Ten Great Religions by James Freeman Clarke

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Is there any way of reconciling these inconsistencies? If we cannot find
such an explanation, there is at least one central point where we may
place ourselves; one elevated position, from which this mighty maze will
not seem wholly without a plan. In India the whole tendency of thought is
ideal, the whole religion a pure spiritualism. An ultra, one-sided
idealism is the central tendency of the Hindoo mind. The God of Brahmanism
is an intelligence, absorbed in the rest of profound contemplation. The
good man of this religion is he who withdraws from an evil world into
abstract thought.

Nothing else explains the Hindoo character as this does. An eminently
religious people, it is their one-sided spiritualism, their extreme
idealism, which gives rise to all their incongruities. They have no
history and no authentic chronology, for history belongs to this world,
and chronology belongs to time. But this world and time are to them wholly
uninteresting; God and eternity are all in all. They torture themselves
with self-inflicted torments; for the body is the great enemy of the
soul's salvation, and they must beat it down by ascetic mortifications.
But asceticism, here as everywhere else, tends to self-indulgence, since
one extreme produces another. In one part of India, therefore, devotees
are swinging on hooks in honor of Siva, hanging themselves by the feet,
head downwards, over a fire, rolling on a bed of prickly thorns, jumping
on a couch filled with sharp knives, boring holes in their tongues, and
sticking their bodies full of pins and needles, or perhaps holding the
arms over the head till they stiffen in that position. Meantime in other
places whole regions are given over to sensual indulgences, and companies
of abandoned women are connected with different temples and consecrate
their gains to the support of their worship.

As one-sided spiritualism will manifest itself in morals in the two forms
of austerity and sensuality, so in religion it shows itself in the
opposite direction of an ideal pantheism and a gross idolatry.
Spiritualism first fills the world full of God, and this is a true and
Christian view of things. But it takes another step, which is to deny all
real existence to the world, and so runs into a false pantheism. It first
says, truly, "There is nothing _without_ God." It next says, falsely,
"There is nothing _but_ God." This second step was taken in India by means
of the doctrine of _Maya_, or _Illusion. Maya_ means the delusive shows
which spirit assumes. For there is nothing but spirit; which neither
creates nor is created, neither acts nor suffers, which cannot change, and
into which all souls are absorbed when they free themselves by meditation
from the belief that they suffer or are happy, that they can experience
either pleasure or pain. The next step is to polytheism. For if God
neither creates nor destroys, but only seems to create and destroy, these
_appearances_ are not united together as being the acts of one Being, but
are separate, independent phenomena. When you remove personality from the
conception of God, as you do in removing will, you remove unity. Now if
creation be an illusion, and there be no creation, still the _appearance_
of creation is a fact. But as there is no substance but spirit, this
_appearance_ must have its cause in spirit, that is, is a _divine_
appearance, is God. So destruction, in the same way, is an appearance of
God, and reproduction is an appearance of God, and every other appearance
in nature is a manifestation of God. But the unity of will and person
being taken away, we have not one God, but a multitude of gods,--or
polytheism.

Having begun this career of thought, no course was possible for the human
mind to pursue but this. An ultra spiritualism must become pantheism, and
pantheism must go on to polytheism. In India this is not a theory, but a
history. We find, side by side, a spiritualism which denies the existence
of anything but motionless spirit or Brahm, and a polytheism which
believes and worships Brahma the Creator, Siva the Destroyer, Vischnu the
Preserver, Indra the God of the Heavens, the Sactis or energies of the
gods, Krishna the Hindoo Apollo, Doorga, and a host of others, innumerable
as the changes and appearances of things.

But such a system as this must necessarily lead also to idolatry. There is
in the human mind a tendency to worship, and men must worship something.
But they believe in one Being, the absolute Spirit, the supreme and only
God,--Para Brahm; _him_ they cannot worship, for he is literally an
unknown God. He has no qualities; no attributes, no activity. He is
neither the object of hope, fear, love, nor aversion. Since there is
nothing in the universe but spirit and illusive appearances, and they
cannot worship spirit because it is absolutely unknown, they must worship
these appearances, which are at any rate _divine_ appearances, and which
do possess some traits, qualities, character; _are_ objects of hope and
fear. But they cannot worship them as appearances, they must worship them
as persons. But if they have an inward personality or soul, they become
real beings, and also beings independent of Brahm, whose appearances they
are. They must therefore have an outward personality; in other words, a
body, a shape, emblematical and characteristic; that is to say, they
become idols.

