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

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

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

Later Buddhism--the so-called Mahayana--may be justly treated as one of
the many varieties of Indian religion, not more differentiated from
others than is for instance the creed of the Sikhs. The speculative side
of early Buddhism (which was however mainly a practical movement) may be
better described as an Indian critique of current Indian views. The
psychology of the Pitakas has certainly enough life to provoke
discussion still, for it receives both appreciative treatment and
uncompromising condemnation at the hands of European scholars. To set it
aside as not worth the labour spent on elucidating it, seems to me an
error of judgment. As a criticism of the doctrine developed in the
Upanishads, it is acute and interesting, even if we hold the Upanishads
to be in the right, and no serious attempt to analyze the human mind can
be without value, for though the facts are before every human being such
attempts are rare. It is singular that so many religions should
prescribe and prophecy for the soul without being able to describe its
nature. Hesitation and diffidence in defining the Deity seem proper and
natural but it is truly surprising that people are not agreed as to the
essential facts about their own consciousness, their selves, souls,
minds and spirits: whether these are the same or different: whether they
are entities or aggregations. The Buddha's answers to these questions
cannot be dismissed as ancient or outlandish, for they are practically
the conclusions arrived at by a distinguished modern psychologist,
William James, who says in his _Psychology_[95], "The states of
consciousness are all that psychology requires to do her work with.
Metaphysics or theology may prove the soul to exist, but for psychology
the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous"
and again "In this book the provisional solution which we have reached
must be the final one: The thoughts themselves are the thinkers."

Equally in sympathy with Buddhist ideas is the philosophy of M. Bergson,
which holds that movement, change, becoming is everything and that there
is nothing else: no things that move and change and become[96]. Huxley
too, speaking of idealism, said "what Berkeley does not seem to have so
clearly perceived is that the non-existence of a substance of mind is
equally arguable.... It is a remarkable indication of the subtlety of
Indian speculation that Gautama should have seen deeper than the
greatest of modern idealists[97]."

Even Mr Bradley says "the soul is a particular group of psychical events
in so far as those events are taken merely as happening in time[98]."
There is a smack of the Pitakas about this, although Mr Bradley's
philosophy as a whole shows little sympathy for Buddhism but a wondrous
resemblance both in thought and language to the Vedanta. This is the
more remarkable because there is no trace in his works of Sanskrit
learning or even of Indian influence at second hand. A peculiarly
original and independent mind seems to have worked its way to many of
the doctrines of the Advaita, without entirely adopting its general
conclusions, for I doubt if Sankara would have said "the positive
relation of every appearance as an adjective to reality and the presence
of reality among its appearances in different degrees and with different
values--this double truth we have found to be the centre of philosophy."
But still this is the gist of many Vedantic utterances both early[99]
and late. Gaudapada states that the world of appearance is due to
_svabhava_ or the essential nature of Brahman and I imagine that the
thought here is the same as when Mr Bradley says that the Absolute is
positively present in all appearances.

Among many coincidences both in thought and expression, I note the
following. Mr Bradley[100] says "The Perfect ... means the identity of
idea and existence, accompanied by pleasure" which is almost the verbal
equivalent of _saccidananda_. "The universe is one reality which appears
in finite centres." "How there can be such a thing as appearance we do
not understand." In the same way Vedantists and Mahayanists can offer no
explanation of Maya or whatever is the power which makes the universe of
phenomena. Again he holds that neither our bodies nor our souls (as we
commonly understand the word) are truly real[101] and he denies the
reality of progress "For nothing perfect, nothing genuinely real can
move." And his discussion of the difficulty of reconciling the ideas of
God and the Absolute and specially the phrase "short of the Absolute,
God cannot rest and having reached that goal he is lost and religion
with him" is an epitome of the oscillations of philosophic Hinduism
which feels the difficulty far more keenly than European religion,
because ideas analogous to the Absolute are a more vital part of
religion (as distinguished from metaphysics) in India than in
Europe[102].

Nor can Indian ideas as to Maya and the unreality of matter be dismissed
as curious dreams of mystical brains, for the most recent phases of
Physics--a science which changes its fundamental ideas as often as
philosophy--tend to regard matter as electrical charges in motion. This
theory is a phrase rather than an explanation, but it has a real
affinity to Indian phrases which say that Brahman or Sakti (which are
forces) produce the illusion of the world.

