Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) by Charles Eliot

C >> Charles Eliot >> Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3)

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41

In Europe we are accustomed to associate the ideas of sacerdotalism,
hierarchy and dogma, mainly because they are united in the greatest
religious organization familiar to us, the Roman Catholic Church. But
the combination is not necessary. Hinduism is intensely sacerdotal but
neither hierarchical nor dogmatic: Mohammedanism is dogmatic but neither
sacerdotal nor hierarchical: Buddhism is dogmatic and also somewhat
hierarchical, since it has to deal with bodies of men collected in
monasteries where discipline is necessary, but except in its most
corrupt forms it is not sacerdotal. The absence of the hierarchical idea
in Hinduism is striking. Not only is there no Pope, but there is hardly
any office comparable with a Bishopric[127]. The relationships
recognized in the priesthood are those springing from birth and the
equally sacred ties uniting teacher and pupil. Hence there is little to
remind us of the organization of Christian Churches. We have simply
teachers expounding their sacred books to their scholars, with such
combination of tradition and originality as their idiosyncrasies may
suggest, somewhat after the theory of congregational churches. But that
resemblance is almost destroyed by the fact that both teachers and
pupils belong to clans, connected by descent and accepted by the people
as a superior order of mankind. Even in the most modern sects the
descendants of the founder often receive special reverence.

Though the Brahmans have no ecclesiastical discipline, they do not
tolerate the interference of kings. Buddhist sovereigns have summoned
councils, but not so Hindu monarchs. They have built temples, paid
priests to perform sacrifices and often been jealous of them but for the
last two thousand years they have not attempted to control them within
their own sphere or to create a State Church. And the Brahmans on their
side have kept within their own province. It is true that they have
succeeded in imposing--or in identifying themselves with--a most exacting
code of social, legal and religious prescriptions, but they have rarely
aimed at temporal power or attempted to be more than viziers. They have
of course supported pious kings and received support--especially
donations--from them, and they have enjoyed political influence as
domestic chaplains to royal families, but they have not consented to any
such relations between religion and the state as exist (or existed) in
England, Russia, Mohammedan countries or China. At the ancient
coronation ceremony the priest who presented the new ruler to his
subjects said, "This is your King, O people: The King of us Brahmans is
Soma[128]."

2

These facts go far to explain some peculiar features of Hinduism.
Compared with Islam or Christianity its doctrines are extraordinarily
fluid, multiform and even inconsistent: its practice, though rarely lax,
is also very various in different castes and districts. The strangeness
of the phenomenon is diminished if one considers that the uniformity and
rigidity of western creeds are due to their political more than to their
religious character. Like the wind, the spirit bloweth where it listeth:
it is governed by no laws but those which its own reverence imposes: it
lives in changing speculation. But in Europe it has been in double
bondage to the logic of Greece and the law of Rome. India deals in
images and metaphor: Greece in dialectic. The original thought of
Christianity had something of this Indian quality, though more sober and
less fantastic, with more limitation and less imagination. On this
substratum the Greeks reared their edifices of dialectic and when the
quarrels of theologians began to disturb politics, the state treated the
whole question from a legal point of view. It was assumed that there
must be a right doctrine which the state should protect or even enforce,
and a wrong doctrine which it should discourage or even forbid. Hence
councils, creeds and persecutions. The whole position is logical and
legal. The truth has been defined: those who do not accept it harm not
only themselves but others: therefore they should be restrained and
punished.

But in religious matters Hindus have not proceeded in this way as a
rule. They have adopted the attitude not of a judge who decides, but of
the humane observer who sees that neither side is completely right or
completely wrong and avoids expressing his opinion in a legal form.
Hindu teachers have never hesitated to proclaim their views as the whole
and perfect truth. In that indeed they do not yield to Christian
theologians but their pronouncements are professorial rather than
judicial and so diverse and yet all so influential that the state,
though bound to protect sound doctrine, dare not champion one more than
the other. Religious persecution is rare. It is not absent but the
student has to search for instances, whereas in Christian Europe they
are among the most conspicuous facts of history.

