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

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Most Europeans consider man as the centre and lord of the world or, if
they are very religious, as its vice-regent under God. He may kill or
otherwise maltreat animals for his pleasure or convenience: his task is
to subdue the forces of nature: nature is subservient to him and to his
destinies: without man nature is meaningless. Much the same view was
held by the ancient Greeks and in a less acute form by the Jews and
Romans. Swinburne's line

Glory to man in the highest, for man is the master of things

is overbold for professing Christians but it expresses both the modern
scientific sentiment and the ancient Hellenic sentiment.

But such a line of poetry would I think be impossible in India or in any
country to the East of it. There man is thought of as a part of nature
not its centre or master[57]. Above him are formidable hosts of deities
and spirits, and even European engineers cannot subdue the genii of the
flood and typhoon: below but still not separated from him are the
various tribes of birds and beasts. A good man does not kill them for
pleasure nor eat flesh, and even those whose aspirations to virtue are
modest treat animals as humble brethren rather than as lower creatures
over whom they have dominion by divine command.

This attitude is illustrated by Chinese and Japanese art. In
architecture, this art makes it a principle that palaces and temples
should not dominate a landscape but fit into it and adapt their lines to
its features. For the painter, flowers and animals form a sufficient
picture by themselves and are not felt to be inadequate because man is
absent. Portraits are frequent but a common form of European
composition, namely a group of figures subordinated to a principal one,
though not unknown, is comparatively rare.

How scanty are the records of great men in India! Great buildings
attract attention but who knows the names of the architects who planned
them or the kings who paid for them? We are not quite sure of the date
of Kalidasa, the Indian Shakespeare, and though the doctrines of
Sankara, Kabir, and Nanak still nourish, it is with difficulty that the
antiquary collects from the meagre legends clinging to their names a few
facts for their biographies. And Kings and Emperors, a class who in
Europe can count on being remembered if not esteemed after death, fare
even worse. The laborious research of Europeans has shown that Asoka and
Harsha were great monarchs. Their own countrymen merely say "once upon a
time there was a king" and recount some trivial story.

In fact, Hindus have a very weak historical sense. In this they are not
wholly wrong, for Europeans undoubtedly exaggerate the historical
treatment of thought and art[58]. In science, most students want to know
what is certain in theory and useful in practice, not what were the
discarded hypotheses and imperfect instruments of the past. In
literature, when the actors and audience are really interested, the date
of Shakespeare and even the authorship of the play cease to be
important[59]. In the same way Hindus want to know whether doctrines and
speculations are true, whether a man can make use of them in his own
religious experiences and aspirations. They care little for the date,
authorship, unity and textual accuracy of the Bhagavad-gita. They simply
ask, is it true, what can I get from it? The European critic, who
expects nothing of the sort from the work, racks his brains to know who
wrote it and when, who touched it up and why?

The Hindus are also indifferent to the past because they do not
recognize that the history of the world, the whole cosmic process, has
any meaning or value. In most departments of Indian thought, great or
small, the conception of [Greek: telos] or purpose is absent, and if the
European reader thinks this a grave lacuna, let him ask himself whether
satisfied love has any [Greek: telos]. For Hindus the world is endless
repetition not a progress towards an end. Creation has rarely the sense
which it bears for Europeans. An infinite number of times the universe
has collapsed in flaming or watery ruin, aeons of quiescence follow the
collapse and then the Deity (he has done it an infinite number of times)
emits again from himself worlds and souls of the same old kind. But
though, as I have said before, all varieties of theological opinion may
be found in India, he is usually represented as moved by some
reproductive impulse rather than as executing a plan. Sankara says
boldly that no motive can be attributed to God, because he being perfect
can desire no addition to his perfection, so that his creative activity
is mere exuberance, like the sport of young princes, who take exercise
though they are not obliged to do so.

Such views are distasteful to Europeans. Our vanity impels us to invent
explanations of the Universe which make our own existence important and
significant. Nor does European science altogether support the Indian
doctrine of periodicity. It has theories as to the probable origin of
the solar system and other similar systems, but it points to the
conclusion that the Universe as a whole is not appreciably affected by
the growth or decay of its parts, whereas Indian imagination thinks of
universal cataclysms and recurring periods of quiescence in which
nothing whatever remains except the undifferentiated divine spirit.

