FOOTNOTES:
[334] See especially Dig. Nik. XX. and XXXII.
[335] But the lists may be pieces of folk-lore older than the suttas in which they are incorporated.
[336] The Dionysus of Megasthenes is a deity who comes from the west with an army that suffers from the heat of the plains. If we could be certain that he meant Śiva by Dionysus this would be valuable evidence. But he clearly misunderstood many things in Indian religion. Greek legends connected Dionysus with India and the East.
[337] Macdonell seems to me correct in saying (J.R.A.S. 1915, p. 125) that one reason why Indian deities have many arms is that they may be able to carry the various symbols by which they are characterized. Another reason is that worship is usually accompanied by dhyâna, that is forming a mental image of the deity as described in a particular text. E.g. the worshipper repeats a mantra which describes a deity in language which was originally metaphorical as having many heads and arms and at the same time he ought to make a mental image of such a figure.
[338] But some forms of Śivaism in southern India come even nearer to emotional Christianity than does Vishnuism.
[339] I cannot discover that any alleged avatâra of Śiva has now or has had formerly any importance, but the Vâyu, Liṅga and Kûrma Purâna give lists of such incarnations, as does also the Catechism of the Shaiva religion translated by Foulkes. But Indian sects have a strong tendency to ascribe all possible achievements and attributes to their gods. The mere fact that Vishṇu becomes incarnate incites the ardent Śivaite to say that his god can do the same. A curious instance of this rivalry is found in the story that Śiva manifested himself as Śarabha-mûrti in order to curb the ferocity of Vishṇu when incarnate in the Man Lion (see Gopinâtha Rao, Hindu Icon. p. 45). Śiva often appears in a special form, not necessarily human, for a special purpose (e.g. Vîrabhadra) and some tantric Buddhas seem to be imitations of these apparitions. There is a strong element of Śivaism borrowed from Bengal in the mythology of Tibet and Mongolia, where such personages as Hevajra, Saṃvara, and Mahâkâla have a considerable importance under the strange title of Buddhas.
[340] The passage from one epithet to the other is very plain in R.V. I. 114.
[341] Book XVI.
[342] In the play Mricchakaṭikâ or The Clay Cart (probably of the sixth century A.D.) a burglar invokes Kârtikeya, the son of Śiva, who is said to have taught different styles of house-breaking.
[343] A similarly strange collocation of attributes is found in Daksha's hymn to Śiva. Mahâbhârata, XII. Sec. 285.
[344] Atharva, V. xi. 2. 24.
[345] It is not certain if the Śisṇadevâh whom Indra is asked to destroy in Ṛig. V. VII. 21. 5 and X. 99. 3 are priapic demons or worshippers of the phallus.
[346] VII. secs. 202, 203, and XIII. sec. 14.
[347] The inscriptions of Camboja and Champa seem to be the best proof of the antiquity of Linga worship. A Cambojan inscription of about 550 A.D. records the dedication of a linga and the worship must have taken some time to reach Camboja from India. Some lingas discovered in India are said to be anterior to the Christian era.
[348] See F. Kittel, Ueber den Ursprung der Linga Kultus, and Barth, Religions of India, p. 261.
[349] As is also its appearance, as a rule. But there are exceptions to this. Some Hindus deny that the Linga is a phallic emblem. It is hardly possible to maintain this thesis in view of such passages as Mahâbh. XIII. 14 and the innumerable figures in which there are both a linga and a Yoni. But it is true that in its later forms the worship is purged of all grossness and that in its earlier forms the symbol adored was often a stûpa-like column or a pillar with figures on it.
[350] Such scenes as the relief from Amarâvati figured in Grünwedel, Buddhist art in India, p. 29, fig. 8, might easily be supposed to represent the worship of the linga, and some of Aśoka's pillars have been worshipped as lingas in later times.
[351] But not of course the soul which, according to the general Indian idea, exists before and continues after the life of the body.
[352] Crooke, Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, I. 84; II. 219.
[353] They are however of some importance in Vishnuite theology. For instance according to the school of Râmânuja it is the Śakti (Śrî) who reveals the true doctrine to mankind. Vishṇu is often said to have three consorts, Śrî, Bhû and Lîlâ.
[354] E.g. Śat. Brâh. I. 2. 5. See also the strange legend Ib. XI. 1. 1 where Vishṇu is described as the best of the gods but is eaten by Indra. He is frequently (e.g. in the Śata Brâh) stated to be identical with the sacrifice, and this was probably one of the reasons for his becoming prominent.
