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

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Both catalogues are somewhat artificial, and it is clear that many views
are mentioned not because they represent the tenets of real schools but
from a desire to condemn all possible errors. But the list of topics
discussed is interesting. From the Brahmajala Sutta we learn that the
problems which agitated ancient Magadha were such as the following:--is
the world eternal or not: is it infinite or finite: is there a cause for
the origin of things or is it without cause: does the soul exist after
death: if so, is its existence conscious or unconscious: is it eternal
or does it cease to exist, not necessarily at the end of its present
life but after a certain number of lives: can it enjoy perfect bliss
here or elsewhere? Theories on these and other points are commonly
called vada or talk, and those who hold them vadins. Thus there is the
Kala-vada[229] which makes Time the origin and principle of the
universe, and the Svabhava-vada which teaches that things come into
being of their own accord. This seems crude when stated with archaic
frankness but becomes plausible if paraphrased in modern language as
"discontinuous variation and the spontaneous origin of definite
species." There were also the Niyati-vadins, or fatalists, who believed
that all that happens is the result of Niyati or fixed order, and the
Yadriccha-vadins who, on the contrary, ascribed everything to chance and
apparently denied causation, because the same result follows from
different antecedents. It is noticeable that none of these views imply
theism or pantheism but the Buddha directed so persistent a polemic
against the doctrine of the Atman that it must have been known in
Magadha. The fundamental principles of the Sankhya were also known,
though perhaps not by that name. It is probably correct to say not that
the Buddha borrowed from the Sankhya but that both he and the Sankhya
accepted and elaborated in different ways certain current views.

The Pali Suttas[230] mention six agnostic or materialist teachers and
give a brief but perhaps not very just compendium of their doctrines.
One of them was the founder of the Jains who, as a sect that has lasted
to the present day with a considerable record in art and literature,
merit a separate chapter. Of the remaining five, one, Sanjaya of the
Belattha clan, was an agnostic, similar to the people described
elsewhere[231] as eel-wrigglers, who in answer to such questions as, is
there a result of good and bad actions, decline to say either _(a)_
there is, _(b)_ there is not, _(c)_ there both is and is not, _(d)_
there neither is nor is not. This form of argument has been adopted by
Buddhism for some important questions but Sanjaya and his disciples
appear to have applied it indiscriminately and to have concluded that
positive assertion is impossible.

The other four were in many respects what we should call fatalists and
materialists[232], or in the language of their time Akriya-vadins,
denying, that is, free will, responsibility and the merit or demerit of
good or bad actions. They nevertheless believed in metempsychosis and
practised asceticism. Apparently they held that beings are born again
and again according to a natural law, but not according to their deeds:
and that though asceticism cannot accelerate the soul's journey, yet at
a certain stage it is a fore-ordained and indispensable preliminary to
emancipation. The doctrines attributed to all four are crude and
startling. Perhaps they are exaggerated by the Buddhist narrator, but
they also reflect the irreverent exuberance of young thought. Purana
Kassapa denies that there is any merit in virtue or harm in murder.
Another ascetic called Ajita of the garment of hair teaches that nothing
exists but the four elements, and that "fools and wise alike are
annihilated on the dissolution of the body and after death they are
not." Then why, one asks, was he an ascetic? Similarly Pakudha Kaccayana
states that "when a sharp sword cleaves a head in twain" the soul and
pain play a part similar to that played by the component elements of the
sword and head. The most important of these teachers was Makkhali
Gosala. His doctrine comprises a denial of causation and free will and
an assertion that fools and wise alike will make an end of pain after
wandering through eighty-four hundred thousand births. The followers of
this teacher were called AjIvikas: they were a distinct body in the time
of Asoka, and the name[233] occurs as late as the thirteenth century in
South Indian inscriptions. Several accounts[234] of the founder are
extant, but all were compiled by bitter opponents, for he was hated by
Jains and Buddhists alike. His doctrine was closely allied to Jainism,
especially the Digambara sect, but was probably more extravagant and
anti-social. He appears to have objected to confraternities[235], to
have enjoined a solitary life, absolute nudity and extreme forms of
self-mortification, such as eating filth. The Jains accused his
followers of immorality and perhaps they were ancient prototypes of the
lower class of religious mendicants who have brought discredit on
Hinduism.

