of caste to maintain its principle of immobility in that region. " The attempt of early lawgivers to divide society into classes, which should hold no communion with each other, was one which broke down at an early period. Even in India 'love will be lord of all.' The plan of 1 British India, I. 48 ; Elliott, Races of N. W. India, I. p. 166. 2 Religiotis Sects of the Hindus, 1862. ^ Chips, II. 347- u-- 26o RELIGION AND LIFE. degrading the issue of mixed castes has been highly beneficiaL It is like the disintegration of granite till it forms fertile soil. In practice, a man who had a Brahman or Rajput for father was not likely to be ashamed of it, or to be looked down on by his fellow- men ; and the barriers of caste once overstepped, that mixture and fusion of the people began which has gone on to our day, and promises to continue till there shall be no remnant of caste left. A laconic modern proverb in North Behar says, ^ Caste is rice ; ' i.e., matter of eating or not eating with others, only. It is a hopeful sign, presaging, like the Brahmo Somaj, a new and better order of things in India." ^ One or two more witnesses will suffice. Says the author of " Rural Annals of Bengal : " " That the time foretold in the Sanskrit Book of the Future, when the Indian people shall be of one caste and form one nation, is not far off, no one who is ac- quainted with the Bengalis of the present day can doubt. They have about them the capabilities of a noble nation." Finally, Maine does not hesitate to say that caste is now '' merelj^ a name for trade or occupation;"^ and Monier Williams asserts that " however theoretically strict, it practically resolves itself into a question of rupees."^ Caste, in Ceylon as well as in India, is now in fact a purely social dis- tinction, and disconnected from any sanction derived from religious belief.^ V The D^-aina has given expression to the democratic ^ Elliott, I. p. 167. 2 Village Coynmunities, p. 57. ^ 8 Lecture oft the Study of SaTtskrit (1S61). He mentions the fact that, a few years before, it was decided at a meeting of Old and New School Hindus in Calcutta that certain young Brahmans, who had lost caste, should be readmitted on paying a large line and performing purification. * Tennent, Christianity in India, p. 91. DEMOCRATIC REACTIONS. 261 spirit in India, — as it did to the opening of modern liberties in Europe, — by protest against the sho^vniIl pride of caste, which is in fact but the feudal- literature. ism of the East. The Mrichchikati,^ for instance, describes the social contempt that befalls poverty, in indignant language, as suitable to the Western as to the Eastern world : — " This is the curse of slavery, to be disbelieved when you speak the truth. " The poor man's truth is scorned : the wealthy guests look at him with disdain ; he sneaks into a corner. " Believe me, he who incurs the crime of poverty adds a sixth sin to those we term most hideous. " Disgrace is in misconduct : a worthless rich man is con- temptible." The same play brings out a Brahman thief who uses his sacred thready " that useful appendage to a Brahman," to measure the walls he would scale, and to open the doors he would force. It ridicules a Brahman pandit, "stuffed with curds and rice, chant- ^ ing a Veda-Hymn ; a pampered parrot." A king is, in another passage, represented as commanding the impalement of a priest. Again, the brother of a slain king, dragged about by a mob, is set free by the for- giveness of the subject he would have put to death unjustly. A slave is shown as a model of integrity, and made to say, " Kill me, if you will : I cannot do what ought not to be done." A chandala, the lowest of all outcasts, when ordered to execute a supposed criminal, replies : — " My father, when about to depart to heaven, said to me : ' Son, whenever you have a culprit to execute, proceed slowly ; for perhaps some good man may buy the criminal's liberation ; perhaps 1 Translated by Wilson. 262 RELIGION AND LIFE. a son maybe born to the king, and a general pardon be proclaimed ; perhaps an elephant may break loose, and the prisoner escape in the confusion ; or perhaps a change of rulers may take place, and every one in bondage may be set free.' " ^ The lower castes have established claims to respect in other ways. In Ceylon they have been the only astronomers, and amidst their astrological fancies attained a certain amount of scientific knowledge, calculating eclipses and noting the periods of the stars. ^ It is probable that the intercourse of the Aryans with native tribes has helped to weaken and disin- Influence of the native tcgratc the caste system. The very ancient *" ^^' popular rites in honor of serpents, doubtless of - agricultural origin, and celebrated throughout India, in which all classes unite, amidst holiday pleasures, prove that a democratic influence has proceeded from - the aboriginal races. Most of these tribes have always been free from caste ; many have bravely resisted the invader among their rocky fastnesses, maintaining a heroic independence. And, with all their barbarism, many of them have shown primitive virtues which ignore conventional distinctions among men. The Bheels are described as " more honest than the Aryan Hindus," and their women as having a higher position than those of the latter race, and taking part actively in all reforms in behalf of order and industry.^ . The Khonds believe that to break an oath, or repudiate a debt, or refuse hospitality, is to ' invite the wrath of the gods.* Another writer speaks of " the kindly spirit of the Kols towards each other." " The Kol girl is never abusive : her vocabulary is as 1 Wilson's Hiftdji Theatre, vol. i. * See Upham's Sacred Boohs of Ceylon^ Introd. xiv. V 8 Mrs. Spier's India. * Lassen, I. 377, 378. DEMOCRATIC REACTIONS. 263 free from bad language of this kind as a Bengali's is full of it."^ "The whole Santhal village," says Hunter, " has joys and sorrows in common. It works together, hunts together, worships together, eats to- gether. No man is allowed to make money out of a stranger." ^ In the interesting work here quoted, the democratic " village-system," which extends over a large portion of India, is traced back to the aborigi- nal tribes. They must, at all events, have shared it from the earliest period with the Aryan immigrants. Ludlow ^ depicts them in general terms as " savages, with scarcely a rag to cover them, yet honest and truthful, as all free races are." " A tithe of the care and benevolence expended on the Hindus," says a still more recent writer,^ " would make the hill races a noble and enlightened people." However strong some of these expressions may seem, the unanimity of the best observers points at least to a strong democratic force as working from this direction on the Hindu social system. Such the force of democratic reaction within this oldest system of social wrongs, — a system which has generally been taken as type of their unchangeable- ness under heathen influences. Such the protest that began with its beginning, and steadily smote against its iron joints till it broke them in pieces ; not indeed introducing liberty, but preparing the way for it by dividing the bondage to an indefinite extent, atomizinof the elements as it were for better affinities. And this old Brahmanical code, wrecked and stranded by the sacred instinct of freedom, bears witness that 1 Bengal your7taC, iS56. 2 Annals of Rural Bengal, pp. 202, 208, 216. •■ 8 British India, I. 19. * Lewins, Races of S. E. Ifidia, 349; also foxtrnal Bengal Society (1866), II. 151. ^-•- 264 RELIGION AND LIFE. man was always greater than his own theocracies, oligarchies, or despotisms, of whatever kind, and will never abide in them as in his home. But further, so far as was possible amidst a series „ .. of chancres like these, each caste has always Positive ^ "^ rights of really stood by itself in political matters, "managing its affairs by its own suffrage ; and even the lowest have always had, notwithstanding the theory of the law, certain well-understood and well- defined civil rights, such as that of acquiring and bestowing property, learning to read, and performing certain sacrifices.^ Caste usages have even been found to resemble in some respects the ancient popular institutions of the European Teutonic tribes. Slavery itself, in many parts of India, has helped to equalize caste, since men of all castes could become slaves, and a Brahman might serve a Sudra ; while, in Mala- bar, slaves, in their turn, have had higher social con- sideration than some of the free castes.^ Slavery in India must be distinguished from caste. It sta'nds on a wholly different basis and origi- Slavery. . - ^- • 1 nates m causes oi a more superncial nature. Accordincr to the Mohammedan law, there is but one justifiable ground of enslavement ; namely, punishment of infidels ficrhtinor ag^ainst the true faith. According- to the Hindus, fifteen causes are enumerated, among which voluntary or involuntary self-sale is the sub- stance of several, and punishment that of others.^ The strong language of the law concerning a slave's natural destitution of rights received in fact many im- portant qualifications. He could be manumitted ; if he saved his master's life, he could demand his free- 1 Buyers's Northern India, 314, 457 ; Allen, Indii, 471. 2 Adam, Slavery ifi India,, 131-133. ' Adam ; Macnaghten's Hindu and MoJtatntnedan Law. SLAVERY. 265 dom and the portion of a son ; if the only son of his master, both his slave mother and himself became free by virtue of that condition alone ; when enslaved for special causes, voluntarily or otherwise, his bondage ceased with the cessation of its grounds.^ Contracts made by slaves in the name of an absent master, for the behoof of the famil}^, could not be rescinded by him ; nor was there any bar to the institution of judi- cial proceedings by a slave against his master ; nor, in practice, to the reception of his testimony thereon.^ We must observe, too, that slavery in India has not been as in the West an incident of race, but attached alike to all 7'aces^ and even to all classes in society. It was therefore impossible that the relation as such should be held, as in Christian countries, to be some- thing organic and essential in its victim. Notwithstanding Hindu laws speak of slaves as mere cattle, though they could be transferred Distinction with the soil, or sold from hand to hand, and fJo^'^^veTt- though their condition, especially in Southern em slavery. India, has been past description miserable and de- graded,'^ yet it may fairly be said that slavery, in the sense in which we have been used to understand the word, has not existed in India. ^ It does not claim in that country to rest on religious foundations.'^ Chief Justice Harrington distinctly declared that " the law^ and usage of slavery had no immediate connection with religion," and that its abolition would not shock the religious prejudices of the people. Manumission * Colebrooke, in Macnaghten, p. 130. 2 Mafiti, VIII. 167; Adam, p. 17. 3 See the accounts given by Adam ; and in a valuable pamphlet on Slavery in htdia (printed in London by Thomas Ward & Co., 1841), full of statistics drawn from official documents, originally prepared for the Mornittg Chro7ticle. * Buyers, 314, 315. ^ Macnaghten, p. 128. 266 RELIGION AND LIFE. / Itself, on the other hand, is regarded as an act of piety expiative of offences ; and by the Mohammedan law it is expressly commended as a religious merit. The form in which slavery appieared in ancient India was so mild that the Greeks refused it the name ; Megas- thenes declaring definitely that "there are no slaves in India," and Arrian that " all Hindus are free." And even in later times and in re^fions of which these writers had no knowledge, it is not easy to find among the Hindus the abstract idea of chattelhood, as Western ingenuity has wrought it out. Everywhere, for example, are traces of the right of the slave to in- heritance ; while the "Law of Nature," as the Romans called those ancient ethnic customs which had a uni- versal scope, was always favorable to his claims.^ I venture to affirm that nothing of the exact nature of Western slavery as an idea existed in the older East, either among the Hebrews, the Persians, the Chinese, or the Hindus. The systematic reduction of men to things could hardly have been conceived by these instinctive races. It belongs to socially self-conscious generations, who know enough of ideal freedom to comprehend what the negation of it implies. It is a Satanic fall made possible only by a mature sense of personal rights. The earliest approach to it, so far as I know, was by polished ethical philosophers of Greece.^ , But there is a family likeness in the forms of slavery , ^ in all races and times. And that theoretic Appeal of J caste to basis whicli could not quite reach the absolut- outoogy. .^^ of Western bondage was, within the limits of caste, developed with extreme precision. The idea 1 Maine's Ancient Law, 15S-160. 2 Aristotle's Politics, B. i. ch. 4-6. SLAVERY. 267 of caste everywhere rests upon an abstract postulate of organic differences among men.^ Thus, in Manu, it is the "nature" of a Brahman to read Vedas, to pray, to be adored. It is the " nature " of a Kscha- triya to fight, of a Vaisya to labor, of a Sudra to serve. This belief grew up insensibly, as the system became fixed, and its distinctions hereditary. Then the Brahmanical priesthood went further, by a neces- sary law of development. With those subtle brains of theirs, they spun out an ontology of caste. The laboring class represented the physical world of ac- Hon, in their philosophy an unreality, a kingdom of obscurity and delusion. The soldier caste represented the -will^ which struggles up out of this lower region, and maintains itself in contradistinction therefrom. The Brahmans themselves represented the purely spiritual realm, the only real life, absorbed in deity. As for the lowest caste, it lay outside the world of ideas, an opposite pole of negation ; though even here it would seem that no absolute evil was affirmed, since from the lowest caste one might rise into the hijjhest through transmigration. Thus it was attempted to justify a colossal servitude by the structure of the soul and the constitution of the universe. To us the chief value of this attempt is in its illustration of the neces- sity which compels every form of injustice to render account to the natural sense of justice in mankind. jMere power never sufficed to vindicate any despotic system in the sight of man. And in this fact lay guaranteed from the first an ultimate real perception and appreciation of social ethics. The ceaseless en- 1 See Grote, on Plato's "guardians," or "golden and silver men," and on the way in which they would necessarily regard the "brass and iron" natures, ordained to lower functions and destinies. Crete's Plato, III. 214. 268 RELIGION AND LIFE. forcement of all institutrons to plead their cause at the ideal bar" of conscience leads at last, without need of miracle, to a true commonwealth. It was inevitable that caste should be driven in India, as slavery has been in America, to justify its falsity upon abstract grounds of nature and right. To this theoretic test it has to come, whether a thousand years before Christ or two thousand years after him. And the appeal to ontological defences was its refutation, just as we have since seen it to be the suicide of American slavery. For a deeper dialectic came to rebut them. And Brahmanism was driven, on its own logical ground, to the utter denial of its own social principle. This result came to pass in the Buddhist reaction. For Buddhism was the abolition nfon recognized meta- physical as well as moral principles, of all distinc- tions founded on caste, and the consequent affirmation of universal brotherhood. And from this Brahmani- cal caste has never fully recovered. So close lay truth to honest error, so inevitable was the appeal to pure reason three thousand years ago. The history of this reaction will claim our attention at a subsequent stage of these studies. But we may go behind the spirit of caste, to far Democratic uoblcr tendencies in the Hindu mind. The tendencies. ^|^ Vcdlc Hvmns do uot rccoc^nizc it at all. in the Hni- -j o dumind. Tlic uamcs afterwards given the three upper castes are found in these hymns, but not as indicative of social distinctions. Brahmana is appellative of prayer ; Kshatriya, of force ; and Vis, whence Vaisya, of the people in a general sense. Indeed the old pastoral Aryans, as we have seen, were a very demo- cratic community. They seem to have known no dis- DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES. 269 tinctions resembling those defined in Manu. The householder had his chosen seer, like the Hebrew, or might himself offer sacrifices as the head of his family.^ The epics speak not only of Brahmans who descended from soldiers, and of Vaisyas taking part in government, but of times when the whole popula- tion assembled to ratify the nomination of a King.^ In the Mahabharata,^ King Judhishthira is inaugu- rated by the united action of all the castes. So the Ramayana tells us that Das'aratha called a great coun- cil of all his ministers and chieftains to discuss the appointment of a son to share the government ; and that all the people were gathered together in like manner to express their preference, and give their advice. The divine Rama is the ideal of a democratic prince. His sanctity in the epic is itself a transfer- ence of the ideal of religion from the Brahman to the Kshatriya ; an affirmation of liberty on this soil of caste. The chiefs praise him for continually "inquir- ing after the welfare of the citizens, as if they were his own children, afflicted at their distresses and re- joicing in their joy, upholding the law by protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty ; so that all the people, whether they be servants or bearers of burdens, citizens or ryots, young or old, petition the monarch to install Rama as coadjutor in the admin- istration of the Raj."* Rama's brother Bharata, seeking to move him from his determination to yield the crow^n, in obedience to his father's vow, as a last resort appeals to the people. "Why, O people! do you not lay your injunction on Rama ? " And the ^ Weber, Vorlesiingen, p. 37; Lassen, I. 795. 2 Lassen, I. 811. 8 Mahabharata, B. 11. < Ramayana, B. 11. 270 RELIGION AND LIFE. people reply that they find reason on both sides, and cannot judge the matter in haste. The people were from the first divided into little clans under independent chiefs. Down to this day the tribes of the Panjab, that oldest homestead of the Hindu Aryans, remain free from consolidated mon- j archy and caste. ^ A quarter of the population of India, about fifty millions, are governed by about two hundred native chiefs. Such is the force of the centrifugal principle of local independence. 2 Small, self-governed com- munities, adhering to local customs and traditions, and organized in guilds and corporations, exist all ) over India, even under the shadow of royalty and caste, persistent protests in many ways against the authority of these institutions.^ The type of this free spirit is the Sikh, whose Bible says : — " They tell us there are four races ; but all are of the seed of Brahm. "The four races shall be one, and all shall call on the Teacher. " Think not of caste, but abase thyself, and attend to thy own soul." Originally the full title of the laborer to the soil was Title to the religiously conccdcd. " The old sages declare land. ^1^0^^ cultivated land is the property of him who ^ first cut away the wood or cleared and tilled it, just as an antelope belongs to the first hunter by whom it is mortally wounded.^ Even the feudalism of the Rajput princes still acknowledges the ryot's ownership in the land.^ This natural hold upon the soil and the right of self-government consequent thereon have been * See Weber, p. 3. 2 Wesitn. Rev., July, 1859. ' Duncker, II. 105; Miiller, Saiisk. Lit., p. 52. * ManUy IX. 44. ^ Asiatic Journal, New Series, V. 41. DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES^ 7'' /2^1 embodied bv the Hindus from remote times ia what are called the "Village Communities."^ - ''/ By this system the land is held by the village com- mune as an organized whole, having complete village com- arrangements for distributing the produce "^^'^ties. among the laborers, after the payment of a certain small fraction, differing at different times, to the king and the local chiefs. The village has its arable land cultivated by all, and its waste land used by all as pasture. It has its judge or head-man, appointed by the raja in the old time, but now a hereditary officer. He is the agent of the village in all transactions with the government, the assessor of taxes according to property, and the manager of the common lands. Yet all matters of moment are determined by " free consultation with the villagers, and disputes decided with the assistance of arbitrators."^ The organization of the little commonwealth is com- plete ; having its judge, its collector, its superintend- ^ ent of boundaries, its notary public, its weigher and ganger ; its guide for travellers, its priest, schoolmaster, astrologer ; its watch and police ; its barber, carpen- ter, smith, potter, tailor, spice-seller; its letter-carrier, ^ irrigator, and burner of the dead ; all functions being hereditary in most villages, and all work paid for out ~ of the common fund."^ Within the limits of Oriental instincts this little community is an independent unit ; a " petty republic ; " containing within itself all the elements of stability and mutual satisfaction ; organ- 1 " The right of the sovereign extended only to the tax. Theoretically, he was owner of every thing acquired by his subjects ; but practically they had their rights, as fully — secured as his own." Ritchie, British World in the East^ I. 179. 2 See Wheeler, History 0/ British India, II. 597. Hunter's 6>rwJrt, (1872') vol. ii. * MiW, British India., I. 217; Heeren, Asiatic Nations, II. 259; IVestm. Revietuiot July, 1859; Ludlow, Brit. India, I. 61. 272 RELIGION AND LIFE. ized for the security and profit of each family in the position hereditarily or otherwise assigned it, and accordins" to the recoijnized measure of its contribu- tion to the public service. And these villages, it may be added, have from very ancient times been, not in- frequently, bound together into larger organizations, containing generally eighty- four members.^ They are an adm.irable illustration of the principle of Mutual Help, and of its controlling influence over mankind in the early organization of social life. The members of such primeval republics, of which India itself has been styled " one vast congeries," have no other tradi- tions of political duty than what this form of govern- ment has transmitted from immemorial antiquity. "They trouble themselves very little about the dis- memberment of empires ; and, provided the township remain intact, it is matter of perfect indiff'erence to them who becomes sovereign of the country, the in- ternal administration continuing the same."^ The system in fact rests on principles that may not only be called congenital with actual Hindu tribes, but go back to more primitive social relations. The tie which unites the members of these village communities in- volves, as Maine has shown in his remarkable work on Ancient Law, the assumption of a common family ) descent, suggesting unmistakably their origin in Patriarchalism, the earliest constructive principle of social life. The same profound student, in a more recent volume of equal interest, has added to his previous parallel between the Indian comrhunities and the Russian and Slavonian village-brotherhoods, a 1 Elliott, N. W. India, II. p. 4. ' Wilkes's Historical Sketches of the South of India, See Heeren, Asiatic Nations, II. 260. DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES. 273 description of the very close resemblance of the first- named organizations to the old Teutonic townships, — a resemblance "much too strong to be accidental," — and especially in their presenting " the same double aspect of a group of families united by common kin- ship, and a company of persons exercising joint ownership of land." ^ These Indo-European affinities will of course suoffjest to the reader a common orif^rin in the primeval life of the race previous to its disper- sion into different nationalities. Mr. Maine infers from the character of villao^e com- munities, as w^ell as from other data, that the Their liber- oldest discoverable forms of property in land ^^^^• are collective rather than individual ownerships ; ^ though he finds a periodical redistribution of the land among families to have been universal among Aryan races. ^ The Hindu villager's idea of freedom is cer- tainly associated with the rights of the corporate body of which he is a member, rather than with personal independence, and the notion of his own in- dividuality as a limitation of these traditional corporate rights is substantially new to him. The idea is doubt- less profoundly alterative of this whole system, now subjected to the influence of European ideas and in- stitutions. Yet the defect of personal freedom is by no means so great as might be inferred ; since these corporate rights constitute the natural body of political consciousness, assuming the form of organic guaran- ties and sacred trusts. The Family, moreover, has its sphere, within which the commune does not penetrate, protected in part by patriarchal traditions of very great sanctity. Personal property is by no means * Village Commtmities inihe East atid the West, pp. 12, 107, 127. 2 Ibid., p. 76. 8 Ibid., p. 82. 18 274 RELIGION AND LIFE. excluded from the system ; and even the arable land, though owned by all, is marked off to different culti- vators, by more or less permanent arrangements. It is to be observed, too, that the absorption of pro- prietary rights in land by the commune is by no means universal in the Hindu villages. Whole races, like the Jats, spread over Northern and Central India, are described ^ as thoroughly democratic ; as having an " excessive craving for fixed ownership in the land," of which every one has his separate share, while the government is not patriarchal, but to a very great degree representative. On the Western coast, and in the broken hilly regions especially, the land is largely held by private ownership. ^ And the isolated home- stead so natural to the Teutonic races is in fact very common in India, notwithstanding the strong ten- dency of an agricultural population like the Hindu, to seek the advantages of a communal system of cultivation.^ Seventy years ago, Sir Thomas Munro found the lands in Kanara owned by individuals sub- ject to government assessments, who inherited their estates; and "who understood property rights as well as Englishmen."^ Ramaswami Naidu, a native official, of reputation in the British service, prepared a careful memoir of the tenures of those ancient States which came to be included in the Madras Presidency.^ It contains full evidence that, under the native sovereigns of India, a portion of the cultivators possessed full proprietary rights in the soil, while another portion merely paid a tribute to the kings in return for protection, according 1 See Campbell's elaborate account oi Indian Ethnology ■, in the JourtuU of tJie Bengal Society for i866. 2 Campbell, p. 83, 134. ' Maine, Village Communities, p. 114. * See IVestm. Rev., Jan. 1868. '' Jourtial R. A. 5"., vol. i. 292-306. DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES. 275 to a fixed proportion of their products. It gives us also a full description of the constitution of a village community, and of the eighteen salaried officers hered- itarily attached to it ; of their appointment by the king in newly conquered territories, and of the distri- bution of free proprietorships among the clearers of the land. "This ownership," says the author, " the cultivators enjoy to this day, because hereditary right tp the soil is vested in them."^ Absolute equality is no part of the ideal of a Hindu commune. There are " parallel social strata ; " and in many parts of India outcast classes are attached to the villages, probably belonging to indigenous conquered races. Yet even these outsiders are held authori- tative on the subject of boundaries ; and the letter- carrier and burner of the dead, who usually belongs to the lowest class, is, like the other functionaries, a free, proprietor, with official fees.^ The people freely discuss laws and customs ; nor can the constant inter- mixture of races of more or less democratic tendency, which has been going on for ages all over India, have failed to supply elements of individuality to Hindu life. It has already been observed that the village system is by no means an exclusively Aryan institu- tion in India, but indigenous also ;^ and, even where it is predominantly Aryan, the native tribes have been quite freely incorporated into its membership, and shared its elements of political equality. This hospi- tality is so characteristic, that the natural working of the system is probably preferable in such respects to the changes introduced by foreign interference, which, * Wilson {Hist. India, I. 418) declares distinctly that "the proprietary right of the sovereign derives no warrant from the ancient laws or institutions of the Hindus." * Ramasw. Naida. ^ Hunter's Orissa, vol. i. 276 RELIGION AND LIFE. in Maine's view, has induced a more jealous corporate exclusiveness, clinging to vested rights, than had pre- viously existed.^ Looking at the history of the insti- tution as a whole, we may discern hints and openings, which promise to throw much light on the subject of indiz'idiial freedom, as an element of Hindu civili- zation. The breaking up of the old caste-system on the one hand, and the persistence of these local liberties and unities of the ai^^ricultural communes on the other, are facts of great historical signiiicance, in estimating the degree in which the idea of personal rights and duties is probably already developed among the races of India. The extent to which the com- munes have absorbed Brahmans and Kshatriyas into the class of cultivators opens the further question, how much this permanent devotion to agricultural industry may have done towards counteracting the exclusiveness of caste. The village community is now affirmed to have been ^ the primitive political unit in all Aryan tribes. These little Indian republics have been truly characterized as ^ " the indestructible atoms out of which empires were formed." Many of the largest cities of India were ori-ginally collectioijs of these villages. Every succes- sive master of the soil has been compelled to respect them, as the real " proprietary units " with which his authority must deal. Wherever the English have abolished them, the people have returned to them at • the earliest opportunity. Their extension, not only over all India, Ar3'an and native, but even beyond Java,^ makes them the ground fact of Oriental history, and especially interpretative of Hindu character. And, ^ Village Communities^ p. 167. ' Raffles, quoted by Heeren, II. 260. DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES. 277 after trvino^ all their own buncjlinof and barbarous forms of political surgery, the latest experimenters in SioverninfT India find the main features of this ancient polity best suited to the genius of the race, and most consistent with social order. It has been an admirable preparation for that system of full personal proprietor- ship, which should long ere now have been accorded to the Hindu people.^ The school-master is an essential member of this system ; and bv virtue of his function eniovs ^ " ^ _* .., Education. a lot of tax-free land by gift of the commune. " In every Hindu village which has retained its old form. I am assured," says Ludlow, "that the children generally are able to read, write, and cipher; but where we have swept away the village svstem, as in Bengal, there the village school also has disap- - Trial by jury (^fanchdyet)^ alike for the determina- tion of law and fact, is jrenerallv a part of this : Junes. system ot selt-government ; as is also a special service for the discovery of criminals, and the escort- ing of travellers. Mr. Reynolds, who was emploved for many years in suppressing Thuggerv, testified in the highest praise to the vigilance of the village police, - and to the aid afforded him in trackino- ofi^enders sometimes for hundreds of miles. He went so far as to call the village system of India "the best in the -. world." 3 1 For a full account of the \-illage land-tenures, see Mackay's Rc/aris on U'esiefyt India- , 2 British Ittdla., I. 62. In Bengal alone there were once no less than eighty thousand native schools ; though, doubtless, for the most part, of a poor qualit}'. According to a government Report in 1S35, there was a village school for every four hundred persons- Missionary iTttelligettcer^ IX. 133, 193. 5 Ludlow, 1.66; II. 3+4. "^ 278 RELIGION AND LIFE. The fanchdyet juries vary in their composition, and in the number of their members. Originally each party named two, and the judge one. It is a common saying in India, " In the -panchdyct is God." And, though not always incorrupt, its administration is, according to good authority, on the whole " singu- -^ larly just." The influence of the elders of the village often induces contending parties to yield points of difference, or even to forgive the injury.^ In Nepal, both civil and criminal cases are referred to the panchayets, at the discretion of the court, or the wish of the parties ; the members being always appointed by the judge, each party having the right of challenge in case of every man nominated. The parties, in other cases, name each five members, and the court adds five to their ten. The verdict must be unanimous, to effect a decision of the case. These jurors are never paid any compensation for travel- ling expenses or loss of time. The prisoner can always confront his accuser, and cross-examine the witnesses against him. The witness is commonly sworn on the Harivansa^ which is placed on his head with a solemn reminder of the sanctity of truth. If a Buddhist, he is sworn on the Pancharaksha ; if a Moslem, on the Koran. If parties are dissatisfied with the judgment of the courts at law, they can appeal to the ministers assembled in the palace at Kathmandu ; applying first to the premier, and, if failing to obtain satisfaction from him, proceeding to the palace gate and calling out, "Justice ! Justice ! " Upon which fourteen ofiicers are assembled to hear the case, and give final judgment.^ ^ Elliott, N. W. India, I. 282. * Hodgson, in Journal R. As. Soc, vol. i. DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES. 279 The Hindu mind, then, retained the natural bias towards republicanism which was so distinctly Republican shown in the Aryans of Vedic times, and tendencies, which reached such energetic growth in the Teu- tonic races of the same stem. Neither the hot sky of Central India, nor the caste system, which it stimu- lated to such rankness, could eradicate this germ. Its fires constantly broke forth in organized efforts to expel the Mussulman invader from the soil. The formidable Mahratta confederacy, which came near overthrowing first the Mogul, and then the British empires in India, was a military republic of independ- ent chiefs, loosel}^ related to a central authority. The Sikhs, or disciples, at first peaceful religious puritans, became, when roused by Moslem persecu- tion, ardent apostles of political liberty. Even after the long and bloody struggle which ended in the subjugation of the peninsula by England, there still remained the energy to combine in one immense revolt against a foreign despotism that had been peel- ing the land and demoralizing the race for more than a century ; and to compel the government to deprive the colossal East India Company of autocratic power. A brief notice of some of the most important features of British rule in India, which, it must be remembered, have been succeeded by much better methods, will be here introduced, not in a censorious spirit towards the people of England, for whom I cherish a most cordial respect, but because such a review will enable the reader to do something like justice to the natural qualities of the Hindus, and to judge whether their degeneracy, so much harped on, is, as we are con- stantly told, owing to viciousness specially inherent in the heathen heart. 28o • RELIGION AND LIFE. The English systems of land tenure and taxation y have been more preiudicial to the riorhts of '^ Foreign mis- ^ i J o government; the village communes than the Mahommedan land system, ^^j^j^j^ ^j^gy supersedcd. Under the latter, the zemindars, or farmers of revenue, took from a fourth to a half the produce of the ryot, in the government's name, paying themselves out of the revenue thus ex- acted. The Eno-lish transformed the zemindars into . positive owners, who paid quit-rent to the Company, and were armed with powers of summary distraint on the tenants ; a system involving the utter extinction of native rights, which had still lingered, favored by the general irregularity of the Mussulman administra- tion. ^ The presidencies of Bengal and Madras becom- ing impoverished by this policy, the Ryotwaree system was tried, in which the zemindars were supplanted by the government tax-gatherers, lev3'ing directly on the villagers ; and this proved as fruitful of corruption, extortion, and outracre as the other. ^ The bribe which would often deliver the ryot from the clutch of the .Mussulman collector would not assuage the rapacity of his Christian successor. The one was generally content with payment in kind, but the other insisted . on having money ;. thus not only throwing the peasant into the grasp of usurers, so that he was at last oblifTfed to alienate his land, but also drainins^ the country of precious metals, to enrich a foreign com- pany. ^ The older taxation took a portion of the actual crop ; but the English " fixed an assumed capa- city of each field for produce, and an assumed price for this, and then from 35 to 40 per cent of this fixed " ^ See JVesttn. Rev., Jan. 1858. 2 LudJow, Lect. IX. * Ibid ; McCulloch's East Indus. MISGOVERNMENT. 281 sum as its share for ever." ^ The effect was to absorb the larger part of the ryot's actual income, and in general to sweep away the whole. From the time of Clive,^ the material exhaustion and social misery went on steadily increasing, until, as in the Puttee- daree plan, which was adopted in the Panjab, isolated efforts were made towards a partial return to the native village polity. In 1838, by the exertions of many leading reform- ers, conspicuous among whom were George Thompson and Daniel O'Connell, the "Brit- India so- ish India Society" was organized, — a natural ^'^*^' offshoot from the great movement against Western slavery, — for the purpose of emancipating the^masses in Hindustan, and at the same time, through the devel- opment of the culture of cotton in that country by free labor, to abolish slavery in America by destroying the English market for the slave-grown article. The apostles of this movement made the land ring with eloquent denunciation and appeal. They brought a flood of light to bear on the wretched condition of the Hindu laborer. Their speeches assailed the pretence that the Government was owner of the soil of India, " with the right to take what suited it from every man's field." They proved that its extortion of rent made private property in land impossible, and that cultiva- tion had decreased in consequence in the ratio of two- thirds, while the tax assessed continued nearly the same. They denounced it for laying high taxes on the cultivation of waste lands, for the express purpose of preventing the impoverished ryots from resorting to these. They pointed to a long series of appalling 1 Gen. 'Qnggs's Speech at Glasgpwi AvLg. i, 1839. *^ 2 Macaulay's Essay on Clive. 282 RELIGION AND LIFE. famines ; in one of which five hundred thousand per- sons perished in a single 3'ear, while grain enough was being exported from Bengal to feed the whole number with a pound of rice a day ; and another of which swept off three millions in Bengal alone. They de- scribed the ruin of Hindu manufacturing industry, and the fall of British imports down to sixpence a head on the population. They warned the rulers of the detestation in which they were held throughout India, of the elements of desperate revolt that were gather- ing. The horrors of Hindu slavery were spread out before the tyes of the British people, who w^ere just then strikinof off the chains from their West India bondsmen.