[355] See many modern examples in Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk Lore of Northern India, chap. IV. and Census of India, 1901, vol. VI. Bengal, pp. 196-8, where are described various deified heroes who are adored in Bengal, such as Goveiyâ (a bandit), Sailesh, Karikh, Lárik, Amar Singh, and Gobind Raut (a slayer of tigers). Compare too the worship of Gopi Nath and Zinda Kaliana in the Panjâb as described in Census of India, 1901, vol. XVII. pp. 118-9.
[356] The Bhâgavata Purâna (I. iii.) and the Bhaktamâlâ (see J.R.A.S. 1909, pp. 621 ff.) give longer lists of 22 and 26, and the Pâncarâtra gives 39. See Ahirbudhnya Saṃhitâ, V. 50-55.
[357] Book I, cantos 74-76.
[358] A parallel phenomenon is the belief found in Bali, that Buddha is Śiva's brother.
[359] For Brahmanic ideas about Buddha see Vishṇu Purâṇa, III. 18. The Bhâgavata Purâṇa, I. 3. 24 seems to make the Buddha incarnation future. It also counts Kapila and Ṛishabha, apparently identical with the founder of the Sânkhya and the first Jain saint, as incarnations. The Padma Purâṇa seems to ascribe not only Buddhism but the Mâyâ doctrine of Śankara to delusions deliberately inspired by gods. I have not been able to find the passage in the printed edition of the Purâṇa but it is quoted in Sanskrit by Aufrecht, Cat. Cod. Bib. Bodl. p. 14, and Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, p. 198.
[360] See Norman in Trans. Third Int. Congress of Religions, II. p. 85. In the Ind. Ant. 1918, p. 145 Jayaswal tries to prove that Kalkî is a historical personage and identical with King Yaśodharman of Central India (about A.D. 500) and that the idea of his being a future saviour is late. This theory offers difficulties, for firstly there is no proof that the passages of the Mahabharata which mention Kalkî (III. 190, 13101; III. 191, 13111: XII. 340, 12968) are additions later than Yaśodharman and secondly if Kalkî was first a historical figure and then projected into the future we should expect to hear that he will come again, but such language is not quoted. On the other hand it seems quite likely (1) that there was an old tradition about a future saviour called Kalkî, (2) that Yaśodharman after defeating the Huns assumed the rôle, (3) and that when it was found that the golden age had not recommenced he was forgotten (as many pseudo-Messiahs have been) and Kalkî again became a hope for the future. Vincent Smith (Hist. of India, ed. III. p. 320) intimates that Yaśodharman performed considerable exploits but was inordinately boastful.
[361] Another version of the story which omits the expedition to Laṅka and makes Sîtâ the sister of Râma is found in the Dasaratha Jâtaka (641).
[362] But this colonization is attributed by tradition to Vijaya, not Râma.
[363] See especially book VI. p. 67, in Growse's Translation.
[364] See Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. IV. especially pp. 441-491.
[365] Ekanâtha, who lived in the sixteenth century, calls the Adhyâtma R. a modern work. See Bhandarkar, Vaishn. and Saivism, page 48. The Yoga-Vasishtḥa R. purports to be instruction given by Vasishṭha to Râma who wishes to abandon the world. Its date is uncertain but it is quoted by authors of the fourteenth century. It is very popular, especially in south India, where an abridgment in Tamil called Jñâna-Vasishṭha is much read. Its doctrine appears to be Vedântist with a good deal of Buddhist philosophy. Salvation is never to think that pleasures and pains are "mine."
[366] Châṇḍ. Up. III. 17.6
[367] The Kaush. Brâhm. says that Kṛishṇa was an Âṅgirasa XXX. g. The Anukramanî says that the Kṛishṇa of Ṛig Veda, VIII. 74 was an Âṅgirasa. For Ghora Âṅgirasa "the dread descendent of the Angirases" see Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, s.v.
[368] E.g. Dig. Nik. V. The Pâncarâtra expressly states that Yoga is worship of the heart and self-sacrifice, being thus a counterpart of the external sacrifice (bâhyayâga).
[369] Pâṇ. IV. 3. 98, Vâsudevârjunâbhyâm vun. See Bhandarkar, Vaishnavism and Śaivism, p. 3 and J.R.A.S. 1910, p. 168. Sûtra 95, just above, appears to point to bhakti, faith or devotion, felt for this Vâsudeva.
[370] Especially the Besnagar column. See Rapson, Ancient India, p. 156 and various articles in J.R.A.S. 1909-10.
[371] X. i, vi.
[372] III. i. 23, Ulâro so Kaṇho isi ahosi. But this may refer to the Rishi mentioned in R.V. VIII. 74 who has not necessarily anything to do with the god Kṛishṇa.
