Ten Great Religions by James Freeman Clarke

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The Puranas are derived from the same system as the epic poems, and carry
out further the same ideas. Siva and Vischnu are almost the only gods who
are worshipped, and they are worshipped with a sectarian zeal unknown to
the epics. Most of the Puranas contain these five topics,--Creation,
Destruction and Renovation, the Genealogy of the gods, Reigns of the
Manus, and History of the Solar and Lunar races. Their philosophy of
creation is derived from the Sanknya philosophy. Pantheism is one of their
invariable characteristics, as they always identify God and Nature; and
herein they differ from the system of Kapila. The form of the Puranas is
always that of a dialogue. The Puranas are eighteen in number, and the
contents of the whole are stated to be one million six hundred thousand
lines.[91]

The religion of the Hindoos at the present time is very different from
that of the Vedas or Manu. Idolatry is universal, and every month has its
special worship,--April, October, and January being most sacred. April
begins the Hindoo year. During this sacred month bands of singers go from
house to house, early in the morning, singing hymns to the gods. On the
1st of April Hindoos of all castes dedicate pitchers to the shades of
their ancestors. The girls bring flowers with which to worship little
ponds of water dedicated to Siva. Women adore the river Ganges, bathing in
it and offering it flowers. They also walk in procession round the banyan
or sacred tree. Then they worship the cow, pouring water on her feet and
putting oil on her forehead. Sometimes they take a vow to feed some
particular Brahman luxuriously during the whole month. They bathe their
idols with religious care every day and offer them food. This lasts during
April and then stops.

In May the women of India worship a goddess friendly to little babies,
named Shus-ty. They bring the infants to be blessed by some venerable
woman before the image of the goddess, whose messenger is a cat. Social
parties are also given on these occasions, although the lower castes are
kept distinct at four separate tables. The women also, not being allowed
to meet with the men at such times, have a separate entertainment by
themselves.

The month of June is devoted to the bath of Jugger-naut, who was one of the
incarnations of Vischnu. The name, Jugger-naut, means Lord of the
Universe. His worship is comparatively recent. His idols are extremely
ugly. But the most remarkable thing perhaps about this worship is that it
destroys, for the time, the distinction of castes. While within the walls
which surround the temple Hindoos of every caste eat together from the
same dish. But as soon as they leave the temple this equality disappears.
The ceremony of the bath originated in this legend. The idol Jugger-naut,
desiring to bathe in the Ganges, came in the form of a boy to the river,
and then gave one of his golden ornaments to a confectioner for something
to eat. Next day the ornament was missing, and the priests could find it
nowhere. But that night in a dream the god revealed to a priest that he
had given it to a certain confectioner to pay for his lunch; and it being
found so, a festival was established on the spot, at which the idol is
annually bathed.

The other festival of this month is the worship of the Ganges, the sacred
river of India. Here the people come to bathe and to offer sacrifices,
which consist of flowers, incense, and clothes. The most sacred spot is
where the river enters the sea. Before plunging into the water each one
confesses his sins to the goddess. On the surface of this river castes are
also abolished, the holiness of the river making the low-caste man also
holy.

In the month of July is celebrated the famous ceremony of the car of
Jugger-naut, instituted to commemorate the departure of Krishna from his
native land. These cars are in the form of a pyramid, built several
stories high, and some are even fifty feet in height. They are found in
every part of India, the offerings of wealthy people, and some contain
costly statues. They are drawn by hundreds of men, it being their faith
that each one who pulls the rope will certainly go to the heaven of
Krishna when he dies. Multitudes, therefore, crowd around the rope in
order to pull, and in the excitement they sometimes fall under the wheels
and are crushed. But this is accidental, for Krishna does not desire the
suffering of his worshippers. He is a mild divinity, and not like the
fierce Siva, who loves self-torture.

In the month of August is celebrated the nativity of Krishna, the story of
whose birth resembles that in the Gospel in this, that the tyrant whom he
came to destroy sought to kill him, but a heavenly voice told the father
to fly with the child across the Jumna, and the tyrant, like Herod, killed
the infants in the village. In this month also is a feast upon which no
fire must be kindled or food cooked, and on which the cactus-tree and
serpents are worshipped..