^ Yet twenty years of corporative des- potism were yet to elapse, finding their natural result in the terrible scenes of 1857-58, before the worst features of the old land system in India began to yield to the civilization of the age.^ The police of the East India Company was as mis- chievous as its revenue system. It was de- Police. *' scribed as " not only powerless to repress crime, but a great engine of oppression and corruption." The venality and arbitrariness of the courts became intolerable, and were among the leading causes of the rebellion."^ The monopoly of opium and its compulsory culture Opium were sources of enormous evil. At one time trade. ^ f^f(-}-^ q{ i\iq revcnucs of the Company were * Of pre-eminent value were the labors of George Thompson, both in advocating the abolition of slavery and in defending oppressed and defrauded native' rulers, with a thor- oughness and eloquence which entitle iiim to be called the apostle of East Indian emanci- pation, as he was one of the bravest helpers of the American slave. 2 See the speeches of Thompson, O'Connell, and Bjjggs, before the British India Societies during 1839 and 1840, for abundant and startling statistics on tliese points. 3 Ludlow, cli. xix. ; Macaulay's Essay on Warre?i. Hasthii^s. MISGOVERNMENT. 283 derived from this pernicious interest. The loss of productive industry effected v^as as nothing compared with the moral ruin it entailed.^ It was the decisive testimony of Hastings that the Hindus were a remark- ably temperate people before evil communication with the Europeans had corrupted them.^ The use of in- toxicating drugs is prohibited to the Brahmans by the native law, and is still disreputable among the higher classes. In the rural districts intemperance is still rare ; but wherever English rule is established, and foreign influence active, it has greatly increased. It is admitted on all hands that in these localities the character of the people has changed, and that both Mohammedans and Hindus are rapidly degenerating, under the effects of alcohol and opium. -^ The Mohammedan government is nowise respon- sible for the terrible results of the opium trade. It repressed the cultivation of the poppy as long as it was able. Ninety years ago no regular trade in opium existed. The East India Company's officers began it by smuggling a thousand chests into China. Thenceforward the " fostering care " of the Company developed it till it "enticed all India, native and for- eign, Christian and Buddhist." In 1840 the Chinese government destroyed twenty thousand chests of opium, being not more than half the importation for a single year. In 1858 the production in India, of which England held the monopoly, for exportation into China, amounted to seventy thousand chests. * Westm. Rev., July, 1859. "Half the crime in the opium districts," said Mr. Sym (Ludlow, II. 300), "is due to opium. One cultivator will demoralize a whole village." Dr. Allen [India, p. 304) declares that he knew nothing in mo.^em commerce, except the slave-trade, more reprehensible than the manner in which this business was carried on. ■^ 2 Ludlow, II. 302. 3 Allen, pp. 478, 479, 497. See testimonies collected in Thompson's Address at Friends^ Yearly Meeting in London, 1839. 284 RELIGION AND LIFE. Government, down to the rebellion of 1857, not only never made the slightest effort to repress, but steadily encouraged it, urging the legalization of it upon the Chinese rulers, who as strenuously strove to resist a scourge that was desolating their dominions. Eng- land, in fact, " found India and China comparatively free from intemperance through the positive restraints of Buddhism and Mohammedanism. She has estab- lished in these countries the most extensive and deeply rooted debauchery the world has known." ^ " The intemperance of the British soldiery in India," wrote Dr. Jeffreys in 1858, " appears to be bounded only by the opportunities they can command. It is to a lamentable extent associated with Christianitv in the minds of the natives. Once, on my making in- quiries into the creeds of certain black descendants of Europeans in the Upper Provinces, a well-informed Mussulman informed me they were Christians, that he knew it (speaking not disrespectfully, but in all sim- plicity) from their being nearly all of them drunkards. The example of Christians, and the efforts of govern- ment to multiply spirit-shops for the sake of revenue, are chanoincr the habits of the natives. Drunkenness is becoming prevalent, whereas formerly there were few who touched alcohol in any form."^ The salt monopoly afforded another fifth of the rev- Saitmo- enue of the Company. The peasants were Ibr- nopoiy. bidden the ver}^ salt-mud of the river mouths, their main reliance for agricultural purposes. "Not a grain of the sun-evaporated salt left by nature at his own door could be placed by a native on his tongue, or ^ These last facts and affinnations are taken from a work by Dr. Jeffreys on The British Army in hidia (London, 1858). See, also, Ludlow, IL 302. * Jeffreys, p. 19. MIS GOVERNMENT. 285 removed into his hut ; " and the trade in salted fish was destroyed. At one time the price of this necessary article was raised to thirteen hundred per cent above ^ the cost of production.^ The supersedure of native manufactures by English machinery created an amount of suiTering^ ^ . , •^ _ ^ o Rum of among numerous classes in India scarcely to manofact- be paralleled in the history of labor.- The ^'^^* slave-grown cotton of America, manufactured in Eng- land, was forced on a people who once had woven for their own use the finest fabrics in the world. The native looms that not long before produced annually eight millions of pieces of cotton goods were stopped altogether. Once flourishing cities and villages, the seats of a busy and thriving population, were ruined. Dacca, for instance, once a city of three hundred thousand inhabitants, has been reduced to sixty thou- sand ; and its transparent muslin, a " woven wind," a w^hole dress of which will pass through a finger-ring, is " almost a thing of the past." ^ The older governments were careful to build roads and secure communication across the country. •^ Internal In 1857, the "Friend of India" confessed thatcommuni- " for one good road we have made we have ^^'^^' ' ^' suffered twenty to disappear." * Four or five thousand miles of railroad have since been projected and in great part constructed, as well as several thousand miles of canal ; but the native industry can hardly have begun to recover from the terrible discourage- ment created by the long-continued neglect of internal communication, on the part of the invaders, and the ^ Ludlow, Thompson, &c. * Allen, 449. 8 Ludlow, I. 10. * See, also, Allen, p. 327. 286 RELIGION AND LIFE. incessant shocks of conquest and civil strife which they helped to introduce. The Skanda Purana describes the descent of . . , Ganor-a, the sacred stream, through the tresses Agnciilture. o ' ' o of Vishnu, which broke her fall and scattered her waves, bearing fertility to the*land. She followed the steps of Bhagiratha, to whom she was granted, — a drop of the waters of heaven, as reward of his all-conquering devotion. Such the consecration in mythic lore of the popular enthusiasm and love for fertilizing streams. Nothing in the Ramayana is more eloquent with genuine national feeling than the episode in which the descent of the waters is identified with the beneficence of all the gods. It represents them as sent to revive the ashes of the seventy thou- sand sons of Sagara, reduced to dust by Vishnu, " spouse of the all-nourishing earth, in his avatara of Fire," because they reproached him with carrying away the sacred horse of their father's sacrifice, which they had sought in vain through the worlds. These are the symbols of an agricultural people ; and the whole is manifestly like the Greek myth of Ceres and Proserpine, significant of the death and re-birth of vegetation. Serpents, in the popular mythology of India, seem to represent this oldest interest of the community. The festivals in honor of these first owners and occu- pants of the ground are celebrated by young and old, rich and poor, throughout Western India. The children have holiday, and the serpent figures are crowned witk flowers. In the Sutras, Puranas, and Epics, these animals are always mentioned with respect, and incarnations in serpent form abound. The popu- lar faith ascribes this veneration to gratitude for the MISGOVERNMENT. 287 forgiveness shown by the queen of serpents to the husbandman who killed her little ones by the stroke of his plough. The prodigious monuments of this agricultural ardor, so mtimately related to the old Hindu religious faith, have been treated by later invaders very much as similar achievements by the ancient Peruvians were treated by the Spanish conquerors of South America. Of the innumerable canals, reservoirs and tanks for irrigation, built by native and Mussulman govern- ments, great numbers were suffered to decay, and the contributions paid in by the people for their repair, in accordance with ancient custom, were appropriated to other purposes.^ Wherever the opportunity has been aflbrded, as especially in the Panjab of late years, the natives have entered with vigor on the improve- ment of these long-neglected works, and their exten- sion upon a. suitable scale. To such demoralizing forces the Hindus have been subject for centuries. When we read therefore , , •' Inferences. of the filthy condition of villages, the destitute and despondent state of the agricultural population, we shall not need to resort for explanation either to caste or to religion. We shall appreciate McCul- loch's abundant proofs that this poverty and misery are largely owing to that misgovernment of which we have here given but the merest outline.^ We shall appreciate the force of such testimony as that of the "Bombay Times," in 1849, ^^^^ ^^^ boundaries of the dominions of the East India Company could be dis- covered by the superior condition of the country people who had not become subject to their sway ; i 1 Ludlow, II. 317; Arnold's Z>«//20«J2V, II. 282. i^ ■*, 2 Commerc. Diet., article on East Indies. | 288 RELIGION AND LIFE. or as Campbell's, who affirms, in his work on India, that "the longer we possess a province, the more common and grave does perjury become ; " or as Sir Thomas Munro's, half a century since, that the in- habitants of the British Provinces were " the most abject race in all India." We shall appreciate the energy with which Burke declared in the House of Commons that, "if the English had been driven from India, they would have left no better traces of their dominion than hyenas and tigers." Systematic contempt and outrage by British officials Ill-treat- ^as SO mucli a matter of course, that for ^^""^ an Englishman to treat natives with common civility was looked upon as a prodigy ; and the gov- ernment servants had a general impression that it would bring one into bad odor with the Compan3^l Impressment, plundering of houses, and burning of villages, the kick, the buffist, the curse, mal-treatment in every form, such as made men like Metcalfe, Napier, and Shore " wonder that we hold India for a year," brought the ryots to the conviction at last, as the missionaries confessed in their conference of 1855, that "the Christian religion consisted in having no caste, eating beef, drinking freely, and trampling on the rights of niggers."^ The gross immoralities of Europeans in the early period of British rule in India in fact led to the use of the term Christian as a bv- word, having nearly the sense of "bastard ;" and, "had the name been altogether laid aside, it would have been a great blessing for those parts of India most frequented by Europeans." ^ It can therefore hardly 1 Hon F. J. Shore. See, also, Speeches at Friends' Meeting in London., 1839 2 Ludlow, II. 365. 3 Buyers's Northern India, p. 107 ; Sanger, History 0/ Prostitution, p. 423 ; Westm. Rev. for July, 1868. MISGOVERNMENT. 289 be held suggestive of special hardness in the natural heathen heart, when we find, after more than a century of British sway, that there are less than a hundred thousand Christian converts in India out of a popula- tion- of nearly two hundred millions ; and less than twenty thousand out of the forty-five millions of Bengal. It remains to add one more item to this sad detail of Christian influence in India. Not only did ^, •^ Slavery. the Company gratuitously sanction existent Hindu and Mohammedan slavery by interpreting law in its interest, needlessly placing it under the shield of " respect for the religious institutions of the natives ; " not only did it everywhere permit and justify the sale of this kind of property among them ; not only en- courage an external slave-trade, for a long period carried on for the supply of India by Arab traders' with the coast of Africa and the Red Sea ; not only sell slaves itself, to secure arrears of revenue. It steadily resisted numerous endeavors to obtain the abolition of Hindu slavery on the part of such men as Harrington and Baber, from 1798 to 1833. ^ Not till 181 1, was legislation directed against the slave- trade ; and the law then made prohibited the sale of such persons only as should be brought from abroad for this exp7'ess fzcrpose, — a limitation which rendered it of no effect. Every extension of British territory increased the traffic, opening the whole domain to importation of fresh victims.^ In 1833, a bill intro- duced by Earl Grey, for abolishing slavery in five years, was so emasculated in its passage through Parliament by the opposition of the Duke of Welling- * See the case fully stated in Adam's Slavery in India. 2 Judge Leycester, in Parliatnentary Documents for i8^q, No. 138, p. 315. 19 290 RELIGION AND LIFE. ton and others, as to come out finally but a timid recom-' mendation to the Company to mitigate the evil as far as should be found convenient ; serving only to en- couracre and confirm it. The earnest af^itation of the subject by the British India Society in 1838 aroused fresh interest ; but the East Indies and Ceylon were excepted from the great Colonial Emancipation of that year. Nor can I learn that any complete Act of Aboli- tion has been passed, down to the present hour. What we are here especially to observe is the fact that this continuance of so barbarous a system has not had the excuse of a necessary regard for the prejudices and interests of the people. Judge Vibart, after an inves- tigation maae by desire of government in 1825, re- ported that the respectable classes of the Hindus were strongly in favor of abolition, and that the Moham- medans had no very great objection. Macaulay, as Secretary of the Board, was assured by the ablest of the Company's civil servants that there would be no danger in the attempt. In 1833, four thousand Hindus, Parsees, and Mohammedans memorialized Parliament, thanking it for its exertions to abolish the slave-trade.^ It was the opinion of able lawyers that the Mohammedan law itself, if rightly executed, would free almost all the slaves in India ; nor has that of the Hindus any immediate connection with their religion or their system of caste. But we hasten from this criticism to an estimate ^ . ^ which could not be fairly presented without Traits of jr. Hindu such reference to an oft-told history, otherwise needing no fresh recital. Charges of gross depravity are constantly brought against the Hindus ^ Pamphlet on Slavery in India^ compiled largely from ofiBcial documents ; printed by Ward & Co., Loudon, 1841. HINDU CHARACTER. 291 as a people. Such writers as Mill and Ward seem to be incapable of finding any good in them. Of these sweeping accusations, falsehood, vindictiveness, and sensuality have been the most frequent. The best authorities agree in refuting them.^ Dr. Jeffreys allows himself the extravagant statements that "every child is educated carefully to avoid speaking the truth, except as a matter of interest or necessity," and "that they will compass each other's ruin or death for the smallest object." Colonel Sleeman, on the contrary, tells us he has had hundreds of cases before him in which a man's property, liberty, or life depended on his telling a lie ; and he has refused to tell it, to save either. Mr. Elphinstone, whose opportunities were those of thirty years in the highest positions in Indian service, de- scribes the Rajputs as remarkable " for courage and self-devotion, combined with gentleness of manners and softness of heart, a boyish playfulness and an almost infantine simplicity." " No set of people among the Hindus," he continues," "are so depraved as the dregs of our own great towns. The villagers are everywhere amiable, affectionate to their families, kind to their neighbors, and towards all but the government honest and sincere. The townspeople are different, but quiet and orderly. Including the Thugs and Deceits, the mass of crime is less in India than in England. The Thugs are almost a separate nation, and the Deceits are desperate ruffians in gangs. The Hindus are a mild and gentle people, more merciful to prisoners than any other Asiatics. Their freedom from gross debauchery is the point in which they appear to most advantage ; and their superiority in ^ See especially Montgomery Martin's admirable Report on the Conditio7i of India {1838). 292 RELIGION AND LIFE. purit}^ of manners is not flattering to our self-esteem."^ "Domestic slaves are treated exactly like servants, except that they are regarded as belonging to the family. I doubt if they are ever sold."^ It is highly creditable to the Hindus that Siva-worship through the symbol of reproduction, the lingam, once widely spread in India, is now found to have "no hold on the popular feeling, and to suggest no offensive ideas." "It is but justice to state," says Wilson, "that it is unattended in Northern India by any indecent or indelicate ceremonies ; and it requires a lively imagi- nation to trace any resemblance in its symbols to the objects they are supposed to represent. The general absence of indecency from public worship and re- ligious establishments in the Gangetic provinces was fully established by the late General Stuart, and in every thing relating to actual practice better authority cannot be desired."^ The licentious customs attri- buted to the sakti-worshippers the same authorities state to be seldom practised, and then in secrecy ; and to be held illicit even by their supporters, if instituted merely for sensual gratification.^ Statistics show that the profligacy of the large cities of British India hardly exceeds that of European communities of similar extent. And to the amount actually existing the habits of Europeans have largely contributed ; while the efforts of the government to diminish this form of immorality have done much to counterbalance these bad influences, as well as to suppress the older religious ceremonies which involved it.^ ^ History of British India, pp. 375-381. See Ritchie, British World in tlie East, I. 186. 2 Elphinstone, I. 350. ' Wilson, Essays on Religion of Hindus, II. 64 ; I. 219. * Ibid., I. 261. ^ Sanger, History of Prostitution, p. 423. HINDU CHARACTER. 293 The great diversity of opinion as to the practical morals of the Hindus is doubtless due in part ,. ,. ^ Morality. to the great varieties of moral t3'pe that must exist in so immense and complex a population as that of India, subjected to sucli variety of foreign influence for thousands of years. It does not appear, however, that the Hindus have been more inclined to sensuality than other races. This is true of them even as sharing the almost universal cultus of the pro- ductive principle in nature, whose symbols seem to have represented the sacred duty of man to propagate his kind. They have always had sufficient sense of propriety to carve the statues of their gods in a way not to give offence to modesty.^ Yet their vices must on the w^hole have been such as belong to the impres- sible temperament of tropical races, the passive yield- ing fibre that obeys the luxury of illusion and reverie. The truth must be somewhere between the unbounded praises lavished by Greek writers on the ancient Hin- dus and the excessive censure of their descendants by Christian criticism. It is in no unmindfulness of these probabilities in the case that I add a few more good words for this non- Christian people from competent witnesses. Malcom "could not think of the Bengal sepoys in his day without admiration." Hastings said of the Hindus in general that they were " gentle and benevolent, more suscep- tible of gratitude for kindness shown them and less prompted to vengeance for WTongs inflicted than any people on the face of the earth; faithful, affectionate, submissive to legal authority." Heber, whose detes- tation of the religions of India was intense, yet records similar impressions. "The Hindus are brave, cour- ^ Stevenson,. in Jour. Roy- As. Soc, 1842, p. 5 294 RELIGION AND LIFE. teous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and improvement; sober, industrious, dutiful to parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient, and more easily affected by kindness and attention to their wants and feelings than any people I ever met with."^ Doubtless these statements, like those on the other side, are highly colored ; but they have great value in view of the character and op- portunities of their authors. " The Hindus," says Harrison, 2 "are a mild, peaceable people, fulfil the relations of life with tolerable exactness, naturally kind to each other, and always ready to be hospita- ble, even where poverty might exempt them : they are never deficient in filial affection. It is a common thincr to find people in humble walks of life bestowing a third or even half their scanty income on aged and destitute parents." I will only add the somewhat ardent tribute of the Mohammedan Abul Faz'l, vizier of the great Sultan Akbar in the seventeenth century, a thoroughly competent witness. " The Hindus," he says, in his Ay in Akbar i^ " are religious, afTable, cheerful, lovers of justice, given to retirement, able in business, ad- mirers of truth, grateful, and of unbounded fidelity. And their soldiers know not what it is to fly from the field of battle." What inhumanity must have been needed to rouse such a race to the barbarities of Delhi and Cawn- pore ! It must be remembered that these barbarities were Cruelties of ^o^ the work of the people as a whole, and the war. ^\y^^ they wcrc quite paralleled by cruelties on the part of the Christian invaders both before and afterwards. The horrors of Cawnpore were the work ^ Heber's Journal, II. 369, 409. 2 English Colonies, p. 64, 66. • HINDU CHARACTER. 295 of Nana Sahib and his body guard of savage adher- ents, his. own soldiers "refusing to massacre the women and children, whiqh was accomplished by the vilest of the city," while his own officers sought in vain to dissuade him from his monstrous purpose. ^ Dr. Mc- Leod invokes his countrymen to public confession, with shame and sorrow, " of indiscriminate slaughter perpetrated in cool blood by Christian gentlemen, in a spirit which sunk them below the level of their ene- mies."^ The atrocities of this war, on the part of the Hindus, were in fact the natural excesses of an excit- able people, driven to madness, not merely by such crimes as the causeless massacre of the loyal thirty- seventh Sepoy regiment, at Benares, such treacheries as the broken promise of higher pay to the army of Oude, such outrages on the religious convictions of the native soldiers as the compulsory use of cartridges greased with pork, but by a long-continued series of enormities that had become habitual. As illustrative of these, the fact will suffice that, a year or two before the revolt of 1857, investigations by the govern- ment brought to light a regular system of torture of the most revolting description even upon women, which for years had been applied in many parts of India by native officers of the Company, in the collec- tion of its revenues and for extorting evidence. This insurrection was but the last of a series growing out of similar causes, and upon the greatest scale of all. It was the common cause of dispossessed kings and beg- gared chieftains starting up and springing to arms all over India ; the issue of a policy of annexation and "subsidiary alliances," pushed for half a century by bribery, fraud, and force ; of the industries of mi-llions ^ McLeod, Da^s in Northern Itidia, p. 68. 296 RELIGION AND LIFE. drained, and the hoarded wealth of ages swept off, to fill the coffers of rapacious foreign masters ; of syste- matic outrage and contempt as of ^he lower animals, practised upon a race whose literature is magnificent, and whose civilization runs beyond historic record ; of a system of exclusion, which shut out the native of India from office and opportunity, whether civil or military : the issue, in short, of monstrous misgovern- ment, which the noblest men had labored ineffectu- ally to reform, and which had made the coming of just such an earthquake as this, for every thoughtful mind in India, merely a question of a few years more or less of time. It could not be said that the East India Company had attempted to suppress the religion of the Hindus : it would give little countenance to missionary efforts, and it even derived revenues from the superstitious rites of the most ignorant classes ; yet it had not succeeded in the slightest degree in calming the nervous fears of the Sepoy army, which knew its character by closest contact, that the native beliefs and traditions would be recklessly trampled out by its mere military and secular interests. It is by no means my purpose to throw the respon- justiceto sibility of the terrible scenes of 1S57-58 upon both sides. ^}^g East India Company alone. I have no desire to hide either the difficulties of the position with which they had to deal, or the previous semi-barbar- ized condition of the Hindu States, upon which in many respects certainly their rule was an improve- ment. The brutality, corruption, and weakness of the later Mogul princes of India, had disorganized these communities ; and robber tribes and robber chieftains were spreading desolation through portions of the peninsula when the French and English began their HINDU CHARACTER. 297 struggle for its possession. Still more important is it to recognize the improvement in Indian affairs after their administration — withdrawn from the East India Company in consequence of the revolt — was assumed by the British people. New civil and criminal codes have been introduced, more wisely regardful of the interests of the native tribes ; municipal and other offices have been transferred in some degree to native talent ; and the extortion of rents has been measur- ably guarded against. The results of these changes, it is claimed, are already apparent in improved culti- vation, purer administration, and happier social life ; though such terrible facts as the Orissa famine in 1865, with its record of governmental neglect, become all the more discreditable, in view of such claims. While we render all due credit to those who have labored to bring about these measures, and are labor- ing for still more important ones equally consistent with the spirit of the age ; and while the noble record of individual officers and scholars, like BenUnck, Elphinstone, Briggs, Crawford, Jones, Lawrence, through the long history of British India, should re- ceive the lasting gratitude of science and humanity ,i — w^e w^ould not fail to note also the bearing of the happy results so speedily claimed for a juster policy, on the question of Hindu capacity and character. That Mogul oppression should have brought about the de- generate social condition of the natives at the com- mencement of British rule, is nowise to their dis- credit. That such amelioration as is now described should follow at once in the track of the earliest 1 The reader will find this record, which I would gladly pause here to review, in the pages of Kaye's Lives of Indian Statesmen, Arnold's Dalhmcsie, and other like works, familiar to the public in England and America. 298 RELIGION AND LIFE. fair opportunity afforded them, after more than a cen- tur}^ of this rule', is surely a strong argument in their favor. And, after all, the conclusion we draw from this painful history must differ widely from that of Nemesis. jt ^ j writers whose view springs from their natural sympathy with the victory of a higher civilization over a lower, and from that only. This crowning insur- rection, in the view of history, reflects more credit on the conquered than on the conquerors. If Macaulay's logic be admitted as fair, when, in his brilliant essay on the life of Clive, he affirmed that " the event of our history in India is a proof that sincerity and upright- ness are wisdom, that all we. could have gained by imitating the duplicity around us is as nothing when compared with what we have gained by being the only power in India on whose word reliance can be placed," — what inference could be drawn when his premise was reversed by unanswerable facts, and th'e event proved an utter absence of confidence in the government of India from end to end of the land? What a piece of irony does the complacent self-eulogy, echoed by so many less respectable voices, become ! The event of European government in India yields a very different lesson. When the rajas of Oude marched in procession to give in their adhesion to the British Government, after the conquest of that kingdom, "all," says McLeod, "were thankful for their restored lands, and the hope of British protection. But there was not one who loved us for our own sakes ; not one who would not have preferred a native rule to ours, even with tolerable protection of life and property ; not one who did not regret the unrighteous destruction HINDU CHARACTER. 299 of the Kingdom of Oude."^ So, in the war of 1857, almost the whole Bengal army was in" sympathy with , the rebellion. 2 It was universally recognized at that time that the lono^-continued rule of En inland in India had in no degree reconciled the masses of that vast empire to the authority of their masters. " If the Russians should march an army into Scinde," said the "Westminster Review," so late as in 1868, "a spirit of disaffection and desire of change would agitate the whole country." This persistent refusal to accept or to trust selfish and despotic rulers, with whatever un- civilized impulses it may be connected, gives hints of higher loyalties. And humanity finds its real interest in the impressive fact that, after centuries of wars and tyrannies, Persian, Afghan, Mongol, Mohammedan and Christian, there should yet have survived enough of the old Aryan fire to turn on the latest invader in // determined and desperate revolt. Such wrath indeed smoulders in the most orentle and laborious races, and in them is most terrible when its frenzy comes at last. In the East and in the West alike, a Nemesis has awaited proud and selfish nations for exploit- ing races weaker than themselves. Tlie passion of - the Hindu and the patience of the American Negro are dissimilar qualities ; but the wrongs of both are avenged. The Hindus do not deserve contempt on any ground. They are made for noble achievement in phi- ^ . -' ^ Promise. losophy, in aesthetics, in science, and even, with Western help, in social and practical activities. Their full day has not yet come. Their vitality is far from spent: they are not in their senescence, but in 1 Days in Northern India, p. 88. ^ ibid., p 166. \ 300 RELIGION AND LIFE. their prime. Their chiefs, often ferocious and crafty, are as often heroic and magnanimous. Sivaji, Hyder AH, Tippoo Saib, Holkar, and others, w*ere briUiant soldiers, and fought valiantly for their cause to the death. India has no lack of subtle thinkers, learned scholars, able administrators, shrewd merchants, nor yet of generous helpers in the improvement of the people. An estimate made by British officials in 1829 represents the works of public utility constructed by individuals, without view to personal profit, in a single district of half a million people, as amounting in value to nearly a million pounds sterling, besides plantations of trees enclosing two-thirds of the villages.-^ Hindu- stan has native scholars of eminence both in Sanskrit and European letters, whose editorship of Sanskrit works as well as contributions to the philosophical and ethnological journals are at this time especially of great value. Deva Sastri mastered the Eastern and Western systems of Astronomy. Rajendralal Mitra was entrusted with the task of expounding the ancient coins discovered in 1863, and has brought out important Brahmanical and Buddhist works. The lamented Radhakanta Deva Bahadur, the author of an immense Sanskrit encyclopgedia, was an honorary member of numerous learned European Societies. Fresh editions of the national epos, and other great works of antiquity, with valuable commentaries, paraphrases, and learned revisions, have within a few years appeared under the auspices of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which owe very much of their excellence as well as their elegance to the per- sonal industr}^ ability and munilicence, of native ^ See Westm. Rev., July, 1868. -* HINDU CHARACTER. 3OT scholars.^ There is ample ground for predicting that, as further friction with Western thought shall elicit the special genius of the Hindus, it will be found capable of supplying many desiderata in our Western civilization, contributing in ways as yet unimagtned by us to the breadth and fulness both of our religious and social ideals. The effect of a sensuous, enervating climate on the Aryan has, however, been in many wa3's Power and prodigious. -His very idealism became a '^^^^'^*' persuasion of the nothingness of the individual. The lack of practical stimulus inclined his intellect to contemplation, and turned his first endeavor at the organization of Labor into what looks to us more like an organization of Idleness : the drone priest at the head, the drudging menial at the foot, the lazy soldier, a blight on industry, between the two. Hindu life, in its twofold aspect, grew more and more like the great rivers it dwelt by, in their alternate flood and failure, - overflow and return. In Thought, a great, broad, still, dreamy sea, its bare, motionless face upturned to the sky ; in Action, a cooped and stinted stream, however stirred here and there, girt with broad strips of thirsty desert and even treacherous slime. Surely it is refreshing to find, under these dead-weights of physical nature, the earnest endeavor for co-opera- ^ tive work, the love of agriculture, the unconquerable -"^ germs of liberty. The degeneracy itself has its hopeful side. It does not prove that the physical must inevitably overmaster the spiritual everywhere, 1 Many of these are mentioned in a synopsis of the recent publications of the Asiatic Society of Be?igal, in Zeitschr. d. D. M. C, XXV. {1S71), p. 656. Their contributions to the Bibliotheca Indica have been of especial value. GUdemeister (^/(5/. Sajiskr-y 1S47) mentions more than 60 Hindu scholars of our time, besides 100 earlier ones. 302 RELIGION AND LIFE. except under specifically Christian disciplines. It illustrates the universal law, that the life that spends itself in thinking or dreaming, and fails to put its brain into its hand, under whatever disciplines or " dispensations," unmans itself, and becomes impotent even to think and dream. TT J.X. RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPflY. ■oo^rdnder life it sees and loves. The voice of the Eternai, alone heard, takes up the human into itself, and the poet's tongue can but echo its- words : — " I am what is and is not. I am, — if thou dost know it Say it, O Jellaleddin, — I an* the Soul in all." Is not man of one nature with what he worships? Knowing Where his faith reposes, t/icre and t/ial is he. and being, ^q thcsc Eastcm mystlcs do not hesitate to say : " Whoso worships God under the thought, ' He is the foundation,' becomes founded ; under the VEDANTA. 333 thought, * He is great,' becomes great ; or under the thought, ^ He is mind,' becomes wise."^ "Whoever thus knows the supreme Brahma becomes even Brahma."^ It is only the prevalent habit of associat- ing self-assertion with whatsoever is said or done, that makes language like this, in any religion, shock and repel. It is perfectly natural to the poetic sense, to the spiritual imagination, to the spontaneity of faith and the self-surrender of love. It is not " self- deification," but that very spirit by which alone, in any age or people, the vice of self-worship is to be escaped. Not yet have we heard any better statement of the relation of individual to universal life than this : — " Round and round, within a wheel, roams the vagrant soul, so long as it fancies itself different and apart from the Supreme. It becomes truly immortal, when upheld by him." ^ " As oil in sesame seed is found by pressure, as water by digging the earth, as fire in the two pieces of wood by rubbing them together, so is that absolute Soul found by one within his own soul, through truth and discipline alone." ^ " The soul must churn the truth patiently out of every thing." ^ The poet does not forget that this is the end, not the beginning, of human endeavor ; and must come by paying the price. The earnestness of this aspiration appears in the stress everywhere laid upon the sufficiency To know of really knowing and seeing truth. The Jg^come^" modern or Western mind, concentrated on truth. action, taught by its theology to distrust intellectual intuition in religious belief, finds it hard to do justice to the ancient principle, "Whoso knows or sees * Taittariyci, III. x. 3. * Mutzdaka, III. ii. 9 ' Svetasvatara, I. 6. * Ibid., I. 15. " Amritanada Upan.^ Weber, II. 63. 334 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. truth becomes truth." But if this principle was not moral power, how came it to be, as it certainly was, the resort of thoughtful men who sought to compre- hend and master the ills of life? What must they have meant by "knowing," who said, "Whatever nature one meditates on, to that nature he goes : he who meditates on God attains God"?^ The Semitic myth of the Fall of Man separates, even to antagonism, the tree of knowledge from the tree of immortal life. Here is a deeper synthesis, that makes the two to be one and the same. There is a worship of knowledge which is not pride of understanding, but sincerity of mind, — the longing to escape falsities, the sway of the will by a supreme necessity of living by truth. " Truth alone, and not falsehood, conquers : by truth is opened the path on which the blest proceed."^ "No purifier in the world like knowledge."^ In the simplest and purest form of conviction, to know is not divorced from to be ; in other words, the life goes into the thought, and is one with it. And this sacred unity of Thought and Being attends the highest philosophy as well. Plato distinguishes "true science" from "opinion," affirming that in this way to know truth is to become truth. Of like purport is his great ethical postulate, that vice is but ignorance ; none who see the beauty of virtue being capable of violating her laws. "Wisdom," in the Hebrew Apocrypha, shines with the same ade- quacy, reflected in large measure from the Hellenic mind. " She is the brightness of the Everlasting Light ; and, being but one, she can do all things ; and in all ages, entering into holy souls, she maketh them * Bhag. Gitdt ch. viii. * Mundaka, III. 6. 8 Bltag. Gii&^ ch iv. VEDANTA. 335 friends of God and prophets." "Bondage," says Kapila, "is from delusion."^ "Whoso knows is eman- cipated, and thirsts no more."^ Spinoza answers across the ages that the knowledge of God is one with loving Him. And the Christian mystic, of whose genius the fourth Gospel is the product, puts into the lips of his ideal " Word " this truth of universal relig- ion : " Ye shall know the truth, and truth shall make you free." " The truth of being and the truth of knowing," says Bacon, "is all one. A man is but what he knoweth. For truth prints goodness ; and they be the clouds of error that descend in storms of passions and perturbations."^ To be what one knows to he real is for ever the goal of noble effort, simply because it is implied in the unity and integrity of thought. Nothing is really known so long as it stands aloof, as mere distinction from the thinker, an external object only. Mind can know only by finding itself in the thing known. Nothing is really thottght by us, whose being is not made mystically one with our thought, through the common element which makes knowledge possible. Nothing is really s-poken or named ^ unless the word or name is in some sense merged in the reality it would express. Hence, for Vedantic piety, the name needed not to be spoken, but breathed only. " The best wor- ship is the silent."