3

None of the phases of religious life described above can be called
popular. The religion of the Brahmans was the thought and science of a
class. The various un-Brahmanic confraternities usually required their
members to be wandering ascetics. They had little to say to village
householders who must have constituted the great majority of the
population. Also there are signs that priests and nobles, however much
they quarrelled, combined to keep the lower castes in subjection[236].
Yet we can hardly doubt that then as now all classes were profoundly
religious, and that just as to-day village deities unknown to the Vedas,
or even to the Puranas, receive the worship of millions, so then there
were gods and rites that did not lack popular attention though unnoticed
in the scriptures of Brahmans and Buddhists.

We know little of this popular religion by direct description before or
even during the Buddhist period, but we have fragmentary indications of
its character. Firstly several incongruous observances have obtruded
themselves into the Brahmanic ritual. Thus in the course of the
Mahavrata ceremony[237] the Hotri priest sits in a swing and maidens,
carrying pitchers of water on their heads and singing, dance round an
altar while drums are beaten. Parallels to this may be found to-day. The
image of Krishna, or even a priest who represents Krishna, is swung to
and fro in many temples, the use of drums in worship is distressingly
common, and during the Pongol festivities in southern India young people
dance round or leap over a fire. Other remarkable features in the
Mahavrata are the shooting of arrows into a target of skin, the use of
obscene language (such as is still used at the Holi festival) and even
obscene acts[238]. We must not assume that popular religion in ancient
India was specially indecent, but it probably included ceremonies
analogous to the Lupercalia and Thesmophoria, in which licence in words
and deeds was supposed to promote fertility and prosperity.

We are also justified in supposing that offerings to ancestors and many
ceremonies mentioned in the Grihya-sutras or handbooks of domestic
ritual were performed by far larger classes of the population than the
greater sacrifices, but we have no safe criteria for distinguishing
between priestly injunctions and the real practice of ancient times.

Secondly, in the spells and charms of the Atharva[239], which received
the Brahmanic imprimatur later than the other three Vedas, we find an
outlook differing from that of the other Vedas and resembling the
popular religion of China. Mankind are persecuted by a host of evil
spirits and protect themselves by charms addressed directly to their
tormentors or by invoking the aid of beneficent powers. All nature is
animated by good and evil spirits, to be dealt with like other natural
advantages or difficulties, but not thought of as moral or spiritual
guides. It is true that the Atharva often rises above this phase, for it
consists not of simple folk-lore, but of folk-lore modified
under-sacerdotal influence. The protecting powers invoked are often the
gods of the Rig Veda[240], but prayers and incantations are also
addressed directly to diseases[241] and demons[242] or, on the other
hand, to healing plants and amulets[243]. We can hardly be wrong in
supposing that in such invocations the Atharva reflects the popular
practice of its time, but it prefers the invocation of counteracting
forces, whether Vedic deities or magical plants, to the propitiation of
malignant spirits, such as the worship of the goddesses presiding over
smallpox and cholera which is still prevalent in India. In this there is
probably a contrast between the ideas of the Aryan and non-Aryan races.
The latter propitiate the demon or disease; the Aryans invoke a
beneficent and healing power. But though on the whole the Atharva is
inclined to banish the black spectres of popular demonology with the
help of luminous Aryan gods, still we find invoked in it and in its
subsidiary literature a multitude of spirits, good and bad, known by
little except their names which, however, often suffice to indicate
their functions. Such are Asapati (Lord of the region), Kshetrapati
(Lord of the field), both invoked in ceremonies for destroying locusts
and other noxious insects, Sakambhara and Apva, deities of diarrhoea,
and Arati, the goddess of avarice and grudge. In one hymn[244] the poet
invokes, together with many Vedic deities, all manner of nature spirits,
demons, animals, healing plants, seasons and ghosts. A similar
collection of queer and vague personalities is found in the popular
pantheon of China to-day[245].