In September is the great festival of the worship of Doorga, wife of Siva.
It commences on the seventh day of the full moon and lasts three days. It
commemorates a visit made by the goddess to her parents. The idol has
three eyes and ten hands. The ceremony, which is costly, can only be
celebrated by the rich people, who also give presents on this occasion to
the poor. The image is placed in the middle of the hall of the rich man's
house. One Brahman sits before the image with flowers, holy water,
incense. Trays laden with rice, fruit, and other kinds of food are placed
near the image, and given to the Brahmans. Goats and sheep are then
sacrificed to the idol on an altar in the yard of the house. When the head
of the victim falls the people shout, "Victory to thee, O mother!" Then
the bells ring, the trumpets sound, and the people shout for joy. The
lamps are waved before the idol, and a Brahman reads aloud from the
Scripture. Then comes a dinner on each of the three days, to which the
poor and the low-caste people are also invited and are served by the
Brahmans. The people visit from house to house, and in the evening there
is music, dancing, and public shows. So that the worship of the Hindoos
is by no means all of it ascetic, but much is social and joyful,
especially in Bengal.

In October, November, and December there are fewer ceremonies. January is
a month devoted to religious bathing. Also, in January, the religious
Hindoos invite Brahmans to read and expound the sacred books in their
houses, which are open to all hearers. In February there are festivals to
Krishna.

The month of March is devoted to ascetic exercises, especially to the
famous one of swinging suspended by hooks. It is a festival in honor of
Siva. A procession goes through the streets and enlists followers by
putting a thread round their necks. Every man thus enlisted must join the
party and go about with it till the end of the ceremony under pain of
losing caste. On the day before the swinging, men thrust iron or bamboo
sticks through their arms or tongues. On the next day they march in
procession to the swinging tree, where the men are suspended by hooks and
whirled round the tree four or five times.

It is considered a pious act in India to build temples, dig tanks, or
plant trees by the roadside. Rich people have idols in their houses for
daily worship, and pay a priest who comes every morning to wake up the
idols, wash and dress them, and offer them their food. In the evening he
comes again, gives them their supper and puts them to bed.

Mr. Gangooly, in his book, from which most of the above facts are drawn,
denies emphatically the statement so commonly made that Hindoo mothers
throw their infants into the Ganges. He justly says that the maternal
instinct is as strong with them as with others; and in addition to that,
their religion teaches them to offer sacrifices for the life and health of
their children.

Sec. 9. Relation of Brahmanism to Christianity.

Having thus attempted, in the space we can here use, to give an account of
Brahmanism, we close by showing its special relation as a system of
thought to Christianity.

Brahmanism teaches the truth of the reality of spirit, and that spirit is
infinite, absolute, perfect, one; that it is the substance underlying all
existence. Brahmanism glows through and through with this spirituality.
Its literature, no less than its theology, teaches it. It is in the dramas
of Calidasa, as well as in the sublime strains of the Bhagavat-gita.
Something divine is present in all nature and all life,--

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air."

Now, with this Christianity is in fullest agreement. We have such passages
in the Scripture as these: "God is a Spirit"; "God is love; whoso dwelleth
in love dwelleth in God, and God in him"; "In him we live, and move, and
have our being"; "He is above all, and through all, and in us all." But
beside these texts, which strike the key-note of the music which was to
come after, there are divine strains of spiritualism, of God all in all,
which come through a long chain of teachers of the Church, sounding on in
the Confessions of Augustine, the prayers of Thomas Aquinas, Anselm,
Bonaventura, St. Bernard, through the Latin hymns of the Middle Ages, and
develop themselves at last in what is called romantic art and romantic
song. A Gothic cathedral like Antwerp or Strasburg,--what is it but a
striving upward of the soul to lose itself in God? A symphony of
Beethoven,--what is it but the same unbounded longing and striving toward
the Infinite and Eternal? The poetry of Wordsworth, of Goethe, Schiller,
Dante, Byron, Victor Hugo, Manzoni, all partake of the same element. It is
opposed to classic art and classic poetry in this, that instead of limits,
it seeks the unlimited; that is, it believes in spirit, which alone is the
unlimited; the _in_finite, that which _is,_ not that which appears; the
_essence_ of things, not their _ex_istence or outwardness.