^ Hence, too, the significance of names and even syllables for Oriental contemplation, as carrying with them something far deeper and more real than an arbitrary symbolism for social con- venience. Thinking, naming, knowing, are the ideals * Kapila, Sctnkhya Aphorisms^ III. 24. 2 ibid., II. Introduction. ' Essay in Praise of Knowledge. * BJiag. Gitd, ch. x. 33^ RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. of contemplative life. To identify them with being was to prove them earnest and devout. Is not all intense faith, will, love, identified with its ideal purpose? Does it not make thought one with thing, knowledge with what it knows, and the name with what it means? We know truth by participation, not by observation. To be absorbed into our idea or principle, so that it is the life of our life, to find it the substance of our path and opportunity, — this, not the mere perception of it as an object, is to know it. Of God what else can we know, save what we have found as life, ideal or actual, in ourselves ? Indispensable to universal religion is the unfailing faith of all mystics, that to know and to be are one. Veda, Upanishad, Sutra, — poetry, philosophy, Search for pi'^ycr, — arc possessed by the infinite de- truth. gii-g {q,^ spiritual knowledge. With incessant questioning they beset the mystery of being. The Svetasvatara opens thus: "The seekers converse to- gether. What form of cause is Brahma? Whence are we ? By whom do we live and where at last abide? By whom are we governed? Do we walk after a law, in joy and pain, O ye knowers of God? " And the Kena thus : " By whom decreed and appointed, does the mind speed to its work ? " The Mitri asks : " How can the soul forget its origin ? How, leaving its selfhood, be again united thereto ? " In Yajna- valkya's Code, the munis inquire of their chief: " How has this world come into being, with gods, spirits, and men ; and how the soul itself ? Our minds are dark : enlighten us on these things." ^ » YAjn., III. ii8. VEDANTA. 337 In the Vedanta poems, wise men and women pro- pound questions, and are answered by wiser ones, or ask in vain. Experience is revealed, foolishness confounded. " Answer truly, or thy head shall fall down," say these saints to each other, let us hope symbolically. The problems that all generations must meet are stated, solved, or left reverently in the care of the Unknown. " How shall death be escaped, and what are the fetters of life ? What is the light of this soul, when the sun and moon have set ? On what are the worlds woven and rewoven ? What is this witness, ever present, the soul within each ? If, O venerable one ! this whole world were mine, -could I become immortal thereby ?"^ The wise answer wisely, and the questioner is dumb. " The king of the Videhas sat on his throne. Then came Yajna- valkya. ' Why hast thou come, O Yajnavalkya ? Is it seeking cattle, or with subtle questions ? ' — ' Even both, O king of kings ! ' — '•Let us hear what any has taught thee.'' " ^ The boon the king asks of his seers is that he may question them at his pleasure. " O sages, whoever is best knower of Brahma, shall have a thousand cattle, their horns overlaid with gold." "As a warrior rises with arrows, and binds the string to his bow, so will I rise before thee with two questions," says Gargi, the daughter of Vachacknu ; " do thou make answer." "Ask on, O Gargi!" And questions and answers lead on through the circle of being, resting at last in the "imperishable One, who unseen sees, unheard hears, unknown knows, beside whom there is none that sees, or hears, or knows." ^ ^ Brihad, III. IV. VI. * Ibid., IV. i. a ibid., III. viii. . 22 338 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. " The wise does not speak of any thing else but the Supreme, his delight is in the soul ; his love and action also." ' . The earliest writers about the Hindus inform us that this people spent their time conversing on life and death. These lively Greeks were profoundly impressed by the absorption of the Brahmans in the thought of immortality. Megasthenes noted their frequent discourse of death as the birth of the soul into blessed life. And Porphyry marvelled at their passion for yielding life, even when no evils pressed on them, and their efforts to seoarate the soul from the senses, esteeming those who died to be happiest, as receiving immortal life. Nachiketas, having earned the promise of a boon Nachiketas from Yama, or Death, demands to know if the death. soul is immortal. And Death replies : ^ — " It is a hard question : the gods asked it of old. Choose another boon, O Nachikdtas ! do not compel me to this : release me from this." N. " The gods indeed asked it of old, O Death ! And as for what thou sayest, that 'it is not easy to understand it,' there is no other speaker to be found like thee, O Death ! there is no other boon like this." Y. " Choose, O Nachikdtas ! sons and daughters who may live a hundred years ; choose herds of cattle, elephants, gold, horses, celestial maidens ; choose the wide-expanded earth, and live as many years as thou wilt. Be a king, O Nachiketas ! on the wide earth ; I will make thee enjoyer of all desires ; but do not ask what the soul shall be after death. N. " All those enjoyments are of yesterday : perishes, O thou end of man ! the glory of all the senses ; and more, the life of all is short. With thee remain thy horses and the like, with thee dance and song. " Man rests not satisfied with wealth. If we should obtain wealth and behold thee, we should live only so long as thou shalt sway. The boon I choose is what I said. 1 Mundaka, III. i. 4. * KatJia Uj>an.y I.-IIL VEDANTA. 339 "What man living in this lower world, who knows that he decays and dies, — while going to the undecaying immortals he shall obtain exceeding bliss, — who knows the real nature of such a's rejoice in beauty and love, can be content with a long life ? " Answer, O Death ! the great question, which men ask, of the coming world. Nachiketas asks no other boon but that, whereof the knowledge is hid." K " One thing is good : another thing is pleasure. Both with different objects enchain man. Blessed is he who between these chooses the good alone. Thou, O Nachiketas ! considering the objects of desire, hast not chosen the way of riches, on which so many perish. " Ignorance and knowledge are far asunder, and lead to different goals. I think thou lovest knowledge, because the objects of desire did not attract thee. " They who are ignorant, but fancy themselves wise, go round and round with erring step, as bhnd led by the blind. He who believes this world exists, and not the other, is again and again subject to my sway. "Of the soul, — not gained by many, because they do not hear of it, and which many do not know, though hearing, — of the soul, wonderful is the teacher, wonderful the receiver, wonderful the knower. The knowledge, O dearest ! for which thou hast asked, is not to ,be gained by argument ; but it is easy to understand it when declared by a teacher who beholds no difference in soul. Thou art persevering as to the truth. May there be for us another inquirer like thee, O Nachiketas ! Thee I believe a house with open door. " The wise, by meditation on the unfathomable One, who is in the heart, leaves both grief and joy : having distinguished the soul from the body, the mortal rejoices, obtaining it in its subtle essence." Nor is the questioner yet content. "Make known to me this being which thou beholdest, as different from this whole of times, of causes, and effects." Then follows the praise of essential being ; of spirit, as of one nature with deity : — " It is not born, nor does it die : it was not produced from any one, nor was any produced from it. Eternal and without decay, it is not slain, though the body is slain. 340 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. " If the slayer think, ' I slay,' or if the slain thinks, ' I am slain,' then both of them do not know well. It does not slay, nor is it slain. Subtler than what is subtle, greater than what is great, it abides in the heart of the living. " He who is free from desire and grief beholds, through tran- quillity of his senses, that majesty of the soul. " Sitting, it goes afar ; sleeping, it goes everywhere. " Thinking the soul as bodiless among bodies, as firm among fleeting things, as great and all-pervaTding, the wise casts off all grief. " The soul cannot be gained by knowledge of rites and texts, not by understanding of these, not by manifold science. It can be obtained by the soul by which it is desired, //zs soul reveals its own truth} " Whoever has not ceased from evil ways, has not subdued his senses, and concentrated his mind, does not obtain it, not even by knowledge." *rt^ " Know the soul as the rider, the body as the car ; know intellect as the charioteer, and mind, again, as the reins. The senses are the horses, their objects the roads. ^ "Whoso is unwise has the senses unsubdued, like wicked horses of the charioteer. But whoso is wise has the senses subdued like good horses of the charioteer. " Whoso is unwise, unmindful, always impure, does not g^in the goal, but descends to the world again. But whosoever is wise, mindful, always pure, gains the goal from whence he is not born again, the highest place of the all-pervading One. " Higher than the senses are their objects, higher than their objects is the mind ; intellect higher than mind ; higher than intel- lect the great soul.^ " Higher than this great one the Unmanifested ; higher than the unmanifested the Spirit ; * higher than this is nought ; it is the last hmit and highest goal. " Let the wise subdue his speech by mind, his mind by knowl- edge, his knowledge in the great soul ; subdue this also in the placid Soul [peace of the soul]. r ' This is Sankara's understanding of the text ; but Rber thinks, in common with Rfiiller and Muir, that a more literal version would be : " It is attainable by him whom it chooses. The Soul chooses this man's body as its own." In view of tlie context, however, the meaning is substantially the same, — that the wise seeker finds God wiihin, and not through outward revelations. 2 Compare Plato in Pkeedrus, § 74. ' The "rider." * Purusha. VEDANTA. 341 "Awake, arise, get to the great teachers, and attend. The wise say that the road to Him is as difficult to tread as a razor's edge." " The wise who tells and hears the eternal tale, which Death related and Nachiketas received, is adored in the world of Brahma." "It is evident," says Dr. Roer, the translator of this wonderful Upanishad, "that the Katha derives the knowledge of Brahma from philosophy, and denies the possibility of a revelation." ^ We should say rather • it grandly identifies knowledge with revelation. Its God is revealed to the wise by their own nature. " One's soul reveals its own truth ; not to be gained by mere knowledge of Vedas, by understanding nor by science;" "not by word, mind, nor eye, but by the soul by which it is desired ; " nor by intellect alone, but by "union of intellect with soul."^ There is nothing of which we read so much in this Hindu thought and worship as Immortality . J. lie oCXloC It is the word for final beatitude, for the end of immor- of all human aspiration. "Whoso is one with '^' the Supreme obtains immortality," is the burden ot precept, philosophy, and prayer. " Immortal become those who know." ^ What meaning did they attach to the term ? Certainly the idea of self-conscious individuality beyond death did not stand so definitely before these dreaming souls as it does before the sharper intelli- gence and the intenser individualism of the modern mind.* But this was simply because self-conscious- ness was not so definitely conceived as a -present fact; 1 KatJui, Introd. 2 ibid., H. 23 ; VI. 12 : II. 12. 8 Ibid., VI. 9. * It is denied in the Brihad {YV . v. 13) that after death there is any self-consciousness; but it is explained as referring to such as are become pure soul, — one with Brahma. 342 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. because it is never definite to the contemplative imagi- nation, which tends to escape it, rather than seeks to hold it fast. On the other hand that anxious dependence on it which comes with the growth of the understanding, and the complexity and refinement of personal relation to men and things, did not trouble them with the doubts and fears which beset it in view of the mystery of physical death. It is here that the feeling of -personal liberty^ so Difference "^^^^ strougcr in the Western than in the of Eastern Eastcm raccs, shows at once its value and its conscious- defect. Their belief in definite creation as an °^^2' act of divine Will, for, instance, so cherished by them, has this advantage over the Oriental belief in Emanation, that it expresses and develops the human sense oi free intelligent -purpose; and thus strengthens the hold of the individual soul on its own conscious existence, and its faith in its own continu- ance as a productive force. At the same time, this strong individuality, nurtured not only by the beli€f just mentioned, but in so many other ways, brings a certain sense of isolation. Self-consciousness be- comes a treasure that demands profoundest care. It is besieged by anxieties and fears, arising from mys- teries which the understanding, thus roused to full faith in itself, and in itself alone, is yet incompe- tent to fathom. But a larger liberty succeeds, which drops the burden. It comes of fresh self- absorption in ideas and principles, in the life of the whole, as the unity of God and Man. The absence of this jealous watch over personal consciousness would naturally cause the Hindus to feel comparatively little interest in continued existence VEDANTA. 343 after death. Yet so strong is the desire of these dreamers for real being, so entire their faith that they are made for it, that they perpetually recur to the idea of immortality ; haunted by the sense of a life beyond death or change. And it is not merely another name for the joy of losing conscious being in the life of Brahma. For they followed the spirit through future lives ; traced it back to past ones ; believed in reminis- , •*■ Individual cence of actions done in former states of being ; imniortai- shrank from future bonds of penalty for present ^*^' deeds, as if they fully recognized that personality was somehow continuous through these manifold births. It was in fact associated with transmigration, if only as a doom to be escaped. But it would seem impossible that the goal which they yearned to attain beyond that, and which seemed to them worth the sacrifice of all positive special desires, could be other than a form of conscious being. It is certainly the longing of all mystical love and faith, to rest in no other object of thought, to be conscious of no lower form of being, than the One and Eternal. Yet they do not discon- nect this rest, even in conception, from personal ex- perience and the sense of communion with God. One of the Upanishads, for instance, describes poeti- cally the soul of the just man as ascending to Brahma's world : there it is questioned by Him about its faith and knowledge, and, being wisely answered, is welcomed thus : " This my world is thine." ^ As the old Hymns of the Rig Veda pray for distinct, conscious immortality in the " world of imperishable light, whither the fathers had gone before, and where all desires shall be fulfilled," — so even the abstrac- ^ Kaushitaki Upan., Weber, I. 395-403. 344 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. tions of later philosophy glow with assurance, how- ever ill-defined and mystical, of essential life as the crown of sacrifice and devotion. " On whatever nature thou meditatest at thy last hour, with desire, to that shalt thou go." ^ " The heavens are Light ; " ^ " the highest thought is a drop of Light ; " ^ and the departing spirit has a sunbeam for its guide.* " As a serpent, casts its slough, so this body is left by the soul. Its immortal life is Brahma, even Light." ^ Of the desire to keep track of the individual soul on a definite path beyond death, we shall speak else- where. But, after all, surely the vaguer sentiment of a natural confidence in life itself is nobler ; leaving this invisible future, in its form and detail, to the benignity and wisdom of immortal laws ; confident that these must involve what is best for the nature whose relations they unchangeably represent. The Vedanta philosophy, in its highest form. Immortality affirms that the proper definition of Immortal f^*^^^^ Life is to know God, by discernment of the knowledge *^ of God. soul as real being. ^ Mere continued existence, from world to world, did not, for such aspiration, constitute the substance or root of Immortality at all. It hardly entered as a noticeable element into the conception of this fulness of knowl- edge and bliss. No pains were taken to prove the fact. And the very thought of lapsing times and renewed births was to be escaped, for the pure sense of inalienable and eternal being. To know Okie's self as one with necessary life was the fact of Immortal- ity, and the evidence of the fact, at once. ^ Bhagavadgita. ^ BriJiad. s Tejovinda Upan., Weber, II. 63. * Thomson's Bhag. Gii&, note to p. 60 ; Brahma-Siiiras, in Colebrooke, I. 366. » Brihad. IV. 18, 7. « BrUiad, IV. iv. 14. VEDANTA. 345 Manifestly the contents of the idea here indicated are not to be supposed the same, whenever p^^ce of this and wherever the same terms are employed evidence. to express it. But, as Idea, it is for ever the essence of all spiritual evidence on this subject. How can we possibly know ourselves immortal, otherwise than by experience of what is imperisha- ble, and by knowing that we are in and of it, and inseparable from it ? " To know thyself immortal," said Goethe also, " live in the whole." " Evidences of immortality " which do not meet these conditions of assurance are crude and imper- fect : their defect of spiritual vitality and relation is fatal to them. Such are those which infer a future life for all men from traditions of a single miraculous resurrection ; and those which rest on testimonies to the reappearance of many persons after their bodily death, as through some natural law ; and those which proceed on the ground that we can be spiritually fed by the reflection of our curiosity or desire, or even by the echoes of* our gossip, from beyond the veil. Of such physical evidences of mere continued existence, the Vedanta philosophy knows nothing. It does not seek its data on this external plane. But of those higher forms of evidence, whose method, still the best we know, has the most,,, Illustrations. intimate relation to essential truth and life, that older piety, like the best of every later faith, has full measure ; though their practical contents in Hindu experience cannot of course compare with those of a larger civilization. The Sankhya philosophy proves immortality from the effort we make to liberate our- selves from the senses ; the Vedanta, from the realitv of all spirit; Brahmanas and Upanishads alike, from 34^ RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. the knowledge of God in the soul; and- one Vedic hymn, as Miiller translates it, from death itself. " There was in the beginning no death ; ihei'cfore no immortality." ^ •J Soul itself was immo7'tality ^ "indestructible, an- cient," " not to be dissipated, not to be seized nor touched ; " soul itself, in its essence one with the Su- preme.^ It is one's own soul that teaches this, " if he be desirous of immortal nature." "Wise, mindful, alwaj^s pure, subduing the senses, fixed on God, one finds the place where fear is not; the goal, the refuge, the serene Soul : he escapes the mouth of death." ^ The sum was this. To know the infinite and eter- nal in all, makes immortal life. The Bhagavadgita says, " He is bright as the sun beyond darkness at the hour of death." ^ And the Mundaka, " He is the bridge to immortality."^ "When He is known," says the Kena, " as the nature of eyery thought, then immor- tality is known." ^ It is "the death of duality in the soul : when the notion of being different (in essence) from the Supreme ceases, the soul if^held by him becomes immortal."''' " Cast off thy desires as the serpent his slough : break but this bondage of the heart, thou art immortal here."* " That Supreme Soul, whose work is the universe, always dwell- ing in the hearts of all beings, is revealed by the heart. Those who know Him become immortal. None can comprehend Him in space above or space below or space between. For Him whose name is the glory of the universe, there is no likeness." " Not in the sight abides his form, none beholds Him with the eye. Those who know Him as dwelling within become immortal." ^ ^ Sansk. Lit., 560. 2 Upanishads, passitn; Bhagav. Gita. ^ Kailta^ III. IV. *Bh.G.,VUl. ''' Muttdaka, n. \\. s- ^ Kena, U. a- '' Brih.^ II. iv. ; Svetds'vatara. 8 Katha, VI. 15. ^ Svetdsv., IV. 17-20. VEDANTA. 347 In that interior sense in which the eternal only is real, the transient is phantasmal. ' Conceived MSya, the as manifold, transitional, not as one in essence, phenomenal. but as ever-flowing form, the world to the Vedantist was but a shadow. Its phenomena referred him to somewhat beyond, which they could but hint, which their changefulness suggested by contrast only. Every passing fact or form in its vanishing said : " Not in me thy goal, thy rest. I am but masking and disguise." We recall the cry of Job out of the depths of this sense of the perishable : — " Where is wisdom, and where the place of understanding ? It cannot be found in the land of the living. " The deep saith, ' It is not in me ; ' and the sea saith, ' Not in me.' Destruction and death say, ' We have heard of its fame with our ears.' God only knoweth the way to it. He only its dwelling- place. " Behold the fear of the Lord, that is thy wisdom; and to depart from evil, thy understanding." The " wisdom " which the Aryan mystic, on his part also, could not find in the land of the living, nor in the sky nor sea, nor in destruction and death, was to him also a reality ; and it turned the perishable to a shadow, only as knowing the unchangeable to be a reality. His " fear " was the fear of being swept from that foothold by the tide of fleeting forms. His "forsaking of evil " was in casting off delusion, and knowing truth as the one and imperishable refuge. The shifting play of forms in time and space, in that they were not truth in this sense, was illusion. Did they not change with the eye itself that beheld them? Of what could their flowing and flitting give assur- ance? This evanescence mocked the infinite thirst of man, and piqued it to negation. This was their 348 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 7ndyd. It was coextensive with the universe of change. It was uiij-eality ; yet not in the sense in which one who had learned to associate great human interests with the visible world would use the word in contradistinction to thei7' reality. It will be better understood in the sense in which it would be applied to the world in contrasting such reality with its evanes- cence^ which in this point of view would become its unx^dXiX-y. Maya was not a declaration of nonentity, not a pure negation. It was part of the mystic's Itsperma- . ° . ^ . . -^ nent mean- solutiou of his problem of asplratiou versus '"^' imperfection, of ideal and actual, of the moral choice between a higher and a lower aim. Maya was his explanation of that flicker of the senses which disturbed his contemplation, and mocked his effort to fix thou^cht and heart on Beinor alone. His mastery of wandering desires, and sorrow, and evil, and of all that bitterness in the actual, which smote on his ideal hope, was in that word Illusion. It solved the mystery. It overcame the world. For it meant ; — These things are not really as they seem. It is only that I see them so for the moment. Their sense is in what my soul shall make them mean through its one- ness with the real ; which I shall know even as it is when I am master of self and sense, and in knowing become. Give us, what we are now attaining so fast, full understandinof of material and social uses ; turn the current of faith and work from the transcendental dream of the East into the positive and clear actualism of the West ; yet this substance of the necessity which the believer in nidyd felt, none the less truly stands fast for us also. And its uses remain ; though VEDANTA. 349 what Goethe calls the "tenacious persistence of what- ever has once arrived at actual being," the exactly opposite pole to that Oriental sense of instability and transience, has now become the all-controlling spring of thought and conduct. Maya, in its root, ina^ meant at first manifestation or creation^ marking these as real; then this Meaning of reality considered in its mystery^ the riddle the word. which finite existence is to the sense of the infinite in man ; and so, generally, the mystery of all subtle untraceable powers, — and from this meaning of the word come magic and mage; and last, in this com- pleted mystic devotion, it meant the illusion that besets all finite things. Such the power of the spirit to take up the visible universe into its dream, to turn its concrete substance into shadow, its positive real into unreal, and dissolve the solid earth in the fervent heat of faith. Some have referred the complete conception ot mdyd to an advanced staple of Hindu philos- ■^ . ° , ^ Function of ophy. In the earlier Upanishads there is a Maya in the certain realism in the idea of the world and of'^'^'^""''"'^- life ; and they present these as consuhstantial with God, rather than illusory in any absolute sense. ^ It has even been supposed — I cannot see with what reason — that mdyd originated in the negations of Buddhism. But its substance seems to be inherent in the structure of the Aryan mind, after all ; whose habit, even in its most practical phases, is to treat its present conception of a truth or a thing as partial 1 See Banerjea, Dialogues on Hindu Philosophy, p. 386. Colebrooke {Essays, I. 377) says that mdyd does not belong to the original Vedanta Sutras. It is very fully devftl- oped, however, in some of the later Upanishads, such as the Svetasvatara. 350 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. and imperfect; in other words, as (so far) illusion in view of a better future one. On this habit of holding the facts of experience as provisional depends the power of progress which distinguishes it. This is no fanciful analogy. To the courage and energy of the Aryan race, as well as to its contemplative faculty, in the West as in the East, the actual is always plastic and convertible. It flits like dreams in the waking moment, before the higher possibility that beckons beyond. All is mdyd, as contrasted with the perma- nence of productive. Mind. Neither in speculation nor practice is any special form of being held to be independent of this all-revising, reconstituting force. The more it discerns of the world, the more intensely does it transfer reality from the conceptions that are behind to those that are before, and sweep these in turn into the same transforming flood. Mind makes, unmakes, and makes again. Yet the true limitation of mdyd comes through this very faith in mind as the only substantial reality and power ; a fact which appears pre-eminently in the con- sciousness of the Indo-European. I refer to the claim of the individual soul to persistence, by virtue of hold- ing in itself full recognition of this validity of mind. Consciousness of being, in other words, involves par- ticipation in being. No Eastern dream of universal metamorphosis, or of the unreality of definite forms or the evanescence of experience, is likely to shake the sense which culture is enforcing, of somewhat per- manent in the subjective source of one's changing thought and growth, memory and desire. With us, as well as with these mystic dreamers, such words as "con- sciousness," "self," "identity," hover in a dim atmos- phere of past changes and future possibilities. But the VEDANTA. 351 indefiniteness of these Ideas is passing more and more surely into a sense of permanent relation to the whole ; and this sense comes to be the real self-conscious- ness, giving sublimer meaning and validity to life as life. To have once arrived at personality, to generate the perception of being, and to have consciousness of it as real, is to partake of that reality. And whatever is achieved by this personality participates in like man- ner in its validity. So that even the fleeting detail of life and conduct assumes eternal meaninn^. The use of illusion is to deepen, not to destroy, this meaning ; being genially interpreted as friendly to the soul, and the natural index of its perpetual growth. We may well believe that it had its helpful and hopeful aspects to the more contemplative Oriental mind also, seeking in its way to lose individual self-cansciousness in the life of the whole. Maya was the fine sense of transition, of the flow of form into form, that makes each intangible Analogues and elusiv.e ; the sign of evanescence. In of Maya. the delicate mythology of the Greek, it appears as mother of Hermes, who is messenger of the gods, and their deceiver also ; the cheat of expectation, the thief of trusts ; whose brisk and versatile genius can never- theless draw music from the laggard tortoise of time. It is mdyd^ too, that we trace in the keen dialectics of the Eleatic School, chasing time and space and all forms of perception through the vanishing points of transition, to end in the same sense of the phantasmal everywhere save in " the One." And modern science comes back to mdyd in its protean dance of forces ; its metamorphoses and cor- relations, that prove the manifold to be illusory, and all phases of force to be in essence one. 352 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. The common sense of civilization is not at war with Its indispen. this ancicnt wisdom of Illusion. It needs no sabieness. mystic to 866 that indyd is not to be escaped, is indeed the most practical of realities. Does not our so palpable and solid world change with the eye that looks on it ? Does it not mock our fixed ideas and our stable definitions ? Not even does gold mean gold. The boy's coppers are gold to him ; but what are eagles to the miser ? Are dollars wealth, tied round a drowning man's waist for preservation, and so dragging him down to loss of all ? Are the shrewd shrewd ? How the financial storm sweeps down the business colossus beneath petty men who trembled in his shadow ! Room yet for thee, great Maya, with the wisest of the children of this world ! Is not all our knowledge relative ? Who of us sees the facts as they ' are ? An owl's eyes peering into darkness detects what we cannot. Molecular immo- bility is an illusion. Every atom vibrates with cosmic and local movements, imperceptible to eye or ear. " The human organism reaches but a little way along the scale of sensibility." And the universe is aflame and vocal with subtler light and sound that it perceives not. What comes with the touch of the insect's anten- nas, or the cilia of the rotifer ? Our chemist knows what nature is made of, for his crucibles ; but let him tell us what she is to the monad in the water-drop, and show the relations of that image to the world, as it stands in the thought that combines galaxies and £eons as we do stars and hours. What is nature to deity, to the Soul that sees all as an Eternal Now ? And beneficent Maya still helps us to solve the problems of evil. For if sorrow and loss mean exactly what they •seem, then what sense is there in our hope to find VEDANTA. 353 that in them which we see not ? If inscrutable wrongs and vices are not to be newly read from a higher point of vision, then what are providence and growth, and how shall we justify existence itself ? There is no solution of these mysteries till we take to heart the laws of illusion. Plutarch finely says, " Alter the nature of your misfortunes by putting a different con- struction on them." Always it is man's wisdom as well as relief to expect metamorphoses, and to deny stability of the hard solid facts that resist us. To read between these lines ; to see loss as gain in the making, fate as freedom, failure as success, death as life, — thus still and ever to recognize illusion, — is the path to reality. Very solid is granite, very rigid is fact ; and you shall take men and things as they are. Undeniable indeed ; but how ai'e they ? " Where the spider sucks- poison, the bee finds honey," says the proverb. What we are, that we see ; and, sooner or later, we find that the first step to knowledge is to doubt if things are what they seem. Under the thought of the Hindu mystic, that all below God is illusion, hides a secret that masters pain and loss, and turns hindrance to help. He' saw that the permanent only was to be trusted; and his mdyd meant that he knew whatsoever did not yield him this to be delusion and dream. Natural illusions have their protective uses, their fine adapta- tions and delights ; recognized more and more, the larger the sense of practical capabilities in life. They gird it with delicate talismans and charms ; soften rough contacts ; hide sterner fates. All the more need, then, that, when we learn how they play with our credulity, we do not react to universal doubt, but pluck divine certainties even from the heart of our dreams. And 23 ' 354 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. in the rush and whirl of social machinery, the phantas- magoria of things^ we want all the more of the tran- scendental conviction that there is pure reality in the best and highest only. It is better to believe the world and the senses to be illusory than to believe the eternal, the immutable, the ground of law and duty and faith, to be a dream. Hindu philosophy did not fail on this side. Crca- The world tion iudccd was illusion ; yet it had its from'^'^^ ^ substance in a divine intent ; and at least was Brahma, not Separated therefrom. It was Brahma's own maya, his "breathing," his "sport," his "magic," and so within him still ; ^ not the outside ball, made of nothing, and flung out of his hand to spin of itself. In the Hindu myth that God created the world " by a thought ^''^ there is even a deeper hold on the imma- nence of Spirit than in the Hebrew, that it was called into being by a " wor<^," — something sent out and away from the mouth, as it were. "God said^ and it was," is the one : " God thought^ and it was, " is the other. Hebrew religion, fervent and spiritual as it was, emphasized sc-paratton between God and the Semitic and ^ ■'■ Aryan world, cspccially the world of man. It was ideals. ^j^g shrinking of the soul before its own ideal, in a deep. sense of short-coming; and these seeds of . fear and alienation in the relimous sentiment ofi'ew into debasing theologies which no imperfect bridge- work of mediation or atonement can permanently redeem. Hindu belief emphasized 07ieness of God 1 "He who is only One, possessed of mSyS, united with mSyS, creates the whole." Svetasvatara,\\\. i; IV. 9. "The Maya of the Vedantists," says the DabistSn, "is the 'magic of God ; ' because the universe is 'his playful deceit.' He gives it apparent existence, himself the unity of reality ; like an actor, passing every moment from form into form." Dai..^ oh. ii. 4. VEDANTA. 355 with the world ; even in the play of illusions seeking fearlessly for the reality they disguised. It lacked the awe the Semite felt in presence of his own conception of the Infinite. It was not a goad of self-condemnation like his stern moral law. And it could degenerate, though in different ways, into mythology and rite as superstitious as the Semitic. But its ground was faith, not fear; and now that re- ligion, mature enough to dispense with schemes for "reconciling God and man," affirms, as its starting- point, the immanence of deity, it is simply resuming on a higher plane, and with practical insight, the truth which early Aryan philosophy instinctively divined. I do not forget that idolatry of the Veda,, which might seem to disprove these claims of devo- vedawor- tion to the Spirit alone. In the wide freedom ^^'p- of discussion open to the Hindu schools, through endless subtleties of speculation on the primal ques- tions of being and thought, the authority of this common bible, twisted and accommodated, like the Christian, in every way that teachers or times might demand, is for the most part accepted without ques- tion. The Vedanta commentators, especially, labor to prove that it is infallible and without human author, identical with "the eternity of sound;" and that the rishis, who are called makers of the hymns, really saw them only. How far this last theory implied that the human faculties of these inspired men were sup- planted by supernatural vision, may not be easy to say. These are questions which bibllolatry raises in all religions. But the mystical worship of soul rose easily out of such conventionalism into the assertion of its own higher inspiration. Scarcely one of the Upanishads fails to urge the superiority of the science 35 6 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. of soul to the study of scripture, or else to imply this by the whole tenor of its thought. " Of what use," they say, " are the hymns of the Rig to one who does not know Him in whom all the gods abide? "^ To one who said, " I know only the hj^mns, w^hile I am ignorant of soul," a sage replies, "What thou hast studied is name. But there is something which is more than name."^ "There are two sciences: the lesser comprehends the rituals, astronomy, the study of words, and the Vedas ; the higher is the science by which the Eternal One is known." ^ It may be of use to hear the testimony of the author of the Dabistan, who wrote tw^o or three centuries ago, as to the spirit of the later Vedantists. He records a visit made to one of their schools with an eminent Hindu poet, who was filled with admiration at what he heard there, and said, " My whole life is passed in the company of devotees ; but my eyes never beheld such independence, and my ears never heard any thing comparable to the speeches of these emanci- pated men." A few passages brought together from the literature of this Spiritual Pantheism will show the meaning it gave to Soul, Duty, Deity, Life : — "Whatever exists in this world is to be enveloped in the thought The su- of the supreme Soul. Whoever beholds all beings in preme soul, this soul alone, and the soul in all beings, cannot look down on any creature. When one knows that all is soul, when he beholds its unity, then is there no delusion, no grief." "He is all-pervading, bodiless, pure, untainted by sin, all-wise, ruler of mind, above all beings, knd self-existent. He distributed things according to their nature for everlasting years." "^ " Adore Him, ye gods, after whom the year with its rolling days ' Svetasvaiara. ^ ChJiandogya. ^ Mutidaka^ I. i. 5. * Vayasaneya Upatu VEDANTA. 357 is completed, the Light of lights, the Immortal Life. He is the Ruler and Preserver of all, the Bridge, the Upholder of worlds lest they fall." ' " The great, the Lord in truth, the Perfect One, the Mover of all that is, the Ruler of purest bliss, He is Light and He is everlasting. He, the Infinite Spirit, is like the sun after darkness. He is to be adored by the deity of the sun : from Him alone has arisen the ancient knowledge." " By the Perfect Soul is all this universe pervaded. None can comprehend Him in the space above, the space below, or the space between. For Him whose name is infinite glory there is no like- ness. Not in the sight abides his form. None beholds Him*by the eye : they who know Him dwelling in the heart and mind be- come immortal." " Without hands or feet He speeds, He takes. Without eye He sees, without ear hears. He is all-knowing, yet known by none ; undecaying, omnipresent, unborn ; revealed by meditation ; whoso knows Him, the all-blessed, dwelling in the heart of all beings, has everlasting peace." ^ " He is not apprehended by the eye, not by devotions nor by rites ; but he whose mind is purified by the hght of knowledge beholds the undivided One, who knows the soul. Inconceivable by thought, more distant than all distant things, and also near, dwelling here in the heart for him who can behold." ^ "The wise who behold this Soul as the eternal among transient things ; as the intelligent among those that know ; as that which, though one, grants the prayers of many, — the wise, who behold the one ruler and inner soul of all, as dwelling within themselves, obtain eternal bliss ; they, not others." "^ " This is dearer than a son, than wealth, than all things ; for this is deeper within. Whoever worships the soul as dear, to him what is dear is not perishable.