I am not venturing here on any general comparison of European and Indian
thought. My object is merely to point out that the latter contains many
ideas to which British philosophers find themselves led and from which,
when they have discovered them in their own way, they do not shrink. It
can hardly then be without interest to see how these ideas have been
elaborated, often more boldly and thoroughly, in Asia.

BOOK II

EARLY INDIAN RELIGION

A GENERAL VIEW

BOOK II

In this book I shall briefly sketch the condition of religion in India
prior to the rise of Buddhism and in so doing shall be naturally led to
indicate several of the fundamental ideas of Hinduism. For few old ideas
have entirely perished: new deities, new sects and new rites have arisen
but the main theories of the older Upanishads still command respect and
modern reformers try to justify their teaching from the ancient texts.

But I do not propose to discuss in detail the religion of the Vedic
hymns for, so far as it can be distinguished from later phases, it looks
backward rather than forward. It is important to students of comparative
mythology, of the origins of religion, of the Aryan race. But it
represents rather what the Aryans brought into India than what was
invented in India, and it is this latter which assumes a prominent place
in the intellectual history of the world as Hinduism and Buddhism. The
ancient nature gods of the wind and the dawn have little place in the
mental horizon of either the Buddha or Bhagavad-gita and even when the
old names remain, the beings who bear them generally have new
attributes. Still, Vedic texts are used in modern worship and in many
respects there is a real continuity of thought.

In the first chapter I enquire whether there is any element common to
the religions of India and to the countries of Eastern Asia and find
that the worship of nature spirits and the veneration of ancestors
prevail throughout the whole of this vast region and have not been
suppressed by Buddhism or Brahmanism. Then coming to the purely Indian
sphere, I have thought it might not be amiss to give an epitome of such
parts of Indian history as are of importance for religion. Next I
endeavour to explain how the social institutions of India and the unique
position acquired by the Brahman aristocracy have determined the
character of Hindu religion--protean and yet unmistakeably Indian in all
its phases--and I also investigate the influence of the belief in
rebirth, which from the time of the Upanishads onwards dominates Indian
thought. In the fourth and fifth chapters I trace the survival of some
ancient ideas and show how many attributes of the Vedic gods can be
found in modern deities who are at first sight widely different and how
theories of salvation by sacrifice or asceticism or knowledge have been
similarly persistent. In the sixth chapter I attempt to give a picture
of religious life, both Brahmanic and non-Brahmanic, as it existed in
India about the time when the Buddha was born. Of the non-Brahmanic
sects which then flourished most have disappeared, but one, namely the
Jains, has survived and left a considerable record in literature and
art. I have therefore devoted a chapter to it here.

My object in this book is to discuss the characteristics of Indian
religion which are not only fundamental but ancient. Hence this is not
the place to dwell on Bhakti or relatively modern theistic sects,
however great their importance in later Hinduism may be.

CHAPTER I

RELIGIONS OP INDIA AND EASTERN ASIA

The countries with which this work deals are roughly speaking India with
Ceylon; Indo-China with parts of the Malay Archipelago; Japan and China
with the neighbouring regions such as Tibet and Mongolia. All of them
have been more or less influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism and in hardly
any of them is Mohammedanism the predominant creed[103], though it may
have numerous adherents. The rest of Asia is mainly Mohammedan or
Christian and though a few Buddhists may be found even in Europe (as the
Kalmuks) still neither Hinduism nor Buddhism has met with general
acceptance west of India.

In one sense, the common element in the religion of all these countries
is the presence of Indian ideas, due in most cases to Buddhism which is
the export form of Hinduism, although Brahmanic Hinduism reached Camboja
and the Archipelago. But this is not the element on which I wish now to
insist. I would rather enquire whether apart from the diffusion of ideas
which has taken place in historical times, there is any common
substratum in the religious temperament of this area, any fund of
primitive, or at least prehistoric ideas, shared by its inhabitants.
Such common ideas will be deep-seated and not obvious, for it needs but
little first-hand acquaintance with Asia to learn that all
generalizations about the spirit of the East require careful testing and
that such words as Asiatic or oriental do not connote one type of mind.
For instance in China and Japan the control of the state over religion
is exceptionally strong: in India it is exceptionally weak. The
religious temperaments of these nations differ from one another as much
as the Mohammedan and European temperaments and the fact that many races
have adopted Buddhism and refashioned it to their liking does not
indicate that their mental texture is identical. The cause of this
superficial uniformity is rather that Buddhism in its prime had no
serious rivals in either activity or profundity, but presented itself to
the inhabitants of Eastern Asia as pre-eminently the religion of
civilized men, and was often backed by the support of princes. Yet one
cannot help thinking that its success in Eastern Asia and its failure in
the West are not due merely to politics and geography but must
correspond with some racial idiosyncrasies. Though it is hard to see
what mental features are common to the dreamy Hindus and the practical
Chinese, it may be true that throughout Eastern Asia for one reason or
another such as political despotism, want of military spirit, or on the
other hand a tendency to regard the family, the clan or the state as the
unit, the sense of individuality is weaker than in Western Asia or
Europe, so that pantheism and quietism with their doctrines of the
vanity of the world and the bliss of absorption arouse less opposition
from robust lovers of life. This is the most that can be stated and it
does not explain why there are many Buddhists in Japan but none in
Persia.

