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

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There is much in these descriptions which is unlike the attributes
ascribed to any other member of the Vedic pantheon and recalls Ahura
Mazda of the Avesta or Semitic deities. No proof of foreign influence is
forthcoming, but the opinion of some scholars that the figure of Varuna
somehow reflects Semitic ideas is plausible. It has been suggested that
he was originally a lunar deity, which explains his association with
Mitra (the Persian Mithra) who was a sun god, and that the group of
deities called Adityas and including Mitra and Varuna were the sun, moon
and the five planets known to the ancients. This resembles the
Babylonian worship of the heavenly bodies and, though there is no record
whatever of how such ideas reached the Aryans, it is not difficult to
imagine that they may have come from Babylonia either to India[153] or
to the country where Indians and Iranians dwelt together. There is a
Semitic flavour too in the Indian legend of the Churning of the
Ocean[154]. The Gods and Asuras effect this by using a huge serpent as a
rope to whirl round a mountain and from the turmoil there arise various
marvellous personages and substances including the moon. This resembles
in tone if not in detail the Babylonian creation myths, telling of a
primaeval abyss of waters and a great serpent which is slain by the Gods
who use its body as the material for making the heavens and the
earth[155].

Yet Varuna is not the centre of a monotheistic religion any more than
Indra, and in later times he becomes a water god of no marked
importance. The Aryans and Semites, while both dissatisfied with
polytheism and seeking the one among the many, moved along different
paths and did not reach exactly the same goal. Semitic deities were
representations of the forces of nature in human form but their
character was stereotyped by images, at any rate in Assyria and
Babylonia, and by the ritual of particular places with which they were
identified. Semitic polytheism is mainly due to the number of tribes and
localities possessing separate deities, not to the number of deities
worshipped by each place and tribe. As villages and small towns were
subordinate to great towns, so the deities of minor localities were
subordinate to those of the greater. Hence the Semitic god was often
thought of as a king who might be surrounded by a court and then became
the head of a pantheon of inferior deities, but also might be thought of
as tolerating no rivals. This latter conception when combined with moral
earnestness gives us Jehovah, who resembles Varuna, except that Varuna
is neither jealous nor national. Indian polytheism also originated in
the personification of various phenomena, the sun, thunder, fire,
rivers, and so forth, but these deities unlike the Semitic gods had
little to do with special tribes or localities and the philosophic
Indian easily traced a connection between them. It is not difficult to
see that sun, fire and lightning have something in common. The gods are
frequently thought of as joined in couples, triads or larger companies
and early worship probably showed the beginnings of a feature which is
prominent in the later ritual, namely, that a sacrifice is not an
isolated oblation offered to one particular god but a series of
oblations presented to a series of deities. There was thus little
disposition to exalt one god and annihilate the others, but every
disposition to identify the gods with one another and all of them with
something else. Just as rivers, mountains and plains are dimly seen to
be parts of a whole which later ages call nature, so are the gods seen
to be parts of some divine whole which is greater than any of them. Even
in the Rig Veda we find such sentiments as "The priests speak of the One
Being in many ways: they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan[156]." Hence it
is not surprising that when in the later Vedic period a tendency towards
monotheism (but monotheism of a pantheistic type) appears, the supreme
position is given to none of the old deities but to a new figure,
Prajapati. This word, meaning Lord of living creatures, occurs in the
Rig Veda as an epithet of the sun and is also occasionally used as the
name of the Being by whom all gods and worlds were generated and by
whose power they continue to exist. In the Brahmanas and later ritual
literature he is definitely recognized as the supreme deity, the
Creator, the first sacrificer and the sacrifice itself. It is perhaps
owing to his close connection with ceremonial that enquiring and
speculative minds felt Prajapati not to be a final or satisfactory
explanation of the universe. He is identified with Brahma, the active
personal creator, and this later name gradually ousts the other but he
does not, any more than Indra or Varuna, become the Atman or supreme
universal Being of the Upanishads.