Restless, subtle and argumentative as Hindu thought is, it is less prone
than European theology to the vice of distorting transcendental ideas by
too stringent definition. It adumbrates the indescribable by metaphors
and figures. It is not afraid of inconsistencies which may illustrate
different aspects of the infinite, but it rarely tries to cramp the
divine within the limits of a logical phrase. Attempts to explain how
the divine and human nature were combined in Christ convulsed the
Byzantine Empire and have fettered succeeding generations with their
stiff formulae. It would be rash to say that the ocean of Hindu
theological literature contains no speculations about the incarnations
of Vishnu similar to the views of the Nestorians, Monophysites and
Catholics, but if such exist they have never attracted much interest or
been embodied in well-known phrases[129]. The process by which a god can
be born as a man, while continuing to exist as a god, is not described
in quasi-legal language. Similarly the Soma offered in sacrifices is a
god as well as a drink. But though the ritual of this sacrifice has
produced an infinity of discussion and exegesis, no doctrine like
transubstantiation or consubstantiation has assumed any prominence.

The Hindu has an extraordinary power of combining dogma and free
thought, uniformity and variety. For instance it is held that the Vedas
are a self-existent, eternal revelation made manifest to ancient sages
and that their correct recitation ensures superhuman results. Yet each
Veda exists in several recensions handed down by oral tradition in
separate schools, and though the exact text and pronunciation are
matters of the utmost importance, diversities of opinion respecting them
are tolerated and honoured. Further, though the early scriptures were
preserved with scrupulous care the canon was never closed. It is
impossible to say how many Upanishads there are, nor does a Hindu think
the less of an Upanishad because it is not found in a certain list. And
in mediaeval and modern times these ancient sacred books have been
replaced for all except Brahmans by more recent Sanskrit works, or by a
vernacular literature which, though having no particular imprimatur,
claims the same authority as the Vedas[130].

The only essential tenets of Hinduism are recognition of the Brahman
caste and divine authority of the Vedas. Those who publicly deny these
doctrines as the Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs have done, put themselves
outside the pale, but the recognition required to ensure orthodoxy or at
least to avoid excommunication must not be compared with that implied by
such phrases as recognizing the authority of the Bible, or the supremacy
of the Pope. The utmost latitude of interpretation is allowed and the
supposed followers of the Veda comprise sects whose beliefs seem to have
no relation to one another or to the Veda, philosophic atheists and
demonolaters whose religious ideas hardly rise above those of African
savages.

One explanation may be, that every nation insists on liberty at the
expense of logic in the matters which interest it most. We do this in
politics. It might be difficult to make an untravelled oriental
understand how parliamentary institutions can continue for a day, how
socialists and republicans can take part in the government of a
monarchical country, and why the majority do not muzzle the opposition.
Yet Englishmen prefer to let this curious illogical muddle continue
rather than tolerate some symmetrical and authoritative system which
would check free speech and individuality. It is the same in Indian
religion. In all ages the Hindu has been passionately devoted to
speculation. He will bear heavy burdens in the way of priestly exaction,
social restrictions, and elaborate ceremonies, but he will not allow
secular or even ecclesiastical authority to cramp and school his
religious fancy, nor will he be deterred from sampling an attractive
form of speculation merely because it is pronounced unorthodox by the
priesthood, and the priesthood, being themselves Hindus, are discreet in
the use of anathemas. They insist not so much on particular doctrines
and rites as on the principle that whatever the doctrine, whatever the
rite, they must be the teachers and officiants. In critical and
revolutionary times the Brahmans have often assured their pre-eminence
by the judicious recognition of heresies. In all ages there has been a
conservative clique which restricted religion to ceremonial observances.
Again and again some intellectual or emotional outburst has swept away
such narrow limits and proclaimed doctrines which seemed subversive of
the orthodoxy of the day. But they have simply become the orthodoxy of
the morrow, under the protection of the same Brahman caste. The
assailants are turned into champions, and in time the bold reformers
stiffen into antiquated saints.

Hinduism has not been made but has grown. It is a jungle not a building.
It is a living example of a great national paganism such as might have
existed in Europe if Christianity had not become the state religion of
the Roman Empire, if there had remained an incongruous jumble of old
local superstitions, Greek philosophy and oriental cults such as the
worship of Mithra or Serapis. Yet the parallel is not exact, for in Rome
many of the discordant religious elements remained exotic, whereas in
India they all, whatever their origin, became Indian and smack of the
soil. There was wanting in European paganism the bond of union supplied
by the Brahmans who by sometimes originating, sometimes tolerating and
adapting, have managed to set their seal upon all Indian beliefs.

