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

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Foreign influences stimulated mythology and imagery. In the reliefs of
Asoka's time, the image of the Buddha never appears, and, as in the
earliest Christian art, the intention of the sculptors is to illustrate
an edifying narrative rather than to provide an object of worship. But
in the Gandharan sculptures, which are a branch of Graeco-Roman art, he
is habitually represented by a figure modelled on the conventional type
of Apollo. The gods of India were not derived from Greece but they were
stereotyped under the influence of western art to this extent that
familiarity with such figures as Apollo and Pallas encouraged the Hindus
to represent their gods and heroes in human or quasi-human shapes. The
influence of Greece on Indian religion was not profound: it did not
affect the architecture or ritual of temples and still less thought or
doctrine. But when Indian religion and especially Buddhism passed into
the hands of men accustomed to Greek statuary, the inclination to
venerate definite personalities having definite shapes was
strengthened[15].

Persian influence was stronger than Greek. To it are probably due the
many radiant deities who shed their beneficent glory over the Mahayanist
pantheon, as well as the doctrine that Bodhisattvas are emanations of
Buddhas. The discoveries of Stein, Pelliot and others have shown that
this influence extended across Central Asia to China and one of the most
important turns in the fortunes of Buddhism was its association with a
Central Asian tribe analogous to the Turks and called Kushans or
Yueeh-chih, whose territories lay without as well as within the frontiers
of modern India and who borrowed much of their culture from Persia and
some from the Greeks. Their great king Kanishka is a figure in Buddhist
annals second only to Asoka. Unfortunately his date is still a matter of
discussion. The majority of scholars place his accession about 78 A.D.
but some put it rather later[16]. The evidence of numismatics and of art
indicates that he came towards the end of his dynasty rather than at the
beginning and the tradition which makes Asvaghosha his contemporary is
compatible with the later date.

Some writers describe Kanishka as the special patron of Mahayanism. But
the description is of doubtful accuracy. The style of religious art
known as Gandharan flourished in his reign and he convened a council
which fixed the canon of the Sarvastivadins. This school was reckoned as
Hinayanist and though Asvaghosha enjoys general fame in the Far East as
a Mahayanist doctor, yet his undoubted writings are not Mahayanist in
the strict sense of the word[17]. But a more ornate and mythological
form of religion was becoming prevalent and perhaps Kanishka's Council
arranged some compromise between the old and the new.

After Asvaghosha comes Nagarjuna who may have flourished any time
between 125 and 200 A.D. A legend which makes him live for 300 years is
not without significance, for he represents a movement and a school as
much as a personality and if he taught in the second century A.D. he
cannot have been the _founder_ of Mahayanism. Yet he seems to be the
first great name definitely connected with it and the ascription to him
of numerous later treatises, though unwarrantable, shows that his
authority was sufficient to stamp a work or a doctrine as orthodox
Mahayanism. His biographies connect him with the system of idealist or
nihilistic metaphysics expounded in the literature (for it is more than
a single work) called Prajnaparamita, with magical practices (by which
the power of summoning Bodhisattvas or deities is specially meant) and
with the worship of Amitabha. His teacher Saraha, a foreigner, is said
to have been the first who taught this worship in India. In this there
may be a kernel of truth but otherwise the extant accounts of Nagarjuna
are too legendary to permit of historical deductions. He was perhaps the
first eminent exponent of Mahayanist metaphysics, but the train of
thought was not new: it was the result of applying to the external world
the same destructive logic which Gotama applied to the soul and the
result had considerable analogies to Sankara's version of the Vedanta.
Whether in the second century A.D. the leaders of Buddhism already
identified themselves with the sorcery which demoralized late Indian
Mahayanism may be doubted, but tradition certainly ascribes to Nagarjuna
this corrupting mixture of metaphysics and magic.

The third century offers a strange blank in Indian history. Little can
be said except that the power of the Kushans decayed and that northern
India was probably invaded by Persians and Central Asian tribes. The
same trouble did not affect southern India and it may be that religion
and speculation flourished there and spread northwards, as certainly
happened in later times. Many of the greatest Hindu teachers were
Dravidians and at the present day it is in the Dravidian regions that
the temples are most splendid, the Brahmans strictest and most
respected. It may be that this Dravidian influence affected even
Buddhism in the third century A.D., for Aryadeva the successor of
Nagarjuna was a southerner and the legends told of him recall certain
Dravidian myths. Bodhidharma too came from the South and imported into
China a form of Buddhism which has left no record in India.