[373] See Hemacandra Abhidhânacintâmani, Ed. Boehtlingk and Rien, p. 128, and Barnett's translation of the Antagada Dasāo, pp. 13-15 and 67-82.
[374] Apparently the same as the Vṛishṇis.
[375] III. XV.
[376] It would seem that the temple of Dvârakâ was built between the composition of the narrative in the Mahâbhârata and of the Vishṇu Purâṇa, for while the former says the whole town was destroyed by the sea, the latter excepts the temple and says that whoever visits it is freed from all his sins. See Wilson, Vishṇu Purâṇa, V. p. 155.
[377] A most curious chapter of the Vishṇu Purâṇa (IV. 13) contains a vindication of Kṛishṇa's character and a picture of old tribal life.
[378] Neither can I agree with some scholars that Kṛishṇa is mainly and primarily a deity of vegetation. All Indian ideas about the Universe and God emphasize the interaction of life and death, growth and decay, spring and winter. Kṛishṇa is undoubtedly associated with life, growth and generation, but so is Śiva the destroyer, or rather the transmuter. The account in the Mahâbhâshya (on Pân. III. 1. 26) of the masque representing the slaughter of Kaṃsa by Kṛishṇa is surely a slight foundation for the theory that Kṛishṇa was a nature god. It might be easily argued that Christ is a vegetation spirit, for not only is Easter a spring festival but there are numerous allusions to sowing and harvest in the Gospels and Paul illustrates the resurrection by the germination of corn. It is a mistake to seek for uniformity in the history of religion. There were in ancient times different types of mind which invented different kinds of gods, just as now professors invent different theories about gods.
[379] The Kṛishṇa of the Chândogya Upanishad receives instruction but it is not said that he was himself a teacher.
[380] Hopkins, India Old and New, p. 105.
[381] Bhandarkar. Allusions to Kṛishṇa in Mahâbhâshya, Ind. Ant. 1874, p. 14. For the pastoral Kṛishṇa see Bhandarkar, Vaishṇavism and Śaivism, chap. IX.
[382] The divinity of Râdhâ is taught specially in the Brahma-vaivarta Purâṇa and the Nârada pâncarâtra, also called Jñânâmṛitasâra. She is also described in the Gopâla-tâpanîya Upanishad of unknown date.
[383] But Kaṃsa appears in both series of legends, i.e., in the Ghata-Jâtaka which contains no hint of the pastoral legends but is a variant of the story of the warlike Kṛishṇa.
[384] Vishṇu Purâṇa, V. 10, 11 from which the quotations in the text are taken. Much of it is repeated in the Harivamsa. See for instance H. 3808.
[385] The Muttra cycle of legends cannot be very late for the inscription of Glai Lomor in Champa (811 A.D.) speaks of Nârâyana holding up Goburdhan and a Cambojan inscription of Prea Eynkosey (970 A.D.) speaks of the banks of the Yamunâ where Kṛishṇa sported. These legends must have been prevalent in India some time before they travelled so far. Some of them are depicted on a pillar found at Mandor and possibly referable to the fourth century A.D. See Arch. Survey Ind. 1905-1906, p. 135.
[386] Strom, III. 194. See M'Crindle, Ancient India, p. 183.
[387] Vincent Smith, Fine Art in India, pp. 134-138.
[388] In the Sutta-nipâta Mâra, the Evil One is called Kaṇha, the phonetic equivalent of Kṛishṇa in Prâkrit. Can it be that Mâra and his daughters have anything to do with Kṛishṇa and the Gopîs?
[389] Compare the Greek stories of the infant Hermes who steals Apollo's cattle and invents the lyre. Compare too, as having a general resemblance to fantastic Indian legends, the story of young Hephæstus.
[390] Mgr. Bongard, Histoire de la Bienheureuse Marguérite Marie. Quoted by W. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 343.
[391] Viṭṭhal or Viṭṭoba is a local deity of Pandharpur in the Deccan (perhaps a deified Brahman of the place) now identified with Kṛishṇa.
[392] Life and Sayings of Râmakṛishṇa. Trans. F. Max Müller, pp. 137-8. The English poet Crashaw makes free use of religious metaphors drawn from love and even Francis Thompson represents God as the lover of the Soul, e.g. in his poem Any Saint.
[393] Though surprising, it can be paralleled in modern times for Kabir (c. 1400) was identified by his later followers with the supreme spirit.