The principal Vedic deities are male and the few goddesses that are
mentioned such as Ushas. the Dawn, seem to owe their sex to purely
dramatic reasons. Greece and Rome as well as India felt it appropriate
to represent the daybreak as a radiant nymph. But though in later times
such goddesses as Durga assumed in some sects a paramount position, and
though the Veda is familiar with the idea of the world being born, there
are few traces in it of a goddess corresponding to the Great Mother,
Cybele or Astarte.

In an earlier period of Vedic studies many deities were identified with
figures in the classical or Teutonic mythology chiefly on philological
grounds but most of these identifications have now been abandoned. But a
few names and figures seem to be found among both the Asiatic and
European Aryans and to point to a common stock of ideas. Dyaus, the Sky
God, is admittedly the same as Zeus and Jupiter. The Asvins agree in
character, though not in name, with the Dioscuri and other parallels are
quoted from Lettish mythology. Bhaga, the bountiful giver, a somewhat
obscure deity, is the same word as the Slavonic Bog, used in the general
sense of God, and we find _deva_ in Sanskrit, _deus_ in Latin, and
_devas_ in Lithuanian. Ushas, the Dawn, is phonetically related to
[Greek: 'Ehos] and Aurora who, however, are only half deities. Indra, if
he cannot be scientifically identified with Thor, is a similar personage
who must have grown out of the same stock of ideas. By a curious
transference the Prophet Elias has in south-eastern Europe inherited the
attributes of the thunder god and is even now in the imagination of the
peasantry a jovial and riotous being who, like Indra, drives a noisy
chariot across the sky.

The connection with ancient Persian mythology is closer. The Avestan
religion was a reformation due to the genius of Zoroaster and therefore
comparable with Buddhism rather than Hinduism, but the less systematic
polytheism which preceded it contained much which reminds us of the
Vedic hymns. It can hardly be doubted that the ancestors of the Indians
and Iranians once practised almost identical forms of religion and had
even a common ritual. The chief features of the fire cult and of the
Soma or Haoma sacrifice appear in both. The sacrifice is called Yajna in
the Veda, Yasna in the Avesta: the Hotri priest is Zaotar, Atharvan is
Athravan, Mitra is Mithra. Vayu and Apah (the divine waters) meet us in
the Avesta in almost the same forms and Indra's epithet of Vritrahan
(the slayer of Vritra) appears as Verethragna. Ahura Mazda seems to be a
development of the deity who appears as Varuna in India though he has
not the same name, and the main difference between Indian and Iranian
religion lies in this, that the latter was systematized by a theistic
reformer who exalted one deity above the others, whereas in India, where
there was more religious vitality, polytheistic and pantheistic fancies
flourished uncurbed and the greatest reformer, the Buddha, was not a
theist.

One peculiarity of Indians in all ages is that they put more into
religion than other races. It received most of the energy and talent
which, elsewhere, went into art, politics and philosophy. Hence it
became both intense and manifold, for deities and creeds were wanted for
every stage of intelligence and variety of taste, and also very
tolerant, for sects in India, though multitudinous, are not so sharply
divided or mutually hostile as in Europe. Connected with the general
interest which religion inspired is its strongly marked speculative
character. The Rig Veda asks whether in the beginning there was being or
not being, and the later Vedas and Brahmanas are filled with discussions
as to the meaning of ceremonies, which show that the most dreary
formalism could not extinguish the innate propensity to seek for a
reason. In the Upanishads we have the same spirit dealing with more
promising material. And throughout the long history of Hinduism religion
and philosophy are seldom separated: we rarely find detached
metaphysicians: philosophers found new sects or support old ones:
religion absorbs philosophy and translates it into theology or myths.

4

To the age of the Vedas succeeds that of the Brahmanas or sacrificial
treatises. The two periods are distinct and have each a well-marked
tone, but they pass into one another, for the Yajur and Sama Vedas
pre-suppose the ritual of the Brahmanas. These treatises introduce us to
one feature of Indian religion mentioned above, namely the extraordinary
elaboration of its ritual. To read them one would suppose that the one
occupation of all India was the offering of sacrifices. The accounts are
no doubt exaggerated and must often be treated as specimens of
sacerdotal imagination, like the Biblical descriptions of the rites
performed in the Tabernacle during the wanderings of the Israelites. But
making all allowance for priestly enthusiasm, it still remains true that
the intellect of India, so far as it is preserved in literature, was
occupied during two centuries or so with the sacrificial art and that
philosophy had difficulty in disentangling itself from ceremonies. One
has only to compare Greek and Sanskrit literature to see how vast are
the proportions assumed by ritual in India. Our information about the
political institutions, the wars and chronology of ancient Greece is
full, but of the details of Greek worship we hear little and probably
there was not much to tell. But in India, where there are no histories
and no dates, we know every prayer and gesture of the officiants
throughout complicated sacrifices and possess a whole library describing
their correct performance.