Western ethics generally aim at teaching a man how to act: Eastern
ethics at forming a character. A good character will no doubt act
rightly when circumstances require action, but he need not seek
occasions for action, he may even avoid them, and in India the
passionless sage is still in popular esteem superior to warriors,
statesmen and scientists.

15. _Eastern Polytheism_

Different as India and China are, they agree in this that in order not
to misapprehend their religious condition we must make our minds
familiar with a new set of relations. The relations of religion to
philosophy, to ethics, and to the state, as well as the relations of
different religions to one another, are not the same as in Europe. China
and India are pagan, a word which I deprecate if it is understood to
imply inferiority but which if used in a descriptive and respectful
sense is very useful. Christianity and Islam are organized religions.
They say (or rather their several sects say) that they each not only
possess the truth but that all other creeds and rites are wrong. But
paganism is not organized: it rarely presents anything like a church
united under one head: still more rarely does it condemn or interfere
with other religions unless attacked first. Buddhism stands between the
two classes. Like Christianity and Islam it professes to teach the only
true law, but unlike them it is exceedingly tolerant and many Buddhists
also worship Hindu or Chinese gods.

Popular religion in India and China is certainly polytheistic, yet if
one uses this word in contrast to the monotheism of Islam and of
Protestantism the antithesis is unjust, for the polytheist does not
believe in many creators and rulers of the world, in many Allahs or
Jehovahs, but he considers that there are many spiritual beings, with
different spheres and powers, to the most appropriate of whom he
addresses his petitions. Polytheism and image-worship lie under an
unmerited stigma in Europe. We generally assume that to believe in one
God is obviously better, intellectually and ethically, than to believe
in many. Yet Trinitarian religions escape being polytheistic only by
juggling with words, and if Hindus and Chinese are polytheists so are
the Roman and Oriental Churches, for there is no real distinction
between praying to the Madonna, Saints and Angels, and propitiating
minor deities. William James[60] has pointed out that polytheism is not
theoretically absurd and is practically the religion of many Europeans.
In some ways it is more intelligible and reasonable than monotheism. For
if there is only one personal God, I do not understand how anything that
can be called a person can be so expanded as to be capable of hearing
and answering the prayers of the whole world. Anything susceptible of
such extension must be more than a person. Is it not at least equally
reasonable to assume that there are many spirits, or many shapes taken
by the superpersonal world spirit, with which the soul can get into
touch?

The worship of images cannot be recommended without qualification, for
it seems to require artists capable of making a worthy representation of
the divine. And it must be confessed that many figures in Indian
temples, such as the statues of Kali, seem repulsive or grotesque,
though a Hindu might say that none of them are so strange in idea or so
horrible in appearance as the crucifix. But the claim of the iconoclast
from the times of the Old Testament onwards that he worships a spirit
whereas others worship wood and stone is true only of the lowest phases
of religion, if even there. Hindu theologians distinguish different
kinds of _avataras_ or ways in which God descends into the world: among
them are incarnations like Krishna, the presence of God in the human
heart and his presence in a symbol or image (_arca_). It may be
difficult to decide how far the symbol and the spirit are kept separate
either in the East or in Europe, but no one can attend a great
car-festival in southern India or the feast of Durga in Bengal without
feeling and in some measure sharing the ecstasy and enthusiasm of the
crowd. It is an enthusiasm such as may be evoked in critical times by a
king or a flag, and as the flag may do duty for the king and all that he
stands for, so may the image do duty for the deity.

16. _The Extravagance of Hinduism_

What I have just said applies to India rather than to China and so do
the observations which follow. India is the most religious country in
the world. The percentage of people who literally make religion their
chief business, who sacrifice to it money and life itself (for religious
suicide is not extinct), is far greater than elsewhere. Russia[61]
probably comes next but the other nations fall behind by a long
interval. Matter of fact respectable people--Chinese as well as
Europeans--call this attitude extravagance and it sometimes deserves the
name, for since there is no one creed or criterion in India, all sorts
of aboriginal or decadent superstitions command the respect due to the
name of religion.