[394] Mahâbhâr. Sabhâp. XIV. Vishṇu Pur. V. xxxiv. The name also occurs in the Taittirîya Âraṇyaka (i. 31) a work of moderate if not great antiquity Nâzâyanâya vidmahe Vasudevâya dhîmahi.
[395] See. Vishṇu Pur. VI. V. See also Wilson, Vishṇu Purâṇa, I. pp. 2 and 17.
[396] Thus the Saura Purâṇa inveighs against the Mâdhva sect (XXXVIII.-XL.) and calls Vishṇu the servant of Śiva: a Purâṇic legal work called the Vriddha-Harita-Samhitâ is said to contain a polemic against Śiva. Occasionally we hear of collisions between the followers of Vishṇu and Śiva or the desecration of temples by hostile fanatics. But such conflicts take place most often not between widely different sects but between subdivisions of the same sect, e.g., Tengalais and Vadagalais. It would seem too that at present most Hindus of the higher castes avoid ostentatious membership of the modern sects, and though they may practise special devotion to either Vishṇu or Śiva, yet they visit the temples of both deities when they go on pilgrimages. Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya in his Hindu Castes and Sects says (p. 364) that aristocratic Brahmans usually keep in their private chapels both a salâgram representing Vishṇu and emblems representing Śiva and his spouse. Hence different observers vary in their estimates of the importance of sectarian divisions, some holding that sect is the essence of modern Hinduism and others that most educated Hindus do not worship a sectarian deity. The Kûrma Purâṇa, Part I. chap. XXII. contains some curious rules as to what deities should be worshipped by the various classes of men and spirits.
[397] Bhag.-gîtâ, XL. 23-34.
[398] See Srisa Chandra Vasu, Daily practice of the Hindus, p. 118.
[399] II. 1 and I. 1.
[400] See Maitrâyaṇa Up. V. 2. It is highly probable that the celebrated image at Elephanta is not a Trimûrti at all but a Maheśamûrti of Śiva. See Gopinâtha Rao, Hindu Iconog. II. 382.
CHAPTER XXVI
FEATURES OF HINDUISM: RITUAL, CASTE, SECT, FAITH
1
In the last chapter I traced the growth of the great gods Śiva and Vishṇu. The prominence of these figures is one of the marks which distinguish the later phase of Indian religion from the earlier. But it is also distinguished by various practices, institutions and beliefs, which are more or less connected with the new deities. Such are a new ritual, the elaboration of the caste system, the growth of sects, and the tendency to make devotion to a particular deity the essence of religion. In the present chapter I shall say something of these phenomena.
Hinduism has often and justly been compared to a jungle. As in the jungle every particle of soil seems to put forth its spirit in vegetable life and plants grow on plants, creepers and parasites on their more stalwart brethren, so in India art, commerce, warfare and crime, every human interest and aspiration seek for a manifestation in religion, and since men and women of all classes and occupations, all stages of education and civilization, have contributed to Hinduism, much of it seems low, foolish and even immoral. The jungle is not a park or garden. Whatever can grow in it, does grow. The Brahmans are not gardeners but forest officers. To attempt a history or description of Indian creeds seems an enterprise as vast, hopeless and pathless as a general account of European politics. As for many centuries the life of Europe has expressed itself in politics, so for even longer ages the life of India, which has more inhabitants than western Europe,[401] has found expression in religion, speculation and philosophy, and has left of all this thought a voluminous record, mighty in bulk if wanting in dates and events. And why should it chronicle them? The truly religious mind does not care for the history of religion, just as among us the scientific mind does not dwell on the history of science.
Yet in spite of their exuberance Hinduism and the jungle have considerable uniformity. Here and there in a tropical forest some well-grown tree or brilliant flower attracts attention, but the general impression left on the traveller by the vegetation as he passes through it mile after mile is infinite repetition as well as infinite luxuriance. And so in Hinduism. A monograph on one god or one teacher is an interesting study. But if we continue the experiment, different gods and different teachers are found to be much the same. We can write about Vishnuism and Śivaism as if they were different religions and this, though incomplete, is not incorrect. But in their higher phases both show much the same excellences and when degraded both lead to much the same abuses, except that the worship of Vishṇu does not allow animal sacrifices. This is true even of externals. In the temples of Madura, Poona and Benares, the deities, the rites, the doctrines, the race of the worshippers and the architecture are all different, yet the impression of uniformity is strong. In spite of divergences the religion is the same in all three places: it smacks of the soil and nothing like it can be found outside India.