^ It is for the soul's sake that all are dear.^ " The soul is to be perceived only by its own true idea ; and only by him who declares that it is real." ^ " Truth alone, not falsehood, conquers. By truth is opened the road which the rishis trod, whose desires are satisfied, the supreme abode. "' ^ 1 Brihad, IV. iv. 22. » Svetasvatara, III. IV. VI. 3 Mimdaka, III. i. 7, 8. * Katha, V. 12, 13. 5 Brihad^ I. iv. 8. ' Brihad, II. iv. 5. ' Kaika, VI. 12, 13. 8 Mtmdaka, III. 6. 358 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. " Let one worship the Soul as his place, and his work shall not perish. Whatsoever he desires from the Soul, the same shall he obtain." ^ " He gains that world and those desires which he imagines in his mind. Therefore let one who desires prosperity worship Him who knows the souh" ^ " The wise who has studied the scriptures casts them by, as he Soul is free- who seeks grain the chaff." ^ dom. " Yajnavalkya, when asked how a Brahman can do with- out the sacrificial girdle, answered, ' The soul itself is his girdle.' " * " They who fancy that oblations and rites are the highest end of m^n know not any thing good. The foohsh ones go round and round, coming back to decay and death, oppressed by misery, as blind led by the blind." 5 " There is a higher and a lower science : the lower is that of the Vedas, the higher that of the Eternal One." ^ " Worshipping deities as if these were apart from themselves, the ignorant maintain their gods, as beasts support a man. It is not pleasant to such gods that men should know Brahma," — and be free.^ '' To behold the soul in itself alone is to subdue sin, not to be Soul Is moral subdued by it." ^ discipline. " By holy acts shall one become holy, by evil ones evil. As his desire, so his resolve ; as his resolve, so his work ; as his work, so his reward." ^ " Whoso has not ceased from evil ways shall not obtain true soul." >" If prayer is aspiration to become one with ideal life, Soul is then this Vedantic pantheism is itself essential- prayer. ]y ^ prayer. And its religious earnestness lifts up the old eternal cry for guidance, help, and rest. There is an old hymn perhaps relating to the last hours of life, which is often quoted in the Upanishads. 1 Brihad, I. iv. 15. ^ Amritanada Up., V. 18. " Mzmdaka Up., I. ii. 7, 8, 10. ' Brihad, I. iv. 10. » Ibid., IV. iv. s. 2 Mundaka, III. 10. * yabala, Weber, Indische Studien, II 75. « Mundaka Up., I- i. 5. 8 Brihad, IV. iv. 23. " Katha Up., 11. 24. * VEDANTA. 359 It appeals to deity as dwelling in the Sun, whose outward light is invoked to give way to its spiritual meaning: — " To me, whose duty is truth, open, O Sun ! upholder of the world, the entrance to truth, hidden by thy vase of dazzling light. Withhold thy splendors that I may behold thy true being. For I am immortal. The same soul that is in thee am I. Let my spirit obtain immortality, then let my body be consumed. Remember thy actions, remember, O my mind ! Guide, O Agni ! to bliss. O God, all-knowing ! dehver from the crooked path of sin." ' "As the birds repair, O beloved ! to a tree to dwell there, so all this universe to the Supreme." ^ " From the unreal, lead me to the real ; from darkness to light, from death to immortality. This uttered overcomes the world." ^ " There is no end to misery, save in knowledge of God." ^ " ' Thrice,' let the saint say, ^ I have renounced all.' " ^ What was this absolute renunciation? It did Renunda- not mean surrender of self-indulgence for the ^^°^- sake of practical uses. It meant rejection of the senses and the world altogether. His problem w^as to deliver hi« soul from all that was conditional, de- pendent, transient. And since he tracked these forms of experience through every phase of his being, it would seem at first sight as if he deliberately sought self-annihilation. But this could not be true in any recognized sense of the word. For he called the highest goal for which he strove beatitude, and its path emancipation. Its bliss was "knowing God," its end "immortal life." "A hundred fold the bliss of those who are gods by birth, is one joy of him who reaches the world of Prajapati. But the world of Brahma is the highest bliss of all." ^ 'O 1 BriJiad, V. xiv; V&yasaneya Sank. Up.., 13-18. * Prasno, Up-, IV. ' Brihad, I. iii. 28. Yajtir Veda Mantras. * Svetasvatara., VI. 20. B Arunika Up. (Weber, II. 178). « Brihad, IV. iii. 33. 360 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. I find no evidence that earnest men have ever made Not self- ^ religion out of the desire of nonentity. Mys- annihUation. ^j^g j^^ve always yeamcd to lose the sense of separate and limited selfhood in the depths of eter- nal and absolute being ; and they have, as invari- abl}^ been charged with desiring to abolish personal- ity. And the charge has usually come from those to whom the Absolute and Eternal was, as nearly as could well be, non-existent. To me it is quite incredible that a religious philoso- phy, so absorbed in the idea of Infinite Life as this is, should aim at destroying, in any absolute sense, that very consciousness which revealed it. And can we suppose any one to be longing for nothing with his whole heart and soul ? Great efforts have been made to prove the Buddhist Nirvana such an irrationality as this.^ But they are far from satisfiictory, and do not prove any thing but the extreme difficulty of making the mystical consciousness of the Oriental mind stand in the clear definite moulds* of Western thouo-ht. It should be fully recognized that this ardent devo- ^.^ . ^ J tion souorht not death, but life; not unreality, Life m God. & . ' •> r- j t but reality ; to escape error, perturbation, change ; conceit of the understanding, idolatry of self, absorption in sense, and slavery to things. " Our fire is piety, and in it I burn the wood of duality ; instead of a sheep, I sacrifice egotism. This is my The Alexandrian school of Greek thought was pervaded by this Oriental thirst for the One and Eter- 1 Burnouf, Koeppen, St. Hilaire. But Duncker, Mohl, and Miiller have fully shown the weakness of their interpretation. • A Vedantist sage ; quoted in Dabistaft, ch. ii. 4. Horn is the sacrificial butter. 'M-,:^** VEDANTA. \ ^ , A'j.2>^T- '^ \^^ nal. It pursued this "ecstasy," or identltyAof the /' soul with its ideal object as the only reality, witVCferi- earnestness of faith of which the Enneads of Plotinus^ ;J remain a marvellous monument for all time. And the same spirit gave religious fervor to the noblest minds of Christian ages ; to the freest of those whom the Church has refused to recognize, from age to age ; a mystic passion for the Infinite that, however unacknowledged, has been the fountain of the ideal life in man. The same in substance, how^ever remote the practi cal Western mind from the life of the East, is Augus- tine's ejaculation : "Thou hast made us, O Lord ! for thyself; and our souls are restless till they return to Thee." Mysteriously involved in the sense of immor- tality is a secret reminiscence of the " immortal sea which brought us hither." It haunts all religious imagination from the Vedic hymns down to Tauler and the Theologia Germanica ; to Wordsworth and Emerson, and the devout sonnets of Henry Vaughan and Jones Very. Say the Upanishads : — " He who has found God has ceased from all wisdom of his own ; as one puts out a torch and lays it down, when the place he sought in the darkness is found." ^ " As the flowing rivers come to their end in the sea, losing name and form, so, liberated from name and form, proceeds the wise to the Divine Soul." ^ " By him who thinks Brahma is beyond comprehension is Brah- ma known. He who thinks Him comprehended does not know Him. Known as the one nature in every thought, He is truly known. By this knowledge comes immortal life." ^ So sings the Sufi poet : — " O Thou of whom all is the manifestation, Thou, independent of ' thou and we,' Thyself ' thou and we,' — * Amritanada. * Mundaka. 8 Kena. 362 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. Thy nature is the spring of thy being : whatever is, is Thou ; We all are billows in the ocean of thy being ; We are a small compass of thy manifested nature."* And so the Christian mystic : — " God is a mighty sea, unfathomed and unbound : Oh, in this blessed deep may all my soul be drowned ! " * Here to abide, in the Spirit " that is without strife, without decay, without death, and without fear,"^ was the goal of that old ceaseless yearning to escape what was called the "return to births," as involved in the "bonds of actions." In a similar lihoris}ns, I. 139, 142, 143. » Karika, XXXVII. « Apk., I. 129, 130. » A ph., II. 29 ; K&riJi&, XIX. SAJ^KHYA. 387 soul " ? Have we not here a germ of positive science ? Is it any thing else than an instinctive presentiment of natural law, and of the development of the world there- by ? And is not the remanding of soul to the position of a " witness and seer," not interfering with those innate properties of spontaneous development, an imperfect recognition of the invariability of natural law, and its independence of all external volition or arbitrary in- tervention ? I cannot find a better explanation than this of his meaning, when, as if fascinated by the self-adequacy of nature, he refers the orderly processes of experience to modifications of an active but uncon- scious principle. Yet the unconsciousness of Prakriti is, as we have just seen, only relative to itself a;3 pro- cess, as mode, or as law. It stands in the closest rela- tion to conscious intelligence^ or soul, which, if not its cause, is allowed to be the motive from which it acts and the force w^hich " superintends " it.^ These are hints that soul, in the Sankhya, really means spirit guiding the course of nature, though Kapila does not seem to have followed them out. So the strictest modern positivist must recognize in natural law that unity, beauty, order, mystery, which are in fact repre- sentative of whatever intelligence holds most worthy of itself. What does Kapila mean here by "soul" and its "desire"? How does Prakriti point to that for whose service it exists ? In other words, how does the actual enforce faith in the ideal ? Here is the compact answer to the last questions : — " Since sensible objects are for use of another [than them- selves] ; since the opposite of that which has the three qualities must exist ; since there must be superintendence ; since there must * Karika, XVII. ; Aphorisms, I. 142. •qSS RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. O be one to enjoy ; and since there is a drawing to abstractionj — that is, since every one desires release, — therefore [know we that] Soul isP ^ What then is Soul? It is affirmed to be free from all What is qualities which produce the imperfections of soul? experience, — free, therefore, from their activ- ity or pursuit of special objects, which in experience produces dependence, bondage, loss, and grief. As steadfast, imperturbable, perfectl}^ self-subsistent, it must be related to the world of imperfect conditions as a witness and a bystander only, not a participant in these defects. In other words, — as we should say, and as the Hindu, in his fashion, says here, I think, quite clearly, — an ideal capability stands fast in us, as the real sub- stance of ourselves, untouched by the errors and stains of life, unabated by its discouragements, with serenity beholding them, as it were, in their real outwardness to its own essence. y Yet this ideal essence, like the Hellenic-Hebrew Soul not "Wisdom," though " remaining in itself, makes really bound. ^^^^ thlugs ucw." It is Constantly united with Prakriti in the individual consciousness, and so af- ■pears to share in its infirmities, to be bound in all the fetters of experience. But the appearance is illusory. The soul is not really bound. In all this confused activity, this unsatisfactory doing, it is " the qualities " that are active, while the " stranger " [soul] but appears the agent. ^ It is like our con- founding fire and iron in a heated bar, or sun and water in reflections from a stream ; like the color of glass when a rose is near it. It is ilkision : " verbal ; resides in the mind, not in the soul itself." ^ The soul 1 Kkrikd, XVII. 2 Ibid., XX. 3 Aph., I. 58. SANKHYA. 389 cannot be bound. "Verily not any soul is bound, or released, or transmigrates ; but nature (Prakriti) alone is so, in relation to the variety of beings." ^ In other words, the bondage men feel is not essential bondage ; ^ and thoroughly to know this by faith in the soul as absolute, imperishable, and free,^ is libera- tion. Plotinus, also, asserts the soul to be an essence which miseries and changes cannot touch; that these reach only to the shadow of it, not the substance ; that its bliss is in pure seeing, free of the blindness of ma- terial desires and pursuits. How the soul comes to be united with " nature," or the defects of experience, Kapila does not ask. He accepts the fact. Whence comes our ideal vision, is not the first, nor the main question, nor soluble for the scientific understanding at any time. For what end it is always with us, is the point of moment. And Kapila's answer is that, prac- tically, " union is for the sake of liberation." Till true discrimination is attained, till the validity and independence of this higher personality is appreciated, there remains the illusion which is bondage and pain. The lame and the blind are journeying, and agree to help each other : the blind carries the lame on his shoulders, and the journey is accomplished, since the one can walk and the other show the way. So " soul " conjoined with " nature," if it cannot move, can see ; and " nature," if it cannot see, can advance under guidance. Thus liberation is effected, and the jour- ney ends.'^ The Sankhya loves to describe the essen- tial good-will that resides in the process, arduous as it is; the real harmony of ideal and actual, the friend- ly purpose that animates this necessary illusion and 1 Karika., LXII.; ApJu, I. 160, 162. 2 Aph-, I. 7. 5 Aph.y I. 12, IS, 19. * Karika, XXI. 390 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. defect; the effort, as it were, of Prakriti herself to deliver man from his pain. That man shall know and discern her truth, — not that she hold him bound in ignorance, — is her purport. Unconscious nature lives and loves, in his desire. "As people engage in acts to relieve desires, so nature to liberate soul; generous, seeking no benefit, nature accom- plishes the wish of ungrateful Soul." ^ Her evolution goes on " for deliverance of each soul : " it is " done for another's sake as for self." ^ Here is unity of spirit plucked even from the abysses of speculative analysis, of essential distinction ! " Nothing," says Gaudapada, "is, in my opinion, more gentle than Prakriti : once aware of having been seen, she does not expose herself again to the gaze of soul." ^ How delicate and genial is this sense of illusion, which makes error vanish from the eyes of truth, as one who knows she should not be seen ! Similar ideas are found in the Gnostic systems. And the fundamental principle of both philosophies is the same. "Bondage is from misconception."'* It consists in errors about the nature of soul. If this seems to ignore the moral element, we have seen that the intellectual and the moral are closely associated in the old philosophies of the Aryan race : that " knowl- edge " involves entering into the nature of what is known, becoming one with the ideal, through aban- donment of all selfish and sensual interests. All Oriental wisdom assumes to a sfreater or less Moral reia- ^^g^^^ ^^^ \rvi\\\ of thc Platouic maxim, that to tionsofthis know virtue is to love it, and that whoso really * ^ sees vices must shun them. That moral evil 1 K&rik&, LVIII. LX. 2 Ibid., LVI. « Ibid., LXI. 4 A/>h., III. 24. SANKHYA. 391 is from misconception, and is to be cured by the pure vision of truth, is at least a principle tending to purify the conscience, and urge it to the pursuit of the real, to surrender of the shadow and the surface to win the substance of virtue. In the absence of that light which science lends to the conscience, the moral effect of this absolute faith in right knowing must have been relatively greater than that of distinctively intellectual motives at the present day. The Sankhya is philosophy rather than ethics ; and its aphorisms do not enter definitely into the . , .... . Ethical special disciplines by which pure " soul " was value of the to be reached. Yet the very substance of its ^^"^^'^^'^ "discrimination" is the preference of higher to lower principles ; of the eternal to the transient ; of ideal personality to self-centred individuality ; of spirit to sense ; of duty to desire. And the sum of those "defects of the understanding" which cause ^' delay of liberation" is distinctly defined to be " acquiescence ;"^ the self-complacency that causes It to stop short of that perfect sacrifice bv which truth is fullv known. Of the forms of such "acquiescence," four are in- ternal. The first relates to nature^ and consists In merely recognizing principles as of nature, without going further ; the second, to means, a mere depend- ance on observance ; the third, to time, a mere wait- ing, as if liberation would come in good season ; the fourth, to lack, expecting it to turn up by chance. The other, or external, kinds of acquiescence, are forms of abstinence from objects, merely because of the trouble and anxiety they bring. ^ The practical philosophy of the Sankhya, as far as ^ Karika, I 2 Qaudapada on Kar., L. 392 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. it can be seen in the Aphorisms, in fact, reminds us of the manly precepts of the later Stoic and the breadth of the Eclectic schools. " Not in a perturbed mind does wisdom spring." " The lotus is according to the soil it grows in." " Success is slow ; and not even, though instruction be heard, is the end gained without reflection." " Not by enjoyment is desire appeased." " Go not, of thine own will, near to one driven by strong desire." " He who is without hopes is happy." " Though one devote himself to many teachers, he must take the essence, as the bee from flowers."^ How far the sacrifice must be carried may be learned Limits of from the following decisive aphorism of the sdf-abnega. Karika I — tion. " Liberation obtained through knowledge of the twenty-five princi- ples teaches the one only knowledge, — that neither I am, nor is aught mine, nor do I exist." ^ Such is Wilson's translation, which doubtless a little periphrasis would make more intelligible to the Teu- tonic mind. How are we to understand such a statement as this? If it were the language of sentiment, instead of being, as it is, a positive aphorism of philosophy, it might find its equivalents in the mystical piety of every age. That it should here mean either nihilism, or the " desire of annihilation,'" is plainly impossible. We have seen that even the Vedanta, in resolving all existence into illusion, except the life of the soul in the absolute and eternal, taught no such purpose of self-destruction. Can we then imagine this to be, in any sense, compati- ble with the intense realism of Kapila, who firmly insists not only that nature is a positive principle and 1 A^/t., IV. 2 K&rikci, LXIV. SANKHYA. 393 entity,^ but that soul is not one, but many; and that each of these souls is a unit, or monad, real and imperishable?^ The whole aim of the Sankhya is liberation ^^for the sake of this,''^ which is the -pi'o^er ■personality ^ and nowise to be lost, nor merged, nor marred. Kapila indeed takes special pains to declare that "the soul's aim is not annihilation."^ And the commentators on the verse above quoted explain it to mean that the one true wisdom is " difference from egotism," and "exemption from being the seat of pain;" i.e.^ from the errors and bonds of the under- standing in its consciousness of agency.* "By these expressions, — 'neither I am, nor is aught mine, nor do I exist,' — we are not to understand negation of soul. This would be direct contradiction to the Sankhya categories. It is intended merely as nega- tion of the soul's having any active participation, in- dividual interest, or property, in human pains and human feelings. The verse does not amount, there- fore, as Cousin has supposed, to "le nihilisme absolu, dernier fruit du skepticisme."^ It should seem that the term ^Wiunian^^^ in Wilson's explanation, as indicating what is to be dismissed from the life in liberation, covers too large a ground ; since the soul, as Kapila conceives it, is properly the very essence of our humanity, and all human experience is for its sake.^ Yet, inasmuch as in Hindu thought knowledge of soul can be attained only by becoming soul, it Disparage- would follow that the interests of the body, Outward. 1 Aph., I. 79 ; VI. 53. * Aph., I. 144, 149-151. "As the elements are real so is the soul real." Yajnav., III. 149- s Aph.^ I. 47. * Chandrika, quoted by Wilson, p. 180. e Wilson, p. 181. « Aph.^ II. 46. 394 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. and properly the body itself, must pass away before liberation, in the pure and perfect sense, can be achieved. Disparagement of man's physical and practical relations is of course the weak point in this as in all Oriental philosophy. Kapila's insistence on the "isolation" of soul, and its distinction from ''nature," involves a constant endeavor to separate the two in the interest of the former, which, even his realistic view of " nature," and his perception of her essential sympathy with the "aim of soul," cannot counteract. Thus while he affirms that liberation is possible in this life, and without the dissolution of the body, he is careful to explain that, wdien this is attained, soul remains invested with body only as the potter's wheel continues to whirl, after the potter has left it, by the impetus previously given. ^ The aspira- tion after purely spiritual existence in the present life has produced similar disparagement of outward rela- tions in Christianitv also, froni the New Testament down to the renaissance-epoch in modern Europe, and even till the recent growth of physical science. Its asceticism could only be counterbalanced by social interests and practical aims ; and these have but fol- lowed up the "necessary discriminations" insisted on by the Kapilas and other rationalists of old, with a higher synthesis of soul and sense. But, liberation not being accomplished in this life, body was, accordino^ to the Sankhva, not Linga, or -^ ^ " spiritual escaped at death. It accompanied the soul ^"'^^* still, in its subtile form, the linga Sa^'ira? or " spiritual body," which consisted of all those prin- ciples and rudimental elements which flow from Prak- ' Karika, LXVII. 2 Li?iga signifies a characteristic, or mark. Sarira is the body. SANKHYA. 395 riti, with the exception of the enveloping gross organs and bodily frame ; these, and only these, perishing at death. The linga, with all its component parts, — un- derstanding, egoism, and the subtile organs that serve them, — is subject to transmigration, requires the sup- port of a special vehicle or body, and ceases only wdth the process of liberation, and the full realization of soul.^ Here Kapila stops. He does not tell us what he holds this life of realized soul to be, save in its Kapiia's difference from all present experiences through ^^°"*- the understanding, from all our self-conscious feeling and action. Not his to describe the end, but to state the distinctions that condition it, and to hint the way to it. But the implication seems to be, that with the fulfilment of man's highest ideal comes the ineffable reality, which we can neither understand nor con- ceive ; but to which all that we see, and know, and feel, and dream ourselves the doers and possessors of, is but the imperfect and transient means ; the deaf, dumb, and blind servant of a secret which its finiteness helps, by very contrast, to reveal. The substance is this. There is a reality^ abid- ing eternally, to know which is life, and be-Hisaffirma- fore which all other intelligence, as Paul says ^^°^' of " tongues and prophecies and knowledge," shall " vanish away." And as the apostle's reason for the evanescence of these is that " we know in part, and prophesy in part, and when that wlvch is perfect is come that which is in part must be done away," Kap- ila would probably ask why the specially Christian faith, hofe, and love, which Paul thought sure to ^ The Bhagav. Giia says that, *' when spirit abandons a body, it migrates, taking with it its senses, as the wind wafts along with itself the perfume of the flowers." 396 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. abide when knowledge shall have been proved a vain thing, must not also, as being in like wise imperfect and partial, pass away when that which is perfect is come. And shall we not hear Kapila and Socrates as well as Jesus and Paul? Are ideals of pure knowledge essentially less adequate than ideals of faith and love, if these disparage knowledge? Will not the future insist on the necessity of independent seeing, in order to right believing and true helping, — on the unity of science and love? For fuller understandinor of this interestmof svstem, TheAphor-l^t US rcvicw its leading characteristics, with isms. special illustration from the aphorisms ascribed to Kapila himself. The Sankhya proves the capacity of Hindu genius Differences for SL vcry different form of thought fi-om that °^7c^T^ which we have been tracing- throuo|;h the mvs- and bank- o » ^ hya. tical unities of the Vedanta. There is no pas- sive receptivity of mind, no dissolving of distinctions in the infinite as the only real. Precisely the opposite. The word Sankhya refers us to mimbe7's as definite entities : it means to distinguish, to weigh, to judge. "Learn to discriminate, and be free," was the precept of this philosophy ; and that it was needed in Indian thought has already become sufficiently plain. Both Vedanta and Sankhya aim at spiritual emanci- pation. But the one assumes absolute unity, and seeks freedom by solving all distinctions therein ; the other assumes essential distinction, as between " soul " and blind "natural" forces, and seeks freedom by dis- solving^ the bonda<^e which consists in confoundinof them. The Vedanta affirms all spirit to be absolutely one : SANKHYA. 397 the Sankhya recognize^ the diversity of persons as real. So that while the Vedantist escapes bondage when he sees himself to be one with Brahma, the Sankhyan is free when he knows himself as really separate from all blind and confused conceptions, all crude, intractable material in the natural order of ex- perience. "To know that one was not bound when one seemed to be so, — this," says Kapila, " is libera- tion." So the Vedantist could say, but hardly in the interest of individual being. For him the real soul was free, in that its substance was not in the indi- vidual self, but in God. For the other it was free, in that it was itself substance, as individual, which bon- dage could not really touch. The Nyaya, also, affirms individual souls to be real, eternal, and even infinite.^ For the Vedantist, bondage was unreal, because the ego that was bound and the phenomenal world which bound it were alike void of essential life. For the Sankhyan, bondage was unreal, because while the world that seemed to bind it was granted real, the true ego^ also real, for ever stood beyond its power. Definite forms of existence were maya (illu- sion) for the one : bondage itself, bondage alone, was mava for the other. The Sankhya is analytic, as the Vedanta is synthe- tic. It reacts against the very idea of unity ; and, so far as is possible, avoids it ; being, in fact, not a sys- tem of theology at all, but a system of analytic phi- losophy in the interest of individual (speculative and moral) freedom. Without denying an ulterior synthe- sis, it affirms its two primary principles, Purusha (the soul) and Prakrid ("nature"), which again are divis- 1 Colebrooke's Analysis, Essays, I. 268. 398 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. ible ; since of souls there is multiplicity, and of Prak- riti there is a primal and also a developed, " phe- nomenal," form. Prakriti, "rootless (or primary) root," is not, let us Meaning of o^ice more note, material nature in any abso- Prakriti. j^j-g geuse ; since, as developed through contact with "soul," it appears in a series of evolutions, of which the first member is apprehension^ and the sec- ond self-consciotcsness, or self-will, the egoistic ele- ment ; out of which, as Hindu thought is wont to make mind precedent and body derivative, arc generated the subtile organs and gross body of sensation and action. ^ To explain the real meaning of the conception, we have the further fact that Prakriti is also the original equipoise or latent potentiality of three psychological qualities, evolved in man through its union with mind,^ — the ascending quality {sattva^ or goodness), allied to essence and light; the impulsive, ungoverned ro- tating quality (j-ajas^ or passion) ; and last, the down- ward-tending quality of weight and darkness {tamas^ or irrationality). Of this triplicity of qualities, which runs through the whole of Hindu thought, and which has formed substantially the basis of psychological conceptions in other races also, Prakriti was the mere potential ground, or indifference, generating them in definite forms, only through union with soul, itself unconscious ; " energizing spontaneously, not b}' thought," yet really existing as Prakriti, in these qualities, the phenomena of mind. From all which, we can perhaps divine the meaning of the word in this subtle system of analytics. Prak- riti cannot be dead matter ; nor is it independent mind. It indicates simply, in my judgment, an effort to ex- 1 Aph.,l. 71, 73; II. 16, 18. » A/>h., III. 48-50. SANKHYA. 399 press that mysterious interweaving of unconscious and active powers, which obscures the rekuion of mind with body, not to Hindu vision only, but lo all human insight hitherto attained. Over against this, Kapila posits essential man, seeking to lift the conception as far as possible Meaning of above these sources of error, confusion, and ^i^rusha. consequent bondage, with which man is phenomenally connected, and to affirm his inalienable ideal sover- eignty. "Soul (purusha) is;"^ and it is substantial and valid in every individual soul ; not competent merely to liberate itself from this blind Prakriti and its bondage of illusions, but in and of itself vitally and for ever free, the ultimate force " for whose service this exists and energizes." Hence it is seen only when felt as throned serene behind the warfare of life, inviolate ; a witness and seer in itself, " neither agent nor patient," though taking the tinge of qualities by reflection merely, so as to appear both the one and the other, just as glass reflects the color of the object near it ; and moving the organs " by proximity only," through some subtle authority lying behind contact, and of a higher quality than that ; as the loadstone moves the iron, or a king his army through orders and not by engaging in the fight. ^ A grand concep- tion, or divination by pure intellect, of the authority of mind over circuvistance, and of the impossibility of final moral and spiritual failure. This is to lay a noble basis for psychology and theology in the dignities of personal being ; and for that inward union with imperishable principles which lifts it above transiency and loss. It is the affirmation of ideal 'personality^ in a very high form. 1 Aph.y VI. I. 2 Aph., I. io6; II. 29; I. 96. 400 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. Here then the two principles ; not absolute duality, Not pure since Prakriti is said to generate y^r the sake dualism. qJt i/^^ sotd, and thus soul alone is declared really and absolutely to be. Yet the Sankhya makes no S3'stematic effort to reduce the two to one, nor even to urge the unity of either with itself It is too much absorbed in the endeavor to distinguish the proper personality from temporary illusions, overmastering passions.; and special solicitudes, and too thoroughly possessed by its glad vision of the soul as divine repose, as free beholding, as pure transcendence. So the substance of its insight is freedom ; its watch- word, "the separateness (or detachment) of soul.''^ So profoundly was the Hindu mind prepossessed . ,. by the synthetic tendency, that an analytic Rationalism ^ ^ J J of the Sank- process was but natural reaction, sundering ^^ the elements, and drawing forth their respec- tive validities. Thus the Sankhya takes special pains to prove, against Vedantic absorption of the many in- to the One, that there is a real imdti'pUcity of souls. ^ And it explains the Vedic texts which affirm the one- ness of soul, as referring simply to the comprehen- siveness of " genus." ^ The Sankhya is rationalistic, as the Vedanta is pietistic. It is sceptical, as the other is believing. It is active criticism, as the other is unquestioning faith. It appeals to common sense and realistic per- ception against the unbalanced mysticism that merely absorbed all things into one. It is an effort to escape from this into the true sense of spiritual being, by concentration on perception, inference, testimony, and the exclusion of all causes of false notions.* 1 Apk; v. 6s ; VI. I, 70. 2 Ibid., I. i4c^isi. 8 Ibid., I. 154. * Ibid., I. 87, 89 100. SANKHYA. ' 401 The Vedanta in its best form recognizes that the highest truth cannot be reached by the study . of the Vedas, and that the wise may " throw them by, as one who seeks grains the chaff." Its piety left paths open out of the bibliolatry that beset its schools. But the Sankhya made a more radical protest ; for it starts from postulates of reason, not of xreatment faith. The worship of the letter, the author- °f''^^'^^'^^- ity of a book, must cease. Kapila declares plainly, The Veda is not eternal ; it is not supernatural nor superhuman ; its meaning does not transcend the com- mon intuition. He who understands the secular mean- ings of words can understand their sense in the Veda. There is no special bible sense ; there is no authorit}^ of scriptures apart from their self-evidence and the fruit of their teaching. They do not proceed from a supreme Person (Iswara) ; for since one liberated could not desire to make them, and one unliberated could not have power, no such supreme Man or Lord can have been their author. They are there; a breath of self-existence ; a fact m other words, traceable to no special mind. That is all that can be said.^ Kap- ila, it is true, on the other hand, did not dispute the Vedas. But he called them " self-evident conveyers of right knowledge, through the patentness of their power to instruct rightly." ^ In other words, he rested his respect for them on their appeal to his own reason, and judged them by their tendencies. What he found contrary to his intuition and his judgment, he ascribed to such and such a motive, and quietly set it aside. ^ Their central idea of unity, for instance, he disposes « Aph., V. 40-51. » Aph., v. 51. • Roer, Introd. to Svet&svatara Upan.^ p. 36. 26 402 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. of thus: "Such texts as, 'all is soul alone,' are there ' for the sake of the undiscriminating,' ' to help the weak to meditation.' " ^ In view of all this, it can hardly be supposed that Kapila allowed absolute authority to the Vedas. Decidedl}^ criticism of the " holy text " has here begun. Its later development forms a strikino; feature of the Buddhist and Puranic systems, which, in the main, follow the Sankh^^a.^ " Scriptural rites and forms are but works : they are not the Ofritualism. cl^ief end of man." ^ " Pain to victims must bring pain to the sacrificer of them." * How indeed, with his intense conviction of the free- dom of the soul, could Kapila believe that any outward conformities would satisfy its desire ? To know itself is its wisdom and its rest. Here is what he says of it : — " Soul is other than body ; not material, because overseeing Of spiritual physical nature, and because, while this is the thing ex- liberties, perienced, the soul it is that experiences." ^ " Atoms are not the cause of it, for atoms have neither pleasure nor pain."** " Light does not pertain to the unintelligent, and the soul is essential lisfht." ' «5' "Mind, as product of undiscerning activity (Prak- riti) and as made of parts, is perishable, but not soul." ^ It is an error to mistake even mind, as such, for soul.^ " Only soul can be liberated ; because only that can be isolated, in which blind, changeful qualities are but reflected, and do not constitute its essence." ^^ Simply, ■ 1 Ap/t., v. 63, 64. > Wilson's Essays. 8 Ap/i., I. 82. * Ibid., I. 84. " Ibid., I. 139-142. 6 Ibid., I. 113. 1 Ibid., I. 145. « Ibid , I. 136; V. 70-73. • Ibid., I. 129. io Ibid., I. 144. SANKHYA. 403 as we have seen, a form of expressing that pure in- dependence which this system claims for spiritual substance, or rather for spiritual integrity. " The soul is solitary, uncompanioned : it is constant freedom, a witness, a seer." ' " Liberation is not through works, which are tran- sient ; nor through the worship of the All, whatiiber- which must be mingled with fancies about the ^^^°^ '^• world; "^ " nor through the desire of heaven, for that desire is to be shunned."^ "It is not the excision of any special qualities ; not possessions, nor magic powers ; not going away to any world, since soul is im- movable, and does not go away ; not conjunction with the rank of gods, which is perishable ; not absorption of the part into the whole ; not destruction of all ; not the void, — nor yet joy:"* but more and better than all these, to know the difference which separates the undiscerning movement of qualities, or tendencies to goodness, passion, and darkness in -the senses and the mind, from free spiritual being, and so " to thirst no more ; " ^ "a work not of a moment, but of that complete concentration and devotion, which has many obstacles." ^ How finely affirmative through all this negation is Kapila's appeal to pure reason to prove that Appeal to bondage is not essential to the soul ; '' that for reason, ever, within man, whether he knows it or not, and lifted above the possibility of subjection to evil, witness and seer, watching and waiting its hour, indefeasible and inviolate, is the principle of purity and freedom ! ^ " To know the difference, and that one was not bound 1 ^/;^., v. 65; 1. 162: II. 29. 2 ^^/;., in. 26, 27. 3 Ibid., III. 52. 4 Ibid., v. 74-83. 5 Ibid., II., VijnSna Bhikshu's Introd. ; so SvetaJvatara, III. 10; IV. 7-17. « Ibid., II. 3- ■^ APK 1-7, &c. 8 Aph., I. 162. 404 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. when one seemed to be so,"^ — is Kapila's idea of "liberation;" and he knew it was not to be reached without paying the price in all that surrender of lower desires on which he insists. To take all this on the authority of pure Reason ; to believe it because it seemed most rational and be- coming, and so to stake the issues of life upon it, — is surely an achievement for all ages and religions to respect. For this great work of liberation, Prakriti is but an „. ^ instrument. She, the really bound, "binds All IS for '' man's ideal hcrself scvcn ways, but becomes liberated in ^' one form only," which is " knowledge " of the truth of thinors.^ All is thus for the ideal life of man. "The soul is the seer, the organs are its instruments."^ "Creation is for the soul's sake, from Brahma down to a post ; till there be liberation thereof."* "Nature serves soul like a born slave ; " " creates for its sake, as the cart carries saffron for its master^"^ And " sense " itself becomes " supersensuous " through this necessity for mind as the explanation of its phenomena. " It is a mistake to suppose that sense is identical with that in which it is seated."^ That all this inherent sovereignty is ascribed to every individual soul, and the " multiplicity of Is the Sank- -^ _ . hyaathe- souls " iusisted ou, lias been thought to involve ^^^^'^' unbelief in unity of essence above this multi- plicity of individuals ; and hence the division into "Theistic" and "Atheistic" Sankhya ; Kapila being regarded as representative of the latter, and Patanjali of the former. It is true that Kapila's jealousy for the freedom 1 A ph., I. 155. 2 jipfi,^ I XI. 73. 8 Afih., II. 29. * Ibid., III. 47. Mbid., III. 51 ; VI. 40. « Ibid., II. 23. SANKHYA. 