This extravagance is both intellectual and moral. No story is too
extraordinary to be told of Hindu gods. They are the magicians of the
universe who sport with the forces of nature as easily as a conjuror in
a bazaar does tricks with a handful of balls. But though the average
Hindu would be shocked to hear the Puranas described as idle tales, yet
he does not make his creed depend on their accuracy, as many in Europe
make Christianity depend on miracles. The value of truth in religion is
rated higher in India than in Europe but it is not historical truth. The
Hindu approaches his sacred literature somewhat in the spirit in which
we approach Milton and Dante. The beauty and value of such poems is
clear. The question whether they are accurate reports of facts seems
irrelevant. Hindus believe in progressive revelation. Many Tantras and
Vishnuite works profess to be better suited to the present age than the
Vedas, and innumerable treatises in the vernacular are commonly accepted
as scripture.

Scriptures in India[62] are thought of as words not writings. It is the
sacred sound not a sacred book which is venerated. They are learnt by
oral transmission and it is rare to see a book used in religious
services. Diagrams accompanied by letters and a few words are credited
with magical powers, but still tantric spells are things to be recited
rather than written. This view of scripture makes the hearer uncritical.
The ordinary layman hears parts of a sacred book recited and probably
admires what he understands, but he has no means of judging of a book as
a whole, especially of its coherency and consistency.

The moral extravagance of Hinduism is more serious. It is kept in check
by the general conviction that asceticism, or at least temperance,
charity and self-effacement are the indispensable outward signs of
religion, but still among the great religions of the world there is none
which countenances so many hysterical, immoral and cruel rites. A
literary example will illustrate the position. It is taken from the
drama Madhava and Malati written about 730 A.D., but the incidents of
the plot might happen in any native state to-day, if European
supervision were removed. In it Madhava, a young Brahman, surprises a
priest of the goddess Chamunda who is about to immolate Malati. He kills
the priest and apparently the other characters consider his conduct
natural and not sacrilegious. But it is not suggested that either the
police or any ecclesiastical authority ought to prevent human
sacrifices, and the reason why Madhava was able to save his beloved from
death was that he had gone to the uncanny spot where such rites were
performed to make an offering of human flesh to demons.

In Buddhism religion and the moral law are identified, but not in
Hinduism. Brahmanical literature contains beautiful moral sayings,
especially about unselfishness and self-restraint, but the greatest
popular gods such as Vishnu and Siva are not identified with the moral
law. They are super-moral and the God of philosophy, who _is_ all
things, is also above good and evil. The aim of the philosophic saint is
not so much to choose the good and eschew evil as to draw nearer to God
by rising above both.

Indian literature as a whole has a strong ethical and didactic flavour,
yet the great philosophic and religious systems concern themselves
little with ethics. They discuss the nature of the external world and
other metaphysical questions which seem to us hardly religious: they
clearly feel a peculiar interest in defining the relation of the soul to
God, but they rarely ask why should I be good or what is the sanction of
morality. They are concerned less with sin than with ignorance: virtue
is indispensable, but without knowledge it is useless.

17. _The Hindu and Buddhist Scriptures_

The history and criticism of Hindu and Buddhist scriptures naturally
occupy some space in this work, but two general remarks may be made
here. First, the oldest scriptures are almost without exception
compilations, that is collections of utterances handed down by tradition
and arranged by later generations in some form which gives them apparent
unity. Thus the Rig Veda is obviously an anthology of hymns and some
three thousand years later the Granth or sacred book of the Sikhs was
compiled on the same principle. It consists of poems by Nanak, Kabir and
many other writers but is treated with extraordinary respect as a
continuous and consistent revelation. The Brahmanas and Upanishads are
not such obvious compilations yet on careful inspection the older[63]
ones will be found to be nothing else. Thus the Brihad Aranyaka
Upanishad, though possessing considerable coherency, is not only a
collection of such philosophic views as commended themselves to the
doctors of the Taittiriya school, but is formed by the union of three
such collections. Each of the first two collections ends with a list of
the teachers who handed it down and the third is openly called a
supplement. One long passage, the dialogue between Yajnavalkya and his
wife, is incorporated in both the first and the second collection. Thus
our text represents the period when the Taittiriyas brought their
philosophic thoughts together in a complete form, but that period was
preceded by another in which slightly different schools each had their
own collection and for some time before this the various maxims and
dialogues must have been current separately. Since the conversation
between Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi occurs in almost the same form in two
collections, it probably once existed as an independent piece.