Thirdly, various deities who are evidently considered to be well known,
play some part in the Pali Pitakas. Those most frequently mentioned are
Mahabrahma or Brahma Sahampati, and Sakka or Indra, but not quite the
same as the Vedic Indra and less in need of libations of Soma. In two
curious suttas[246] deputations of deities, clearly intended to include
all the important gods worshipped at the time, are represented as
visiting the Buddha. In both lists a prominent position is given to the
Four Great Kings, or Ruling Spirits of the Four Quarters, accompanied by
retinues called Gandhabbas, Kumbhandas, Nagas, and Yakkhas respectively,
and similar to the Nats of Burma. The Gandhabbas (or Gandharvas) are
heavenly musicians and mostly benevolent, but are mentioned in the
Brahmanas as taking possession of women who then deliver oracles. The
Nagas are serpents, sometimes represented as cobras with one or more
heads and sometimes as half human: sometimes they live in palaces under
the water or in the depths of the earth and sometimes they are the
tutelary deities of trees. Serpent worship has undoubtedly been
prevalent in India in all ages: indications of it are found in the
earliest Buddhist sculptures and it still survives[247]. The Yakkhas (or
Yakshas) though hardly demons (as their name is often rendered) are
mostly ill disposed to the human race, sometimes man-eaters and often of
unedifying conduct. The Mahasamaya-sutta also mentions mountain spirits
from the Himalaya, Satagiri, and Mount Vepulla. Of the Devas or chiefs
of the Yakkhas in this catalogue only a few are known to Brahmanic
works, such as Soma, Varuna, Venhu (Vishnu), the Yamas, Pajapati, Inda
(Indra), Sanan-kumara. All these deities are enumerated together with
little regard to the positions they occupy in the sacerdotal pantheon.
The enquirer finds a similar difficulty when he tries in the twentieth
century to identify rural deities, or even the tutelaries of many great
temples, with any personages recognized by the canonical literature.

In several discourses attributed to the Buddha[248] is incorporated a
tract called the Sila-vagga, giving a list of practices of which he
disapproved, such as divination and the use of spells and drugs. Among
special observances censured, the following are of interest. (_a_) Burnt
offerings, and offerings of blood drawn from the right knee. (_b_) The
worship of the Sun, of Siri, the goddess of Luck, and of the Great One,
meaning perhaps the Earth. (_c_) Oracles obtained from a mirror, or from
a girl possessed by a spirit or from a god.

We also find allusions in Buddhist and Jain works as well as in the
inscriptions of Asoka to popular festivals or fairs called Samajjas[249]
which were held on the tops of hills and seem to have included music,
recitations, dancing and perhaps dramatic performances. These meetings
were probably like the modern _mela_, half religion and half
entertainment, and it was in such surroundings that the legends and
mythology which the great Epics show in full bloom first grew and
budded.

Thus we have evidence of the existence in pre-Buddhist India of rites
and beliefs--the latter chiefly of the kind called animistic--disowned for
the most part by the Buddhists and only tolerated by the Brahmans. No
elaborate explanation of this popular religion or of its relation to
more intellectual and sacerdotal cults is necessary, for the same thing
exists at the present day and the best commentary on the Sila-vagga is
Crooke's _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_.

In themselves such popular superstitions may seem despicable and
repulsive (as the Buddha found them), but when they are numerous and
vigorous, as in India, they have a real importance for they provide a
matrix and nursery in which the beginnings of great religions may be
reared. Saktism and the worship of Rama and Krishna, together with many
less conspicuous cults, all entered Brahmanism in this way. Whenever a
popular cult grew important or whenever Brahmanic influence spread to a
new district possessing such a cult, the popular cult was recognized and
brahmanized. This policy can be abundantly illustrated for the last four
or five centuries (for instance in Assam), and it was in operation two
and a half millenniums ago or earlier. It explains the low and magical
character of the residue of popular religion, every ceremony and deity
of importance being put under Brahmanic patronage, and it also explains
the sudden appearance of new deities. We can safely assert that in the
time of the Buddha, and _a fortiori_ in the time of the older
Upanishads[250] and Brahmanas, Krishna and Rama were not prominent as
deities in Hindustan, but it may well be that they had a considerable
position as heroes whose exploits were recited at popular festivals and
that Krishna was growing into a god in other regions which have left no
literature.