405 and self-subsistence of spirit carried him to the fur- thest possible isolation of its essence, in each and every individual beings from finite conditions. But the Sankhya cannot, even in his logic, be called athe- istic. On the contrary, as Bunsen has noticed, " God, regarded as the undivided Unity, therefore the eternal essence of minds when perfected, is an assumption, or ■postulate^ running through the whole system, like that of the existence of light in a treatise on colors ; " and fairly inferrible, as a " Divine Order of the Uni- verse," from the "recognition of reason, knowledge, righteousness, as common attributes of these individ- ual minds." ^ And the latest translator of the Bhaga- vadgita, in an elaborate review of Hindu philosophy, asserts, from a point of view quite different from Bun- sen's, that the Sankhya " not only does not deny the existence of a Supreme Being, but even hints at it in referring the emanation of individual souls to a spirit- ual essence gifted with volition."^ The idea of a multiplicity of souls, real, endless, and eternally dis- tinct from body, is not inconsistent with theism ; since the Nyaya, which follows the Sankhya in this belief, also declares the Supreme Soul (Paramatma) to be "one, eternally wise, and the source of all things."^ It is curious to note how similar, in many respects, is Patanjali's description, in his theistic Yoga^ sys- tem, of an ^^ Iswara^'' or Lord, to that which Kapila gives of ^^ Soul,'' — "untouched by troubles, works, fruits, or deserts." Were not both seeking, each in his own way, the spiritual ideal in its independence of limit or change? Kapila could not have admitted ^ God in History, I. 336. 2 Thomson's Bhag. Gita, Introd., p. Iviii. Such definite reference to emanation I have not been able to find in Kapila. * Colebrooke's Essays, I. 268. * "Yoga" means conjunction (with deity). 406 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. an Iswara, like that of the Yoga, who is in one sense distinct from all actual souls ; yet his conception of soul itself afforded ample basis for the idea of infinite Mind. Theistic scholiasts on Kapila's aphorisms affirm that his denial of an Iswara is but hypothetical, not abso- lute. It would have been more correct to say that it did not deny central and tm^nanent deity. In truth it was Kapila's function to apply a disinte- grating analysis to the monarchical sii^ernaturalistic, as well as to the blindly ^pantheistic, conceptions of his time. He simply shows that there is no evidence of an Iswara, or Lord, — that is, of a " governor of nature," in such a sense as the separation of soul from nature and its isolation as witness forbade ; one, namely, whose action would involve imperfection ; the sway of some " passion " or desire ; a certain needy " working for his own benefit ■ or glory, like a worldly lord ; " ^ one whose interference should be necessary to the retributions of conduct, — an inadmissible condition, in his view ; since works produced their consequences by having their law for ever in themselves. Christian theology also has its Is'wara. The interfering, self- interested Providence, the " deus ex machina" of the supernaturalist, is found in all religions, whether in early or late stages, w^herever there is an unreasoning faith. It was this idea of a mechanical Deity that Kapila seems to have rejected so positively in the name of an inherent virtue in the constant course of things ; the adequacy of those laws of being which he sought to unfold. And the like protest of rationalism returns to-day, at the culmination of a Semitic faith also, with similar sanctions and justifications. The 1 A/>h., v. 3, 4, 6. SANKHYA. 407 selfishness of a God who could create man " for his own glory," and interfere capriciously with the laws he has made, renders denial of such Iswara a duty still. All this is not positive piety, not heartfelt theism. But neither is it atheism. It does not deny deity to spirit. It denies creation and interference ab extra, by spirit ; and this, in order to exalt it above all that is conditional, and to isolate it so that it may affirm its own highest ideal of freedom and self-subsistence. And, with all its emphasis on the multiplicity of souls, it constantly describes soul as such, — not souls, but soul, — as if it were indeed but one in essence, after all : one of those unconscious confessions, by which all reasoning assumes the necessity of primal unity ; in other words, of God. Love indeed does not move in these depths of logic. But the intellect also has its work to do, and we have here a legitimate form of this work. If Kapila is not distinctly ethical and theistic, it is, we repeat, because he is not teaching a religion, but a system of analytic philosophy ; because the Sankhya is a criticism, not a confession of faith. If it is in- complete ; if it does not fuse its own elements and reconcile its own poles of thought, it is yet a protest against the one-sided mysticism and supernaturalism, which do not sufficiently guard the dignity and seren- ity of spirit, in the form under which they conceive its relation to the world. It was in fact found easy to develop out of the Sankhya those very elements of universal pruits of the religion which it failed of positively affirming. Sankhya. Its intellectual criticism was the condition and germ at once of the purest theism and the most practical 408 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. humanity in Oriental history ; of lessons in love and worship which Christendom cannot afford to despise nor to ignore. Its clear separation of soul from sense was unfolded into the theistic Sankhya and the Karma Yoga of the Bhagavadgita, in which the old Vedantic panthe- ism is inspired with the thought of deity as both inde- pendent and providential ; as at once purely spiritual, and the All in all. Its free dealing with bibliolatry and tradition, its appeal to practical reason, and its trust in the ade- quacy of the dialectic faculty, issued not only in the independence of the best Puranas ; but, far better than this, in the pure democracy and boundless brother- hood of Buddhism, — a gospel of " mercy for all." Had those contemplative philosophies been so par- alyzing to the heart and will as they would at first seem, they could not have afforded groundwork for even a reaction to this great impulse. Oriental in its scale and ardor, to emancipate the world through love. Our review of Hinduism already justifies us in af- instinctof firming that the profound intuition of Unity Unity. traversed the whole field of desire and belief, and that in this one branch of the Aryan race it found scope for revealing those great typical moulds in which its aspirations are elsewhere found to grow. III. A THE BHAGAVAD-GITA ^ THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 'T^HE date of the Bhagavadgita, or " Divine Lay," "*- the most important episode of the Ma- The Divine habharata, although uncertain, cannot be far ^^y- distant on either side from the beginning of the Chris tian era..^ It embodies, in the form of dialogue, a revelation by Krishna, as incarnation of the Supreme, to the hero Arjuna, on the field of Kuru ; and the armies of two opposing dynasties, about to join battle, are drawn up in silence to await the close of this transcendental communion between the man and the god. Its initial motive is to remove the scruples of the prince against destroying human life, which have paralyzed his power to fulfil the duties of a soldier and a ruler. To this end it celebrates the sovereignty of the soul over the body, its eternal essence, which death cannot harm, and the fulfilment of personal duty as the way of life and the path of glory. The use of such arguments to reconcile men to the sternest obligations involved in a state of war is itself an im- pressive illustration of the power of ideal interests. It contrasts favorably with the use of arguments from immortality to justify the destruction of the heretic's body in order to save his soul from eternal woe, or to 1 Thomson's transl., Inirod., p. cxiv. ; Lassen's Frefacg, p. xxxvi. 412 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. make the threat of future punishment more appalling.^ The meditations of Arjuna before a Hindu epic battle contrast in many ways with the prayers of Cromwell's soldiers before a real English one. They are, how- ever, alike in the recognition of ideal relations in the sternest actual work. But this is incidental to the great purpose of the poem, which covers the whole ground of theology, philosophy, and ethics. It is the final flower of Hindu intellect and piety ; the summary reconciliation and poetic fusion of the best elements that preceded it in the mystical, rationalistic, and practical schools. It is better known to modern scholars than any other production of Oriental genius ; having been again and again edited with rare critical industry, re- sulting in the statement of Schlegel, based on diligent comparison of a great number of manuscripts, that the differences between these are almost impercep- tible ; while Lassen, after a still more extended use of materials, adds, but fifteen slight emendations.^ The disagreement among translators and critics on here and there a passage^ interferes in no degree with our sense of possessing an accurate transcript of this, the most important of all records of Eastern faith, into the languages of the West.^ And the en- thusiasm of its European students almost rivals that veneration which in India has assigned it a place not inferior in dignity and authority to the Vedas themselves.^ Wilhelm von Humboldt celebrates it as "the most * See Matt. xii. 32 ; xxv. 41. * Lassen, p. xxxiv. 8 See especially Wilson's criticisms on Lassen and Schlegel (Essays on Satiks. Litera- ture, vol. iii,). * The translations consulted in the present chapter are Schlegel's Latin version, edited by Lassen (1846), and the English versions of Wilkins (17S5) and Thomson (1855). " Lassen, p. xxvii. THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 413 beautiful, perhaps properly the only true, philosophical song, that exists in any known tongue." Lassen shrinks from attempting to recommend it, lest he should imply that it has need of any praise of his. Warren Hastings notes a " sublimity of conception, reasoning, and diction, almost unequalled ; " and Schle- gel closes his Latin version with a pious invocation of the unknown prophet bard, "whose oracular soul is as it were snatched aloft into divine and eternal truth with a certain ineffable delight." It is indeed, though not without its imperfections like the rest, one of the grand immortal forms in relig- ious literature ; an eternal word of the Spirit in man. It combines in broad and inspired synthesis the various points of view from which the Hindu j^g compre- schools had contemplated the union of philoso- i^ensiveness. phy and faith. Opening with the practical doctrine of duty, as conceived by the Yoga, it unfolds the Idea of God from the best side of the Vedanta, and the speculative analysis of man's spiritual relations after the formulas and in the freedom of the Sankhya, and ends with the substance of mystical piety, — deliver- ance, through self-renunciation and devotion, into union w^ith deity. It adheres indeed to the system of caste ; yet seeks to soften its injustice^ by declaring perfection itsuniver- open to all who do faithfully their own work, ^^^'^y- -and making this very dogma of natural subordination emphasize the call to every class to seek refuge in God. Even while, with the old contempt which Buddhism had repudiated so nobly, it once mentions women with the lowest castes, it yet declares that ^ A method not unlike that of the early Christian teachers touching slavery. 414 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. all who resort to God will reach the highest goal.^ Krishna says : — " I have neither friend nor foe : I am the same to all. And all who worship me dwell in me, and I in them." ^ " To them who love me, I give that devotion by which they come at last to me." ^ " The soul in every creature's body is invulnerable ; "^ and none who has faith, however imperfect his attainment, or however his heart have wandered from right discipline, shall perish, either in this world or in another. He shall have new births, till, purified and made perfect, he reaches the supreme abode." ^ " Mankind turn towards my path in every manner, and accord- ing as they approach me so do I reward them." ^ Deity here is not abstraction, but speaks to man as , . . Creator, Preserver, Friend. Krishna is the Its god inti- mate with companion and intimate counsellor of Arjuna, '°^"' revealing to him out of pure love "^ the law of duty and the path of immortal life ; yet preserving the majesty and mystery of the Infinite. This is the " Supreme Universal Spirit," above and behind* the universe, as well as its inmost substance ; the Maker as well as the All. " I am the origin of all ; from me all proceeds."*^ "Thou," says Arjuna, "thou only, knowest thyself by thyself, O Creator and Lord of all that exists, God of gods, most ancient of Beings !"^ And Krishna says, "I am the soul that exists in the heart of all beings. I am the beginning, the middle, the end, of all things." ^^^ He is death as well as life ; absorbing all forms, to ^^ . . the terror of the finite worshipper ; yet the The vision ^ ^ •' of Time as tcrror is not meant to be final. Arjuna would estroyer. j^gj^Qj^^ ^j-^g wholc infinite of deity with mortal eyes. His prayer is answered ; and he sees what » Bk. G., ch. ix. 2 Ibid. » Ibid., ch. x. * Ibid., ch. ii. « Ibid , ch. vi. 6 Ibid., ch. iv. ^ Ibid., ch. x. » Ibid., ch. x. ^ The term is Purtisha, or person^ ch. x. w ibid., ch. x. THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 415 mortal eyes can see, the onward sweep of atoms and worlds and souls from life to death. This is the terri- ble, all-devouring form under which the god appears. The mystery of time, whelming all objects of sense, is concentrated into One Visible Shape, clothed by the tropical imagination, which most dreads the power of fire, in terrors and splendors that no eye can endure. The transient, for ever vanishing into the bosom of the eternal, stands manifest in one immeasurable sym- bol. Flaming mouths and ventral abysses open to engulf it ; down these, through rows of dreadful teeth, the human heroes rush, by their own will, as full streams roll on to meet the ocean, as troops of insects seek their death in the taper's flame. ^ Very apt symbolism it is, in view of the other and immediate purpose, to reconcile the hero to the dread necessity of carnage that fronted the assembled hosts. As in the old Hebrew legends men fall upon their faces before the vision of Jehovah, so is it ns friendly with Arjuna here. But this " awe is mingled i^eaning. with delight." And its cry of trust is, — "Thou shouldst bear with me, O.God ! as a father with his son, as a friend with his friend, a lover witli his beloved. Be gracious, O habitation of the universe ! show me thy other [more human] form." ^ And the vision of destruction vanishes, when the divine relations of destruction are thus made plain, into the familiar shape of the companion and friend. Through the terrors of Death and Time, that eternal good-will has been abiding unchangeable ; and the sublimest lesson of life is learned. " Be not alarmed, nor troubled, at having seen this my terrible 1 Bh. Gt ch. xi. « Ibid. 4l6 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. form. But look free from fear, with happy heart, upon this other form of mine. " That which thou hast seen is very difficult to behold ; not to be seen by studying the Vedas, nor by mortifications, nor alms- givings, nor sacrifices. Even the gods are always anxious to be- hold that form. But only by worship, which is rendered to me alone, am I to be seen, and known in truth, and obtained. He Cometh to me whose works are done for me, who holdeth me supreme ; who is my servant only ; who hath abandoned all conse- quences, and liveth amongst all men without enmity." ^ This Hindu form of the faith that deity is present in „. , , human shape, to teach, console, instruct, and Hindu and *^ Christian in- save meu, and to make clear and sweet to carnations, ^j^^j^ ^^iQ mystcHes of death and change, differs from the Christian idea of incarnation,, as set forth in the gospel of John, in this respect among others, that it does not seek to confine the freedom of the universal and infinite to a single historic form. Krishna, incarnation of Vishnu, the all-pervading Preserver, is not claimed to be the only possible Word of God in the flesh for all time. Not once for all is this immanent life invested in a man. " Although I am not in my nature subject to birth or decay, and am lord of all created beings, yet in my command over nature as mine own, I am made evident by my own (maya) power ; and as often as there is a decline of virtue and insurrection of vice and injustice in the world, I make myself evident ; and thus I appear^ from age to age, for the preservation of the just, the destruction of evil-doers, and the establishment of virtue." ^ This is the Krishna of philosophy ; but it expressed a truth that lay deep in the religious instinct of the people. Accordingly, for the worship of the "all-pervading Preserver," incarnation, or avatar a (descent), runs > Bh. G., ch. xi. > Ibid., ch. iv. THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 417 through every form of life, beginning in earliest ages with the creatures in which it was supposed that the primitive piety of mankind must have beheld deity, and passing on through a series of saints, heroes, redeemers, to a final judge, so reaching to the bounds of time. In the latest Puranas no less than twenty- two of these avataras are ascribed to this unfailing providence ; ^ not all indeed of a noble or worthy quality, but such as the varying degrees of spiritual and moral intelligence in the worshippers compelled. It has never been shown that any appreciable influ- ence was exerted by Christianity upon the for- Avatara sys- mation of this Avatara system of the Hindus. J^"V"°^ ^''^ •/ to Christian Neither the Apostle Thomas, nor Nestorian influence. Christians from Syria, nor a stray legend about some distant realm of mystical monotheists, that turns up among the leaves of the old epic, nor traces of very secluded and unimportant Christian settlements in later times upon the coasts of India, can be made available for refuting the claim of Hindu religious genius to unin- terrupted assurance that preserving deity is manifested in constantly renewed forms upon the earth. Lassen, after a careful inquiry into the traditions of a Christian origin of this belief, reaches the conclusion that we cannot ascribe to missionaries of the church any in- fluence whatever in shaping these religious concep- tions of the Hindus. 2 The Krishna Avatara, in special, has been sup- posed, not only from the resemblance between the 1 See Lassen's account of them in Indische Alterthmnskunde, IV. 578-586. Also note on Thomson's Bhag. G., p. 147. 2 Weber {Ind. Stud., I. 400) and Hardwick {Christ and other Masters, I. 254) main- tain the theory of Christian influence ; but all its points seem to be fully met by Lassen, and no real evidence has been adduced in its defence. There is no proof whatever that the Apostle Thomas ever saw India, and none that Nestorian missions had any influence there before the fifth century. 27 41 8 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. names Krishna and Christ, but from certain corres- ^ . . , ^ pondences in the later Puranic lessen ds with Ongin of the ■*• " Krishna thosc of the infancj of Jesus, to have origi- ^^ ^"^^ nated in these relations with Christianity. But the resemblances are of slight import ; and the belief itself goes back, at the latest, to the time of Megas- thenes, three centuries before the Christian era. This writer describes Krishna as the Indian Hercules, who had "traversed the whole earth and sea, to purify them from evil ; " and even identifies his worship with Mathura, the native place of Krishna in the legend.^ The similarity of the names, Krishna and Christ, is Its possible purely accidental. The word Krishna means relations. ^^^ black. And it forms the pivot of a very curious tendency among the Aryan Hindus to vener- ate that very color which they despised in the aborigi- nal tribes of India, and which marked the lowest and most degraded of the castes. For, in spite of these antagonisms, strange symbols of a deeper brother- hood seem to crop out in several interesting myths, both philosophical and poetic. Here, for instance, in the Bhagavadgita, Krishna, or the blacky is the intimate friend and divine counsellor of Arjuna, or the white, — a feature which cannot be accidental. And in the Vishnu Purana, Vishnu sends two of his hairs, the one white, the other black, to remove by their joint virtue the miseries of the whole earth. I can hardly help believing that this respect for the dark skin points to very early recognitions of a common humanity ; and it is not improbable that Krishna worship itself is the mark of some profound influence exerted on the faith of the aristocratic Aryans by the conquered tribes of India. The generally democratic character of this ' Lassen^ I. 647; II. 1107. THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 4I9 wide-spread and deeply rooted form of worship would thus be explained. And the exaltation of a repre- sentative of the enslaved race as divine guide of their white master, in the noblest intellectual achievement his literature can boast, is a piece of fine poetic justice, which gives dignity to the whole history of the Hindus. And it associates the oldest with the latest phases of our Aryan pride of race, in a common lesson for com- ing time. From the early period above mentioned, down to the latest Purana, the Bhae^avata, in the thir- , ^. \ & ' ^ Its history. teenth century, Kris-hna comes constantly into view, in the utmost variety of forms, — as protecting hero; as saint and sage, mastering evil spirits instead of physical and outward enemies ; as inspired shep- herd boy, idyllic lover of the country maidens, and wonder-worker in the spheres of popular interests and pursuits; assuming in the epic mythology, where all the numberless rills of popular belief have flowed together, all imaginable powers and forms of charac- ter. ^ He says in the Bhagavadgita, " I am represen- tative of the supreme and incorruptible, of eternal law and endless bliss." ^ In the Bhagavata Purana he is exalted as the ideal centre of all virtues, human and divine ; and saviour of men through the blessings he bestows on all who enter his spiritual being through meditation and holy discipline.^ His worship is thus a purely native prod- uct of Hindu sentiment. And the sublime assertion, in the Bhagavadgita, of his incarnation whenever right needs to be re-established and wrong to be over- turned, requires no other explanation than an intuitive 1 Muir's Sanshrit Texts, vol. iv. 2 Jbid., ch. xiv. • See Th. Pavie's Krishna et sa Doctrine (Paris, 1852). 420 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. faith in the intimate union of deity with life and the world. We may further observe, as characteristic of Hindu Relation to rcHgious development, an effort in the history pantheism. Qf Krishua-worship to purify pantheism of its cruder elements. The pantheistic sense of divine im- manence and universality naturally involves profound moral and spiritual meaning. With the advance- ment of thought, such better significance is brought to the interpretation of popular beliefs of whatever nature. Krishna is the common term which Hindu- ism has maintained as the thread of its religious tradition ; and, in the heterogeneous web of the Ma- habharata, all its meaning for the popular mind has been wrouo-ht over in the interest of the hifjher form of pantheism just mentioned. So that the Krishna of the epic presents the very noblest traits which the Hindu mind was able to conceive, as will be seen hereafter. The play of illusion, under which his assumption of all forms of human sympathy and desire is believed by the more spiritually-minded to be masked, is frequently lifted away, revealing what is held to be his inmost reality, by which the often questionable phenomena are to be mystically interpreted ; a pro- cess of compromise to which all distinctive religions have in their different ways, from time to time, sub- jected their sacred books. The substance of this higher pantheism is expressed in language like the following : — " Know that Dharma (righteousness) is my first-born beloved Son, whose nature is to have compassion on all creatures. In his character, I exist among men, both present and past, in different disguises and forms. While all men live in unrighteousness, I, the THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 42I unfailing, build up the bulwark of right, as the ages pass. Assuming various divine births to promote the good of all creatures, I act according to my nature." ^ Upon this grand postulate of the constant presence and watchful intimacy of deity with man, as sympathies guide and deliverer, the Bhagavadgita sought °J^^^'°g^jJ^^g_ to unfold the sympathies of past and present avadgita. forms of faith. It declared that knowledge and action are one in worship. 2 " Children only, not the wise, speak of the Sankhya (rational) and the Yoga (devotional) religious systems as different. He who sees their unity sees indeed. The place which is gained by the followers of the one is gained by the followers of the other." ^ " He who can behold inaction in action, and action in inaction, is wise amongst mankind." ■* " There are divers ways of sacrificing ; and all purify men. But the worlds are not for him who worships not.^'' ^ For one to reach this higher point of spiritual recog- nition, the Veda, with the subtle questions Bible and thereon that have distracted the conscience, mediators. must have become secondary, and be held as transient means to a spiritual end. " When thy mind shall have worked through the snares of illu- sion, thou wilt become indifferent to traditional behef. When thy mind, liberated from the Vedas,^ shall abide fixed in contemplation, thou shalt then attain to real worship," ' " Thou shalt find it in due time, spontaneously, within thyself" * This freer treatment of the " sacred scriptures " de- 1 Mahabh; XIV. 2 BJiag. G., ch. iii. 3 Ibid., ch, v. * Ibid., ch. iv. ^ Ibid., ch. iv, 6 So Thomson translates nirveda, which according to Wilson also {Essays on Sanskr. Lit.., III. 128)' means "certainty of the futility of the Vedas." Schlegel translates the passage thus: "sententiis theologicis antea distracta." Only Wilkins differs: his reading is, " by study brought to maturity," which can hardly be correct. ^ Bhag. G; ch. ii. * Ibid., ch. iv. 422 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. serves notice, as showing how strong is the demand, Reactions evcn in 3. race whose faith naturally turns to lioiatry. thc past, for escape from a bible-worship, which still dominates far more enlightened communi- ties. In every great form of Hindu philosophy we find this opening upward into freedom from sacred text and rite. The Vedanta declares "the science of the Vedas inferior to the science of soul." The Sankhya denies the eternity of the hymns, and asserts fullest liberty of interpretation. The Bhagavadgita holds real wor- ship to be that in which the Vedas have no further place, having done their work, and given way to the vision and enjoyment of deity. The Ramayana and Mahabharata speak of themselves as equal to the Vedas. The Puranas, in general, go much further. The Bhagavadgita says : — " As great as is the use of a well when it is surrounded by over- flowing waters, so great and no greater is the use of the Vedas to a Brahman endowed with knowledge." But the Bhagavata Purana : — "Men do not worship the Supreme when they worship Him as circumscribed by the attributes specified in the hymns. Thou who strewest the earth with thy sacrificial grass, and art proud of thy numerous immolations,' knowest not what is highest work of all." The Brahmanas speak of the limitations of the Vedas in the same tone. Even Manu perceives that the spirit must interpret the text, to make it of service. The progress of experience brought fresh inspirations that criticised the older ones ; and there were bitter controversies between the supporters of the different Vedas, fatal to the pretence of inviolable authority in either.^ 1 See iexls in Muir, III. ch. i. THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 423 The " spiritual knowledge " which is to be substituted for all written or traditional objects of faith, ^.. ,. •' bpintuality, as the supreme end of life, is called jndna.^ The Bhagavadgita describes what it reveals as deity, in terms most clearly expressive of spiritual being : — " It is that which hath no beginning, and is supreme ; not the existent alone, nor the non-existent alone ; with hands and feet on all sides, at the centre of the world comprehending all ; exempt from all organs, yet shining with the faculties of all ; unattached, yet sustain- ing everything; within and without ; afar, yet near; the hght of lights, the wisdom that is to be found by wisdom, implanted in every breast." ^ " The recompense of devotion is greater than any that can be promised to the study of the Vedas, or the practice of independ- austerities, or the giving of alms." ^ e^ce. " Better than material sacrifice is the sacrifice of spiritual 'wisdom." ■* " Men are seduced from the right path by that flowery sentence proclaimed by the unwise, who delight in texts from the Vedas, and say, ' there is nothing else than that,' covetous of heaven as the highest good, offering regeneration as the reward of mere perform- ances, and enjoining rites for the sake of pleasures and powers." ^ " The worship of personages as divine bestowers of all good seeks to propitiate such personages ; and* receives, as from theni^ its reward, which yet comes after all only from God. .But the reward of these disciples of little mind is finite. They who worship gods go to their gods. They who worship me come to me. Only the unwise believe that I, who neither am born nor die, am confined to a visible form." ^ While the power of attaining union with essential truth and good, independently of permanent Ethical cui- or exclusive mediators, is thus affirmed as in- ^^^^ 5 ^"io°- dispensable to the highest life, the ethical conditions of such attainment are not slighted. The authority of the moral nature has all due reverence. ^ Compare Greek yvcJOig^ Latin nosco, Saxon know. ' Bhag. G-, ch. xiii. * Ibid., ch. viii. * Ibid., ch. iv, 5 Ibid., ch. ii. * Ibid., ch. vii. 424 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. What is the secret of duty ? O Arjuna ! the old eternal answer, — the soul knows no other : — Master the senses, and subdue desires. Of all actions the con- sequences are bonds determined and inevitable. What is the self-centred act, what the pleasure of mere physical contact, that comes but to pass again, leaving unsatisfied desire behind it, but " a womb of pain " ? Is then all activity to be renounced ? By no means. " No one ever resteth a moment inactive. Every one is in- voluntarily urged to act, by principles which are inherent in his nature. Inertness is not piety. Perform, then, thy functions. Action is better than inaction." " But as this world entails the bonds of action on every work but that which has worship for its object, therefore abandon, son of Kunti ! all selfish motive, and perform thy duty for God alone." "Even if thou considerest only the good of mankind, still thou* shouldst act. For what good men practise, others will practise likewise." " I have no need of any good, that I should be obliged to do any thing throughout the three worlds ; yet do I for ever work. For if 1 did not, — men follow in my steps in all things, and the people would perish." ^ " But every work is comprehended in wisdom : seek thou this, by worship, inquiry, service." ^ " Whoso abandons all interest in the reward of his actions shall be contented and free : though engaged in work, he, as it were, doeth nothing. The same in success and failure, even though he acts he is not bound by the bonds of action. His mind led by spiritual knowledge, and his work done for the sake of worship, his own action is, as it were, dissolved away." " God is the gift, the sacrifice, the altar-fire ; God the maker of the offering ; and God, the object of his meditation, is by him attained." ^ " Let thy motive lie in the deed, and not in the reward : perform Motive. *^y *^"*y) *^"^ make the event equal, whether it ter- minate in good or ill. This is devotion." ^ * Bhag. Cr., ch. iii. ' Ibid., ch. iv. ' Ibid., ch. ii. THE BHAGAV AD-GIT A. 425 " He who puts aside self-interest is not tainted by sin, but re- mains unaffected, as the lotus-leaf is not wet, by the waters." ^ " What is given for the sake of a gift in return, or for the sake of the fruit of the action, or reluctantly, is a gift of inferior quality." ^ " Whatever thou doest, do as offering to the Supreme." ^ " He who casts off desires, he into whose heart desires enter but as rivers run into the never-swelling, passive ocean, he is Mastery of tranquil ; and there springs in him separation from all desires, trouble. He only whose thoughts are gathered in meditation can find rest." ■* " The wise are troubled to determine what is action and what is not. I will tell thee the path of deliverance. He is the doer of duty who beholds inaction in action, and action in inaction, free from the sense of desire : his action is consumed by the fire of knowledge." ^ " As a candle placed in shelter from the wind does not flicker, so is he who, with thoughts held in devotion, delighteth in his soul, knowing the boundless joy that the mind attains beyond sense, whereon being fixed it moveth not from truth ; and who, having attained it, regardeth no other attainment as so great as it is, nor is moved by severest pain." ^ " Seek refuge in thy mind." ' " Let one raise his soul by his own means : let him not lower his soul ; for he is his soul's friend or enemy. He v/ho gg^-.^es ect has subdued himself by his soul finds that self which, by reason of the enmity of what is not spiritual, might be a foe, the friend of his soul." ^ " Draw in the senses from objects of sense, as the tortoise its limbs ; for when the heart follows their roaming it Spirituality snatches away spiritual wisdom as a wind a ship on the of purpose, waves." ^ Yet even in the practice of ascetic disciplines, com- mended to the devotee who would concentrate „ ^ . Moderation, his mind on God alone, excess is discounten- 1 Bkag. G., ch. V. * Ibid., ch. xvii. 3 ibid., ch. ix. * Ibid., ch. ii. s ibid., ch. iv. 8 ibid., ch vi. ' Ibid., ch ii. 8 ibid., ch. vi. ^ Ibid., ch. ii. 426 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. anced ; and fanatical abstinence from food, sleep, recreation, action, are discouraged, — he only being a true devotee who is moderate in all things, and, above all, in his desires.^ How these opposite tendencies are reconciled does not indeed appear. It has been supposed '^ that indifference to results was substituted for abandonment of action, from a sense of the neces- sity of modifying the strictness of ascetic practices, which is very probable. Such are the cultures of piety, — contemplative Practical mainly, and in their final aim. But practical virtues. virtues are held as equally imperative. Such are fearlessness, temperance, rectitude, veracity, a harmless spirit, freedom from anger, liberality, mod- esty, gentleness, benevolence towards all, stability, energy, fortitude, patience, purity, resolution, and the absence of vindictiveness and conceit. ^ These are enforced as positive duties. They are described, also, as the path of those who are " born to the lot of divine beings," while those who have them not gravitate the other way. All actual conditions were, to the Hindu, profoundly Natural rctrospectivc. They must somehow find their destiny. ground iu the determinations of a divine Order. There w^as more in moral good and evil than mere fruit of culture. And to be " born to the lot " of divine or depraved beings must of course have meant some- thing beyond caste-distinctions. A sense of destiny came mightily down on the dreamer's vision, as he thought of the prodigious force of natural endow- ment in determining the paths of conduct. Virtues were upward tracks, for which, it was plain, some had 1 BJiag. G; ch. vi. 2 Wilson, III. no. 3 Bhag. G-, ch. xvi. THE BH AG A V AD-GIT A. 427 a kind of natural fore-ordinatlon ; while the birth-doom of others drove them in the opposite direction into correspondent vices. And here the poet's moral judg- ment seems too much absorbed in the sense of inevi- table consequence to recognize that apparent injustice in such predestinations, which demanded solution. And he turns the evil-doers away ^ upon their down- ward path of bestial transmigrations, with as little apparent sympathy as is conveyed in that kindred sentence from another gospel: "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." Doubtless in the one case, as in the other, the special aspect under which moral evil was, for the moment, intensely conceived, excluded other and kindlier elements of faith, which elsewhere enter into both these gospels, though in different ways. With the Hindu, the deliverance from these bonds of destiny might surely be found in the all-embracing mystic unity of spiritual life, as with the Hebrew in the depths of the Fatherhood of God. And yet it is evident of the one as of the other gospel, that its cen- tral idea had not reached its own full significance, as a guaranty for the preservation and perfection of all spiritual forces, even in the mind of its greatest teacher. But we must not overlook the fact, that this whole poem is intent on pointing out the ways in which the dark, bewildering, bestializing ^;^;2<25, or organic qual- ities, might be "burned away in the fires of worship." It implies a certain inherent and absolute power in these disciplines and endeavors, to accomplish their purpose. They involve a higher freedom, which contravenes the apparent fatalities of evil. ^ Bhag. G., ch. xvi. 428 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. And for all aspirations alike there was the One I/ife The path ^^^^ animated all lives, an unfailing promise, open to all. justification, and resource. " Rest assured, O son of Kunti ! that they who worship me, shall never die. I am the pledge of their bliss." ' " Forsake all other reliance, and fly to me alone. I will deliver thee from all thy transgressions." ^ " Even if one whose ways have been ever so bad worship me alone, with devotion, he shall be honored as a just man; for he has judged aright. He soon becometh of a virtuous spirit, and entereth eternal rest." ^ " He my servant is dear to me, who is free from enmity, the friend of all nature, merciful, exempt from pride and selfishness, the same in pain and pleasure, patient of wrongs, contented, of subdued passions and firm resolves, and whose mind is fixed on me alone. "He also is worthy of my love who neither rejoices nor finds fault ; neither laments nor covets ; and, being my servant, has forsaken both good and evil fortune. " He is my beloved who is the same in friendship and hatred, in honor and dishonor, unsolicitous about the event of things ; to whom praise and blame are as one ; who is of little speech, and pleased with whatever cometh to pass ; who owneth no particular home, and who is of steadfast mind. " They who seek this amrita [immortal food] of religion, even as I have said, and serve me faithfully, are dearest of all."'* Here the independent witness-soul of the Sankhya Concen- is combiucd with a Vedantic reverence for the trationof q^^ Universal Life, and a Buddhistic recocrni- virtues in c5 worship, tion of actiou and social duties. The meaninof of this blending of stoical indifference, pious ardor, and human love, can only lie in the effort to consecrate the whole of life, to fuse every element of the human ideal in the one purpose of worship, as substantial unity with the Highest, as all-sufficing joy. ^ Bhag. G., ch. ix. 2 Jbid., ch. xviii. 8 Ibid., ch. -au * Ibid., ch. xii. (Wilkins). THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 429 "They who worship me dwell in me, and I in them." ' " By him who constantly seeks me, without wandering of mind, I am easily found." ^ " Thinking on me, absorbed in me, teaching each other, and constantly telling of me, the wise are blessed. To such as seek me with constant love, I give the power to come to me. Through my compassion, while remaining in my own essence, I yet turn their darkness into light." ^ " Most dear am I to the spiritually wise, and he is dear to me. The distressed, the seeker for hght, the desirer of good, the wise, are all exalted ; but the wise, whose devout spirit rests on me, I hold even as myself."