In most respects these sacrifices which absorbed so much intellect and
energy belong to ancient history. They must not be confounded with the
ceremonies performed in modern temples, which have a different origin
and character. A great blow was struck at the sacrificial system by
Buddhism. Not only did it withdraw the support of many kings and nobles
(and the greater ceremonies being very costly depended largely on the
patronage of the wealthy), but it popularized the idea that animal
sacrifices are shocking and that attempts to win salvation by offerings
are crude and unphilosophic. But though, after Buddhism had leavened
India for a few centuries, we no longer find the religious world given
over to sacrificing as it had been about 600 B.C., these rites did not
die out. Even now they are occasionally performed in South India and the
Deccan. There are still many Brahmans in these regions who, if they have
not the means or learning to perform the greater Vedic ceremonies, at
any rate sympathize with the mental attitude which they imply, and this
attitude has many curious features.

The rite of sacrifice, which in the simple form of an offering supposed
to be agreeable to the deity is the principal ceremony in the early
stages of most religions, persists in their later stages but gives rise
to clouds of theory and mystical interpretations. Thus in Christianity,
the Jewish sacrifices are regarded as prototypes of the death of Christ
and that death itself as a sacrifice to the Almighty, an offering of
himself to himself, which in some way acts as an expiation for the sins
of the world. And by a further development the sacrifice of the mass,
that is, the offering of portions of bread and wine which are held to be
miraculously transformed into the body and blood of Christ by the
manipulations of a qualified priest, is believed to repeat every day the
tragedy of Calvary. The prevalence of this view in Europe should make us
chary of stigmatizing Hindu ideas about sacrifice as mental aberrations.
They represent the fancies of acute intellects dealing with ancient
ceremonies which they cannot abandon but which they transform into
something more congenial to their own transitional mode of thought.

Though the Brahmanas and Upanishads mix up ritual with physical and
metaphysical theories in the most extraordinary fashion, their main
motive deserves sympathy and respect. Their weakness lies in their
inability to detach themselves (as the Buddha succeeded in doing) from a
ritual which though elaborate was neither edifying nor artistic: they
seem unable to see the great problems of existence except through the
mists of altar smoke. Their merit is their evident conviction that this
formalism is inadequate. Their wish is not to distort and cramp nature
by bringing it within the limits of the ritual, but to enlarge and
expand the ritual until it becomes cosmic. If they regard the whole
universe as one long act of prayer and sacrifice, the idea is grandiose
rather than pedantic, though the details may not always be to our
taste[157]. And the Upanishads pass from ritual and theology to real
speculation in a way unknown to Christian thought. To imagine a
parallel, we must picture Spinoza beginning with an exposition of the
Trinity and transubstantiation and proceeding to develop his own system
without becoming unorthodox.

The conception of the sacrifice set forth in the Brahmanas is that it is
a scientific method of acquiring immortality as well as temporal
blessings. Though originally a mere offering in the _do ut des_
principle, it has assumed a higher and more mysterious position[158]. We
are told that the gods obtained immortality and heaven by sacrifice,
that they created the universe by sacrifice, that Prajapati, the
creator, _is_ the sacrifice. Although some writers are disposed to
distinguish magic sharply from religion, the two are not separated in
the Vedas. Sacrifice is not merely a means of pleasing the gods: it is a
system of authorized magic or sacred science controlling all worlds, if
properly understood. It is a mysterious cosmic force like electricity
which can be utilized by a properly trained priest but is dangerous in
unskilful hands, for the rites, if wrongly performed, bring disaster or
even death on bunglers. Though the Vedic sacrifices fell more and more
out of general use, this notion of the power of rites and formulae did
not fade with them but has deeply infected modern Hinduism and even
Buddhism, in both of which the lore of spells and gestures assumes
monstrous proportions. The Vedic and modern tantric rituals are
different but they are based on the same supposition that the universe
(including the gods which are part of it) is regulated by some
permeating principle, and that this principle can be apprehended by
sacred science and controlled by the use of proper methods[159]. So far
as these systems express the idea that the human mind can grasp the
universe by knowledge, they offer an example of the bold sweep of the
Hindu intellect, but the methods prescribed are often fatuous.