Thus Christianity meets and accepts the truth of Brahmanism. But how does
it fulfil Brahmanism? The deficiencies of Brahmanism are these,--that
holding to eternity, it omits time, and so loses history. It therefore is
incapable of progress, for progress takes place in time. Believing in
spirit, or infinite unlimited substance, it loses person, or definite
substance, whether infinite or finite. The Christian God is the infinite,
definite substance, self-limited or defined by his essential nature. He is
good and not bad, righteous and not the opposite, perfect love, not
perfect self-love. Christianity, therefore, gives us God as a person, and
man also as a person, and so makes it possible to consider the universe as
order, kosmos, method, beauty, and providence. For, unless we can conceive
the Infinite Substance as definite, and not undefined; that is, as a
person with positive characters; there is no difference between good and
bad, right and wrong, to-day and to-morrow, this and that, but all is one
immense chaos of indefinite spirit. The moment that creation begins, that
the spirit of the Lord moves on the face of the waters, and says, "Let
there be light," and so divides light from darkness, God becomes a person,
and man can also be a person. Things then become "separate and divisible"
which before were "huddled and lumped."

Christianity, therefore, fulfils Brahmanism by adding to eternity time, to
the infinite the finite, to God as spirit God as nature and providence.
God in himself is the unlimited, unknown, dwelling in the light which no
man can approach unto; hidden, not by darkness, but by light. But God, as
turned toward us in nature and providence, is the infinite definite
substance, that is, having certain defined characters, though these have
no bounds as regards extent. This last view of God Christianity shares
with other religions, which differ from Brahmanism in the opposite
direction. For example, the religion of Greece and of the Greek
philosophers never loses the definite God, however high it may soar. While
Brahmanism, seeing eternity and infinity, loses time and the finite, the
Greek religion, dwelling in time, often loses the eternal and the
spiritual. Christianity is the mediator, able to mediate, not by standing
between both, but by standing beside both. It can lead the Hindoos to an
Infinite Friend, a perfect Father, a Divine Providence, and so make the
possibility for them of a new progress, and give to that ancient and
highly endowed race another chance in history. What they want is evidently
moral power, for they have all intellectual ability. The effeminate
quality which has made them slaves of tyrants during two thousand years
will be taken out of them, and a virile strength substituted, when they
come to see God as law and love,--perfect law and perfect love,--and to
see that communion with him comes, not from absorption, contemplation, and
inaction, but from active obedience, moral growth, and personal
development. For Christianity certainly teaches that we unite ourselves
with God, not by sinking into and losing our personality, in him, but by
developing it, so that we may be able to serve and love him.

Chapter IV.

Buddhism, or the Protestantism of the East.

Sec. 1. Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Romanism; in its Spirit,
Protestantism.
Sec. 2. Extent of Buddhism. Its Scriptures.
Sec. 3. Sakyamuni, the Founder of Buddhism.
Sec. 4. Leading Doctrines of Buddhism.
Sec. 5. The Spirit of Buddhism Rational and Humane.
Sec. 6. Buddhism as a Religion.
Sec. 7. Karma and Nirvana.
Sec. 8. Good and Evil of Buddhism.
Sec. 9. Relation of Buddhism to Christianity.

Sec. 1. Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Romanism; in its Spirit,
Protestantism.