CHAPTER VII

THE JAINS[251]

1

Before leaving pre-Buddhist India, it may be well to say something of
the Jains. Many of their doctrines, especially their disregard not only
of priests but of gods, which seems to us so strange in any system which
can be called a religion, are closely analogous to Buddhism and from one
point of view Jainism is part of the Buddhist movement. But more
accurately it may be called an early specialized form of the general
movement which culminated in Buddhism. Its founder, Mahavira, was an
earlier contemporary of the Buddha and not a pupil or imitator[252].
Even had its independent appearance been later, we might still say that
it represents an earlier stage of thought. Its kinship to the theories
mentioned in the last chapter is clear. It does not indeed deny
responsibility and free will, but its advocacy of extreme asceticism and
death by starvation has a touch of the same extravagance and its list of
elements in which physical substances and ideas are mixed together is
curiously crude.

Jainism is atheistic, and this atheism is as a rule neither apologetic
nor polemical but is accepted as a natural religious attitude. By
atheism, of course, a denial of the existence of Devas is not meant; the
Jains surpass, if possible, the exuberant fancy of the Brahmans and
Buddhists in designing imaginary worlds and peopling them with angelic
or diabolical inhabitants, but, as in Buddhism, these beings are like
mankind subject to transmigration and decay and are not the masters,
still less the creators, of the universe. There were two principal world
theories in ancient India. One, which was systematized as the Vedanta,
teaches in its extreme form that the soul and the universal spirit are
identical and the external world an illusion. The other, systematized as
the Sankhya, is dualistic and teaches that primordial matter and
separate individual souls are both of them uncreated and indestructible.
Both lines of thought look for salvation in the liberation of the soul
to be attained by the suppression of the passions and the acquisition of
true knowledge.

Jainism belongs to the second of these classes. It teaches that the
world is eternal, self-existent and composed of six constituent
substances: souls, dharma, adharma, space, time, and particles of
matter[253]. Dharma and adharma are defined by modern Jains as subtle
substances analogous to space which make it possible for things to move
or rest, but Jacobi is probably right in supposing that in primitive
speculation the words had their natural meaning and denoted subtle
fluids which cause merit and demerit. In any case the enumeration places
in singular juxtaposition substances and activities, the material and
the immaterial. The process of salvation and liberation is not
distinguished from physical processes and we see how other sects may
have drawn the conclusion, which apparently the Jains did not draw, that
human action is necessitated and that there is no such thing as free
will. For Jainism individual souls are free, separate existences, whose
essence is pure intelligence. But they have a tendency towards action
and passion and are misled by false beliefs. For this reason, in the
existence which we know they are chained to bodies and are found not
only in Devas and in human beings but in animals, plants and inanimate
matter. The habitation of the soul depends on the merit or demerit which
it acquires and merit and demerit have respectively greater or less
influence during immensely long periods called Utsarpini and Avasarpini,
ascending and descending, in which human stature and the duration of
life increase or decrease by a regular law. Merit secures birth among
the gods or good men. Sin sends the soul to baser births, even in
inanimate substances. On this downward path, the intelligence is
gradually dimmed till at last motion and consciousness are lost, which
is not however regarded as equivalent to annihilation.

Another dogmatic exposition of the Jain creed is based on seven
principles, called soul, non-soul, influx, imprisonment, exclusion,
dissipation, release[254]. Karma, which in the ordinary language of
Indian philosophy means deeds and their effect on the soul, is here
regarded as a peculiarly subtle form of matter[255] which enters the
soul and by this influx (or asrava, a term well-known in Buddhism)
defiles and weighs it down. As food is transformed into flesh, so the
Karma forms a subtle body which invests the soul and prevents it from
being wholly isolated from matter at death. The upward path and
liberation of the soul are effected by stopping the entrance of Karma,
that is by not performing actions which give occasion to the influx, and
by expelling it. The most effective means to this end is
self-mortification, which not only prevents the entrance of new Karma
but annihilates what has accumulated.

Like most Indian sects, Jainism considers the world of transmigration as
a bondage or journey which the wise long to terminate. But joyless as is
its immediate outlook, its ultimate ideas are not pessimistic. Even in
the body the soul can attain a beatific state of perfect knowledge[256]
and above the highest heaven (where the greatest gods live in bliss for
immense periods though ultimately subject to transmigration) is the
paradise of blessed souls, freed from transmigration. They have no
visible form but consist of life throughout, and enjoy happiness beyond
compare. With a materialism characteristic of Jain theology, the
treatise from which this account is taken[257] adds that the dimensions
of a perfected soul are two-thirds of the height possessed in its last
existence.