Accordingly idol-worship is universal in India. The most horrible and
grotesque images are carved in the stone of the grottos, stand in rude,
block-like statues in the temple, or are coarsely painted on the walls.
Figures of men with heads of elephants or of other animals, or with six or
seven human heads,--sometimes growing in a pyramid, one out of the other,
sometimes with six hands coming from one shoulder,--grisly and uncouth
monsters, like nothing in nature, yet too grotesque for symbols,--such are
the objects of the Hindoo worship.

Sec. 3. Helps from Comparative Philology. The Aryans in Central Asia.

We have seen how hopeless the task has appeared of getting any definite
light on Hindoo chronology or history. To the ancient Egyptians events
were so important that the most trivial incidents of daily life were
written on stone and the imperishable records of the land, covering the
tombs and obelisks, have patiently waited during long centuries, till
their decipherer should come to read them. To the Hindoos, on the other
hand, all events were equally unimportant. The most unhistoric people on
earth, they cared more for the minutiae of grammar, or the subtilties of
metaphysics, than for the whole of their past. The only date which has
emerged from this vague antiquity is that of Chandragupta, a contemporary
of Alexander, and called by the Greek historians Sandracottus. He became
king B.C. 315, and as, at his accession, Buddha had been dead (by Hindoo
statement) one hundred and sixty-two years, Buddha may have died B.C. 477.
We can thus import a single date from Greek history into that of India.
This is the whole.

But all at once light dawns on us from an unexpected quarter. While we can
learn nothing concerning the history of India from its literature, and
nothing from its inscriptions or carved temples, _language_, comes to our
aid. The fugitive and airy sounds, which seem so fleeting and so
changeable, prove to be more durable monuments than brass or granite. The
study of the Sanskrit language has told us a long story concerning the
origin of the Hindoos. It has rectified the ethnology of Blumenbach, has
taught us who were the ancestors of the nations of Europe, and has given
us the information that one great family, the Indo-European, has done most
of the work of the world. It shows us that this family consists of seven
races,--the Hindoos, the Persians, the^ Greeks, the Romans, who all
emigrated to the south from the original ancestral home; and the Kelts,
the Teutons, and Slavi, who entered Europe on the northern side of the
Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. This has been accomplished by the new
science of Comparative Philology. A comparison of languages has made it
too plain to be questioned, that these seven races were originally one;
that they must have emigrated from a region of Central Asia, at the east
of the Caspian, and northwest of India; that they were originally a
pastoral race, and gradually changed their habits as they descended from
those great plains into the valleys of the Indus and the Euphrates. In
these seven linguistic families the roots of the most common names are the
same; the grammatical constructions are also the same; so that no scholar,
who has attended to the subject, can doubt that the seven languages are
all daughters of one common mother-tongue.

Pursuing the subject still further, it has been found possible to
conjecture with no little confidence what was the condition of family life
in this great race of Central Asia, before its dispersion. The original
stock has received the name Aryan. This designation occurs in Manu (II.
22), who says: "As far as the eastern and western oceans, between the two
mountains, lies the land which the wise have named Ar-ya-vesta, or
_inhabited by honorable men_." The people of Iran receive this same
appellation in the Zend Avesta, with the same meaning of _honorable_.
Herodotus testifies that the Medes were formerly called [Greek: Arioi]
(Herod. VII. 61). Strabo mentions that, in the time of Alexander, the
whole region about the Indus was called _Ariana_. In modern times, the
word _Iran_ for Persia and _Erin_ for Ireland are possible reminiscences
of the original family appellation.