On first becoming acquainted with the mighty and ancient religion of
Buddha, one may be tempted to deny the correctness of this title, "The
_Protestantism_ of the East." One might say, "Why not rather the
_Romanism_ of the East?" For so numerous are the resemblances between the
customs of this system and those of the Romish Church, that the first
Catholic missionaries who encountered the priests of Buddha were
confounded, and thought that Satan had been mocking their sacred rites.
Father Bury, a Portuguese missionary,[92] when he beheld the Chinese
bonzes tonsured, using rosaries, praying in an unknown tongue, and
kneeling before images, exclaimed in astonishment: "There is not a piece
of dress, not a sacerdotal function, not a ceremony of the court of Rome,
which the Devil has not copied in this country." Mr. Davis (Transactions
of the Royal Asiatic Society, II. 491) speaks of "the celibacy of the
Buddhist clergy, and the monastic life of the societies of both sexes; to
which might be added their strings of beads, their manner of chanting
prayers, their incense, and their candles." Mr. Medhurst ("China," London,
1857) mentions the image of a virgin, called the "queen of heaven,"
having an infant in her arms, and holding a cross. Confession of sins is
regularly practised. Father Huc, in his "Recollections of a Journey in
Tartary, Thibet, and China," (Hazlitt's translation), says: "The cross,
the mitre, the dalmatica, the cope, which the grand lamas wear on their
journeys, or when they are performing some ceremony out of the
temple,--the service with double choirs, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the
censer suspended from five chains, and which you can open or close at
pleasure,--the benedictions given by the lamas by extending the right hand
over the heads of the faithful,--the chaplet, ecclesiastical celibacy,
religious retirement, the worship of the saints, the fasts, the
processions, the litanies, the holy water,--all these are analogies
between the Buddhists and ourselves." And in Thibet there is also a Dalai
Lama, who is a sort of Buddhist pope. Such numerous and striking analogies
are difficult to explain. After the simple theory "que le diable y etait
pour beaucoup" was abandoned, the next opinion held by the Jesuit
missionaries was that the Buddhists had copied these customs from
Nestorian missionaries, who are known to have penetrated early even as far
as China.[93] But a serious objection to this theory is that Buddhism is
at least five hundred years older than Christianity, and that many of
these striking resemblances belong to its earliest period. Thus Wilson
(Hindu Drama) has translated plays written before the Christian era, in
which Buddhist monks appear as mendicants. The worship of relics is quite
as ancient. Fergusson[94] describes topes, or shrines for relics, of very
great antiquity, existing in India, Ceylon, Birmah, and Java. Many of them
belong to the age of Asoka, the great Buddhist emperor, who ruled all
India B.C. 250, and in whose reign Buddhism became the religion of the
state, and held its third Oecumenical Council.

The ancient Buddhist architecture is very singular, and often very
beautiful. It consists of topes, rock-cut temples, and monasteries. Some
of the topes are monolithic columns, more than forty feet high, with
ornamented capitals. Some are immense domes of brick and stone, containing
sacred relics. The tooth of Buddha was once preserved in a magnificent
shrine in India, but was conveyed to Ceyion A.D. 311, where it still
remains an object of universal reverence. It is a piece of ivory or bone
two inches long, and is kept in six cases, the largest of which, of solid
silver, is five feet high. The other cases are inlaid with rubies and
precious stones.[95] Besides this, Ceylon possesses the "left collar-bone
relic," contained in a bell-shaped tope, fifty feet high, and the thorax
bone, which was placed in a tope built by a Hindoo Raja, B.C. 250, beside
which two others were subsequently erected, the last being eighty cubits
high. The Sanchi tope, the finest in India,[96] is a solid dome of stone,
one hundred and six feet in diameter and forty-two feet high, with a
basement and terrace, having a colonnade, now fallen, of sixty pillars,
with richly carved stone railing and gateway.

The rock-cut temples of the Buddhists are very ancient, and are numerous
in India. Mr. Fergusson, who has made a special personal study of these
monuments, believes that more than nine hundred still remain, most of them
within the Bombay presidency. Of these, many date back two centuries
before our era. In form they singularly resemble the earliest Roman
Catholic churches. Excavated out of the solid rock, they have a nave and
side aisles, terminating in an apse or semi-dome, round which the aisle is
carried. One at Karli, built in this manner, is one hundred and twenty-six
feet long and forty-five wide, with fifteen richly carved columns on each
side, separating the nave from the aisles. The facade of this temple is
also richly ornamented, and has a great open window for lighting the
interior, beneath an elegant gallery or rood-loft.

The Buddhist rock-cut monasteries in India are also numerous, though long
since deserted. Between seven and eight hundred are known to exist, most
of them having been excavated between B.C. 200 and A.D. 500. Buddhist
monks, then as now, took the same three vows of celibacy, poverty, and
obedience, which are taken by the members of all the Catholic orders. In
addition to this, _all_ the Buddhist priests are mendicants. They shave
their heads, wear a friar's robe tied round the waist with a rope, and beg
from house to house, carrying their wooden bowl in which to receive boiled
rice. The old monasteries of India contain chapels and cells for the
monks. The largest, however, had accommodation for only thirty or forty;
while at the present time a single monastery in Thibet, visited by MM. Huc
and Gabet (the lamasery of Kounboum), is occupied by four thousand lamas.
The structure of these monasteries shows clearly that the monkish system
of the Buddhists is far too ancient to have been copied from the
Christians.