3

Thus the dominance of the Brahmans and their readiness to countenance
every cult and doctrine which can attract worshippers explains the
diversity of Indian religion, but are there no general characteristics
which mark all its multiple forms? There are, and they apply to Buddhism
as well as Hinduism, but in attempting to formulate them it is well to
say that Indian religion is as wilful and unexpected in its variations
as human nature itself and that all generalizations about it are subject
to exceptions. If we say that it preaches asceticism and the subjection
of the flesh, we may be confronted with the Vallabhacaryas who inculcate
self-indulgence; if we say that it teaches reincarnation and successive
lives, we may be told that the Lingayats[131] do not hold that doctrine.
And though we might logically maintain that these sects are unorthodox,
yet it does not appear that Hindus excommunicate them. Still, it is just
to say that the doctrines mentioned are characteristic of Hinduism and
are repudiated only by eccentric sects.

Perhaps the idea which has had the widest and most penetrating influence
on Indian thought is that conception of the Universe which is known as
Samsara, the world of change and transmigration. The idea of rebirth and
the wandering of souls from one body to another exists in a fragmentary
form among savage tribes in many countries, but in India it makes its
appearance as a product of ripening metaphysics rather than as a
survival. It plays no part in the Vedic hymns: it first acquires
importance in the older Upanishads but more as a mystery to be
communicated to the elect than as a popular belief and to some extent as
the special doctrine of the military class rather than of the Brahmans.
At the time of the Buddha, however, it had passed beyond this stage and
was as integral a part of popular theology as is the immortality of the
soul in Europe.

Such expressions as the transmigration of souls or metempsychosis
imperfectly represent Indian ideas. They are incorrect as descriptions
of Buddhist dogmas, which start by denying the existence of a soul, and
they are not entirely suitable to those Vedantic schools which regard
transmigration as part of the illusory phenomenal world. The thought
underlying the doctrine is rather that as a child grows into youth and
age, so the soul passes from life to life in continuity if not in
identity. Whatever the origin of the idea may have been, its root in
post-Vedic times is a sense of the transitoriness but continuity of
everything. Nothing is eternal or even permanent: not even the gods, for
they must die, not even death, for it must turn into new life.

This view of life is ingrained in Indian nature. It is not merely a
scientific or philosophical speculation, but it summarizes the outlook
of ordinary humanity. In Europe the average religious man thanks or at
least remembers his Creator. But in India the Creator has less place in
popular thought. There is a disinclination to make him responsible for
the sufferings of the world, and speculation, though continually
occupied with the origins of things, rarely adopts the idea familiar to
Christians and Mohammedans alike, that something was produced out of
nothing by the divine fiat. Hindu cosmogonies are various and discordant
in details, but usually start with the evolution or emanation of living
beings from the Divinity and often a reproductive act forms part of the
process, such as the hatching of an egg or the division of a Divinity
into male and female halves. In many accounts the Deity brings into
being personages who continue the work of world-making and such entities
as mind, time and desire are produced before the material world. But
everything in these creation stories is figurative. The faithful are not
perplexed by the discrepancies in the inspired narratives, and one can
hardly imagine an Indian sect agitated by the question whether God made
the world in six literal days.

All religious doctrines, especially theories about the soul, are matters
of temperament. A race with more power of will and more delight in life
might have held that the soul is the one agent that can stand firm and
unshaken midst the flux of circumstance. The intelligent but passive
Hindu sees clearly that whatever illusions the soul may have, it really
passes on like everything else and continueth not in one stay. He is
disposed to think of it not as created with the birth of the body, but
as a drop drawn from some ocean to which it is destined to return. As a
rule he considers it to be immortal but he does not emphasize or value
personality in our sense. In previous births he has already been a great
many persons and he will be a great many more. Whatever may be the
thread between these existences it is not individuality. And what he
craves is not eternal personal activity, but unbroken rest in which
personality, even if supposed to continue, can have little meaning.