^ " Though thou wert the greatest of offenders, thou shalt cross the gulf of sin in this bark of spiritual wisdom. He who hath faith shall find this ; and, having found it, shall speedily attain rest for his soul. No bonds of action hold the mind which hath cut asunder the bonds of doubt. Son of Bharata, sever thy doubt in worship, and arise ! " ^ And, on the other side, the inevitableness of moral penalty is as positively asserted. It rests not Moral pen- on any arbitrary decree, but on the essential ^^^'^^• qualities of conduct. It is associated indeed in certain aspects with the notion that the castes originated in these moral qualities, and their due subordinations;^ for the Bhagavadgita does not attain the grand dem- ocracy of Buddhism. But the inherence of moral consequence according to purely moral quality is nevertheless strictly defined : — " The pleasure that springs from serenity of mind is first like poison, and afterwards like the amrita of immortals ; but the pleas- ures of the senses begin like amrita, and end as poisons ; and the pleasure that, is from sleepy sloth is the utter bewilderment of the soul." 6 According to the quality that has ripened into pre- dominance is the form the individual spirit assumes ; ^ Bhag. G., ch. ix. ^ ibid., ch. viii. 8 Ibid., ch. x. * Ibid., ch. vii. ^ Ibid., ch. iv. ^ Ibid., ch xviii. 430 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. gravitating at death to the "imperishable place," or downwards, through lower forms of life, even to the "wombs of the senseless," or inorganic matter, if the deathly blight of indifference shall come to that at last.^ "Threefold the gate of this hell, — avarice, anger, and lust."^ Thus the bad are consigned, not to endless misery by one dread sentence, but to pro- bations manifold; and, if hopelessly sunk, reaching at last a quasi annihilation, by laws of affinity alone ; not to be preyed on by the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched ; but, more mercifully (if that word be applicable at all), to become the clod or the stone, which testify that the capability to sin and to suffer are alike no more. So that hope ceases only with consciousness itself; for transmigration is a re- volving wheel, and with every fresh birth comes fresh gift of opportunity for such intelligence as may still survive. " All worlds up to that of Brahma are subject to ^, ,, ^ [the law ofl return." But there is a state The blessed ■- ^ -■ life beyond from which they who enter it do ilot need, as they cannot desire, to return. " There is an invisible, eternal existence, beyond this visible, which does not perish when all things else perish, even when the great days of Brahma's creative life pass round into night, and all that exists in form returns unto God whence it came. They who obtain this never return." ^ " They proceed unbewildered to that imperishable place, which is neither illumined by the sun nor moon ; to that primeval Spirit whence the stream of life for ever flows." ^ " Whoso beholds me in all things and all in me, I do not vanish from him, nor does he vanish from me ; for in me he lives." ^ " Bright as the sun beyond darkness is He to the soul that remembers Him in meditation, at the hour of death, with thought ^ Bhag. G., ch. xiv. ' Ibid., ch. xvi. * Ibid., ch. viii. * Ibid., ch. XV. " Ibid., cb. vL THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 43 1 fixed between the brows, — Him the most ancient of the wise, the primal ruler, the minutest atom, the sustainer of all, — in the hour when each finds that same nature on which he meditates, and to which he is conformed." ^ " They who put their trust in me, and seek deliverance from decay and death, know Brahma, and the highest spirit (Adhyatma), and every action (karma). They who know me in my being, my person, and my manifested life, in the hour of death know me indeed." - Who is this that is so known? " The Soul in all beings, the best in each, and the inmost nature of all ; their beginning, middle, end ; the all-watching preserver, father and mother of the universe, supporter, witness, fiabitation, refuge, friend ; the knowledge of the wise, the silence of mystery, the splendor of light ; and death and birth, and all faculties and powers ; the holiest hymn, the spring among seasons, the seed and the sum of all that is." ^ And whoso by inward worship of God overcomes the bhnd qualities and dispositions, by devotion shall enter at once into His being.* These conceptions of a future life seem to hover between absorption into deity and revolving cy- personal cles of ever-renewed births. Yet, through alP"'°^°'^^^y- this indistinctness, a certain sense of permanence must have been felt by those whose minds dwelt so con- stantly on the thought of somewhat eternal in the very consciousness of spiritual being. We have already seen that the mystical Hindu mind did not demand so distinct an assurance of continued personal conscious- ness after death as does the intense individualism of modern thought. Such positiveness of prediction would have been associated with limitations rather than with freedom : always the longing of mystical faith has been to lose limit in pure self-surrender, and find freedom in absolute present trust. 1 Bhag-. G., ch. viii, 2 ibid., ch. vii. 3 Ibid., ch. ix. x. xi. * Ibid., ch. xiv. xviii. 432 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. Yet the Bhagavadgita recognizes the desire of con- tinued being, as indeed it does not fail of recognizing almost every genuine aspiration. And when Krishna would allay the compassionate scruples of Arjuna against destroying human life, he points to the im- perishable personality that resides in every soul. Its description fully corresponds with what we mean by that term. One with infinite soul, expanded to share the universal life, yet in a real sense distinct in itself, as being that in each soul which makes it real and eternal, it comes home to our experience as our own deepest sense of immortality, which transcends the thought of beginning as of end. " As the soul in this body undergoes the changes of infancy, youth, and age, so it obtains a new body hereafter. " Know that these finite bodies have belonged to an eternal, inexhaustible, indestructible spirit. He who believes that this spirit can kill, and he who believes it can be killed, both are wrong. Unborn, changeless, eternal, it is not slain when the body is slain. " As a man abandons worn-out clothes and takes other new ones, so does the soul quit worn-out bodies and enter others. Weapons cannot cleave, nor fire burn it. It is constant, immovable ; yet it can pass through all things. " If thou hadst thought it born with the body, to die with the body, even then thou shouldst not grieve for the inevitable ; since what is born must die, and what is dead must live again. All things are first unseen, then seen, then at last unseen again. Why then be troubled about these things ? " Some hold the soul as a wonder, while some speak and others hear of it with astonishment ; but no one knoweth it, though he may have heard it described. The soul, in its mortal frame, is invul- nerable. • " Grieve not then for any creatures, and abandon not thy duty. For a noble man that infamy were worse than death." ^ " It is good to die doing thy own work : doing another's brings danger."^ » Bhag. G., ch. il » Ibid., ch. iii. THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 433 The sense of immortality is here associated with the idea of duty, conceived indeed after a Hindu fashion. Wherever such connection is recognized as essential, there, under whatever special form duty may be presented, w^e may be sure that personality is in- volved in the idea of eternal life. This " invulnerable soul " is in every one of the living beings before Arjuna on the battle-field ^n destinies of Kuru. "An imaginary thing can have no ^^"^^• existence, nor can that which is real be other than a stranger to nonentity." ^ Is not this an implication of full faith in personal destinies? What limitation is possible to the sweep of this invulnerability of life through all special lives? What is it but the living path and the living goal, at once, for them all? It is a protest against the fate elsewhere in the Bhagavad- gita assigned to those who are fallen lowest in delusion and vice. The " w^ombs of the senseless " disappear before it. How can the soul die down into a clod, if soul is invulnerable? By this rescue of the substance, all that waste is made impossible. The higher "con- servation of force," which resides in intelligence itself, forbids it. The "wombs of the senseless," like the "everlasting woes" of Christian theology, are, in fact, but mythological and dramatic fictions, in which the fears and hates arising from certain stages of moral development invest the idea of spiritual destiny. Intuitions of the eternal validity of that which is in- most substance and proper selfhood in every one, flash out by the side of these mythologic fancies, and reach beyond them, discerning the real purport of existence. This inmost personal life, rooted in essential life, con- tains all guaranties of good : whatever else dies out or ^ Bhag. G; ch. ii. 28 434 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. revolves through phases of matter, coming up again in vapor or tree, that which is called "soul" in each, the intellectual and moral quality, the sphere of aspi- ration and relation to the infinite, however it may change and develop, must escape such fate, — must abide, according to this philosophy, in the imperish- able place of soul itself. Honor to pantheism for affirming the oneness of spiritual substance, for the sweep of its great circle that leaves no life homeless and wandering outside God. The recognition of an inmost personality, lifted in , pure independence of all the chanfje and loss Correspond- •*■ ^ ^ encewith juvolvcd iu actious and their fruits, is as posi- ^^' tive in the Bhagavadgita as in Kapila's dis- tinction between Prakriti and Purusha. In fact, this distinction, with the whole Sankhya system,^ is here fully set forth ; though as but a single side of an eclectic philosophy, and combined — Kapila would hardly say, reconciled — with that oneness of spiritual being to which he objected as opposed to individual claims. "He who beholdeth all his actions performed by Prakriti, at the same time perceives that his atma [self] is inactive in them. The su- preme soul, even when it is in the body, neither acts nor is it affected, because its nature is eternal, and free of qualities. As the all-pene- trating ether, from the minuteness of its parts, passeth everywhere unaffected, so this spirit in the body. As one sun illumines the whole world, so does the one spirit illumine the whole of matter, O Bharata ! They who thus perceive the body and the soul as dis- tinct, and that there is release, go to the Supreme." ^ This effort to combine the Sankhya with the Ve- Unjversaiity dauta is but One element of the vast synthesis of the Gita. Qf f^i^i-^ attempted in the " Divine Lay " which * The reader will recall the explanation of this distinction, as suggested in the chapter on the Sankhya in the present volume, p. 388. 2 Bhag. G; ch. xiii. THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 435 we are now studying. It has been described^ as evading all great questions which divide the schools of belief, as hovering between faith and works, reason and devotion, the worship of the invisible and the worship of the visible God.^ It is certain that the reconciliation of opposite tendencies is by no means clear or satisfactory. It is syncretism rather than fusion. It is intellectual recognition, rather than final system. But the breadth of this recognition is what deserves our admiration, the large justice done to every existing element of Hindu thought. Like its own Brahma, the Bhagavadgita is the best of every form, revealing its highest aspect, its spiritual pur- port. Faith is good, and works are good ; but the goodness of each is in the subordination of one to the other. Absorption and transmigration are both real ; but their meaning for the desire of immortality is in their respective meanings as the true end of life and the consequence of conduct. Not less real the worth of the Veda for the greater worth of ntrvcda, the divine certainty that lies beyond it. Sacrifices are good, yet only as the step to a higher service of God. The Sankhya witness-soul is exalted ; not less so the soul performing these duties that belong to its path in life. The gmias, or qualities of blind nature, have their tremendous moral issues : not less true are the all-dissolving Unity of Brahma, and the illusion of this universe that comes and goes, these worlds of life that are " subject to return." The eternal Substance abides, beyond all forms of existence, inconceivable, unknown. Yet every term by which the inmost per- sonality of man is expressed is carried up into this divine substance, making it a fulness of life. It is 1 Wilson, Essay on Bhagav. Git& {Sanskr. Lit,, III. 144). 43^ RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. Purtisha, personal soul. It is Puriishottdma, Ultimate Personality. It is Adhydtma^ Over-Soul, or Divine Self. It is even Mahesvara^ the Great Lord. It is the Avatara, the perpetual providence, ever manifest in visible form to save the w^orld. This boundless hospitality to existing beliefs indi- cates at least the force with which the religious senti- ment was embodied in them all at the time when the Bhagavadgita was written. One element betrays the Brahmanical source from which it flowed, the main- tenance, however modified, of caste. Brahmanism is here seen, surrounded by rationalizing independent tendencies, seeking to accommodate itself to their demands, while maintaining the unity of religious development as a whole. Like the somewhat analo- gous production of the Christian Church, the Johannic Gospel, it is the work of the highest spiritual genius, the most deliberate and careful constructive skill, the most earnest desire of religious unity, which the tendencies it represented had at their command ; and a spirit is moving through its speculative deeps, that could not be bound within the limits of any creed, — the spirit of Universal Religion. We cannot wonder that in a time of contending sects, The maker ^^^^ amidst the distiuctious of caste, the disclo- of the Lay. g^-g gf ^^^ " sublime mvstcry " to the reviler, the indifferent, the unspiritual, should be forbidden. ^ How indeed, leaving caste out of the question, could it be made known to such ? No deep religious faith fails wholly of that wisdom which knows where not to cast its pearls. , As the Hebrew reformer clothed his doc- trine in parables, for those who hearing did not hear, and as the Greek philosopher veiled his in symbols, so 1 Bhag. G-t ch. xviii. THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 437 the Hindu mystic admonished his disciples th»at prepa- ration was needed for receiving what only the eye of thoughtful attention could even behold. And was not this light of pure thought indeed shining in compara- tive darkness ? Was it not on the heights of con- templation, in a region which the disciplined intellect alone could make a home ? Yet we detect also behind these ethical and spiritual considerations the strict re- quirements of caste. Not here the broad humanity of Buddha, whose word was a gospel rather than a phi- losophy, and probably uttered with less of esoteric myster}^ or exclusiveness than that of any other teacher of the ancient world. The claims of the philanthropist differ from the claims of the seer. Shall we not say with the latest English translator of this wonderful song, sung in the far East two thousand years ago, that " it is sufficient praise for the mystical old Brahman to have inferred, amidst dark- ness and ignorance, the vast powers of mind and will, and to have claimed for the soul the noble capacity of making the body and even external matter its slave ? " IV. PIETY AND MORALITY OF PANTHEISM. PIETY AND MORALITY OF PANTHEISM. TF the Bhagavadgita is pantheistic, it is none the less ^ theistic also. While these two terms inThedemand their extreme meaning represent widely differ- °^ ^^® ^se. ent conceptions, here is a higher unity which seeks to include what is best in both. Whatever may have been the result of this effort, its comprehensiveness deserves special notice, in view of the demand of our civilization for a breadth and freedom which can ap- preciate every real element of human belief. In this spirit of the age, Goethe wrote to Jacobi that he could not be content with one way of thinking ; that as artist and poet he was a polytheist, while as student of nature he was a pantheist. All phases of religion appear alike imperfect, if defined as mutually exclusive systems. But their real affinities are coming to be comprehended in the unity of personal experience. We are learning to recognize theism, polytheism, and pantheism as legiti- mate parts of ourselves, to resume them under as- pects which explain their power over races and times other than our own, and so to relieve the steps of human endeavor from disparagement by exclusive creeds. 442 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. There are phases of skepticism and phases ot , . science which seem to turn from reliction as Justice to *-* pantheism Well as intuition with sweeping denial. There are phases of superstition apparently blind to all rights of skepticism and science. But both science and religion in our day are to receive a republican breadth of meaning. They will not only guard the right of every faculty and every aspiration to plead its own cause, but respect the witness it may be able to bring in its own behalf from the confidence of mankind. To how purely negative a criticism has pantheism been subjected ! Yet there must be truth in a form of belief which has satisfied enduring civilizations, and which has reappeared in philosophy and ethics wherever these have reached a high development, without regard to the lines which separate recognized religions or even races. It has usually been through some form of spiritual pantheism that these distinctive religions have escaped their limitations, and risen into a universality unknown either to their founders or to the ordinary current of their history. We may instance the Sufism of the Mohammedans, the Neo- Platonism of the Greeks, and the Mysticism that preceded the Reformation in Germany and Italy, and showed a far larger and profounder spirit than that movement. Modern philosophy has received its strongest impulse from a similar tendency in German thought. And the unities of political, intellectual, and religious life, at the present time, make the relation of pantheism to the coming age a question of real moment. Whatever inferior forms of experience may have received or assumed the name, it is of great impor- PIETY OF PANTHEISM. 443 tance to emphasize that special purport of pantheism which accounts for its frequent recurrence and its noble fruits. Our study of the Hindu schools of re- ligious philosophy should help us to this result. It is commonly insisted that all pantheistic systems are ways of confounding the Creator with the what is creation, and sinking the soul in the senses. Pantheism? This form of statement comes mainly from Semitic habits of thought inherited by Christianity. Panthe- ism could expect no other reception from their intense jealousy for the rights of an external deity, by whom the world is made out of nothing, and the human soul autocratically ruled. But, if pantheism were what this fixed impression of the Christian Church as a whole represents it, it would certainly be far from resembling the aspirations of those Hindu seers whom we have been studying in the preceding chapters of this volume. They, of all men, sought emancipation from the "wheel of the senses," and fervently believed in the possibility of union with the Absolute and Eternal. In reality, pantheism, whether as sentiment or philosophy, is not the worship of a finite and visible world. In its nobler forms it is essentially of the spirit, and rests, as its name imports, on these princi- ples : that Being is, in its substance, one ; that this substantial unity is, and must be, implicated in all energy, though indefinably and inconceivably, — as Life, all-pervading, all-containing, the constant ground and ultimate force of all that is ; and that the recog- nition of this inseparableness of the known universe from God is consistent with the worship of God as infinitely transcending it. A theism of pure sentiment, following the Hebrew 444 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. prophetic consciousness of intimacy with God, yet, like that earher Semitism, too monarchical in its Limits of Christian thcory to recognize how completely all manifes- t eism. tatlon must be one with its spiritual substance, was the religious inspiration of Jesus and his compan- ions. Not less was this the limit for every form under which Christianity could appear. Even the Gospel of John — though a later product, drawing largely from Greek and Oriental fountains, and imbued with mystical elements apparently unknown to the original faith as it was in Jesus — stopped short, on this track, w^ith limiting the -pure immanence of God in the universe to the ideally constructed person of Jesus, as the "Word made flesh." All pantheistic forms or tendencies of distinctive Christianity have had the same limitation , and this obscures the universal element, which never- theless underlay and in fact prompted them. The ideal demand of modern life is for fuller recosf- „ , nltlon than was ever before possible, that spirit- Modem ^ '^ ideal of ual being is of one substance. All religions ^^^* measurably express this truth, and their aspira- tions after universality imply it. But their distinctive tendencies have interfered more or less harmfully with its free development and just emphasis. With the knowledge of universal laws there enters a more genial and inclusive spirit. ■ Philosophy now aims at complete expression of the essential unity of subject with object, in what Aristotle called "thought thinking itself;" thus reaching the ultimate conception of One Spiritual Substance em- bracing all being within the scope of its self-affirma- tion. ^ The Imagination of our time divines, beyond * This is involved even in the " relativity of all knowledge," which might seem to make it void ; since the conception of this relativity implies recognition of its opposite, the non-relative or absolute, as the test of its own reality even as a conception. PIETY OF PANTHEISM. 445. this metaphysical conception, that the living universe is the play of deity, through all forms and forces, all dream and faith and action, all names, all symbols, all religions. Its Piety and its Humanity must be more than a mere recognition of what is eternally good and true, as an object of thought : they aim at the expression of this, as far as possible, in forms of which it shall be at once the productive cause and the inseparable life. Its Sciences must recognize that what lies beyond their tests and explanations is really the one master force involved in every step of evolu- tion from lowest to highest forms, the substance of these force-factors out of which all constructions flow. Its God must be no mere Creator of a distinct uni- verse, in the sense of maker, constructor, provider ; but far more, even the inmost Essence and Principle of all. The age, in fine, is resuming, in the fulness of its experience, the ideal meaning of all spiritual motives profound enough to have acquired distinctive names, and to have entered into the classification of religious systems. I am not then forgetting the larger light of science and practical relation in the civilization of the West, when I bring the " Hindu dreamers " to help towards a better understanding of the needs of our time. It is these very forms of intellectual maturity that impel us to seek fresh meaning in all ancient divinations of the Unity of Being. The mystery which we are to ourselves, and find in all things around us, not only transcends our jj^e mystery theological terms, but effaces all scientific land- °'^ ^^'"s- marks and distinctions. It is by tho2tght we know all that we call God, the world, ourselves ; and in all 44^ RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. directions alike is thought incomprehensible to the thinker. Facts, phenomena, the operation of forces, we claim to understand simply because we employ them for our purposes, select them to meet definite demands, combine them in positive constructions. But of force we only know that it acts in certain ways, not how it can act thus, nor how act at all. And of the fleeting play of phenomena, what can we say but that the con- nection between mind and the physical organs through which they are perceived — nay, between mind and its own activity — is a mystery penetrable by no faculty that we possess. With a change in our mode of exist- ence, the familiar universe would roll up as a scroll ; though it were only to reappear in such new% unim- agined form as may accord with new desires or needs, — so sligrht the hold of either our volition or our com- prehension on the relations of our being. Yet we inevitably trust the reports of consciousness concern- ing its own objects. And how should this unison be possible, and this confidence and calm abide in the depths of the reason, but for an inmost identity of es- sence^ including" within itself alike the truster and what he trusts f This presence of the unfathomable, in which all ex- perience is involved, cannot be set aside on the ground that it is always unknown, and that a purely unknown factor may be eliminated from the problem. It abides everywhere : it is that which we do know most surely, even if we know nothing else, unless knowing means comprehending, in which case we should do well to drop the word altogether. Nor can a universal element be eliminated and left out of the problem, — like a constant factor in arith- metic, — on the ground that it is constant and every- PIETY OF PANTHEISM. 447 where of equal force. ^ It is dynamic, not arithmetical. It enters into the substance of each experience, with special influences in each. Its presence affects the spirit and attitude of inquiry, shapes the definitions, and saves from absorption in the finite side of experi- ence. " They who prize experience exclusively," said Goethe, "forget that experience is but the half of ex- perience." Our victorious science fails to sound one fathom's depth on any side, since it does not ex-_, i^ 'J ^ _ The pantne- plain the parentage oi mind. For mind was istic side of in truth before all science, and remains for^^"''^^'* ever the seer, judge, interpreter, even father, of all its systems, facts, and laws. Our faculties are none the less truly above our heads because we no longer won- der, like children, at processes we do not understand. Spite of category and formula, of Kant and Hegel, we are abashed before our own untraceable thought. The stars of heaven, the grass of the field, the very dust that shall be man, foil our curiosity as much as ever, and none the less for yielding to the lens, the prism, and the polariscope of science ever new tri- umphs for our pride and delight. Not less mystical is mind because it will no longer be suppressed and stultified by mysteries of faith. True as ever is what Krishna savs in the old Eastern reverie : — " Some regard the soul as a miracle, while some speak of it, and others hear of it, with like astonishment ; but no one comprehends it, even when he has heard it described." ^ What know we of matter f Philosophy can define it as a form in which spirit manifests itself to spirit, a reflex of thought, an expression or mode of mind ; 1 This is Mr. Buckle's mode of historical computation: "The moral factor is con- "j stant: ergo^ it has no influence." j ' Bhagavadgit^ ch. ii. | 448 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. and so escape the dualism that would seem involved in its being an independent reality. The spiritual is its substance, is what it means, is what we are conscious of, after all. What, then, is spiritual essence? We cannot define it, we know not how, only that it acts ; still less do we know what it is. To remember, to hope, to love : these we explain only by themselves again. That they are is itself the mystery, all- pervading, infinite, — To Be. Into such transcendence the whole of life enters, and with it all science, matter, force, and form. By this one fact of mystery alone, though we should look no further, the infinite of mind is found inseparable from all experience. And this " Unknowable " is known to be not merely continuous with the human, nor interpenetrating it merely, as space is per- vaded by light, — but more. As a man's mind is in his thought and his love, so is essential mind the unfathomable life in which all intelligent spiritual forces move.^ And this truth has still closer relations with our In etWcs fiioral and spiritual nature. The sense of and faith, limit that for ever besets the understandinor, withholding from us the meaning of the world and the purpose of existence in a certain repulsion as towards aliens and strangers, necessitates a path upwards to the freedom of an all-embracing idea, an all-dissolving unity, in which our individual imperfec- tions shall, ideally at least, cease to separate us from the whole. This dualism, as between one who seeks ^ ^"^^viz^x {Psychology, p. 110) regards such ideas as anthropomorphic, and so without authority. But if the substance of the universe is not mind, as we are mind wlio tliink it, then the very conception of existence, on whicli that of substance depends, is also base- less as resulting from our mentality alone. \ PIETY OF PANTHEISM. 449 and one who shuns, can yield only to a sense of in- most identity. The soul must gather the world and itself under one conception. It must see the whole, in other words, in God. Only the inseparableness of finite from infinite can assure our life of an origin and purport adequate to its nature. " Because God is," saith the soul, " therefore I am and shall.be, — in God." But to this assurance there is no other path than that of moral consecration. The reconciliation, the freedom, the unity, come only with absorption of the conscious self into the truth of principles, convictions, ideal aims; with finding, in the best moments, somewhat of thought or feeling, which " having been must ever be ; " with participation in somewhat of divine nature and endless promise, throuo-h an absolute love and service : so that it shall no longer be the private self, but soul as soul, which affirms within us, and once for all, — " I am." " O grace abundant, by which I presumed To fix my sight upon the light eternal, So that the seeing /consumed therein ! I saw that in its depth far down is lying Bound up in love together in one volume What through the universe in leaves is scattered ; Substance, and accident, and their operations, All interfused together in such wise That what I speak of is one simple lightP * Such experience is limited to no age nor race. Through such paths as these, in such form as v\ as possible within his special horizon, as I believe, the Hindu saint arrived at his pantheistic faith. This is the substance of the process, with whatever errors * Paradise, XXIII. (Longfellow's transl.). 29 -1 450 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. mingled, by whatever superstitions marred. Through such experiences not the saints and seers only, but simply earnest people, through much imperfection, have in every religion reached the certainty of infinite good, under whatever name, as inseparable from their own inward being. These are truths not of the reason only, however Its ethical they may accord with its higher processes ; value. -^ut primarily of religious sentiment, and espe- cially in its dealing with the facts of moral and phys- ical evil. For the root of all effective force against these facts as actual is in holding the good to be the one reality ; in finding fast anchorage in this tdtimate^ essential fact which they are bound to subserve ; in being sure that the whole process of life is somehow contained within the infinite rectitude of God. The Hindu dreamer, seeking to abolish evils by thinking them away ; and the practical worker, in practical races and times, more effectually battling them down by action^ — alike assume that the real and essential are to be found only in the good. Both seek to reach true being by denying the claim of evil to be positive and permanent ; to read the world with clearer insight of its meaning ; to affirm for the actual its ultimate significance in the ideal, in God. We master the despair with which the prevalence of evils would otherwise overwhelm us, by assuring ourselves that evil is properly "good in the making," a condition of finite growth. This is but recognizing tht: fact that our philosophy cannot possibly be sound and healthful so long as it does not explain the finite by the infinite, and interpret the life of man in its wholeness as manifestation of God. The best and bravest souls have always treated evils PIETY OF PANTHEISM. 45 1 not as if their depressing side were the substance of their meaning, but as involving issues of all-reconcil- ing good. This mystic faith, that things seen but in part are seen in illusion, and that they are seen but in part till they are brought out into relations that accord with ideal good, is as practical as it is speculative. Science itself can offer no other interpretation than this of the physical evil, which "final causes" and " special interferences " only aggravate by their im- plication of a divine intention. Its help is for the sternest and bitterest lot. It is an instinct of cheerful hope, where it has not yet become a clear perception of the reason. It inspires the will, where it finds no hold in the understanding. Its secret assurance is perhaps strongest in the simplest natures that are least perplexed with casuistry or doubt. It is apt to find clear and hopeful solutions of duty, whether men are dealing with their own sense of wrong-doing or with outward and social wrong. We must act upon the testimony of the practical consciousness \ hold common sense sacred ; ignore no facts that life teaches ; neglect no function of the understanding. But there is need of a philosophy in which the ideal only is seen as real ; of hours when the eye is opened with vision of the divine alone. Alas for common sense itself, if our ideals have taught us no more than our understandings ; if banks and ships and railroads do not sometimes dissolve as illu- m sions in the white light of noble dreams ; if even the woes and sins of the world, which permit no rest to the eyelids of faithful men, could never vanish before their sight into the infinite depths of Divine Order; never melt, even for an hour of happier inspiration, into the mystery of all-embracing good ! 452 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. But is not this pure Fatalism, and destructive to the Relation moral being? To this question we must reply to fate. that, while destiny or fate in the sense of abso- lute external compulsion would certainly be destructive not only of moral responsibility, but of the personality itself, yet religion or science without fate, in another sense, is radically unsound. The word properly means "fixed, settled, irrevocably spoken ;" that is, it notes the final truth and substance of things. To make it mean only hostile sovereignty — what is desperately bad, and rendered so by a dead, mechanical, motiveless, yet external power — is to misapply it. Rather should it signify what is impregnably certain ; and if good is so, — things being regarded in their inherent and ulti- mate meaning, — then good, not evil, is fate. Is not truth itself, then, fate: — truth, which is but another name for the sanity and integrity of nature and law ; truth, which is the health and sweetness of universal order ; truth, which is therefore interchangeable, as to its meaning, with good? Why should not the very perfection of the moral and spiritual laws, whose be- nignity it is no part of our liberty of thought or will to alter or suppress, to make or to mar, stand to the soul as its fate? Subject as we surely are to organi- zation, heredity, conditions innumerable, shall we not hold that the ideal g-ood also, which we dream of beyond these limitations, is our ultimate destiny? We cannot separate perfection and fate. Deity, whose sway is not destiny, would not be venerable, nor even reliable. It would be a purpose that did not round the universe, a love that could not preserve it. Theism without fate is a kind of atheism. And a self-denominated ''atheism," yet holding justice to be the true necessity, or fate, is properly theism, though it refuse the name. MORALITY OF PANTHEISM. 453 Sovereign right and good at the centre of soul and nature, what is that but God? So that destiny should not be defined as hostile sovereignty or suppressive decree. But we Freedom must go further. It cannot be pure outward reconciled ^ , , . ^ , . I with fate. lorce, compelling man, even to his good. Even worshipped as the dearest ideal, even cherished as the power of God to set aside human defect and guarantee the best, it would still abolish liberty, the substance of the soul, — if it were this. The impell- ing forces therefore represent not foreign mastery, but natural growth. God is the inmost life of the human, not the- external will that shapes it as the potter moulds his clay. The fate that man must accept is but the real law of his own nature, whereby it is in accord with the universal life. It is thus not only consistent wdth freedom, but coincident with it. While he resists his own essential humanity, while he fails to express or to seek in his individual purpose that harmony with the universal order, his will can in no proper sense be called free : it is enslaved to illusion and bound to failure, and can reach nothing he really needs or can intelligently love. Liberty itself can be found only in knowing essential good to be the moving force of his own spiritual being. This unity is the true self; in this is personality ; therefore it is spontaneity, joy, health, success. The fate that abolishes individual caprice is the seal of freedom. Hence the inspiration that comes in self-abandonment to an idea or a dutv. It identifies our fate with our freedom. All great aspiration brings the sense of destiny, because it frees from inward conflict, from the resistance of finite caprice to infinite good ; and in this deep natural alli- ance and harmony of forces the doubts and fears are dissolved. 454 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. Even in the less enlightened forms of personal energy, we note that the sense of destiny comes in, wherever there is unity of the motive powers, al- lowing entire concentration of purpose. This is the condition of valor, assurance, authority. The vivacious Norse Sagas, are full of fatalism, and every storming Viking believed that his destiny was written in his brain at birth. " Odin," says the Heim- skringla, "knew beforehand the predestined fate of men, or their not yet completed lot." "No soul can die unless by permission of God," says Mohammed in the Koran, for the encouragement of his followers. "Everyman's fate have we bound about his neck." Better still, fate is the refuge and strength of Greek Prometheus in that sublime martyrdom which he en- dures as the penalty of his love for man. It is free- dom and justice approaching in the future, to dethrone the tyrannical gods of the past. And this divine myth of the identity of fate with noble will is a normal type of all ethical and spiritual inspiration. The heroes and the saints are fatalists, and read doom and triumph alike by one token : " for this cause came I unto this hour." The Stoic schools, both Greek and Roman, have proved that spiritual pantheism, as the essential unity of the human and divine, is reconcilable with the strongest conviction of moral freedom ; ^ affirming in theory, and carrying out into actual life, a degree of personal independence and self-respect as remarkable as their confidence that fate and providence are one.