Is, then, the reverse true? Did the Catholic Christians derive their
monastic institutions, their bells, their rosary, their tonsure, their
incense, their mitre and cope, their worship of relics, their custom of
confession, etc., from the Buddhists? Such is the opinion of Mr. Prinsep
(Thibet, Tartary, and Mongolia, 1852) and of Lassen (Indische
Alterthumskunde). But, in reply to this view, Mr. Hardwicke objects that
we do not find in history any trace of such an influence. Possibly,
therefore, the resemblances may be the result of common human tendencies
working out, independently, the same results. If, however, it is necessary
to assume that either religion copied from the other, the Buddhists may
claim originality, on the ground of antiquity.

But, however this may he, the question returns, Why call Buddhism the
Protestantism of the East, when all its external features so much resemble
those of the Roman Catholic Church?

We answer: Because deeper and more essential relations connect Brahmanism
with the Romish Church, and the Buddhist system with Protestantism. The
human mind in Asia went through the same course of experience, afterward
repeated in Europe. It protested, in the interest of humanity, against
the oppression of a priestly caste. Brahmanism, like the Church of Rome,
established a system of sacramental salvation in the hands of a sacred
order. Buddhism, like Protestantism, revolted, and established a doctrine
of individual salvation based on personal character. Brahmanism, like the
Church of Rome, teaches an exclusive spiritualism, glorifying penances and
martyrdom, and considers the body the enemy of the soul. But Buddhism and
Protestantism accept nature and its laws, and make a religion of humanity
as well as of devotion. To such broad statements numerous exceptions may
doubtless be always found, but these are the large lines of distinction.

The Roman Catholic Church and Brahmanism place the essence of religion in
sacrifices. Each is eminently a sacrificial system. The daily sacrifice of
the mass is the central feature of the Romish Church. So Brahmanism is a
system of sacrifices. But Protestantism and Buddhism save the soul by
teaching. In the Church of Rome the sermon is subordinate to the mass; in
Protestantism and in Buddhism sermons are the main instruments by which
souls are saved. Brahmanism is a system of inflexible castes; the priestly
caste is made distinct and supreme; and in Romanism the priesthood almost
constitutes the church. In Buddhism and Protestantism the laity regain
their rights. Therefore, notwithstanding the external resemblance of
Buddhist rites and ceremonies to those of the Roman Catholic Church, the
internal resemblance is to Protestantism. Buddhism in Asia, like
Protestantism in Europe, is a revolt of nature against spirit, of humanity
against caste, of individual freedom against the despotism of an order, of
salvation by faith against salvation by sacraments. And as all revolts are
apt to go too far, so it has been with Buddhism. In asserting the rights
of nature against the tyranny of spirit, Buddhism has lost God. There is
in Buddhism neither creation nor Creator. Its tracts say: "The rising of
the world is a natural case." "Its rising and perishing are by nature
itself." "It is natural that the world should rise and perish."[97] While
in Brahmanism absolute spirit is the only reality, and this world is an
illusion, the Buddhists know only this world, and the eternal world is so
entirely unknown as to be equivalent to nullity. But yet, as no revolt,
however radical, gives up _all_ its antecedents, so Buddhism has the same
_aim_ as Brahmanism, namely, to escape from the vicissitudes of time into
the absolute rest of eternity. They agree as to the object of existence;
they differ as to the method of reaching it. The Brahman and the Roman
Catholic think that eternal rest is to be obtained by intellectual
submission, by passive reception of what is taught us and done for us by
others: the Buddhist and Protestant believe it must be accomplished by an
intelligent and free obedience to Divine laws. Mr. Hodgson, who has long
studied the features of this religion in Nepaul, says: "The one infallible
diagnostic of Buddhism is a belief in the infinite capacity of the human
intellect." The name of Buddha means the Intelligent One, or the one who
is wide awake. And herein also is another resemblance to Protestantism,
which emphasizes so strongly the value of free thought and the seeking
after truth. In Judaism we find two spiritual powers,--the prophet and the
priest. The priest is the organ of the pardoning and saving love of God;
the prophet, of his inspiring truth. In the European Reformation, the
prophet revolting against the priest founded Protestantism; in the Asiatic
Reformation he founded Buddhism. Finally, Brahmanism and the Roman
Catholic Church are more religious; Buddhism and Protestant Christianity,
more moral. Such, sketched in broad outline, is the justification for the
title of this chapter; but we shall be more convinced of its accuracy
after looking more closely into the resemblances above indicated between
the religious ceremonies of the East and West.