The Ayrans, long before the age of the Vedas or the Zend Avesta, were
living as a pastoral people on the great plains east of the Caspian Sea.
What their condition was at that epoch is deduced by the following method:
If it is found that the name of any fact is the same in two or more of the
seven tribal languages of this stock, it is evident that the name was
given to it before they separated. For there is no reason to suppose that
two nations living wide apart would have independently selected the same
word for the same object. For example, since we find that _house_ is in
Sanskrit _Damn_ and _Dam_; in Zend, _Demana_; in Greek, [Greek: Domos]; in
Latin, _Domus_; in Irish, _Dahm_; in Slavonic, _Domu_,--from which root
comes also our English word _Domestic_,--we may be pretty sure that the
original Aryans lived in houses. When we learn that _boat_ was in Sanskrit
_Nau_ or _nauka_; in Persian, _Naw, nawah;_ in Greek, [Greek: Naus]; in
Latin, _Navis_; in old Irish, _Noi_ or _nai_; in old German, _Nawa_ or
_nawi_; and in Polish _Nawa_, we cannot doubt that they knew something of
what we call in English _Nau_tical affairs, or Navigation. But as the
words designating masts, sails, yards, &c. differ wholly from each other
in all these linguistic families, it is reasonable to infer that the
Aryans, before their dispersion, went only in boats, with oars, on the
rivers of their land, the Oxus and Jaxartes, and did not sail anywhere on
the sea.

Pursuing this method, we see that we can ask almost any question
concerning the condition of the Aryans, and obtain an answer by means of
Comparative Philology.

Were they a pastoral people? The very word _pastoral_ gives us the answer.
For _Pa_ in Sanskrit means to watch, to guard, as men guard cattle,--from
which a whole company of words has come in all the Aryan languages.

The results of this method of inquiry, so far as given by Pictet, are
these. Some 3000 years B.C.,[33] the Aryans, as yet undivided into
Hindoos, Persians, Kelts, Latins, Greeks, Teutons, and Slavi, were living
in Central Asia, in a region of which Bactriana was the centre. Here they
must have remained long enough to have developed their admirable language,
the mother-tongue of those which we know. They were essentially a
pastoral, but not a nomad people, having fixed homes. They had oxen,
horses, sheep, goats, hogs, and domestic fowls. Herds of cows fed in
pastures, each the property of a community, and each with a cluster of
stables in the centre. The daughters[34] of the house were the
dairy-maids; the food was chiefly the products of the dairy and the flesh
of the cattle. The cow was, however, the most important animal, and gave
its name to many plants, and even to the clouds and stars, in which men
saw heavenly herds passing over the firmament above them.

But the Aryans were not an exclusively pastoral people; they certainly had
barley, and perhaps other cereals, before their dispersion. They possessed
the plough, the mill for grinding grain; they had hatchet,[35] hammer,
auger. The Aryans were acquainted with several metals, among which were
gold, silver, copper, tin. They knew how to spin and weave to some extent;
they were acquainted with pottery. How their houses were built we do not
know, but they contained doors, windows, and fireplaces. They had cloaks
or mantles, they boiled and roasted meat, and certainly used soup. They
had lances, swords, the bow and arrow, shields, but not armor. They had
family life, some simple laws, games, the dance, and wind instruments.
They had the decimal numeration, and their year was of three hundred and
sixty days. They worshipped the heaven, earth, sun, fire, water, wind; but
there are also plain traces of an earlier monotheism, from which this
nature-worship proceeded.

Sec. 4. The Aryans in India. The Native Races. The Vedic Age. Theology of the
Vedas.

So far Comparative Philology takes us, and the next step forward brings us
to the Vedas, the oldest works in the Hindoo literature, but at least one
thousand or fifteen hundred years more recent than the times we have been
describing. The Aryans have separated, and the Hindoos are now in India.
It is eleven centuries before the time of Alexander. They occupy the
region between the Punjaub and the Ganges, and here was accomplished the
transition of the Aryans from warlike shepherds into agriculturists and
builders of cities.[36]