7. _Revival of Hinduism_

In 320 a native Indian dynasty, the Guptas, came to the throne and
inaugurated a revival of Hinduism, to which religion we must now turn.
To speak of the revival of Hinduism does not mean that in the previous
period it had been dead or torpid. Indeed we know that there was a Hindu
reaction against the Buddhism of Asoka about 150 B.C. But, on the whole,
from the time of Asoka onwards Buddhism had been the principal religion
of India, and before the Gupta era there are hardly any records of
donations made to Brahmans. Yet during these centuries they were not
despised or oppressed. They produced much literature[18]: their schools
of philosophy and ritual did not decay and they gradually made good
their claim to be the priests of India's gods, whoever those gods might
be. The difference between the old religion and the new lies in this.
The Brahmanas and Upanishads describe practices and doctrines of
considerable variety but still all the property of a privileged class in
a special region. They do not represent popular religion nor the
religion of India as a whole. But in the Gupta period Hinduism began to
do this. It is not a system like Islam or even Buddhism but a parliament
of religions, of which every Indian creed can become a member on
condition of observing some simple rules of the house, such as respect
for Brahmans and theoretical acceptance of the Veda. Nothing is
abolished: the ancient rites and texts preserve their mysterious power
and kings perform the horse-sacrifice. But side by side with this,
deities unknown to the Veda rise to the first rank and it is frankly
admitted that new revelations more suited to the age have been given to
mankind.

Art too enters on a new phase. In the early Indian sculptures deities
are mostly portrayed in human form, but in about the first century of
our era there is seen a tendency to depict them with many heads and
limbs and this tendency grows stronger until in mediaeval times it is
predominant. It has its origin in symbolism. The deity is thought of as
carrying many insignia, as performing more actions than two hands can
indicate; the worshipper is taught to think of him as appearing in this
shape and the artist does not hesitate to represent it in paint and
stone.

As we have seen, the change which came over Buddhism was partly due to
foreign influences and no doubt they affected most Indian creeds. But
the prodigious amplification of Hinduism was mainly due to the
absorption of beliefs prevalent in Indian districts other than the homes
of the ancient Brahmans. Thus south Indian religion is characterized
when we first know it by its emotional tone and it resulted in the
mediaeval Sivaism of the Tamil country. In another region, probably in
the west, grew up the monotheism of the Bhagavatas, which was the parent
of Vishnuism.

Hinduism may be said to fall into four principal divisions which are
really different religions: the Smartas or traditionalists, the
Sivaites, the Vishnuites and the Saktas. The first, who are still
numerous, represent the pre-buddhist Brahmans. They follow, so far as
modern circumstances permit, the ancient ritual and are apparent
polytheists while accepting pantheism as the higher truth. Vishnuites
and Sivaites however are monotheists in the sense that their minor
deities are not essentially different from the saints of Roman and
Eastern Christianity but their monotheism has a pantheistic tinge.
Neither sect denies the existence of the rival god, but each makes its
own deity God, not only in the theistic but in the pantheistic sense and
regards the other deity as merely an influential angel. From time to
time the impropriety of thus specially deifying one aspect of the
universal spirit made itself felt and then Vishnu and Siva were adored
in a composite dual form or, with the addition of Brahma, as a trinity.
But this triad had not great importance and it is a mistake to compare
it with the Christian trinity. Strong as was the tendency to combine and
amalgamate deities, it was mastered in these religions by the desire to
have one definite God, personal inasmuch as he can receive and return
love, although the Indian feeling that God must be all and in all
continually causes the conceptions called Vishnu and Siva to transcend
the limits of personality. This feeling is specially clear in the growth
of Rama and Krishna worship. Both of these deities were originally
ancient heroes, and stories of love and battle cling to them in their
later phases. Yet for their respective devotees each becomes God in
every sense, God as lover of the soul, God as ruler of the universe and
the God of pantheism who is all that exists and can exist.