How is this paradise to be reached? By right faith, right knowledge and
right conduct, called the three jewels, a phrase familiar to Buddhism.
The right faith is complete confidence in Mahavira and his teaching.
Right knowledge is correct theology as outlined above. Knowledge is of
five degrees of which the highest is called Kevalam or omniscience. This
sounds ambitious, but the special method of reasoning favoured by the
Jains is the modest Syadvada[258] or doctrine of may-be, which holds
that you can (1) affirm the existence of a thing from one point of view,
(2) deny it from another, and (3) affirm both existence and
non-existence with reference to it at different times. If (4) you should
think of affirming existence and non-existence at the same time and from
the same point of view, you must say that the thing cannot be spoken of.
The essence of the doctrine, so far as one can disentangle it from
scholastic terminology, seems just, for it amounts to this, that as to
matters of experience it is impossible to formulate the whole and
complete truth, and as to matters which transcend experience language is
inadequate: also that Being is associated with production, continuation
and destruction. This doctrine is called _anekanta-vada_, meaning that
Being is not one and absolute as the Upanishads assert: matter is
permanent, but changes its shape, and its other accidents. Thus in many
points the Jains adopt the common sense and _prima facie_ point of view.
But the doctrines of metempsychosis and Karma are also admitted as
obvious propositions, and though the fortunes and struggles of the
embodied soul are described in materialistic terms, happiness is never
placed in material well-being but in liberation from the material
universe.

We cannot be sure that the existing Jain scriptures present these
doctrines in their original form, but the full acceptance of
metempsychosis, the animistic belief that plants, particles of earth and
water have souls and the materialistic phraseology (from which the
widely different speculations of the Upanishads are by no means free)
agree with what we know of Indian thought about 550 B.C. Jainism like
Buddhism ignores the efficacy of ceremonies and the powers of priests,
but it bears even fewer signs than Buddhism of being in its origin a
protestant or hostile movement. The intellectual atmosphere seems other
than that of the Upanishads, but it is very nearly that of the Sankhya
philosophy, which also recognizes an infinity of individual souls
radically distinct from matter and capable of attaining bliss only by
isolation from matter. Of the origin of that important school we know
nothing, but it differs from Jainism chiefly in the greater elaboration
of its psychological and evolutionary theories and in the elimination of
some materialistic ideas. Possibly the same region and climate of
opinion gave birth to two doctrines, one simple and practical, inasmuch
as it found its principal expression in a religious order, the other
more intellectual and scholastic and, at least in the form in which we
read it, later[259].

Right conduct is based on the five vows taken by every Jain ascetic, (1)
not to kill, (2) not to speak untruth, (3) to take nothing that is not
given, (4) to observe chastity, (5) to renounce all pleasure in external
objects. These vows receive an extensive and strict interpretation by
means of five explanatory clauses applicable to each and to be construed
with reference to deed, word, and thought, to acting, commanding and
consenting. Thus the vow not to kill forbids not only the destruction of
the smallest insect but also all speech or thought which could bring
about a quarrel, and the doing, causing or permitting of any action
which could even inadvertently injure living beings, such as
carelessness in walking. Naturally such rules can be kept only by an
ascetic, and in addition to them asceticism is expressly enjoined. It is
either internal or external. The former takes such forms as repentance,
humility, meditation and the suppression of all desires: the latter
comprises various forms of self-denial, culminating in death by
starvation. This form of religious suicide is prescribed for those who
have undergone twelve years' penance and are ripe for Nirvana[260] but
it is wrong if adopted as a means of shortening austerities. Numerous
inscriptions record such deaths and the head-teachers of the Digambaras
are said still to leave the world in this way.

Important but not peculiar to Jainism is the doctrine of the periodical
appearance of great teachers who from time to time restore the true
faith[261]. The same idea meets us in the fourteen Manus, the
incarnations of Vishnu, and the series of Buddhas who preceded Gotama.
The Jain saints are sometimes designated as Buddha, Kevalin, Siddha,
Tathagata and Arhat (all Buddhist titles) but their special appellation
is Jina or conqueror which is, however, also used by Buddhists[262]. It
was clearly a common notion in India that great teachers appear at
regular intervals and that one might reasonably be expected in the sixth
century B.C. The Jains gave preference or prominence to the titles Jina
or Tirthankara: the Buddhists to Buddha or Tathagata.