^ The pantheistic fol- lowers of the Bab, a modern Persian heretic, have * See Zeller's Sioics, pp. 170, 205, 227. ' Siobceus Eclog-, I. 179 ; Seneca de Bene/.^ IV. 7. MORALITY OF PANTHEISM. 455 ^ met incessant persecutions of the most barbarous kind with astonishing courage and enthusiasm.^ And why should the fact be otherwise? Immanent deity, become intensely real for the consciousness, should not only consecrate the whole life to duty, but should give the powers that freedom of aspiration which a universe so consecrated cannot but guarantee to all its own natural and proper forces. "It is an error to suppose," says Heine, "that pantheism leads to indifference. On the contrary, the sense of his own divineness wall stir man to reveal the same, and from that moment really grand actions and genuine heroism will enter and glorify this world."- The life and death of the pantheistic Fichte were full of noble service, both patriotic and humane., Spinoza was the harbinger of free thought and scholar- ship, the Columbus of ethics and theology as well as of philosophy. The mystical " Friends of God " in the Middle Ages were the fathers of modern philanthropy : their "Theologia Germanica," Luther tells us, first brought him inward light and peace. From the spirit- ual closet of a pantheistic dream issued the Reforma- tion. And every time the world is about to move a fresh step forward, there is somewhere in seclusion a m3'Stical brooding sense of all-mastering and all- absorbing deity, that holds in its bosom the germinant religious and social revolution, and sends forth the earliest witnesses and purest martyrs in its cause. It must not, then, be supposed that Hindu Panthe- ism and Fatalism were wholly irreconcilable Hindu Pan- with moral earnestness, or even eners^y. j J^eismand ' o ./ the moral cannot admit, for instance, that Mr. Banerjea, sense. 1 See their history in De Gobineau's Relig. de PAsie Centrale. ' DeVAllemagjiei I. p. 103. 45^ RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. a Hindu convert to Christianity, has furnished con- vincing proofs that the Vedanta, making the universe and the soul identical with God, destroyed the idea of duty. The same was said of Spinozism, by Jew and Christian.' Yet Spinoza himself, cast out of the syna- gogue with curses as the sum of all wickedness, was, in morality, piety, and spiritual earnestness, far in advance of all his accusers, then or since. Moral purpose in the Hindu was apt to take inward, rather than outward, directions : this was incident to his ethnic and climatic conditions. But how large a degree of such purpose was involved in the effort to overcome self and the senses by his method! It was contemplative indeed, not social. He watched the flow of change as it swept through all forms, as one watches in reverie the waves of a running stream, or the drift of clouds across the sky ; and the thought that he was himself but part of the current made him feel himself profoundly a child of fate. And he was fond of such sayings as these : — " Life, death, wealth, wisdom, works, are measured for one while on his mother's bosom." " Their fated allotments the very gods must bear. As pieces of drift-wood meet in ocean, and remain together a little time only ; as a traveller sleeps under a tree, and the next day departs, — so friends and possessions pass : there is no return." ^ "When his time is come, the bird who can see his food a long way off cannot see the snare." " Birds are killed in the air ; fishes caught in the sea : what help in choice of place ? " " When I see the sun and moon in eclipse, and the wise man in want, then I say, Fate is master." ^ " Where are the princes of the earth with their chariots and armies ? The earth that saw them perish still abides." ' Ram&y&na. ' Hito^adesa, I. 44-46. MORALITY OF PANTHEISM. 457 " Who sees not that this body passes away every moment ? Like a pot of clay in the water, it falls in pieces." " So many dear ties as man may form, so many thorns of sorrow are planted in his heart." " Foolish is he who would lay up riches in a world that is like a bubble." " As waters flow away and come not back, so the days and nights of mortal men." " The society of the good, which brings us a little joy, is bound to the yoke of pain ; for it ends in separation. " And there is no healing for the heart that is wounded with this sword." ^ But the inferepce shows that the wisdom to draw help from these necessities was not wanting. " Therefore be thou resolved, and think no more of sorrowing : here is the healing for thy wounds." ^ " Every thing on earth has its pleasure and its pain. Death comes to all that is born, and new birth to all that dies. Grieve not for what must be."^ And what was this intense feeling of the transient but equally intense suggestion of the eternal ? Did not the lower fate point to a higher ? If change sweeps over all, . what makes the changes but a changeless law ?* What makes a changeless law but an eternal life ? Vicissitudes pass, God is. And we are, — in God. So, with all his moral energies, the devotee of contemplation strove to reach perma- nent peace, at the heart of a restless world. The old lawgivers found no lack of moral sanction here. 1 Hit op., IV. 67-77 2 Ibid., 82. * Rattiayana; Bhag, Git&, &c. * '• Anaxagoras, Epicurus, and Euripides agree that 'nothing dies; But different changes give their various forms.' " Plutarch, Sentim. of Nature. 458 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. > " If one considers the whole universe as existing in the Supreme Spirit, how can he give his soul to sin ? " ' " He who understands divine omnipresence can no more be led captive by crime." ^ A Upanishad says : — " Such a one, who beholds the soul in the infinite soul alone, him sin does not consume : he consumes sin ; becomes free from doubt, and is pure." ^ The pantheistic bias of Hindu thought does not exclude a trustful and hopeful spirit. Through most Indian poetry there flows a delicate sense of divine benignity in the natural processes of life. The Hitopadesa, the people's ancient Book of Precepts and Fables, whose choice sentences are gathered out of all the Hindu classics, says : — " Hear the secret of the wise. Be not anxious for subsistence : it is provided by the Maker. When the child is born, the mother's breasts flow with milk. He who hath clothed the birds with their bright plumage will also feed thee." " How should riches bring thee joy, which yield pain in the getting, and pain in the passing away, and turn the head of the winner with folly .'' What trouble so great, in this life of many cares, as the for ever unsatisfied desire ? That only which one no longer seeks with anxious heart has he really attained." * The Vedanta says : — " As birds repair to a tree to dwell therein, so all this universe to the Supreme One."^ " He, the All-wise Preserver, dispenses the objects of our desire. To know Him is to be free : there is no end of misery but through this knowledge of God, To him whose trust is in God reveal themselves the mysteries." ^ Says the Divine One in the Gita : — ^ Manut XII. ii8. * Ibid., VI. 74; so Spinoza. 8 Brihad^ IV. iv. 23. * From Miiller's version, I. 170-179. " Pras'na, IV. 7. " Svet&savatara, VI. 13-23- MORALITY OF PANTHEISM. 459 " I am the Preserver who watches in all directions. Be not alarmed at having seen me in the terrible shape of all-destroying Time. Hasten to look, free from fear, on my human and friendly form." ^ ^ Another text, of frequent recurrence in the philo- sophical and ethical books, makes mortality itself the ground of spiritual faith : — " From what root springs man, when felled by death ? Say not, ' like a tree, he springs from seed.' If the tree be destroyed with its root, it grows not again. If then man be cut down by death, from what root shall he spring to life again ? It is God, the highest aim of one who abideth in and knoweth Him." ^ In the Ramayana, Bharata is adjured by the sages not to mourn too bitterly for his dead father : — " O wise Bharata ! grieve not for the departed. He is no longer an object for grief, and too many tears may bring him down from the heaven to which he has gone." ^ And Arjuna, permitted to ascend, though living, to the heaven of the just, " Follows the path unknown to mortals, where no golden sun nor silver moon divides the time, but the mighty hosts of men shine with the splendor of their own virtue, in a light which we afar off think to be the tremulous fires of stars. " There sees he the good kings, the brave and faithful men who were blessed with glorious deaths, and holy prophets, and pure women in chariots that wing the heavenly spaces." "* In the absence of historical and biographical facts, we are obliged to infer the ethical ideal and Ethical attainment which Hindu civilization permitted, illustrations. from the prevailing maxims and proverbs ; the wisdom that has been circulating for ages, in sentence and in song, among the masses of this immense empire. 1 Bhag. G., ch. xi. 2 Brihad, III. ix. 28. 8 Ramay., B. 11. * Mahabh., III. 460 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. Here, for example, is manly diet, from the Hltopa- The Hito- des'a, for the believer in fate : — • padesa. " Twofold is the life we live in : fate and will together run : Two wheels bear the chariot onward : will it move on only one ? " " Nay, but faint not, idly sighing, ' destiny is mightiest.' Sesamum holds oil in plenty ; but it yieldeth none unprest." ' "Fortune comes of herself to the honlike man who acts. It is the abject who say, ' All must come from fate.' Forget fate, and be brave. If thou failest, having put forth all thy force, the blame is not thine. " The deeds done in a former life are what is called fate. There- fore let one exert himself with unwearied energy in the present. " As the potter shapes the clay at his will, so a man shapes his own action. " Though he see his desired good close at hand, fate will not bestow it on him : it waits the manly deed. " A work prospers through endeavors, not through vows : the fawn runs not into the mouth of a sleeping lion." ^ " Take good and ill as they come ; for fortune turneth like a wheel. " Frogs to the marsh, birds to the lake, so all good to the man who strives for it : as one who seeks him, so hastes it to the hero who dallies not, is virtuous, grateful, and a faithful friend." ^ "By his own doings one rises or falls, as one man digs a well and another throws up a wall."'' " Seek not the wild ; sad heart ! Thy passions haunt it. Play hermit in thy house, with will undaunted. A governed heart, thinking no thought but good, Makes crowded houses holy solitude." * Hitopad- Introd., 29, 31. The verses are from Arnold's pleasant abridgment of this old Book of Good Counsels (Lond. 1861), and are literal translations. The prose pas- sages are selected from Ariillp.r''s German version (1S44). I have also carefully compared with this the French version of Lancercau (1855) and the English by Sir IVilliatu Jones. This last is hardly trustworthy, and Miiller thinks it cannot have received the author's entire elaboration. Such liberties are taken by the native copyists of the Hitopadesa, that, in Miilier's opinion, no trtte edition is possible, and each tratislator must select the special text he will follow. This fact helps to explain the very marked difference in these versions. 2 Ibid- hiirod.y 30-35. * Ibid., I. 164-166 < Ibid., II. 45. MORALITY OF PANTHEISM. 461 " Thine own self, Bharata, is the holy stream, whose shrine is virtue, whose water is truth, whose bank is character, whose waves are sympathy. There bathe, O Son of Pandu ! Thy inward life is not by water made pure." ' II 1 " Better be silent than speak ill ; better give up life than love harsh words ; better beggar's fare than luxury at another's board." ^ " Only that life is worth living which is free. If they live who depend on others, who are dead.''"^ " He has all good things whose soul is content: the whole earth is spread with leather, for him whose own feet are well shod." " He has read and heard and acquired all things, who turns his back on hope, and expects nothing.""* " Do not rage, like a cloud, with empty thunder : the noble man does not let the good or ill that foes have done him be seen."^ " What is a brave man's fatherland, and what a foreign country ? Wherever he goes, his strength makes-that land his own."^ " A bad man is like an earthen pot, easy to break and hard to mend. A good man is like a golden vase, hard to break and easy to mend."' " Disposition is hard to overcome. If you make a d6g a king, will he not still gnaw leather ? " ^ "A gem may be trodden under foot, and glass be put on the head : yet the glass is only glass, and the gem is still a gem." ' "How shall teaching help him who is without understanding? Can a mirror help the blind to see ? " ^^ " It is to no purpose that the bad man says, I have read the Vedas and the Laws. His character rules him, as it is the property to milk to be sweet." ^^ " Wise men seek not things unattainable : grieve not over the lost, and stand firm in time of trouble." ^^ " In the poisoned tree of life grow two sweet fruits, — the enjoy- ment of the nectar of poetry and the society of noble men." '^ " Integrity, self-sacrifice, valor, steadfastness through all changes, sympathy, loyalty, and truth are the virtues of a friend." ^* 1 Hitopadeia, IV. 83, 86 From the Mahabh. 2 ibid., I. 129. 3 Ibid., II. ai. « Ibid., I. I3S, 137. 5 Ibid., IV. 91. 6 Ibid., I. 96. 7 Ibid., I. 86. 8 Ibid., III. 58. 9 Ibid., II. 67. w Ibid., III. 117. 11 Ibid., I. 15. " Ibid., I. 161. " Ibid., I. 145. »* Ibid., I. 89. 462 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. "By whom is this jewel created, this word of two syllables (Mitram, friend), wherein we pour the joy of love, which guards us from sorrow and foes and fear? A friend who gladdens the heart, sharing one's pleasure and pain, is hard to find. Friends in pros- perity, self-seekers, abound ; but misfortune is their touchstone." " Be hospitable to thine enemy when he comes to thy door : the tree withdraws not its shade even from the wood-cutter. " Good men are compassionate to the lowest beings. The moon refuses not its light to the hut of the Chandala. "A guest who departs from a house disappointed, leaves his own sins behind him, and carries away the virtue of its owner. " Even a low-born man who comes to a Brahman's house must be honored: the stranger is on the same footing with the gods."^ " He alone is to be praised, he is blest, from whom the weak and suppHant go not away with hopes destroyed."^ " The friendship of noble persons endures to the end of life ; their anger is quickly appeased ; their liberality is without self- interest." ^ " Only the foolish ask, * Is this one of us or ah outside person ? ' To the noble the whole world is a family." ^ " One should spare his neighbor, thinking of the pain one feels when he sees that he must die." " O sacred earth ! why dost thou endure the false man, who re- turns noble and trusting kindness with evil treatment ? " " " This life, which is like a wave trembling in the wind, is in a right cause to be sacrificed for the good of others."'' " Let the wise man give up his goods for the sake of his neigh- bor ; for the sake of the good let him even give his life." "* " As life is dear to thee, so is it to other creatures : the good have mercy on all, as on themselves. " He who regards ahother's wife as his mother, his wealth as vain, and all creatures as himself, is wise. " Give to the poor, O son of Kunti ! not to the rich. Medicine is for the sick, not for those that are well. " The gift, bestowed with right purpose, at right time and place, on one who cannot repay it, is to be called a real gift."* ' Hitopade'sa^ I. 203, 204. * Jbid., I. 52-57. ' Ibid., I. 183. * Ibid., I. 180. 6 Ibid., I. 64. « Ibid., I. 61, 73. ' Ibid , III. 140. » Ibid., I. 38. » Ibid., I. 10-14. MORALITY OF PANTHEISM. 463 " Between virtues and the body there is infinite difference : the body perishes in a moment, virtues endure while the world lasts." ^ " The wise will follow duty, as if death were already grasping his hair." « The following are from the Panchatantra, a still older collection of tales and sentences, whose pancha- relation to the Hitopadesa is not yet very ^^''*^^- clearly understood : — " In all actions, to be like one's self is the praise of the wise : this makes smooth the right path, so full of hindrance." ^ "When the just falls, it is like a ball of feathers, but the wicked falls like a clod." * " A noble person never fails in protecting others, even in his extreme need ; as the pearl loses not its whiteness, though it have passed through the flames." ^ " The storm blows down the strongest tree, if it stands alone ; but not the well-rooted trees that stand together."^ " He who is kind to those that are kind to him does nothino; great. To be good to the offender is what the wise call good." ''' " A good prince is eye to the blind, friend to the friendless, father and mother of all who do well." ^ " Where he is honored who is unworthy of honor, and he de- pised who deserves respect, there come three things, r- famine, pestilence, and war." ^ The fact that these popular "Books of Wisdom " are mainly of Buddhist origin '^^ does not weaken their testimony to the union of practical morality with pan- theistic sentiment. The Hindu masses who have rejected Buddhism as a system of negations cherish these manly maxims as the true philosophy of life. They are heard on the lips of the poorest people, and circulate freely through city and village. As in the * Hitopadesa^ I. 43. 2 Ibid., Introd-, 3. ' /'««cAiZ^. (Benfey's German transl.) B. III. * Ibid., II. B Ibid. IV. 6 Ibid., III. » Ibid., IV. ix. « Ibid., I. xii. 9 Ibid., III. x. ><> See Benfey, Einleitung^ z. Panchatantra, 464 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. gnomic literature of other races, so here, the higher ethics are combined with maxims of prudential and even of selfish quality, though these last are very rare.^ Plaints of poverty, and policies that secure success are quaintly mixed with admonitions on the brevity of life and the vanity of riches. And, as with Buddhist teaching generally, the inculcation of good will sometimes runs out into extravagant forms of self- sacrifice. These fables are in fact an honest picture of human life, and proverbs are not wanting which answer to every human quality represented therein. That those of sense and shrewdness should abound is but another proof that pantheism does not exclude practical capacities and aims. Bhartrihari, a very ancient gnomic poet, whose "sentences " on human life and conduct are very popu- lar in India, begins with the praise of Jove and beauty, and ends with the praise of devotion : — " Wisdom is a treasure thieves cannot steal. It grows by spend- ing, and it cannot pass away. The wise are the rich ; and ye, O princes ! will never become their equals." " Without the wisdom that burns away our sins, the Vedas are nothing but men's trading wares." " Virtue has no need of penances, nor a pure heart of washing in the Ganges, nor a true man of human protection, nor magna- nimity of any ornament, nor the wise of any treasure but wisdom." " Though thy efforts fail, be steadfast, and thou shalt be exalted. The torch thrown on the ground goes not out." " He who has given himself to virtue, and felt the joy of obedi- ence to duty, will give up life, but not his purpose." " If the thistle has no leaves, is the spring to be blamed ; or the sun, if bats fly not by day ; or the cloud, if no drop of rain fall into ^ The worst of these in the Hitopadesa are suggested by the good mouse (B. i.) — purely for the purpose of testing tlie lieroic professions of the king of the doves, who begs him to gnaw his subjects out of the net before himself, thus preferring their safety to his own. The selhsh maxims are promptly rejected, and answered by others of the opposite quality: whereat the mouse praises this. wisdom of self-sacrifice as worthy of a king. MORALITY OF PANTHEISM. 465 the-cuckoo's beak ? So blame not fate : not so wilt thou change its path." " Go not aside from wisdom : then shall fire become as water, and the sea as a well ; Meru shall be as a hillock, and the lion as a gazelle ; poison shall be sweet as nectar, and serpents a crown of flowers." " As shadows in the morning is friendship with the wicked : . hour by hour it wanes. But friendship with the good grows like the shadows of eve, till lifers sun shall have set." " The drop of rain tails on glowing iron, and is no more. It falls on a flower, and shines like a pearl. It sinks into a shell at the happy hour, and becomes the pearl itself. Such the difference be^ tween kinds of friendship among men." " To do good in secret, to conceal one's good act, to help the poor when he comes, to be moderate in prosperity, always to speak kindly, is the path of wisdom." ^ I add a few selections of similar ethical purport from other popular Hindu writings : — " In thy passage over this earth, where the paths are now low, now high, and the true way seldom distinguished, thy steps must needs be unequal ; but fidelity to thyself will bear thee right on- ward." ^ " Let thy motive lie in the act, not in the reward. Having sub- dued thy passions, do thy own work, unconcerned for the result. Then shalt thou stand untainted in the world, as the lotus-leaf lies on the waters unwet."^ ^' The Mahabharata says of Arjuna that — " Neither lust nor fear nor love could tempt him to transgress his duty, or to do evil : " — and Rama in the Ramayana that — "As birds are made to fly and rivers to run, so the soul to-ii*" follow duty." " As the fragrance of a blossoming tree spreads far, so the fra- grance of a pure action." * 1 Bhartr- (Von Bohlen's Latin vers.) I. 13; III. 72; I. 45, 75; II- 100; I. 89, 78, 5°. 57- • • Sakuntal^. « Bhagavad-Gitd.. * Mahanarayana U/>an., II. 30 466 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. "As the stars disappear, so fades the memory of a kindness out of a,n evil heart." ^ "Our senses are like lattices, at which the deities keep watch. And if the soul unconsciously leaves them open to the poisonous air of temptation, sincere prayer to these heavenly guardians will save the precious hght." " How can he who loves all men be torn by affliction ? Or he who hates be free from terror ? or the voluptuary from misery ? How can he fail who acts wisely? How can he be happy who mur- murs at Providence ? Who can be glorious without virtue ? who truly dishonored without blame ? And how without justice shall the kingdom stand ?"^ " He who lives pure in thought, free from malice, contented, leading a holy life, feeling tenderness for all creatures, speaking wisely and kindly, humble and sincere, has Vasudeva (Vishnu) ever in his heart. The Eternal makes not his abode within the heart of that man who covets another's wealth ; who injures living creatures ; who speaks harshness or untruth ; who is proud of his iniquity ; whose mind is evil."^ " Men are ever seeking, never attaining, bliss. They die thirst- ing. The whole world is suffering under triple affliction. Why should I hate beings who are objects for compassion ? why cherish malignity towards those who are more prosperous than myself.'' I should rather sympathize with their happiness. For to suppress unkind feelings is itself a reward."* " It is the duty of the good man, even in the moment of his de- struction, not only to forgive, but to seek to bless his destroyer, even ^ as the sandal-tree sheds perfume on the axe that fells it." * " Heaven's gate opens to the good without a gift : the gate shut fast to the wicked, though he bring hundred-fold offerings. " Put a thousand horses in the scale, yet shall virtue be the heavier weight. ' " The sweet scent of flowers is lost on the breeze, but the fra- grance of virtue endures for ever. " Whatever men do of good or evil, they shall reap the fruit in due season. " The foolish, like a child, knows not if things grow better or worse ; and while, drawn by the roses, he lets the orchard go, he will mourn over the fading flower, and lose the golden fruit." ® * Hindu Play (Wiison). ' Ramciy&7ta. 3 Vishnu Purdna^ III. viL * Vishnu PurdnOf I. xvii. ^ Halhed's Gento'o Code- « Rantdydna. PIETY OF PANTHEISM. ' 467 And so we may judge whether Manu is not justified in claiming what he does for the religion of his race. "Of all duties the first is to know the Supreme. It is the most exalted science, and assures immortal life. For in the knowledge and adoration of God, which the Veda teaches, all rules of good conduct are com- prised." "Wisdom," says the Hitopadesa, "is the highest good of man ; for it cannot be sold nor taken from him, nor can it ever die. He who hath it not, the destroyer of doubt, the mirror of the unseen, the eye of all, is blind." ^ The belief that the substance of life is one and divine has its forms in all af^^es, — recocrnitions, . . ^ ' o ' The intui- more or less enlightened, of a constant spir- tionofiife itual fact ; to which thought is again and again ^^ °°^* remanded, under broader and clearer aspects, as man advances to new forms of culture. And this better knowledge comes mainly from doing justice to the balancing fact of difference, or individuality. In the Hindu mystic, a child of religious instinct and dream, the unity of life was an exclusive con- sciousness, an all-absorbing wonder and delight. For the religious sentiment of itself is not analytic, but integrative ; absorbed in what it loves, it sees not parts, but wholes ; it dissolves antagonisms and dis- tinctions, just as it does doubts or fears, in its own fervent heat. While the understanding is unde- veloped, this mystic sense of oneness is of course blind to the capabilities of life, and the meaning of its relations. As in Brahmanism, it even helps to eternize social wrongs ; either ignoring them as illu- sion, or else accepting them as elements of a divine order, and reconciling them in its all-dissolving dream. * Hiio^., Introd., 4, 9. 46S RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. Yet this dream is divination also of a central truth, whose practical and social meaning grows with prog- ress, and appears in the latest science and faith. For these are really the goal involved in that mystic point of departure, that intuitive ideal of the unity of life. The course of history justifies and reaffirms it on a broader plane, having at last developed its human values. We can here but sketch this process. In the Oriental philosophies, unity is for the most Its historical P^^^t 3. rcligious abstraction, an ideal of con- evolution, templatiou. But with Greek and Roman the understanding comes to its rights. The individual asserts his validity. The human and finite are marked oflf, as against the infinite, and studied, in and for themselves. And in this polarity or antagonism come liberty and progress. Man recognizes his own regulated powers to be the path to truth, beauty, good. It is no longer the unlimited, but limits that is divine. What Kapila and his Sankhya reaction on Vedantism showed in germ thus reaches maturer expression under more favoring skies, in more energetic races. Here all is relation, contrast, difference. With the Greek comes the triumph of dialectics, the clear analysis of ideas and principles, the keenest sense of individual purpose. With the Greek appears duality of matter and mind ; also of matter and num- ber. Pythagoras determines the harmonious relations of finite things. Xenophanes, who pronounced unity to be the ultimate fact, as distinctly as the Vedantists, and who recognized the illusion of the phenomenal world as fully, yet not the less insisted that all visible things should be studied, and had his own natural history of their origin and development. So the Ionian cities first thoroughl}^ distinguished politics PIETY OF PANTHEISM. 469 from theocracy ; and Greek life emancipated govern- ment, making it a separate independent science. And the first great step was taken towards freeing men from religious bondage when Xenophanes pointed out the fact tliat they made their own gods. *' The gods have not given every thing to man. It is man who has ameHorated his own destiny." The Prometheus of ^^schylus, resisting Jove for the sake of mankind, and predicting his downfall at the hands of the son of a mortal woman, illustrates the same protest of the human, against an overwhelming sense of infinity. Taine has admirably pointed out this quality of the Greek mind. " The Greeks have no sentiment of this infinite universe, in which a generation of people is but an atom in time and place. Eternity does not set up before them its pyramid of myriads of ages. The universal escapes them, or at least half occupies them, or remains in the background in their religion."^ In Rome, on the other hand, the universal was everywhere pursued, yet always in con- crete and human forms, — as political organization, as jurisprudence, as world-wide sway. Even in Greece and Rome, however, we still find the religious sentiment to be, on the whole, inclusive of all human spheres and functions. It gives man and nature their meaning for art, science, philosophy, domestic, social, municipal life ; so that there is still a sense in which life might make the impression of a divine unity. But the process advances. Aristotle has defined ; analyzing man and nature as he could. Bacon goes further ; plots the sciences on a map, and marks the regions yet to be filled. Men botanize, dissect, unroll the earth's pages, loose the ^ Ari in Greece, p. 38. 470 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. bands of Orion, and resolve the galaxy into m3Tiads of worlds. It is telescope and calculus, instruments of analysis, that are divine. We learn the mechanics of religion, politics, commerce, art. ■ Men search out the cunning workmanship of the universe. They are all eye to detect how it was contrived by a Being who plans, devises, manipulates, constructs like themselves. In this inspection of definite processes the immanence of the infinite gradually recedes from thought, and religion enters the phase of a more or less external deism, oscillating between the Paleys and Voltaires ; knowing God only as a manipulator of materials provided for him from without, just as one knows an architect by the style of his house, or a watch- maker by his watch. It is not strange that analytic science, elated by its discoveries in this realm of de- finable relations and palpable mechanism, and in- attentive to the infinite substance that must condition all phenomena, should concentrate its homage at last on the processes by which it achieves its triumph. Analysis, in fact, by its own function of taking the world to pieces, instead of receiving the impression of its unity and integrity, is reduced to holding this critical process as the essential thing, the vital fact of the universe. Mind and nature become in its theory simply objective material for testing and reducing, mere hylic mass for manipulation by its forces ; whether to afford them discipline, or to give scope to their energies, or to reflect their praise. This merely analytic process is quite incompetent to reveal truth in the form oi life. To dissect its objects, it must destroy them. It slays that beautiful unit}^ of functions and relations, in which life is mysteriously shrined. In the heap of dead fibres and organs, on PIETY OF PANTHEISM. 47 1 which it has operated, and which it displays in their mere outward mechanism, what resemblance is there to the living, breathing, inspired body? What resem- blance to the former life can you get by putting them together again? Phosphorus in the growing grain is food for human brains : extract this phosphorus by chemical process, and it is poison. Being must be seen in its natural and vital relations, in its integrity, or it is not seen at all. Under the power of mere analysis, science would become pure autopsy, and nature have no informing soul. The genius of scientific and practical races has therefore not been without its tendencies to transform the living universe — which for the contemplative spirit is thrilling with a mystic divine pulsation, and which Plato even called a living creature — into a well-devised machine. Their vast capacities, under the lead of analysis, have developed its definable uses, rather than felt the mystery of its life. As one after another they have unfolded its flowing activities, its unfathomed forces, they have seemed to claiai these by right of creation quite as much as by tRat of dis- covery ; to throw off the Infinite as a separable ele- ment, and then refuse it all place in the triumph of the very powers which it conditions and supplies ; writing on each freshly won field, " God is not here, but, if anyzvhe7'e, behind and beyond ; " insisting all tlie time, observe, that the idea of God as a distinct exter- nal power is the only idea of God, being that which analysis must report. Their physical science goes further still, and in its search for physical origins of life has often quite overlooked the substance for the processes of nature, and mistaken the mechanism of life for its explanation and cause. 472 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. But science cannot penetrate far on her divine path Through without discerninor that it zs divine. Science mature sci- , , ence. has uo commissiou to take the mystery out of nature, to exorcise from its law^s the life that preserves them from being fathomed by progressive thought, or marred by imperfect will. So much is clearly dis- cerned by the broadest scientific minds of the day. Science solves no problem but by recognizing another and more interior, disclosed by the solution itself, as a flower within its opening sheath. The freest explorers of nature not only see most clearly the unity of the universe, tracing its laws through their relations to each other and to the whole, but also the infinitude of these relations, inexhaustible for every atomic fact. Not less is the unity of life revealed in the w^onderful gradations of its forms ; in the compre- hension of all lower stages within all higher ones ; and in endless subtle affinities, transitions, transforma- tions, that forbid absolute lines of separation between these stages of ascent. And the whole drift of mod- ern science is towards the recognition of what has been described by one of its ablest exponents as " one harmonious action, underlying the whole of nature, organic and inorganic, cosmical, physical, chemical, terrestrial, vital, and social." ^ Yet this unity is, it must also be observed, of a purely transcendental kind. It is not explicable, or even expressible, by the processes of science, which can but trace the order of phenomena, and must therefore confess herein the immanence of the infinite throughout its fields of research. Science, then, must inevitably bring fresh tributes to mystic contempla- tion, and reconcile liberty and knowledge with that * Mivart, Genesis of SfecUs, p. 239. PIETY OF PANTHEISM. 473 old eternal longing of the soul for the unfathomable One. Of this whole process, miracle is of course the in- tolerable neofation. If it were possible for the^, =' ^ Through re- notion that the course of natural law can bejectionof violated or suspended to hold its ground, it "^'^'^ ^^" -* would utterly abolish the power of science to reveal immanent deity, and even the idea of deity as infinite intelligence. Logically, there could be no science, and no religion ; only observations of phenomena that point to no universal or reliable basis of belief. How could these observations really reveal One who mav contradict them to-morrow? But such contempt of nature and distrust of its orderly laws is not properly Aryan. With races of this stock science hastens to fulfil its religious function. The Semitic mind also has learned to greet this form of revelation as freely as the Aryan. Oriental faith in miracles knew no bounds. But miracle was as universal in the East as law with us, and so that stupendous mythology had meaning for the re- ligious sentiment. There was no vain distinction made between miraculous and 7iatural revelation ; but the whole actual or possible of nature and life was, as it were, insphered in deity. In a child's wonder at all he sees, special wonder-working counts for no more than plain nature. . The scientific conception of invariable law comes, then, not to destroy this divine dream that the The universe is in God, so dear to contemplative °^ minds in every age, but to interpret and fulfil it. Man has been learning to reconcile freedom, even in deity, with orderly and unchanging ways, and to clear his own ideal of perfection from every element mission science. 474 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. of excluslveness or divided power. He has been learning that the closest study of mind and nature does not free him from the conviction that infinite in- telligence is the inmost ground of finite, but confirms it by all the certainties of law. The mystic faith which, while yet an infantile instinct, sang of Brahma as the All, and of the world of forms as his divine play, has thus permanent meaning for man ; and all its phases in history have been pointing beyond them- selves to a maturity which only science could bring. Clothed in new knowledge as in new names ; inter- preted by things natural and practical, and giving these a sublime reach of relation and promise ; set to largest social uses, and inspiring them with universal- ity, identifying religion with the free growth of every human faculty, with labor and with life, and so eman- cipating it from dependence on mediator or miracle, — this mystic faith in the oneness of God and man reappears at last as a freedom and intelligence, which neither distinctive Brahmanism, Judaism, nor Chris- tianity could express. I perceive no power cither in the friends or foes of ^ . . , . science to resolve it into spiritual nefjation. It Spiritual re- i o lationsof can neither become the slave of superstition nor the bar to sentiment and ideal vision. It refuses to be ruled by the hostile supernaturalist, who imagines that a development theory must involve atheism. It must no less distinctly decline the pro- posal of the student of nature to banish, in the name of law itself, " what we call spirit and spontaneity," from human thought. ^ For a law, physical or ps3xhological, is no mere automatic machinery. It is a mode of action^ so ^ YixxA^-^ Qw Physical Basis of Lije. PIETY OF PANTHEISM. 475 orderly, so harmoniously related to other laws, so expressive of what we most reverence in thought, that to divorce it from mind would be to refuse belief in the ideal forms of those attributes which most dignify mind ; those highest functions to which in- telligence, as we find it in ourselves, clearly points upward. Instead of being apart from mind, the con- stancy of natural law implies an inseparable mental force, none the less real because without the limita- tions which human intelligence involves. Its univer- sality does not make it the less, but the more divine. A man may make wheels, springs, and levers his agents, and withdraw ; for inertia and weight do not depend on his fingers, and the machine will get on for a while without his aid. But deity cannot leave the laws of the universe* to work alone, since they are sim- ply forms of divine energy ; the activity of the law being nothing else than the instant energy of imma- nent mind. That this energy transcends all we ex- perience as personal consciousness does not alter the fact that it is a form of mind. What serves it to remand this wisdom and power to a distinct sphere, and lay it quietly aside as "The Unknowable " ? How indeed can that be unknowable of which we know that it exists, and of w^hich, if we are to allow ourselves competent to science in any form, the very meaning for us is constant self-mani- festation in phenomena? The mind and heart of man still fail not to enter- tain the never solved, yet never wholly unanswered questions which a secret intuitive assurance will not suffer him to dismiss. What is this instant intelligence whereby the uni- verse becomes unity and order and growth ? What 4^6 * RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. harmonizes nature and man ? What brings the atoms together each moment to form the coherent globe, and yet holds them at the same moment apart, so that two shall never touch ? What lifts each separate billow of the sea, yet binds it to obey the tidal swell ? Discussion as to which is the one great force in material atoms, attraction or self-repulsion ; or w^hether all things come to pass through action and reaction of the two, — makes no difference to our questions, which go deeper. What is that in conscience which is so at one with gravitation^ and affinity and light ? What mysterious sway makes recollection and hope, past and future, alike our servants ? What directs the remedial retri- butions, silent and sure, to bring us back to nature and right ? What is that most minute attention which guards the pulsations of the heart; keeps thought, affection, will, coherent and untroubled ; buoying up individual existence on the unfathomed sea? And what makes the deep that brought us hither, and into which we return, to be in all its mystery a home into whose care we entrust what is dearest to us with such wondrous calmness? Questions these as old as mind and heart, earlier than the study of natural laws, and not set aside there- by. And what of the answer ? Was it only because he had so little knowledge of the definite processes, the delicate distinctions which science reveals, that the Hindu, pondering over these mysteries, solved all questions by pronouncing the one word AdhydtJiia^ — Over-soul ? Was it his ignorance that spirit and spontaneity must be dismissed, upon the discovery of law, that prompted the answer, "Mind is all" ? Yet PIETY OF PANTHEISM. 