For some time before and after the beginning of our era, north-western
India witnessed a great fusion of ideas and Indian, Persian and Greek
religion must have been in contact at the university town of Taxila and
many other places. Kashmir too, if somewhat too secluded to be a
meeting-place of nations, was a considerable intellectual centre. We
have not yet sufficient documents to enable us to trace the history and
especially the chronology of thought in these regions but we can say
that certain forms of Vishnuism, Sivaism and Buddhism were all evolved
there and often show features in common. Thus in all we find the idea
that the divine nature is manifested in four forms or five, if we count
the Absolute Godhead as one of them[19].

I shall consider at length below this worship of Vishnu and Siva and
here will merely point out that it differs from the polytheism of the
Smartas. In their higher phases all Hindu religions agree in teaching
some form of pantheism, some laying more and some less stress on the
personal aspect which the deity can assume. But whereas the pantheism of
the Smartas grew out of the feeling that the many gods of tradition must
all be one, the pantheism of the Vishnuites was not evolved out of
pre-buddhist Brahmanism and is due to the conviction that the one God
must be everything. It is Indian but it grew up in some region outside
Brahmanic influence and was accepted by the Brahmans as a permissible
creed, but many legends in the Epics and Puranas indicate that there was
hostility between the old-fashioned Brahmans and the worshippers of
Rama, Krishna and Siva before the alliance was made.

Saktism[20] also was not evolved from ancient Brahmanism but is
different in tone from Vishnuism and Sivaism. Whereas they start from a
movement of thought and spiritual feeling, Saktism has for its basis
certain ancient popular worships. With these it has combined much
philosophy and has attempted to bring its teaching into conformity with
Brahmanism, but yet remains somewhat apart. It worships a goddess of
many names and forms, who is adored with sexual rites and the sacrifice
of animals, or, when the law permits, of men. It asserts even more
plainly than Vishnuism that the teaching of the Vedas is too difficult
for these latter days and even useless, and it offers to its followers
new scriptures called Tantras and new ceremonies as all-sufficient. It
is true that many Hindus object to this sect, which may be compared with
the Mormons in America or the Skoptsy in Russia, and it is numerous only
in certain parts of India (especially Bengal and Assam) but since a
section of Brahmans patronize it, it must be reckoned as a phase of
Hinduism and even at the present day it is an important phase.

There are many cults prevalent in India, though not recognized as sects,
in which the worship of some aboriginal deity is accepted in all its
crudeness without much admixture of philosophy, the only change being
that the deity is described as a form, incarnation or servant of some
well-known god and that Brahmans are connected with this worship. This
habit of absorbing aboriginal superstitions materially lowers the
average level of creed and ritual. An educated Brahman would laugh at
the idea that village superstitions can be taken seriously as religion
but he does not condemn them and, as superstitions, he does not
disbelieve in them. It is chiefly owing to this habit that Hinduism has
spread all over India and its treatment of men and gods is curiously
parallel. Princes like the Manipuris of Assam came under Hindu influence
and were finally recognized as Kshattiyas with an imaginary pedigree,
and on the same principle their deities are recognized as forms of Siva
or Durga. And Siva and Durga themselves were built up in past ages out
of aboriginal beliefs, though the cement holding their figures together
is Indian thought and philosophy, which are able to see in grotesque
rustic godlings an expression of cosmic forces.

Though this is the principal method by which Hinduism has been
propagated, direct missionary effort has not been wanting. For instance
a large part of Assam was converted by the preaching of Vishnuite
teachers in the sixteenth century and the process still continues[21].
But on the whole the missionary spirit characterizes Buddhism rather
than Hinduism. Buddhist missionaries preached their faith, without any
political motive, wherever they could penetrate. But in such countries
as Camboja, Hinduism was primarily the religion of the foreign settlers
and when the political power of the Brahmans began to wane, the people
embraced Buddhism. Outside India it was perhaps only in Java and the
neighbouring islands that Hinduism (with an admixture of Buddhism)
became the religion of the natives.