But apart from Buddhism and all creeds which have received a name,
certain ideas are universal in this vast region. One of them is the
belief in nature spirits, beings who dwell in rocks, trees, streams and
other natural objects and possess in their own sphere considerable
powers of doing good or ill. The Nagas, Yakshas and Bhutas of India, the
Nats of Burma, the Peys of Siam, the Kami of Japan and the Shen of China
are a few items in a list which might be indefinitely extended. In many
countries this ghostly population is as numerous as the birds of the
forest: they haunt every retired spot and perch unseen under the eaves
of every house. Theology has not usually troubled itself to define their
status and it may even be uncertain whether respect is shown to the
spirits inhabiting streams and mountain peaks or to the peaks and
streams themselves[104].

They may be kindly (though generally requiring punctilious attention),
or mischievous, or determined enemies of mankind. But infinite as are
their variations, the ordinary Asiatic no more doubts their existence
than he doubts the existence of animals. The position which they enjoy,
like their character, is various, for in Asia deities like men have
careers which depend on luck. Many of them remain mere elves or goblins,
some become considerable local deities. But often they occupy a position
intermediate between real gods and fairies. Thus in southern India,
Burma and Ceylon may be seen humble shrines, which are not exactly
temples but the abodes of beings whom prudent people respect. They have
little concern with the destinies of the soul or the observance of the
moral law but much to do with the vagaries of rivers and weather and
with the prosperity of the village. Though these spirits may attain a
high position within a certain district (as for instance Maha Saman, the
deity of Adam's Peak in Ceylon) they are not of the same stuff as the
great gods of Asia. These latter are syntheses of many ideas, and
centuries of human thought have laboured on their gigantic figures. It
is true that the mental attitude which deifies the village stream is
fundamentally the same as that which worships the sun, but in the latter
case the magnitude of the phenomenon deified sets it even for the most
rustic mind in another plane. Also the nature gods of the Veda are not
quite the same as the nature spirits which the Indian peasants worship
to-day and worshipped, as the Pitakas tell us, in the time of the
Buddha. For the Vedic deities are such forces as fire and light, wind
and water. This is nature worship but the worship of nature generalized,
not of some bold rock or mysterious rustling tree. It may be that a
migratory life, such as the ancient Aryans at one time led, inclined
their minds to these wider views, since neither the family nor the tribe
had an abiding interest in any one place. Thus the ancestors of the
Turks in the days before Islam worshipped the spirits of the sky, earth
and water, whereas the more civilized but sedentary Chinese had genii
for every hamlet, pool and hillock.

It is difficult to say whether monotheism is a development of this
nature worship or has another origin. In Japanese religion the
monotheistic tendency is markedly absent. The sun-goddess is the
principal deity but remains simply _prima inter pares_. But in the
ancient religion of China, T'ien or Heaven, also called Shang-ti, the
supreme ruler, though somewhat shadowy and impersonal, does become an
omnipotent Providence without even approximate rivals. Other superhuman
beings are in comparison with him merely angels. Unfortunately the early
history of Chinese religion is obscure and the documents scanty. In
India however the evolution of pantheism or theism (though usually with
a pantheistic tinge) out of the worship of nature forces seems clear.
These gods or forces are seen to melt into one another and to be aspects
of one another, until the mind naturally passes on to the idea that they
are all manifestations of one force finding expression in human
consciousness as well as in physical phenomena. The animist and
pantheist represent different stages but not different methods of
thought. For the former, every natural object which impresses him is
alive; the latter concurs in this view, only he thinks the universe is
instinct with one and the same life displaying itself in infinite
variety.