477 it would appear that our science of invariable har- monious law itself can give no other answer ; and we must still demand what invisible life is plying at this seamless warp and woof of "evolution," "natural selection," "metamorphosis." Is it we individually, we collectively, who do it, — we who can neither make nor mar one of these laws, and who advance only by accepting and rightly using them according to laws of reason and love ? Is it, as some dream, spirits wiser than we, a hierarchy of diviner insights and powers ? We gain not a step by such ascent, to- wards reaching the constitutive force of law. Spirits themselves are not less truly expressions of this force in thfeir mental energies, for being also free, produc- tive, personal. Their spontaneity itself rests on this mystery of orderly law, like the movements of atoms and of suns. Morality is personal liberty ; but it is no less the movement of immutable law, transcending the individual, while it lifts him into the freedom and strength which belong to universal truth. We call the intelligence, of which universal law is the movement, God. But in reality we have no name for it, because no name can cover the whole. Law, Life, Love, Unity, Fatherhood, Brotherhood, this re- ligion, that religion, all are waves of the One Divine Sea. None of these syllables have quite expressed the truth that is found only in the whole. They yield but fragments of a sense that was never sounded, of a growth that cannot end. The Vedantic worship of One Life in all was darkened by idolatry of tradition and of caste. Escape from Yet it should be noted that caste and tradition limitations. were held to be steps only, to higher unity of being 478 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. which should dissolve them away. After all, the rela- tions of the devotee with his ideal of the Supreme were felt to be personal and direct : his own sacrifice, his own disciplines, not another's, were relied on to make his illusions vanish and reality appear. All special religions have, in like manner, presented obstacles of their own to that free recognition of the infinite which they sought. Especially is this true of their pretensions to supernatural revelation, which science is so thoroughly setting aside in the name of law. In the lower stages of culture, supernaturalism is indeed a reaching forth to find God : it means that there is at least a divineness in things exceptional or wonderful, for those who have not yet learned what sacredness there is in things familiar and near. It is, primarily then, a form of spiritual progress, and satis- fies real needs. But, when prolonged into scientific ages and enlightened races, claims of this kind practically teach that God is not in man, in nature, in history; but Old of man, against n2,\.\\x^^ behind history; en- tering the world once on a time, with what men are expected to receive as truer than truth, more legislative than law, more loving than love. They teach that spirit is to be held the more divine for secluding itself in the prescriptive claim of one or of a few. They teach that the infinite is the better recognized for confining its manifestation to a class, an epoch, an individual life. All this limita- tion of universal forces, this prescription of divine paths, this foreclosure of inspiration, the liberty of our day holds to be no better than sarcophagus or shroud. It will choose rather that pantheism of the Spirit that finds God instant and informing in all history, experience, law, and work. What Eastern PIETY OF PANTHEISM. 479 contemplation could foreshadow, Western vigor and grasp of things will have to deliver out of its limita- tions, old and new, by bringing the unities of races and sciences and faiths, to serve, now that their day too has come, this eternal desire of the soul. Never can man, with whatsoever motive, even in theory separate himself from God. Theology has vainly attempted it, under promptings of fear and self-contempt. Even the noble sentiment of humility has been pressed by a sense of imperfection and in- ward evil, to the point of imagining a gulf positively separating the divine from the human. It has thus attempted what would divide deity itself, and abolish at once both human and divine. This also was in vain. It is the virtue of modern culture, intellectual and moral, that it educates man in self-respect; so that he shall no longer think himself bound to deny the validity of his own nature, in order to affirm the reality of the divine. It does not hesitate to assure him that it is only where he finds his own real being that' he is finding God. I I V. INCARNATION. -?! INCARNATION. 'THHE literal meaning of Incarnation is that deity -*" assumes a material body, in order to be universality clearly recognized as present in the actual °^ ^^^ ^'^^^• world. Substantially, the belief implies a profounder truth, which its various forms imperfectly express: — that Life is in its inmost sense one with God. It is essential to the religious sentiment, and has as many forms as there are religions in the world. God must be not abstraction, but life. Somehow the world must manifest the Highest Spirit. Philosophy affirms that it must be so, by the very nature of being, notwithstand- ing the conditions of relativity and imperfect vision under which we must behold this manifestation. The heart pleads that it is surely so, because God loves us, and nothing will satisfy this love but to take our nature, that he may be among us as a friend. The disciples of every positive religion insist that it has been so, in this or that exalted personage who has appeared, to found a faith. The devout thinker says : It is so, now and always ; for what is God but the life of the universe, as of the soul? No race of men, in other words, is satisfied to think of the world as separate from ideal good. And every religion devises some special way of bringing the one into the other, even though it may overlook or deny 484 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. some completer way ; because all instinctively divine that the two are essentially one. Of course the form chosen is noble or otherwise, according to the charac- ter of the civilization ; but the endeavor is not any- where wanting. Even where little inspiration or faith is left, religions throw themselves back upon past ideals, which are believed to have exhausted the sources of truth. And this idolatry becomes the more anxious and jealous, the feebler the faith in revelation through living consciousness and present opportunity. The manifold superstition that hastens to call itself " inspirational " proves at least the need of being some- how assured of a divine presence. Lacking the heavenly form, men will grub within the earth for sub- stitutes. Nor is there any creature so insignificant, down to beetle and worm, but it has been some- where supposed to guest a god. And if science delights to discover the forces of gravitation and re- pulsion in every atom, and the mysterious dynamics of life in every organic molecule, may not the relig- ious instinct well have sought to greet the divinity in every form of being from the loftiest to the least? The highest type of the idea is of course that of Incarnation incamatiou in Man ; and this also is not ex- inman. clusively rcvcalcd to any race, nor in any per- son. It is human, as is also the faith that deity is in sympathy with man, and uplifts him through experi- ence of his needs and desires. Of this assurance how various the forms in human history, all more or less imperfect expressions of the idea. For the Hindu, it was God manifest in the Brahman, or divinely absorbed man ; for the Hebrew and Mohammedan, in the prophetic man ; for the Greek, in the Delphic man or woman, oracular ^ INCARNATION. ^M / 4,§S and ecstatic; for the Celt, in the Druid man o^Ayo- man ; for the modern Persian mystic, in the Bab, oi; > man who represents the open " gate " of God ; for the Christian, in the Christ, or man supposed to have been the one only possible Form of God, or else exclusively '"anointed " to be the central life of hu- manity, or nucleus of its faith in God. Then for the Roman Catholic, to meet the needs of that great organization which had followed logically on the sub- mission of mankind to this central Christ, it was in- evitably the papal man. But there are far broader and more spiritual forms than any of these, — into which the idea of incar- nation is now steadily advancinor. God becomes in- carnate through the eternal principles that underlie the conscience and the affections of man ; in his reason and his faith ; organized into character as intellectual light and noble love. And again God is incarnate in the social man, in humanity itself, developed at once in the individual and in the race, as is possible only through the free intermingling and mutual balance of all human elements, and inspiring institutions wdth those principles of personal freedom and moral order by which the human becomes one with the divine. We are henceforth to find this unity in actual life ; in wise, productive labor of brain and hand ; in an inte- gral culture of the individual and the race, instead of reading it as a tradition of the past, veiled behind my- thology and philosophy, as an idealization or a divine dream. For all the lofty sentences of Eastern wisdom do not tell us how far men lived according to the best ; and it would also seem that the more the New Testa- ment is studied in a genuine spirit of historical re- search, the less can be affirmed with certainty about ^86 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. that personal life which Christians have been taught to adore. But everywhere in some form recurs the assurance that God is manifest in man. Ever since man, made in the divine image, came to conscious spiritual life, he has felt the necessity to find his nature indeed divine ; to behold deity in it, transfiguring its outward part in the shimmer of miracle, or else its inward and spiritual part, and thence the body and its uses, in the real splendor of truth and love. The aspiration never dies out of the soul, because God and the soul are essentially one. And this, which Oriental instinct divined, was re- cognized in many noble ways, not only in its relation to the desire of progress, but as balance to the sense of moral evil and spiritual need. Emile Burnouf ^ thinks that incarnation in the com- Aryanincar-plcts scusc is pre-eminently an Aryan belief; nation. -j-]^^^ jj- jg easicr for an Arvan to conceive God as incarnated in man than to conceive prophetic inspi- ration in the Hebrew sense. ^ This is but to say that the Ar3'an religious sentiment is pantheistic. And the statement is true. There is a breadth and abso- luteness in its conception of the unity of all truth, which is not satisfied with leaving man outside divin- ity, the mere recipient of gifts from a source apart from his nature. The divine desire in the soul implies the divinity of the soul. The object of worship is more than object : it pre-existed in the worshipper, and prompted the aim and the prayer. The yearnings * A rt. on the Science of Religions, in the Revue des Deux MondeS' 2 As an illustration may be mentioned the Persian sect of Babists, already referred to, which has spread over a large portion of Persia, and, like Sufism, engrafted upon Islamite theism a pantheistic faith. See Gobineau, p. 477. INCARNATION. 487 of the spirit are more than a sense of need : they are the strength of an inward ideal seeking its own. And the perception of this truth is* eminently Aryan. The tendency of Indo-European philosophy to identify sub- ject and object in the processes of existence is but the sj^cctdative form of a profound instinct in this race, which demands that culture shall express by its freedom and fulness the essential unity of the human with the divine. Burnouf fails to appreciate this philosophical scope of the fact he has attempted to state, when he ventures to infer from it that the dogma of the divinity of ycstis will stand permanently for all Aryan races as a truth of positive religion. It is mainly from Aryan idealiza- tion indeed that the dogma in question has proceeded. Jesus himself was of Semitic descent : the earliest records of his life are of similar origin, and form no, exception to the instinctive reluctance of the Semite to ascribe pure deity to the human. To effect this, they required to be clothed in purely Aryan conceptions from Greek and Oriental sources. And they were in fact so transformed, in the Christian consciousness. The ideal demand thus proved itself independent of specific historical or biographical truth. But the fact that it has been so at last becomes manifest, by the progress of inquiry, to all ; and then the absoluteness of this special personal symbol can no longer be main- tained. It was provisional and temporary ; represent- ing one stage only in the development of that Aryan demand for incarnation in man, which passes on to broader levels and maturer siofht.^ * This is fully recognized even in Babism, which Gobineau describes (p. 326) as defi- nitely affirming that God has not willed humanity to believe that revelation had reached its limitf or that its own revelation was shut up within a single personage. 488 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. Of all personal incarnation that which man has Incarnation ^^ost lovcd in all agGS is God manifest as as Saviour. SavioiLT ; and it 'has as many forms as there are stages and epochs in his comprehension of his own spiritual and moral needs. The Christian belief that God was incarnated once for all for this purpose, undoubtedly contained, in its earnestness and concentrative power, the germs of broader and maturer conceptions than itself. These have always been apparent in efforts, more or less successful, to escape the limitations which as dogma it affirms. The time has come when these efforts have learned their own significance, and resulted in an idea of incarnation, consistent with Universal Religion. To all such exclusive forms of the idea succeeds the nobler faith that incarnation is the permanent fact of human nature, and comes into special view wherever beautiful and beneficent lives are lived, or thought is uttered, in earnest accord with its universal laws ; and that the "saving" power, which is neither more nor less than the educating, humanizing power, and coincident with culture, is, as power of God, one and the same thing in them all. Whenever any part of the world, spiritual or material, is redeemed to its natural and so divine uses, there God, as man, becomes Saviour. And who shall fathom how much of this there has been in past human lives, or how much there is in present ones? The conception of this movement comes to absorb into its unity, one by one, the manifold stages of human progress ; and we apprehend deity as manifest in each age under such forms as its knowledge of life and nature have enabled it to reco^;nize. INCARNATION. 489 In periods when a sense of degeneracy inevitably possessed men, and they turned their faces The Hindu backward to find golden ages in the past, ^'^^^^• because there was as yet no foothold for practical con- struction through the intercourse of energetic races ; when the outward world therefore repelled them as illusion, and refuge in the inward became a necessity, — it is refreshing to find the belief that deity becomes manifest as deliverer whenever man's needs reqitire^ or his aspirations and devotions enter the ever of en door of a mystic union with omnipotence. This instant access to the best was not through all sainthood and heroism only, as these were then its universal conceived by the traditional ideal. In the ^^'^"'^^^^• oneness of all life, Hindu faith beheld everywhere the Supreme sacrificing himself for all ; ^ "through de- votion " taking on himself the whole possibility of human misery and want. Brahma is in the form of every element, every creature. He is their unity, and it is his sacrifice that consecrates them all. It was a redeeming element of Hindu caste itself, that it constituted every saint an incarnation of Brah- ma for the preservation of the world, in virtue of his • fulfilment of the ideal of sainthood. This equal opportunity, even within the limits of a hereditary class, was at least the recognition that fresh access to union with deity by discipline and faith could never be wholly foreclosed. Nor was any past form of sainthood regarded as in permanent possession either of supreme and final virtue, or of invincible authority. Its throne was held provisionally, and liable to pass to a stronger master in the sphere of "devotion." 1 Sec Sankara's Commentary on the BrUtad Upan-, where the Brahmana is quoted at length. 490 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. This democratic element in Brahmanical holiness has already attracted our interest. Under favoring cir- cumstances, it would have reconciled incarnation with liberty and progress. Although such instincts of growth had little practical opportunity, and cannot here receive the living meaning which a more en- ergetic civilization would put into them, they were nevertheless not wholly a dream. Their influence is traceable through the whole course of Hindu religious history. The moral defects of an unrestrained play of the idea of incarnation, in races and ages of imperfect culture, are obvious. And, on the other hand, the very limitations of this idea in the Christian conscious- ness, its confinement to a single historic form, severely simple and ethically noble, has been temporarily of great service in sobering the sensuous imagination and guiding the moral sentiment of mankind. Chris- tian mythology, cautious and tame beside Hindu, is proportionately purer. The virtue of a mythology, however, considered as play of the religious imagina- tion, lies not only in ethical purity, but in freedom and scope also. Full justice to the religious nature of man will recognize both these sides, and find germs of permanent service in both. As representing the freedom of deity to assume Breadth of Hviug forms of manifestation. Christian my- human re- ,, . ., i-ii r r ^• lation. thology IS ccrtamly tame beside that oi India. Its Virgin conceives her Child through the miraculous overshadowing of the Holy Ghost. But the wives of Dasaratha in the Ramayana conceive and bear sons who are gods, simply by eating sacrificial food. And Sita, who is the celestial Lakshmi in human form, arises from the Earth in a silver vessel turned up by INCARNATION. 49I the plough in clearing a place for sacrifice ; for Sita is the fiwrow^ and her worship as wife of Rama, the incarnate preserver, divinizes the bounteous earth and the labors that redeem it ; as her separation from him, and disappearance in the arms of the earth itself, amidst a divine flame that issues from the cloven ground, expresses the sowing and death of the seed. In similar recognition of physical uses, the gods churn the sea of milk, throwing into it every kind of medi- cinal plant that grows ; and out of the arnrita or im- mortal food that com.es of this divine toil ascend goddesses that bless mankind. Oriental civilization being based on the family, we are prepared to find much of the incarnation-lore of India centering in the functions and destinies of kin- dred. These may, in fact, almost be said to consti- tute its tragedy and triumph, in epos and drama and sacred song. Strife and reconciliation, duty and sacri- fice, penalty and reward, find their divine expression in the idealization of these simple relations. And Kalidasa, with entire simplicity, describes the four sons of Raghu shining by division of their father's being, as jusdce, use, redemption, and love descended from heaven to become incarnate in four human lives. ^ Rama, as incarnation of Vishnu for human deliver- ance from evil, is hailed by aged saints, who vishnuas die gladly when their eyes have seen the long Rama. expected One.^ He supplants all the older gods, who pour on their heads the dust that is under his feet. He absorbs all their powers into himself; but it is because he represents all functions and demands of Ife. He passes through every phase of the Hindu sense of per- sonal duty. He fulfils every relation recognized in the 1 Raghuvansa, X. ^ Ramdy.j III- 492 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. Oriental ideal of service and of command, assuming in succession the three stages of student, married, and hermit life. He suffers all injustice, even to complete deprivation of his natural rights. He condescends to wear the bark dress, and to dig roots with a spade, though born to a throne ; and this through obedience to fihal love and duty, that a father's word, might not be made void. His conviction is his life and strenn-th and immortality. He brings out by his self-sacrifice a soul of tenderness and magnanimity in his relatives ; "overcomes mankind by fidelity, Brahmans by gen- erosity, preceptors by his attention to duties, and all enemies by the sword and bow." His forgiveness of injury is not less perfect than his power to punish it. He pays funeral honors to his bitterest foe. He cherishes no anger against the false queen who has deprived him of his crown, driven him into exile, and brought his father to untimely death. He even seeks excuses for her, and commends her to the care of his. brother, on whom she has forced the crown that belonged of right to himself. One who mourned excessively for a lost -brother he admonishes thus: — " Man must not be carried away by grief, but hasten to a better mind. Thou hast shed tears : it is enough. Necessity is lord of the world. But let man never forget the good on which he should fix his eyes ; for fate embraces in its movement duty, use, and joy. We have given what we ought to grief: now let us do what is becoming." His virtues are exaggerations, and conformed to Oriental ideals and motives ; but, whatever its faults, we must note, as the special nobility of this poetic incarnation, which enters profoundly into the popular faith, its effort to embody the whole duty, at once of 1 Rdrndy., IV. INCARNATION. 493 a king, a husband, a son, a brother, a hero, a saint, a deliverer of mankind from moral evil. He is adored as "protector of the defenceless, extending mercy to the oppressed."^ Even his foe, whom he is obliged to slay, commits his son to his care in perfect trust, at death. ^ When counselled to obtain the throne by treachery, he replies : — " Far from me as poison be a gain, even were it of the throne ot heaven, which is obtained by the iniquity of destroying a friend." A victor over his enemies by his superhuman powers, he generously ascribes his success to his companions in arms. Rama's absolute sacrifice of his own interests to his father's authority is an exaltation of the patriarchal ideal above the Brahmanical. Social relations are here shown to be amenable to a higher law than caste. Here, as Michelet has enthusiastically said, "is a new revelation ; God incarnate in a non-Brahmanic caste ; the ideal of holiness transferred to a Kshattriya ; as later, in Europe, St. Louis, a warrior, a king, becomes the spiritual ideal, of whom a contemporary exclaims, ^O holy layman, whose deeds the priests should emulate l'"^ Rama is indeed the universality of the divine life. The arrow with which he slays the Satan of the epic, Ravana, is "made from the spirit of all the gods." He is intensely human. Overwhelmed by his afflic- tions, he is consoled by the gods. " Having appeared on earth in human form, his actions must accord with those of human beings." Human he is to the point of yielding to temptations now and then for the mo- * AdJiyatma R&may. (the Vaishnava version of the epic). Wheeler, II. p. 308, 404. • Ram&y.y IV. * Bible de PHmnanite, p. 52. 494 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. ment. Thus he puts away Sita after all her fidelity, merely because her virtue had been exposed to peril while in the hands of her demon ravisher, and suffers her to enter the fire to prove her innocence ; a dra- matic invention, to bring out the national sensitiveness in regard to female chastity, at the same time that it affords Rama the opportunity of naively reproaching himself for injustice to her, and so makes his very weakness inspire new affection, and associate him with human and even childish experience. " His face became like the moon in the month of snows : if he had sent his queen from his palace for fear of evil speech, he had not been able to banish her from his heait."^ There is at least a democratic touch in this feature of the story. He explains the act by saying, " I knew she was true ; but I put her to the test lest the people should blame me " for lack of respect for the purity of wifehood. So when in irritation he slays a Sudra, the victim is transported in a beautiful form to para- dise.2 Rama at last ascends to heaven from the banks of the Sarayu, resuming his divine essence, amidst all holy persons, revelations, powers, elements, in sight of all the people and even the lower animals. In the heavens appear all the gods, in infinite splendor, amidst fragrant winds and rain of flowers. As Rama enters the sacred waters, Brahma from the sky pro- nounces the words : — " Approach, O Vishnu ! enter thine own body, the eternal ether. Thou art the abode of the worlds."^ By the blessing of Rama's name and through Deliverance previous faith in him, all sins, according to from sin. Valshuava belief, are remitted; and "every * Raghuvansat'Kl'V . * Adhy. R5.viay. (Wheeler, p. 393). » Ra.mciy.^ VII. INCARNATION. 495 one, whatever his iniquities, whether a Brahman or a Chandala, a king, or a beggar, who shall at death pronounce this name with sincere worship, shall be forgiven." The gods, conversing together of the re- pentance and restoration, in this way, of an evil spirit who had sought to compass the ruin of Rama, say : — " Behold how this sinner has been saved ! Such is the benevo- lence of Rama. What good actions has this demon performed that he could deserve such happiness ? He has, from having resigned his life at Rama's feet and beholding him, been absorbed into him." ^ Hindu theology understands even better than Chris- tian how to shift off the burden of an evil conscience, by trust in vicarious merits. This offence against the t moral laws in either case we are not commending to an enlightened age. Yet in its origin the idea has very plain relation to the sense of an omnipotent power and purpose to relieve from crushing burdens of moral and spiritual penalty. In the expression of absoluteness in divine good-will, no form of incarna- tion has attempted so wide a scope as the Rama of this epic mythology, whose worst enemies, while they are punished, after Hindu fashion, with much outlay of terrific penalty, are yet all taken up into heaven at last, through such force of good as may have once been in them, and the all-embracing benignity and mercy of the god. These liberal and benignant elements are repro- duced in the modern Vaishnava sects, founded _ Democratic on the worship of Rama: such as those of and humane Ramananda and Kabir, of Rai-Das and Dadu, "^""'"'" of which further notice will be taken hereafter. These teachers were for the most part men of the lowest * Ad/iy Ramay., p 287. 49^ RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. castes ; and the mythology that has already gathered about their names centres in the democratic reaction against caste and ecclesiastical authority which has gone steadily on throughout Hindu history. Of this element Vishnu, ^2;^' Rdina, is the constant represen- tative. The relation of this humanitarian spirit to the worship of Rama is illustrated by the charters of land granted by the later Hindu kings, and written on metallic tablets, which are constantly coming to light. Their stereotyped phrase quotes Rama as declaring that " to j^ive awav land is to cross oceans of sin ; while to resume or reappropriate it is to fall back into hells of transmiorration." The incarnation of Vishnu as Krishna is of a more complex character, and covers a still lariier knsiuu. ... . . . c^round of historic relation ; embracinij: in the diversity of its phases the whole compass of Hindu ex- perience. In Krishna every popular and every specula- tive ideal, every instinct and every conviction that sought religious sanction, has found its embodiment; each in turn assuming this traditionally consecrated name. In its service therefore, as well as in its sound, the name corresponds with that of Christ in the religious history of the Western nations. It has represented every stage of progress, every degree of enlightenment, or of the lack of it, in Hindu history. It is the divinization of desire and hope trom lowest to highest level, the sport of the superstitious fancy and of the devout imagina- tion alike. They have made it mean whatever they would. It is vain therefore to look for moral or spec- ulative unity in what is plainly but a common name for the whole of Hindu aspiration, exclusive only of its most rationalistic side ; a thread by which it haii INCARNATION. 497 given some semblance of continuity to its past. In this respect it does not differ from the endless dis- cordance of high and low ideals, which Christianity, throurrh its asfes of sectarian strife, has comprehended under the name of Christ, reaching back indeed throucfh the earliest records of his life. If all these had at some epoch been brought together into one vast Christian Bible, in which the Church had ever since been seeking by repeated elaborations and mys- tical reinterpretations to preserve the continuity of its faith, through the one term common to the whole, — the name of Christ, — it would be analogous to what has happened in this Krishna-worship of the Hindus. An indefinite expansion of the name of Christ, to cover all stages and forms of recognized faith, and all sacred records on which they rest, is really the fact of Christian history, although the whole process is not concentrated in such a Bible as has been suggested. So true is this, that the name has long since ceased to be of service for convevinor an idea of the actual reliirious belief of its confessors. Now the Mahabharata is for the Hindu masses a Bible somev/hat of this description, though The Krishna by no means exclusively in honor of Krishna. ^'''^^■ It is an immense ocean, into which almost everv stream of Hindu faith and feeling has by one path or another found its way. Age after age, barbarous, heroic, or ecclesiastical, has contributed its popular traditions, its religious speculations, its morality and its faith, to swell this colossal epic ; and it embodies, on a pro- digious scale, every element of dramatic, intellectual, and spiritual, as well as popular and national interest familiar to the Hindu mind. It has probably under- gone frequent readjustments to fresh experience under 32 49^ RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. the influence of the reHofious classes. From time to time fresh fragments of ethics and philosophy have been interpolated, often in the strangest context : the profoundest spirituality flows from the lips of dying barbarians, and metaphysics are- sounded to tlieir depths in the intervals of internecine strife. The Bhagavata Purana ^ is another vast body of incarnation myths and traditions, more especially de- voted to the worship of Krishna, whose manifold births and forms are traced throuo-h all cosmoi^onv, theology, philosophy, and who here becomes the universal absorbent and solvent of traditional beliefs. Both Epic and Purana are the free play of Hindu imagination and fancy, and turn past, present, and future into song. They connect the national life with the simple ages of minstrelsy, purporting to come from the lips of bards. The Krishna of the Epos might seem to be imperfect- Krishnamy-ly defined as an incarnation, to the religious thoiogy. sense. He seems sometimes to be man, some- times God of gods. At one time his divinity is denied, at another he seems unaware of it. He is opposed, slighted, assailed, w^ounded. Even as incarnation, he is but a hair from Vishnu's body. But in the Pura- nas, he is the Supreme alone. ^ He is Vasudeva, God with the world, in all beings, and without appeal. He combines all exalted appellatives and powers, and many that we should hold as quite other than exalted. But through all incongruities the religious interest is held fast to the person of Krishna, as central incar- nation of protecting, and retributive deity, as well as ^ Translated by Eugene Bumouf. * In the Brahma Vaivartta^ he is adored by all the gods. See Wilson's analysis in Essays on Sansk. Lit.^ I. 94. INCARNATION. 499 the embodiment of ideals and delights essentially human. That much of personal biography is to be discerned through this immeasurable haze of fable is improbable enough. It seems quite as impracticable to construct a positive basis or nucleus of historical fact out of the mythology of the cowherd boy, or the Kshattriya hero, as out of the supernaturalism of the god. And certainly the moral value of the. Krishna faith is in no degree determinable by tracing it back, upon mythical authority, to somebody who was " orig- inally a mere cowherd, stealing butter and performing similar pranks when a boy, and rendering himself famous by his amours when a man " ! - The democratic character of this faith in its original form has already been inferred ^ from the relation of the name Krishna (or the black) to the color of the lowest caste and of the aboriginal races of India. Its suggestions of an ancient sense of brotherhood, and of a powerful influence on Aryan faith from the side of conquered or enslaved tribes, as well as the poetic justice of which this worship of the black by the white is a historic landmark, seem to me very im- pressive. The idyllic legends of the Krishna-Govinda (or cowherd), his boyish pranks, his miraculous feats, and amours among the cowherdesses, are evidently based on the folklore of rude country tribes, like those of the patriarchal Hebrew age. Their grotesque humor reminds us of the miracle plays of the Middle Ages, in which the New Testament myths, grown too familiar to be venerated, were freely handled for the general amusement ; and this wild jungle of tropic fable has far more than the animal exuberance and lawless * Wheeler's Hist, of India. ^ See chapter on the BhagavadgUci. 500 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. sportlveness of the "Arabian Nights." Doubtless the coarseness of its natural meaning was spiritualized away by the later, more enlightened, Krishna-wor- shippers,^ just as the barbarities and sensualities of the older Bible legends have been by later Jews and Christians. But in the main body of the epos, Krishna assumes ^, ,, , a nobler function. Throuijh all the fratricidal Noble func- ^ tionsof horrors of the great war between kindred Pandus and Kurus, the most tragic tale ever told in song, he enacts the part of mediator and con- soler : he is not a warrior, but a peace-maker ; inter- feres in the strife purely in the interest of justice, and mourns with the love of a brother over the fearful consummation of evil-doing which all his efforts fail to prevent. Though a Kshattriya in his human form, and though other passages relate his tremendous exploits in destroying the wicked, he refuses to fight in this unnatural war ; will be only Arjuna's charioteer, on the just side, if war viiisl be ; and Arjuna chooses his presence, as of itself more than armies, and as fullest assurance of victory. Though able to compel obe- dience, he respects the freedom of those who choose to disregard his wise and humane counsels, while he strives to compose the bitter feud between brothers. Warned that the attempt would be useless, he says : — " To deliver the world from all this preparation for strife is the highest of duties ; and it is right to give all one's efforts to such a duty, whether they succeed or fail." Sent to the hostile Kuru princes with this intent, he is received with divine honors, in festival raiment, with offerings of sandal-wood and perfume ; carpets are ' Bh&gav. Pur&7ia, X. INCARNATION. 50I strewn in his path, and the king goes out on foot to meet him. Yet his advice is rejected, and his person threatened. And when his hopes that kindredship would have enabled him to save the infatuated Kura- vas from destruction are proved vain ; when his tender and noble appeals, and his prophecies of coming deso- lation, alike fail, he returns sorrowing, after embracing the noblest of these fated ones, with tears over the bitter future that must come to them all. When the multitude of Brahmans crave of him for- giveness for sin, he answers, " If your hearts be pure and single before God, there is hope of forgiveness from Him." He consoles Arjuna for the loss of his son, savinof- : '' His fame will endure for ever, and it might be said that he is still alive. Children, like worldly goods, are given to us by God; and he can resume them at his pleasure." He comforts a woman for a similar bereavement by reminding her "how happy a mother should be whose son has met so glorious a destiny." At the end of the war he bids the victors administer justice to all the oppressed, and promises them reward for their good deeds in another life. After the doom has fallen upon his people, and his brothers and companions have perished, as he sits alone in his sorrow in the forest, he is fatally wounded by a careless hunter, whose remorse he seeks to allay in the hour of his own death, saying, " Go thy way : thine is not the blame." We should not expect that very exalted- moral standards would be found inter- woven • with a movem.ent of warfare so brutal and ferocious as that of the Mahabharata, where the world seems given over to the nemesis of wrathful and de- structive passions ; yet it really abounds in noble 502 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. reconciliations, in heroic self-disciplines, in the loyal- ties of tender affection. And in this epic Krishna is, in his relations to the Pandu war, a redeeming presence of justice, magnanimity, and mercy, which, spite of all the monstrosities of supernaturalism, flows in a golden thread of providential purport through the retributive woof of wrong and pain. This ideal incarnation aspires, therefore, to include „ . . all nature and life, and to divinize all human Partiapa- tion in the duty by thc direct participation of deity in its whole of life. ' r ^ i i maniiold spheres. " Priest, teacher, marriageable man, householder, and beloved companion, because he is all this, therefore has Krishna been hon- ored. Generosity, ability, sacred wisdom, heroism, humility, splen- dor, endurance, cheerfulness, joyousness, exist constantly in this unfailing one. It is Krishna who is the origin and end of all the worlds. All this universe comes into being through him, the eternal Maker, transcending all beings. And he enlightens and gladdens the assembly, as a sunless place would be cheered by the sun, or a windless spot by the wind." ' Krishna, in short, represented the genial and happy sense of unity for all finite relations with the infinite and eternal. The universality of the religious instinct, shown in this combination 'of the cosmical with the manifold human in one divine personality, is an ele- ment of very great interest. In absorbing the universe into their divinity, the Krishna of Eastern, and the Christ of Western faith are in their diverse ways analogous. The Christian incarnation, however, while superior in spiritual ele- vation, does not attempt to represent that