The belief in the potency of words and formulae, though amplified and
embellished by the Hindus, is not an Indian invention but a common
aspect of early thought which was less emphasized in other countries. It
is found in Persia and among the tribes of Central and Northern Asia and
of Northern Europe, and attained a high development in Finland where
_runot_ or magical songs are credited with very practical efficacy. Thus
the Kalevala relates how Waeinaemoeinen was building a boat by means of
songs when the process came to a sudden stop because he had forgotten
three words. This is exactly the sort of thing that might happen in the
legends of a Vedic sacrifice if the priest had forgotten the texts he
ought to recite.

The external features of Vedic rites are remarkable and unlike what we
know of those performed by other nations of antiquity. The sacrifice is
not as a rule a gift presented to a single god to win his favour.
Oblations are made to most members of the pantheon in the course of a
prolonged ceremony, but the time, manner and recipients of these
oblations are fixed rather by the mysteries of sacrificial science, than
by the sacrificer's need to propitiate a particular deity. Also the
sacrifice is not offered in a temple and it would appear that in
pre-Buddhist times there were no religious edifices. It is not even
associated with sacred spots, such as groves or fountains haunted by a
deity. The scene of operations requires long and careful preparation,
but it is merely an enclosure with certain sheds, fireplaces and mounds.
It has no architectural pretensions and is not a centre round which
shrines can grow for it requires reconsecration for each ceremony, and
in many cases must not be used twice. There is little that is national,
tribal or communal about these rites. Some of them, such as the
Asvamedha or horse sacrifice and the Rajasaya, or consecration of a
king, may be attended by games and sports, but that is because they are
connected with secular events. In their essence sacrifices are not
popular festivals or holidays but private services, performed for the
benefit of the sacrificer, that is, the person who pays the fees of the
priests. Usually they have a definite object and, though ceremonies for
the attainment of material blessings are not wanting, this object is
most frequently supramundane, such as the fabrication of a body in the
heavenly world. It is in keeping with these characteristics that there
should be no pomp or spectacular effect: the rites resemble some
complicated culinary operation or scientific experiment, and the
sacrificial enclosure has the appearance of a laboratory rather than a
place of worship.

Vedic ritual includes the sacrifice of animals, and there are
indications of the former prevalence of human sacrifice. At the time
when the Brahmanas were composed the human victims were released alive,
but afterwards the practice of real sacrifice was revived, probably
owing to the continual incorporation into the Hindu community of
semi-barbarous tribes and their savage deities. Human victims were
offered to Mahadevi the spouse of Siva until the last century, and would
doubtless be offered now, were legal restrictions removed. But though
the sporadic survival of an old custom in its most primitive and
barbarous form is characteristic of Hinduism, the whole tendency of
thought and practice since the rise of Buddhism has been adverse to
religious bloodshed, even of animals. The doctrine of substitution and
atonement, of offering the victim on behalf of the sacrificer, though
not absent, plays a smaller part than in the religions of Western Asia.

Evidently it was not congenial: the Hindu has always been inclined to
think that the individual earns his future in another world by his own
thoughts and acts. Even the value of the victim is less important than
the correct performance of the ceremony. The teaching of the Brahmanas
is not so much that a good heart is better than lavish alms as that the
ritually correct sacrifice of a cake is better than a hecatomb not
offered according to rule.