One difficulty incidental to the treatment of Asiatic religions in
European languages is the necessity, or at any rate the ineradicable
habit, of using well-known words like God and soul as the equivalents of
Asiatic terms which have not precisely the same content and which often
imply a different point of view. For practical life it is wise and
charitable to minimize religious differences and emphasize points of
agreement. But this willingness to believe that others think as we do
becomes a veritable vice if we are attempting an impartial exposition of
their ideas. If the English word God means the deity of ordinary
Christianity, who is much the same as Allah or Jehovah--that is to say
the creator of the world and enforcer of the moral law--then it would be
better never to use this word in writing of the religions of India and
Eastern Asia, for the concept is almost entirely foreign to them. The
nature spirits of which we have been speaking are clearly not God: when
an Indian peasant brings offerings to the tomb of a deceased brigand or
the Emperor of China promotes some departed worthy to be a deity of a
certain class, we call the ceremony deification, but there is not the
smallest intention of identifying the person deified with the Supreme
Being, and odd as it may seem, the worship of such "gods" is compatible
with monotheism or atheism. In China, Shang-ti is less definite than
God[105] and it does not appear that he is thought of as the creator of
the world and of human souls. Even the greater Hindu deities are not
really God, for those who follow the higher life can neglect and almost
despise them, without, however, denying their existence. On the other
hand Brahman, the pantheos of India, though equal to the Christian God
in majesty, is really a different conception, for he is not a creator in
the ordinary sense: he is impersonal and though not evil, yet he
transcends both good and evil. He might seem merely a force more suited
to be the subject matter of science than of religion, were not
meditation on him the occupation, and union with him the goal, of many
devout lives. And even when Indian deities are most personal, as in the
Vishnuite sects, it will be generally found that their relations to the
world and the soul are not those of the Christian God. It is because the
conception of superhuman existence is so different in Europe and Asia
that Asiatic religions often seem contradictory or corrupt: Buddhism and
Jainism, which we describe as atheistic, and the colourless respectable
religion of educated Chinese, become in their outward manifestations
unblushingly polytheistic.

Similar difficulties and ambiguities attend the use of the word soul,
for Buddhism, which is supposed to hold that there is no soul, preaches
retribution in future existences for acts done in this, and seeks to
terrify the evil doer with the pains of hell; whereas the philosophy of
the Brahmans, which inculcates a belief in the soul, seems to teach in
some of its phases that the disembodied and immortal soul has no
consciousness in the ordinary human sense. Here language is dealing with
the same problems as those which we describe by such phrases as the
soul, immortality and continuous existence, but it is striving to
express ideas for which we have little sympathy and no adequate
terminology. They will be considered later.

But one attitude towards that which survives death is almost universal
in Eastern Asia and also easily intelligible. It finds expression in the
ceremonies known as ancestor worship. This practice has attracted
special attention in China, where it is the commonest and most
conspicuous form of religious observance, but it is equally prevalent
among the Hindus, though less prominent because it is only one among the
many rites which engage the attention of that most devout nation. It is
one of the main constituents in the religions of Indo-China and Japan,
though the best authorities think that it was not the predominant
element in the oldest form of Shinto. It is less prominent among the
Tibeto-Burmese tribes but not absent, for in Tibet there are both good
and evil ghosts who demand recognition by appropriate rites. It is
sometimes hard to distinguish it from the worship of natural forces. For
instance in China and southern India most villages have a local deity
who is often nameless. The origin of such deities may be found either in
a departed worthy or in some striking phenomenon or in the association
of the two.

The cult of ghosts may be due to either fear or affection, and both
motives are found in Eastern Asia. But though abundant examples of the
propitiation of angry spirits can be cited, respect and consideration
for the dead are the feelings which usually inspire these ceremonies at
the present day and form the chief basis of family religion. There is no
need to explain this sentiment. It is much stronger in Asia than in
Europe but some of its manifestations may be paralleled by masses and
prayers for the dead, others by the care bestowed on graves and by
notices _in memoriam_. As a rule both in China and India only the last
three generations are honoured in these ceremonies. The reason is
obvious: the more ancient ancestors have ceased to be living memories.
But it might be hard to find a theoretical justification for neglecting
them and it is remarkable that in all parts of Asia the cult of the dead
fits very awkwardly into the official creeds. It is not really
consistent with any doctrine of metempsychosis or with Buddhist teaching
as to the impermanence of the Ego. In China may be found the further
inconsistency that the spirit of a departed relative may receive the
tribute of offerings and salutations called ancestor worship, while at
the same time Buddhist services are being performed for his deliverance
from hell. But of the wide distribution, antiquity and strength of the
cult there can be no doubt. It is anterior not only to Brahmanism but to
the doctrines of transmigration and karma, and the main occupation of
Buddhist priests in China and Japan is the performance of ceremonies
supposed to benefit the dead. Even within Buddhism these practices
cannot be dismissed as a late or foreign corruption. In the
Khuddaka-patha which, if not belonging to the most ancient part of the
Buddhist canon, is at least pre-Christian and purely Indian, the dead
are represented as waiting for offerings and as blessing those who give
them. It is also curious that a recent work called _Raymond_ by Sir O.
Lodge (1916) gives a view of the state after death which is
substantially that of the Chinese. For its teaching is that the dead
retain their personality, concern themselves with the things of this
world, know what is going to happen here and can to some extent render
assistance to the living[106]. Also (and this point is specially
remarkable) burning and mutilation of the body seem to inconvenience the
dead.