Hinduism is an unusual combination of animism and pantheism, which are commonly regarded as the extremes of savage and of philosophic belief. In India both may be found separately but frequently they are combined in startling juxtaposition. The same person who worships Vishṇu as identical with the universe also worships him in the form of a pebble or plant.[402] The average Hindu, who cannot live permanently in the altitudes of pantheistic thought, regards his gods as great natural forces, akin to the mighty rivers which he also worships, irresistible and often beneficent but also capricious and destructive. Whereas Judaism, Christianity and Islam all identify the moral law with the will and conduct of the deity, in Hinduism this is not completely admitted in practice, though a library might be filled with the beautiful things that have been said about man and God. The outward forms of Indian religion are pagan after the fashion of the ancient world, a fashion which has in most lands passed away. But whereas in the fourth century A.D. European paganism, despite the efforts of anti-Christian eclectics, proved inelastic and incapable of satisfying new religious cravings, this did not happen in India. The bottles of Hinduism have always proved capable of holding all the wine poured into them. When a new sentiment takes possession of men's souls, such as love, repentance, or the sense of sin, some deity of many shapes and sympathies straightway adapts himself to the needs of his worshippers. And yet in so doing the deity, though he enlarges himself, does not change, and the result is that we often meet with strange anachronisms, as if Jephthah should listen appreciatively to the Sermon on the Mount and then sacrifice his daughter to Christ. Many Hindu temples are served by dancing girls who are admittedly prostitutes,[403] an institution which takes us back to the cultus of Corinth and Babylon and is without parallel in any nation on approximately the same level of civilization. Only British law prevents widows from being burned with their dead husbands, though even in the Vedic age the custom had been discontinued as barbarous.[404] But for the same legislation, human sacrifice would probably be common. What the gods do and what their worshippers do in their service cannot according to Hindu opinion be judged by ordinary laws of right and wrong. The god is supra-moral: the worshipper when he enters the temple leaves conventionality outside.
Yet it is unfair to represent Hinduism as characterized by licence and cruelty. Such tendencies are counterbalanced by the strength and prevalence of ideas based on renunciation and self-effacement. All desire, all attachment to the world is an evil; all self-assertion is wrong. Hinduism is constantly in extremes: sometimes it exults in the dances of Kṛishṇa or the destructive fury of Kâlî: more often it struggles for release from the transitory and for union with the permanent and real by self-denial or rather self-negation, which aims at the total suppression of both pleasure and pain. This is on the whole its dominant note.
In the records accessible to us the transition from Brahmanism—that is, the religion of the Vedas and Brâhmaṇas—to Hinduism does not appear as direct but as masked by Buddhism. We see Buddhism grow at the expense of Brahmanism. We are then conscious that it becomes profoundly modified under the influence of new ideas. We see it decay and the religion of the Brahmans emerge victorious. But that religion is not what it was when Buddhism first arose, and is henceforth generally known as Hinduism. The materials for studying the period in which the change occurred—say 400 B.C. to 400 A.D.—are not scanty, but they do not facilitate chronological investigation. Art and architecture are mainly Buddhist until the Gupta period (c. 320 A.D.) and literature, though plentiful, is undated. The Mahâbhârata and Râmâyaṇa must have been edited in the course of these 800 years, but they consist of different strata and it is not easy to separate and arrange them without assuming what we want to prove. From 400 B.C. (if not from an earlier date) onwards there grew up a great volume of epic poetry, founded on popular ballads, telling the stories of Râma and the Pâṇḍavas.[405] It was distinct from the canonical literatures of both Brahmans and Buddhists, but though it was not in its essential character religious, yet so general in India is the interest in religion that whole theological treatises were incorporated in these stories without loss, in Indian opinion, to the interest of the narrative. If at the present day a congregation is seen in a Hindu temple listening to a recitation, the text which is being chanted will often prove to be part of the Mahâbhârata. Such a ceremony is not due to forgetfulness of the Veda but is a repetition of what happened long before our era when rhapsodists strung together popular narratives and popular theology. Such theology cannot be rigidly separated from Brahmanism and Buddhism. It grew up under their influence and accepted their simpler ideas. But it brought with it popular beliefs which did not strictly speaking belong to either system. By attacking the main Brahmanic doctrines the Buddhists gave the popular religion its opportunity. For instance, they condemned animal sacrifices and derided the idea that trained priests and complicated rites are necessary. This did not destroy the influence of the Brahmans but it disposed them to admit that the Vedic sacrifices are not the only means of salvation and to authorize other rites and beliefs. It was about this time, too, that a series of invasions began to pour into India from the north-west. It may be hard to distinguish between the foreign beliefs which they introduced and the Indian beliefs which they accepted and modified. But it is clear that their general effect was to upset traditional ideas associated with a ritual and learning which required lifelong study.