In Buddhist literature the composite and tertiary character of the Sutta
Pitaka is equally plain. The various Nikayas are confessedly collections
of discourses. The two older ones seem dominated by the desire to bring
before the reader the image of the Buddha preaching: the Samyutta and
Anguttara emphasize the doctrine rather than the teacher and arrange
much the same matter under new headings. But it is clear that in
whatever form the various sermons, dialogues and dissertations appear,
that form is not primary but presupposes compilers dealing with an oral
tradition already stereotyped in language. For long passages such as the
tract on morality and the description of progress in the religious life
occur in several discourses and the amount of matter common to different
Suttas and Nikayas is surprising. Thus nearly the whole of the long
Sutta describing the Buddha's last days and death[64], which at first
sight seems to be a connected narrative somewhat different from other
Suttas, is found scattered in other parts of the Canon.

Thus our oldest texts whether Brahmanic or Buddhist are editions and
codifications, perhaps amplifications, of a considerably older oral
teaching. They cannot be treated as personal documents similar to the
Koran or the Epistles of Paul.

The works of middle antiquity such as the Epics, Puranas, and Mahayanist
sutras were also not produced by one author. Many of them exist in more
than one recension and they usually consist of a nucleus enveloped and
sometimes itself affected by additions which may exceed the original
matter in bulk. The Mahabharata and Prajnaparamita are not books in the
European sense: we cannot give a date or a table of contents for the
first edition[65]: they each represent a body of literature whose
composition extended over a long period. As time goes on, history
naturally grows clearer and literary personalities become more distinct,
yet the later Puranas are not attributed to human authors and were
susceptible of interpolation even in recent times. Thus the story of
Genesis has been incorporated in the Bhavishya Purana, apparently after
Protestant missionaries had begun to preach in India.

The other point to which I would draw attention is the importance of
relatively modern works, which supersede the older scriptures,
especially in Hinduism. This phenomenon is common in many countries, for
only a few books such as the Bhagavad-gita, the Gospels and the sayings
of Confucius have a portion of the eternal and universal sufficient to
outlast the wear and tear of a thousand years. Vedic literature is far
from being discredited in India, though some Tantras say openly that it
is useless. It still has a place in ritual and is appealed to by
reforming sects. But to see Hinduism in proper perspective we must
remember that from the time of the Buddha till now, the composition of
religious literature in India has been almost uninterrupted and that
almost every century has produced works accepted by some sect as
infallible scripture. For most Vishnuites the Bhagavad-gita is the
beginning of sacred literature and the Narayaniya[66] is also held in
high esteem: the philosophy of each sect is usually determined by a
commentary on the Brahma Sutras: the Bhagavata Purana (perhaps in a
vernacular paraphrase) and the Ramayana of Tulsi Das are probably the
favourite reading of the laity and for devotional purposes may be
supplemented by a collection of hymns such as the Namghosha, copies of
which actually receive homage in Assam. The average man--even the average
priest--regards all these as sacred works without troubling himself with
distinctions as to _sruti_ and _smriti_, and the Vedas and Upanishads
are hardly within his horizon.

In respect of sacred literature Buddhism is more conservative than
Hinduism, or to put it another way, has been less productive in the last
fifteen hundred years. The Hinayanists are like those Protestant sects
which still profess not to go beyond the Bible. The monks read the
Abhidhamma and the laity the Suttas, though perhaps both are disposed to
use extracts and compendiums rather than the full ancient texts. Among
the Mahayanists the ancient Vinaya and Nikayas exist only as literary
curiosities. The former is superseded by modern manuals, the latter by
Mahayanist Sutras such as the Lotus and the Happy Land, which are
however of respectable antiquity. As in India, each sect selects rather
arbitrarily a few books for its own use, without condemning others but
also without according to them the formal recognition received by the
Old and New Testaments among Christians.