The last hymns of the Vedas were written (says St. Martin) when they
arrived from the Indus at the Ganges, and were building their oldest city,
at the confluence of that river with the Jumna. Their complexion was then
white, and they call the race whom they conquered, and who afterward were
made _Soudras_, or lowest caste, blacks.[37] The chief gods of the Vedic
age were Indra, Varuna, Agni, Savitri, Soma. The first was the god of the
atmosphere; the second, of the Ocean of light, or Heaven; the third, of
Fire;[38] the fourth, of the Sun; and the fifth, of the Moon. Yama was the
god of death. All the powers of nature were personified in turn,--as
earth, food, wine, months, seasons, day, night, and dawn. Among all these
divinities, Indra and Agni were the chief.[39] But behind this incipient
polytheism lurks the original monotheism,--for each of these gods, in
turn, becomes the Supreme Being. The universal Deity seems to become
apparent, first in one form of nature and then in another. Such is the
opinion of Colebrooke, who says that "the ancient Hindoo religion
recognizes but one God, not yet sufficiently discriminating the creature
from the Creator." And Max Mueller says: "The hymns celebrate Varuna,
Indra, Agni, &c., and each in turn is called supreme. The whole mythology
is fluent. The powers of nature become moral beings."

Max Mueller adds: "It would be easy to find, in the numerous hymns of the
Veda, passages in which almost every single god is represented as supreme
and absolute. Agni is called 'Ruler of the Universe'; Indra is celebrated
as the Strongest god, and in one hymn it is said, 'Indra is stronger than
all.' It is said of Soma that 'he conquers every one.'"

But clearer traces of monotheism are to be found in the Vedas. In one hymn
of the Rig-Veda it is said: "They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni;
then he is the well-winged heavenly Garutmat; that which is One, the wise
call it many ways; they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan."

Nothing, however, will give us so good an idea of the character of these
Vedic hymns as the hymns themselves. I therefore select a few of the most
striking of those which have been translated by Colebrooke, Wilson, M.
Mueller, E. Bumont, and others.

In the following, from one of the oldest Vedas, the unity of God seems
very clearly expressed.

RIG-VEDA, X. 121.

"In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. He was the
only born Lord of all that is. He established the earth, and this sky.
Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He who gives life. He who gives strength; whose blessing all the
bright gods desire; whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death.
Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He who through his power is the only king of the breathing and
awakening world. He who governs all, man and beast. Who is the god to
whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power the sea proclaims,
with the distant river. He whose these regions are, as it were his two
arms. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm. He through whom
heaven was stablished; nay, the highest heaven. He who measured out the
light in the air. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by his will, look up,
trembling inwardly. He over whom the rising sun shines forth. Who is
the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed the seed and
lit the fire, thence arose he who is the only life of the bright gods.
Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He who by his might looked even over the water-clouds, the clouds
which gave strength and lit the sacrifice; _he who is God above all
gods_. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"May he not destroy us,--he the creator of the earth,--or he, the
righteous, who created heaven; he who also created the bright and
mighty waters. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our
sacrifices?"[40]

The oldest and most striking account of creation is in the eleventh
chapter of the tenth Book of the Rig-Veda. Colebrooke, Max Muller, Muir,
and Goldstucker, all give a translation of this remarkable hymn and speak
of it with admiration. We take that of Colehrooke, modified by that of
Muir:--

"Then there was no entity nor non-entity; no world, no sky, nor aught
above it; nothing anywhere, involving or involved; nor water deep and
dangerous. Death was not, and therefore no immortality, nor distinction
of day or night. But THAT ONE breathed calmly[41] alone with Nature,
her who is sustained within him. Other than Him, nothing existed
[which] since [has been]. Darkness there was; [for] this universe was
enveloped with darkness, and was indistinguishable waters; but that
mass, which was covered by the husk, was [at length] produced by the
power of contemplation. First desire[42] was formed in his mind; and
that became the original productive seed; which the wise, recognizing
it by the intellect in their hearts, distinguish as the bond of
non-entity with entity.

"Did the luminous ray of these [creative acts] expand in the middle, or
above, or below? That productive energy became providence [or sentient
souls], and matter [or the elements]; Nature, who is sustained within,
was inferior; and he who sustains was above.

"Who knows exactly, and who shall in this world declare, whence and why
this creation took place? The gods are subsequent to the production of
this world: then who can know whence it proceeded, or whence this
varied world arose, or whether it upholds [itself] or not? He who in
the highest heaven is the ruler of this universe,--he knows, or does
not know."