The character of the successive appearances or tenements of the soul is
determined by the law of Karma, which even more than metempsychosis is
the basis of Indian ideas about the universe. Karma is best known as a
term of the Buddhists, who are largely responsible both for the
definition and wide diffusion of the doctrine. But the idea is Brahmanic
as well as Buddhist and occurs in well-known passages of the Upanishads,
where it is laid down that as a man acts so shall he be in the next
life[132]. The word (which means simply _deed_) is the accepted
abbreviation for the doctrine that all deeds bring upon the doer an
accurately proportionate consequence either in this existence, or, more
often, in a future birth. At the end of a man's life his character or
personality is practically the sum of his acts, and when extraneous
circumstances such as worldly position disappear, the soul is left with
nothing but these acts and the character they have formed as, in Indian
language, the fruit of life and it is these acts and this character
which determine its next tenement. That tenement is simply the home
which it is able to occupy in virtue of the configuration and qualities
which it has induced in itself. It cannot complain.

One aspect of the theory of Samsara which is important for the whole
history of Indian thought is its tendency towards pessimism. This
tendency is specially definite and dogmatic in Buddhism, but it is a
marked characteristic of the Indian temperament and appears in almost
every form of devotion and speculation. What salvation or the desire to
be saved is to the ordinary Protestant, Mukti or Moksha, deliverance, is
to the ordinary Hindu. In Buddhism this desire is given a dogmatic basis
for it is declared that all existence in all possible worlds necessarily
involves dukkha or suffering[133] and this view seems to have met with
popular as well as philosophic assent. But the desire for release and
deliverance is based less on a contemplation of the woes of life than on
a profound sense of its impermanence and instability[134]. Life is not
the preface to eternity, as religious Europeans think: the Hindu justly
rejects the notion that the conduct of the soul during a few score years
can fix its everlasting destiny. Every action is important for it helps
to determine the character of the next life, but this next life, even if
it should be passed in some temporary heaven, will not be essentially
different from the present. Before and behind there stretches a vista of
lives, past, present and to come, impermanent and unsatisfying, so that
future existences are spoken of not as immortality but as repeated
death.

4

This sense of weary reiteration is increased by two other doctrines,
which are prevalent in Hinduism, though not universal or uncontested.
The first of them identifies the human soul with the supreme and only
Being. The doctrine of Samsara holds that different forms of existence
may be phases of the same soul and thus prepares the way for the
doctrine that all forms of existence are the same and all souls parts
of, or even identical with the Atman or Self, the divine soul which not
only pervades the world but _is_ the world. Connected with this doctrine
is another, namely, that the whole world of phenomena is Maya or
illusion. Nothing really exists except the supreme Atman: all perception
of plurality and difference is illusion and error: the reality is unity,
identity and rest. The development of these ideas leads to some of the
principal systems of philosophy and will claim our attention later. At
present I merely give their outlines as indicative of Hindu thought and
temperament. The Indian thinks of this world as a circular and unending
journey, an ocean without shore, a shadow play without even a plot. He
feels more strongly than the European that change is in itself an evil
and he finds small satisfaction in action for its own sake. All his
higher aspirations bid him extricate himself from this labyrinth of
repeated births, this phantasmagoria of fleeting, unsubstantial visions
and he has generally the conviction that this can be done by knowledge,
for since the whole Samsara is illusion, it collapses and ceases so soon
as the soul knows its own real nature and its independence of phenomena.
This conviction that the soul in itself is capable of happiness and in
order to enjoy needs only the courage to know itself and be itself goes
far to correct the apathy which is the great danger of Indian thought.
It is also just to point out that from the Upanishads down to the
writings of Rabindranath Tagore in the present day Indian literature
from time to time enunciates the idea that the whole universe is the
manifestation of some exuberant force giving expression to itself in
joyous movement. Thus the Taittiriya Upanishad (III. 6) says: "Bliss is
Brahman, for from bliss all these beings are born, by bliss when born
they live, into bliss they enter at their death."