Many features of Hinduism, its steady though slow conquest of India, its
extraordinary vitality and tenacity in resisting the attacks of
Mohammedanism, and its small power of expansion beyond the seas are
explained by the fact that it is a mode of life as much as a faith. To
be a Hindu it is not sufficient to hold the doctrine of the Upanishads
or any other scriptures: it is necessary to be a member of a Hindu caste
and observe its regulations. It is not quite correct to say that one
must be born a Hindu, since Hinduism has grown by gradually hinduizing
the wilder tribes of India and the process still continues. But a
convert cannot enter the fold by any simple ceremony like baptism. The
community to which he belongs must adopt Hindu usages and then it will
be recognized as a caste, at first of very low standing but in a few
generations it may rise in the general esteem. A Hindu is bound to his
religion by almost the same ties that bind him to his family. Hence the
strength of Hinduism in India. But such ties are hard to knit and
Hinduism has no chance of spreading abroad unless there is a large
colony of Hindus surrounded by an appreciative and imitative
population[22].

In the contest between Hinduism and Buddhism the former owed the victory
which it obtained in India, though not in other lands, to this
assimilative social influence. The struggle continued from the fourth to
the ninth century, after which Buddhism was clearly defeated and
survived only in special localities. Its final disappearance was due to
the destruction of its remaining monasteries by Moslem invaders but this
blow was fatal only because Buddhism was concentrated in its monkhood.
Innumerable Hindu temples were destroyed, yet Hinduism was at no time in
danger of extinction.

The Hindu reaction against Buddhism became apparent under the Gupta
dynasty but Mahayanism in its use of Sanskrit and its worship of
Bodhisattvas shows the beginnings of the same movement. The danger for
Buddhism was not persecution but tolerance and obliteration of
differences. The Guptas were not bigots. It was probably in their time
that the oldest Puranas, the laws of Manu and the Mahabharata received
their final form. These are on the whole text-books of Smarta Hinduism
and two Gupta monarchs celebrated the horse sacrifice. But the
Mahabharata contains several episodes which justify the exclusive
worship of either Vishnu or Siva, and the architecture of the Guptas
suggests that they were Vishnuites. They also bestowed favours on
Buddhism which was not yet decadent, for Vasubandhu and Asanga, who
probably lived in the fourth century, were constructive thinkers. It is
true that their additions were of the dangerous kind which render an
edifice top-heavy but their works show vitality and had a wide
influence[23]. The very name of Asanga's philosophy--Yogacarya--indicates
its affinity to Brahmanic thought, as do his doctrines of Alayavijnana
and Bodhi, which permit him to express in Buddhist language the idea
that the soul may be illumined by the deity. In some cases Hinduism, in
others Buddhism, may have played the receptive part but the general
result--namely the diminution of differences between the two--was always
the same.

The Hun invasions were unfavourable to religious and intellectual
activity in the north and, just as in the time of Moslim inroads, their
ravages had more serious consequences for Buddhism than for Hinduism.
The great Emperor Harsha ({~DAGGER~}647), of whom we know something from Bana and
Hsuean Chuang, became at the end of his life a zealous but eclectic
Buddhist. Yet it is plain from Hsiian Chuang's account that at this time
Buddhism was decadent in most districts both of the north and south.

This decadence was hastened by an unfortunate alliance with those forms
of magic and erotic mysticism which are called Saktism[24]. It is
difficult to estimate the extent of the corruption, for the singularity
of the evil, a combination of the austere and ethical teaching of Gotama
with the most fantastic form of Hinduism, arrests attention and perhaps
European scholars have written more about it than it deserves. It did
not touch the Hinayanist churches nor appreciably infect the Buddhism of
the Far East, nor even (it would seem) Indian Buddhism outside Bengal
and Orissa. Unfortunately Magadha, which was both the home and last
asylum of the faith, was also very near the regions where Saktism most
flourished. It is, as I have often noticed in these pages, a peculiarity
of all Indian sects that in matters of belief they are not exclusive nor
hostile to novelties. When a new idea wins converts it is the instinct
of the older sects to declare that it is compatible with their teaching
or that they have something similar and just as good. It was in this
fashion that the Buddhists of Magadha accepted Saktist and tantric
ideas. If Hinduism could summon gods and goddesses by magical methods,
they could summon Bodhisattvas, male and female, in the same way, and
these spirits were as good as the gods. In justice it must be said that
despite distortions and monstrous accretions the real teaching of Gotama
did not entirely disappear even in Magadha and Tibet.