No Asiatic country possesses so large a portion of the critical spirit
as China. The educated Chinese, however much they may venerate their
classics, think of them as we think of the masterpieces of Greek
literature, aS texts which may contain wrong readings, interpolations
and lacunae, which owe whatever authority they possess to the labours of
the scholars who collected, arranged and corrected them. This attitude
is to some extent the result of the attempt made by the First Emperor
about 200 B.C. to destroy the classical literature and to its subsequent
laborious restoration. At a time when the Indians regarded the Veda as a
verbal revelation, certain and divine in every syllable, the Chinese
were painfully recovering and re-piecing their ancient chronicles and
poems from imperfect manuscripts and fallible memories. The process
obliged them to enquire at every step whether the texts which they
examined were genuine and complete: to admit that they might be
defective or paraphrases of a difficult original. Hence the Chinese have
sound principles of criticism unknown to the Hindus and in discussing
the date of an ancient work or the probability of an alleged historical
event they generally use arguments which a European scholar can accept.

Chinese literature has a strong ethical and political flavour which
tempered the extravagance of imported Indian ideas. Most Chinese systems
assert more or less plainly that right conduct is conduct in harmony
with the laws of the State and the Universe.

18. _Morality and Will_

It is dangerous to make sweeping statements about the huge mass of
Indian literature, but I think that most Buddhist and Brahmanic systems
assume that morality is merely a means of obtaining happiness[67] and is
not obedience to a categorical imperative or to the will of God.
Morality is by inference raised to the status of a cosmic law, because
evil deeds will infallibly bring evil consequences to the doer in this
life or in another. But it is not commonly spoken of as such a law. The
usual point of view is that man desires happiness and for this morality
is a necessary though insufficient preparation. But there may be higher
states which cannot be expressed in terms of happiness.

The will receives more attention in European philosophy than in Indian,
whether Buddhist or Brahmanic, which both regard it not as a separate
kind of activity but as a form of thought. As such it is not neglected
in Buddhist psychology: will, desire and struggle are recognized as good
provided their object is good, a point overlooked by those who accuse
Buddhism of preaching inaction[68].

Schopenhauer's doctrine that will is the essential fact in the universe
and in life may appear to have analogies to Indian thought: it would be
easy for instance to quote passages from the Pitakas showing that
_tanha_, thirst, craving or desire, is the force which makes and remakes
the world. But such statements must be taken as generalizations
respecting the world as it is rather than as implying theories of its
origin, for though _tanha_ is a link in the chain of causation, it is
not regarded as an ultimate principle more than any other link but is
made to depend on feeling. The Maya of the Vedanta is not so much the
affirmation of the will to live as the illusion that we have a real
existence apart from Brahman, and the same may be said of Ahamkara in
the Sankhya philosophy. It is the principle of egoism and individuality,
but its essence is not so much self-assertion as the _mistaken_ idea
that this is _mine_, that _I_ am happy or unhappy.

There is a question much debated in European philosophy but little
argued in India, namely the freedom of the will. The active European
feeling the obligation and the difficulties of morality is perplexed by
the doubt whether he really has the power to act as he wishes. This
problem has not much troubled the Hindus and rightly, as I think. For if
the human will is not free, what does freedom mean? What example of
freedom can be quoted with which to contrast the supposed non-freedom of
the will? If in fact it is from the will that our notion of freedom is
derived, is it not unreasonable to say that the will is not free?
Absolute freedom in the sense of something regulated by no laws is
unthinkable. When a thing is conditioned by external causes it is
dependent. When it is conditioned by internal causes which are part of
its own nature, it is free. No other freedom is known. An Indian would
say that a man's nature is limited by Karma. Some minds are incapable of
the higher forms of virtue and wisdom, just as some bodies are incapable
of athletic feats. But within the limits of his own nature a human being
is free. Indian theology is not much hampered by the mad doctrine that
God has predestined some souls to damnation, nor by the idea of Fate,
except in so far as Karma is Fate. It is Fate in the sense that Karma
inherited from a previous birth is a store of rewards and punishments
which must be enjoyed or endured, but it differs from Fate because we
are all the time making our own karma and determining the character of
our next birth.