Early Chinese works prescribe that during the performance of ancestral
rites, the ghosts are to be represented by people known as the
personators of the dead who receive the offerings and are supposed to be
temporarily possessed by spirits and to be their mouthpieces. Possession
by ghosts or other spirits is, in popular esteem, of frequent occurrence
in India, China, Japan and Indo-China. It is one of the many factors
which have contributed to the ideas of incarnation and deification, that
is, that gods can become men and men gods. In Europe the spheres of the
human and divine are strictly separated: to pass from one to the other
is exceptional: a single incarnation is regarded as an epoch-making
event of universal importance. But in Asia the frontiers are not thus
rigidly delimitated, nor are God and man thus opposed. The ordinary dead
become powers in the spirit world and can bless or injure here: the
great dead become deities: in another order of ideas, the dead
immediately become reincarnate and reappear on earth: the gods take the
shape of men, sometimes for the space of a human life, sometimes for a
shorter apparition. Many teachers in India have been revered as partial
incarnations of Vishnu and most of the higher clergy in Tibet claim to
be Buddhas or Bodhisattvas manifest in the flesh. There is no proof that
the doctrine of metempsychosis existed in Eastern Asia independently of
Indian influence but the ready acceptance accorded to it was largely due
to the prevalent feeling that the worlds of men and spirits are divided
by no great gulf. It is quite natural to step into the spirit world and
back again into this.

It will not have escaped the reader's attention that many of the
features which I have noticed as common to the religions of Eastern
Asia--such as the worship of nature spirits and ancestors--are not
peculiar to those countries but are almost, if not quite, universal in
certain stages of religious development. They can, for instance, be
traced in Europe. But whereas they exist here as survivals discernible
only to the eye of research and even at the beginning of the Christian
era had ceased to be the obvious characteristics of European paganism,
in Asia they are still obvious. Age and logic have not impaired their
vigour, and official theology, far from persecuting them, has
accommodated its shape to theirs. This brings us to another point where
the linguistic difficulty again makes itself felt, namely, that the word
religion has not quite the same meaning in Eastern Asia as in Mohammedan
and Christian lands. I know of no definition which would cover
Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism and the superstitions of African
savages, for the four have little community of subject matter or aim. If
any definition can be found it must I think be based on some superficial
characteristic such as ceremonial. Nor is there any objection to
refusing the title of religion to Buddhism and Confucianism, except that
an inconvenient lacuna would remain in our vocabulary, for they are not
adequately described as philosophies. A crucial instance of the
difference in the ideas prevalent in Europe and Eastern Asia is the fact
that in China many people belong to two or three religions and it would
seem that when Buddhism existed in India the common practice was
similar. Paganism and spiritual religion can co-exist in the same mind
provided their spheres are kept distinct. But Christianity and Islam
both retain the idea of a jealous God who demands not only exclusive
devotion but also exclusive belief: to believe in other Gods is not only
erroneous; it is disobedience and disloyalty. But such ideas have little
currency in Eastern Asia, especially among Buddhists. The Buddha is not
a creator or a king but rather a physician. He demands no allegiance and
for those who disobey him the only punishment is continuance of the
disease. And though Indian deities may claim personal and exclusive
devotion, yet in defining and limiting belief their priests are less
exacting than Papal or Moslim doctors. Despite sectarian formulas, the
Hindu cherishes broader ideas such as that all deities are forms and
passing shapes of one essence; that all have their proper places and
that gods, creeds and ceremonies are necessary helps in the lower stages
of the religious life but immaterial to the adept.