8. _Later Forms of Hinduism_

In the eighth and ninth centuries this degenerate Buddhism was exposed
to the attacks of the great Hindu champions Kumarila and Sankara, though
it probably endured little persecution in our sense of the word. Both of
them were Smartas or traditionalists and laboured in the cause not of
Vishnuism or Sivaism but of the ancient Brahmanic religion, amplified by
many changes which the ages had brought but holding up as the religious
ideal a manhood occupied with ritual observances, followed by an old age
devoted to philosophy. Sankara was the greater of the two and would have
a higher place among the famous names of the world had not his respect
for tradition prevented him from asserting the originality which he
undoubtedly possessed. Yet many remarkable features of his life work,
both practical and intellectual, are due to imitation of the Buddhists
and illustrate the dictum that Buddhism did not disappear from India[25]
until Hinduism had absorbed from it all the good that it had to offer.
Sankara took Buddhist institutions as his model in rearranging the
ascetic orders of Hinduism, and his philosophy, a rigorously consistent
pantheism which ascribed all apparent multiplicity and difference to
illusion, is indebted to Mahayanist speculation. It is remarkable that
his opponents stigmatized him as a Buddhist in disguise and his system,
though it is one of the most influential lines of thought among educated
Hindus, is anathematized by some theistic sects[26].

Sankara was a native of southern India. It is not easy to combine in one
picture the progress of thought in the north and south, and for the
earlier centuries our information as to the Dravidian countries is
meagre. Yet they cannot be omitted, for their influence on the whole of
India was great. Greeks, Kushans, Huns, and Mohammedans penetrated into
the north but, until after the fall of Vijayanagar in 1565, no invader
professing a foreign religion entered the country of the Tamils. Left in
peace they elaborated their own version of current theological problems
and the result spread over India. Buddhism and Jainism also flourished
in the south. The former was introduced under Asoka but apparently
ceased to be the dominant religion (if it ever was so) in the early
centuries of our era. Still even in the eleventh century monasteries
were built in Mysore. Jainism had a distinguished but chequered career
in the south. It was powerful in the seventh century but subsequently
endured considerable persecution. It still exists and possesses
remarkable monuments at Sravana Belgola and elsewhere.

But the characteristic form of Dravidian religion is an emotional
theism, running in the parallel channels of Vishnuism and Sivaism and
accompanied by humbler but vigorous popular superstitions, which reveal
the origin of its special temperament. For the frenzied ecstasies of
devil dancers (to use a current though inaccurate phrase) are a
primitive expression of the same sentiment which sees in the whole world
the exulting energy and rhythmic force of Siva. And though the most
rigid Brahmanism still flourishes in the Madras Presidency there is
audible in the Dravidian hymns a distinct note of anti-sacerdotalism and
of belief that every man by his own efforts can come into immediate
contact with the Great Being whom he worships.

The Vishnuism and Sivaism of the south go back to the early centuries of
our era, but the chronology is difficult. In both there is a line of
poet-saints followed by philosophers and teachers and in both a
considerable collection of Tamil hymns esteemed as equivalent to the
Veda. Perhaps Sivaism was dominant first and Vishnuism somewhat later
but at no epoch did either extinguish the other. It was the object of
Sankara to bring these valuable but dangerous forces, as well as much
Buddhist doctrine and practice, into harmony with Brahmanism.

Islam first entered India in 712 but it was some time before it passed
beyond the frontier provinces and for many centuries it was too hostile
and aggressive to invite imitation, but the spectacle of a strong
community pledged to the worship of a single personal God produced an
effect. In the period extending from the eighth to the twelfth
centuries, in which Buddhism practically disappeared and Islam came to
the front as a formidable though not irresistible antagonist, the
dominant form of Hinduism was that which finds expression in the older
Puranas, in the temples of Orissa and Khajarao and the Kailasa at
Ellora. It is the worship of one god, either Siva or Vishnu, but a
monotheism adorned with a luxuriant mythology and delighting in the
manifold shapes which the one deity assumes. It freely used the
terminology of the Sankhya but the first place in philosophy belonged to
the severe pantheism of Sankara which, in contrast to this riotous
exuberance of legend and sculpture, sees the highest truth in one Being
to whom no epithets can be applied.