If the following hymn, says Mueller, were addressed only to the Almighty,
omitting the word "Varuna," it would not disturb us in a Christian
Liturgy:--

1. "Let me not yet, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay; have mercy,
almighty, have mercy.

2. "If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind, have
mercy, almighty, have mercy!

3. "Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone
to the wrong shore; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

4. "Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the midst of
the waters; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

5. "Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offence before the heavenly
host; whenever we break thy law through thoughtlessness; have mercy,
almighty, have mercy!"

Out of a large number of hymns addressed to Indra, Mueller selects one that
is ascribed to Vasishtha.

1. "Let no one, not even those who worship thee, delay thee far from
us! Even from afar come to our feast! Or, if thou art here, listen to
us!

2. "For these who here make prayers for thee, sit together near the
libation, like flies round the honey. The worshippers, anxious for
wealth, have placed their desire upon Indra, as we put our foot upon a
chariot.

3. "Desirous of riches, I call him who holds the thunderbolt with his
arm, and who is a good giver, like as a son calls his father.

4. "These libations of Soma, mixed with milk, have been prepared for
Indra: thou, armed with the thunderbolt, come with the steeds to drink
of them for thy delight; come to the house!

5. "May he hear us, for he has ears to hear. He is asked for riches;
will he despise our prayers? He could soon give hundreds and
thousands;--no one could check him if he wishes to give."

13. "Make for the sacred gods a hymn that is not small, that is well
set and beautiful! Many snares pass by him who abides with Indra
through his sacrifice.

14. "What mortal dares to attack him who is rich in thee? Through faith
in thee, O mighty, the strong acquires spod in the day of battle."

17. "Thou art well known as the benefactor of every one, whatever
battles there be. Every one of these kings of the earth implores thy
name, when wishing for help.

18. "If I were lord of as much as thou, I should support the sacred
bard, thou scatterer of wealth, I should not abandon him to misery.

19. "I should award wealth day by day to him who magnifies; I should
award it to whosoever it be. We have no other friend but thee, no other
happiness, no other father, O mighty!"

22. "We call for thee, O hero, like cows that have not been milked; we
praise thee as ruler of all that moves, O Indra, as ruler of all that
is immovable.

23. "There is no one like thee in heaven and earth; he is not born, and
will not be born. O mighty Indra, we call upon thee as we go fighting
for cows and horses."

"In this hymn," says Mueller, "Indra is clearly conceived as the Supreme
God, and we can hardly understand how a people who had formed so exalted a
notion of the Deity and embodied it in the person of Indra, could, at the
same sacrifice, invoke other gods with equal praise. When Agni, the lord
of fire, is addressed by the poet, he is spoken of as the first god, not
inferior even to Indra. While Agni is invoked Indra is forgotten; there is
no competition between the two, nor any rivalry between them and other
gods. This is a most important feature in the religion of the Veda, and
has never been taken into consideration by those who have written on the
history of ancient polytheism."[43]

"It is curious," says Mueller, "to watch the almost imperceptible
transition by which the phenomena of nature, if reflected in the mind of
the poet, assume the character of divine beings. The dawn is frequently
described in the Veda as it might be described by a modern poet. She is
the friend of men, she smiles like a young wife, she is the daughter of
the sky." "But the transition from _devi_, the bright, to _devi_, the
goddess, is so easy; the daughter of the sky assumes so readily the same
personality which is given to the sky, Dyaus, her father, that we can only
guess whether in every passage the poet is speaking of a bright
apparition, or of a bright goddess; of a natural vision, or of a visible
deity. The following hymn of Vashishtha will serve as an instance:--

"She shines upon us, like a young wife, rousing every living being to
go to his work. The fire had to be kindled by men; she brought light by
striking down darkness.

"She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving towards every one. She
grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. The mother of the
cows (of the morning clouds), the leader of the days, she shone
gold-colored, lovely to behold.

"She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the god, who leads the white
and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn was seen, revealed by her rays;
with brilliant treasures she follows every one.