It is remarkable that Indian thought, restless and speculative as it is,
hardly ever concerns itself with the design, object or end of the world.
The notion of [Greek: Telos] plays little part in its cosmogony or
ethics[135]. The Universe is often regarded as a sport, a passing whim
of the divine Being, almost a mistake. Those legends which describe it
as the outcome of a creative act, generally represent the creator as
moved by some impulse to multiply himself rather than as executing some
deliberate if mysterious plan. Legends about the end of the world and
the establishment of a better order are rare. Hindu chronology revels in
periods, whose enormous length though expressed in figures leaves no
real impression on the mind, days and nights of Brahma, Kalpas,
Manvantaras and Yugas, in which gods and worlds are absorbed into the
supreme essence and born again. But there is no finality about these
catastrophes: the destruction of the whole universe is as certain as the
death of a mouse and to the philosopher not more important[136].
Everything is periodic: Buddhas, Jinas and incarnations of all sorts are
all members of a series. They all deserve great respect and are of great
importance in their own day, but they are none of them final, still less
are they able to create a new heaven and earth or to rise above the
perpetual flux of Samsara. The Buddhists look forward to the advent of
Maitreya, the future Buddha, and the Hindus to the reappearance of
Vishnu as Kalki, who, sword in hand and mounted on a white horse, will
purge India of barbarians, but these future apparitions excite only a
feeble interest in the popular conscience and cannot be compared in
intensity with such ideas as the Jewish Messiah.

It may seem that Indian religion is dreamy, hopeless, and unpractical,
but another point of view will show that all Indian systems are
intensely practical and hopeful. They promise happiness and point out
the way. A mode of life is always prescribed, not merely by works on law
and ceremony but by theological and metaphysical treatises. These are
not analogous to the writings of Kant or Schopenhauer and to study them
as if they were, is like trying to learn riding or cricket by reading
handbooks. The aphorisms of the Sankhya and Vednata are meant to be read
under the direction of a teacher who will see that the pupil's mind is
duly prepared not only by explanation but by abstinence and other
physical training. Hindu religions are unpractical only in so far that
they decline to subordinate themselves to human life. It is assumed that
the religious man who is striving towards a goal beyond this world is
ready to sacrifice the world without regret and in India the assumption
is justified surprisingly often.

As mentioned already the word god has more than one meaning. In India we
have at least two different classes of divinities, distinguished in the
native languages. First there is Brahman the one self-existent,
omnipresent, superpersonal spirit from whom all things emanate and to
whom all things return. The elaboration of this conception is the most
original feature of Indian theology, which tends to regard Brahman as
not merely immanent in all things, but as being all things, so that the
soul liberated from illusion can see that it is one with him and that
nothing else exists. Very different is the meaning of Deva: this
signifies a god (which is not the same as God, though our language
insufficiently distinguishes the two) roughly comparable with the gods
of classical mythology[137]. How little sense of divinity it carries
with it is seen by the fact that it became the common form of address to
kings and simply equivalent to Your Majesty. In later times, though Siva
is styled Mahadeva, it was felt that the great sectarian gods, who are
for their respective worshippers the personal manifestations in which
Brahman makes himself intelligible, required some name distinguishing
them from the hosts of minor deities. They are commonly spoken of by
some title signifying the Lord: thus Siva is Isvara, Vishnu and his
incarnations are more often styled Bhagavad.

From the Vedic hymns onwards the gods of India have been polymorphic
figures not restricted by the limitations of human personality. If a Jew
or a Moslim hears new views about God, he is disposed to condemn them as
wrong. The Hindu's inclination is to appropriate them and ascribe to his
own deity the novel attributes, whether they are consistent with the
existing figure or not. All Indian gods are really everything. As the
thought of the worshipper wanders among them they turn into one another.
Even so sturdy a personality as Indra is declared to be the same as Agni
and as Varuna, and probably every deity in the Vedic pantheon is at some
time identified with another deity. But though in one way the gods seem
vague and impersonal, in another the distinction between gods and men is
slight. The Brahmanas tell us that the gods were originally mortal and
obtained immortality by offering sacrifices: the man who sacrifices like
them makes for himself an immortal body in the abode of the gods and
practically becomes a Deva and the bliss of great sages is declared
equal to the bliss of the gods[138]. The human and divine worlds are not
really distinct, and as in China and Japan, distinguished men are
deified. The deification of Buddha takes place before our eyes as we
follow the course of history: the origin of Krishna's godhead is more
obscure but it is probable that he was a deified local hero. After the
period of the Brahmanas the theory that deities manifest themselves to
the world in avataras or descents, that is in our idiom incarnations,
becomes part of popular theology.