The offerings required by the Vedic ritual are very varied. The simplest
are cakes and libations of melted butter poured on the fire from two
wooden spoons held one over the other while Vedic verses are recited.
Besides these there was the animal sacrifice, and still more important
the Soma[160] sacrifice. This ceremony is very ancient and goes back to
the time when the Hindus and Iranians were not divided. In India the
sacrifice lasted at least five days and, even in its simpler forms, was
far more complicated than any ceremony known to the Greeks, Romans or
Jews. Only professional priests could perform it and as a rule a priest
did not attempt to master more than one branch and to be for instance
either a reciter (Hotri) or singer (Udgatri). But the five-day
sacrifices are little more than the rudiments of the sacrificial art and
lead on to the Ahinas or sacrifices comprising from two to twelve days
of Soma pressing which last not more than a month. The Ahinas again can
be combined into sacrificial sessions lasting a year or more[161], and
it would seem that rites of this length were really performed, though
when we read of such sessions extending over a hundred years, we may
hope that they are creations of a fancy like that of the hymn-writer who
celebrated the state

Where congregations ne'er break up And Sabbaths never end.

The ritual literature of India is enormous and much of it has been
edited and translated by European scholars with a care that merited a
better object. It is a mine of information respecting curious beliefs
and practices of considerable historical interest, but it does not
represent the main current of religious ideas in post-Buddhist times.
The Brahmans indeed never ceased to give the sacrificial system their
theoretical and, when possible, their practical approval, for it
embodies a principle most dear to them, namely, that the other castes
can obtain success and heaven only under the guidance of Brahmans and by
rites which only Brahmans can perform. But for this very reason it
incurred the hostility not only of philosophers and morally earnest men,
but of the military caste and it never really recovered from the blow
dealt it by Buddhism, the religion of that caste. But with every
Brahmanic revival it came to the front and the performance of the
Asvamedha or horse sacrifice[162] was long the culminating glory of an
orthodox king.

CHAPTER V

ASCETICISM AND KNOWLEDGE

1

As sacrifice and ceremonial are the material accompaniments of prayer,
so are asceticism and discipline those of thought. This is less
conspicuous in other countries, but in India it is habitually assumed
that the study of what we call metaphysics or theology needs some kind
of physical discipline and it will be well to elucidate this point
before describing the beginnings of speculation.

Tapas, that is asceticism or self-mortification, holds in the religious
thought and practice of India as large a place as sacrifice. We hear of
it as early, for it is mentioned in the Rig Veda[163], and it lasts
longer, for it is a part of contemporary Hinduism just as much as prayer
or worship. It appears even in creeds which disavow it theoretically,
_e.g._ in Buddhism, and evidently has its root in a deep-seated and
persistent instinct.

Tapas is often translated penance but the idea of mortification as an
expiation for sins committed, though not unknown in India, is certainly
not that which underlies the austerities of most ascetics. The word
means literally heat, hence pain or toil, and some think that its origin
should be sought in practices which produced fever, or tended to
concentrate heat in the body. One object of Tapas is to obtain abnormal
powers by the suppression of desires or the endurance of voluntary
tortures. There is an element of truth in this aspiration. Temperance,
chastity and mental concentration are great aids for increasing the
force of thought and will. The Hindu believes that intensity and
perseverance in this road of abstinence and rapture will yield
correspondingly increased results. The many singular phenomena connected
with Indian asceticism have been imperfectly investigated but a
psychological examination would probably find that subjective results
(such as visions and the feeling of flying through the air) are really
produced by the discipline recommended and there may be elements of much
greater value in the various systems of meditation. But this is only the
beginning of Tapas. To the idea that the soul when freed from earthly
desires is best able to comprehend the divine is superadded another
idea, namely that self-mortification is a process of productive labour
akin to intellectual toil. Just as the whole world is supposed to be
permeated by a mysterious principle which can be known and subdued by
the science of the sacrificing priests, so the ascetic is able to
control gods and nature by the force of his austerities. The creative
deities are said to have produced the world by Tapas, just as they are
said to have produced it by sacrifice and Hindu mythology abounds in
stories of ascetics who became so mighty that the very gods were
alarmed. For instance Ravana, the Demon ruler of Lanka who carried off
Sita, had acquired his power by austerities which enabled him to extort
a boon from Brahma. Thus there need be nothing moral in the object of
asceticism or in the use of the power obtained. The epics and dramas
frequently portray ascetics as choleric and unamiable characters and
modern Yogis maintain the tradition.