Nânak and the Sîkhs.
It is a pity that we possess so little trustworthy information about the original Sîkh reformers. Their sacred book, the Granth, exists, nay, it has even been translated into English by the late Dr. Trumpp. But it turns out now that Dr. Trumpp was by no means a trustworthy translator. The language of the Granth is generally called old Penjâbi, and it was supposed that a scholar who knew modern Penjâbi might easily learn to understand the language as it was four hundred years ago. But that is not the case. The language of the Granth is said to be full of local dialectic varieties and forgotten idioms, so much so that it has been said to be without any grammar at all. That is, of course, impossible, for there is method even in what we might call grammatical madness, and we may hope that such a method may in time be discovered. Mr. Macauliffe, who has spent many years among the Sîkhs, and has with the help of their priests paid much attention to their Granth, has given us some most interesting and beautiful specimens of their poetry which form part of their sacred book. Though Nânak was the chief founder of the new religion of the Sîkhs, that is of the Sishyas or disciples, other well-known poets, such as Amgada, Râmdâs, Râmânand, Kabîr, Farîd (a Mussulman), and Mira Bir, a queen, are mentioned as his helpers and as contributors to the Granth. Râmânand, a Brâhman, or rather a Sannyâsin who had renounced many of the old ceremonial restrictions, on being asked one day to attend a Hindu religious worship, wrote the following lines:—
“Whither shall I go? I am happy at home,
My heart will not go with me; it has become a cripple.
One day my heart desired to go;
I ground sandal, took attar of roses and many perfumes,
And was proceeding to worship in the temple of Brahm;
But my spiritual guide showed me God in my heart.
Wherever I go I find only water and stones (for bathing and worshipping);
But thou, O God, art equally contained in everything.
The Vedas and the Purânas I have all seen and searched.
Go thou thither, if God be not here (in the heart).
O true Guru, I am a sacrifice unto Thee,
Who hast cut away all my perplexities and doubts.
Râmânand’s Lord is the all-pervading God,
The Guru’s word has cut away millions of acts (sins).”
Another and perhaps the greatest among the disciples of Nânak was Kabîr, i.e. the Great. He was strongly opposed to idol-worship. “If God is a stone,” he used to say, “I will worship a mountain.” Idol-worship was, of course, the greatest stumbling-block in the way of a reconciliation between Hinduism and Islam. Still the defenders of idol-worship and the iconoclastic Mohammedans managed to come to a certain understanding. They agreed to speak each his own language, but to feel that they meant the same. Why cannot Christians and Hindus do the same, particularly when the best spirits among the Hindus at least, have adopted a language which shows that they are very near the Kingdom of God, nearer, I believe, than thousands who are baptized and call themselves Christians? It is most interesting to watch the compromise made between Hinduism and Islam four hundred years ago and to compare it with the compromise between Hinduism and Christianity that is now so eloquently advocated by the followers of Rammohun Roy and Keshub Chunder Sen.
Kabîr said:—
“What availeth devotion, what penance, what fasting and worship,
To him in whose heart there is worldly love?
O man, apply thy heart to God:
Thou shalt not obtain Him by artifice.
Put away covetousness and regard for what people say of thee.
Renounce lust, wrath, and pride.
By the religious ceremonies (of the Hindus) conceit is produced,
That if they join and worship a stone (they shall receive salvation).
Saith Kabîr, by serving Him I have obtained the Lord.
By becoming simple in heart I have met my God.
How many wear the bark of trees as clothes! What if men dwell in the forest?
What availeth it, O man, to offer incense to idols and drench thy body with ablutions?
O my soul, I know that thou shalt depart.
O silly one, know God!
Wherever I look I see none but those who are entangled in worldly love.
Men of Divine knowledge and meditation, great preachers, all are engrossed in this world’s affairs.
Saith Kabîr, without the name of the One God, this world is blinded by Mammon.
By the favour of the Guru the slave Kabîr loveth God.
O Brethren, the Vedas and Mohammedan books are lies, and free not the mind from anxiety.
If for a moment thou restrain thy mind, God shall appear before thee.
O man, search thy heart daily, that thou mayest not fall into despair.
This world is a magic show which hath no tangibility.
Men read falsehood and are pleased; they quarrel over what they do not understand.
The truth is, the Creator is contained in the Creation. He is not of a blue colour, like Krishna.”
Nânak himself expresses his devotion to the true God in the following words:—
“Were a mansion of pearls erected and inlaid with gems for me,
Perfumed with musk, fragrant aloe, and sandal, so as to confer delight—
May it not be that on beholding it I should forget Thee and not remember Thy name!
My soul burneth without God.
I have ascertained from my Guru that there is no other shelter than thou, O God.
Were the earth to be studded with diamonds and rubies, and my couch to be similarly adorned,
Were fascinating damsels, whose faces shine with jewels, to shed lustre and diffuse pleasure,
May it not be that on beholding them, I should forget Thee, and not remember Thy name!”
The following verses will show what was in the mind of Nânak and of his followers, and we know from history how well their labours for conciliation between Hindus and Mohammedans succeeded, at least for a time, and how what seems to us impossible at present was fully achieved by them. Rammohun Roy and Keshub Chunder Sen would gladly have joined in the following words of the Granth:—
“Some men are Hindus and some Musalmans.
Among the latter are Rawazis, Imams, and Sufis; know that all men are of the same caste.
The Creator and the Beneficent are the same; the Provider and the Merciful are the same, there is no difference, let no one suppose so even by mistake.
Worship the One God, He is the one Divine Guru after all; know that His form is one, and that He is the one light diffused in all.
The Temple and the Mosque are the same, the Hindu worship and the Musalman prayer are the same; all men are the same; it is through error they appear different.
Allah and Alekh are the same, the Purânas and the Korân are the same; they are all alike, it is the One God who created all.”
No wonder then that Rammohun Roy and Keshub Chunder Sen should have been hopeful that their endeavours also might be crowned by the same success as Nânak’s, and that their new Church would have included not only the believers in the Vedas and the Korân, but the believers in the Bible also. They both tried very hard to come to an understanding with the representatives of Christianity in India. It is the same even now. There are men who can speak in the name of the Indian people at large, and whose example would tell on the masses who in every country have to be led by their own men of light and leading. Mozoomdar, the natural successor of Keshub Chunder Sen, would not recede a step from the position which his great predecessors took up with regard to Christianity. The idea that his Samâj was in any sense opposed to Christianity or jealous of it would be scouted by him as it was by Keshub Chunder Sen. “Woe unto me,” Keshub wrote, “if ever I harboured in my mind the remotest desire to found a new sect, and thus add to the already accumulated evils of sectarianism! Woe unto us, if I ever conceived the project of setting up a movement against the Church of Christ! Perish these lips if they utter a word of rebellion against Jesus. And let the genial currents of my life-blood be curdled at this very moment, if I glory in the hateful ambition of rising against my master. A new sect! God forbid. We preach not a new sect, but the death of sectarianism and the universal reconciliation of all churches. But the very idea of an eclectic church, it will be contended, is anti-Christian. To mix up Christ with the hundred and one creeds of the world is to destroy and deny Christ. To mix Christ with what? With error, with impurity? No. Mix Christ with all that is Christian in other creeds. Surely that is not un-Christian, far less anti-Christian. In uniting the East and the West, in uniting Asiatic and European faith and character, the Church of the New Dispensation works faithfully upon the lines laid down by Christ, and only seeks to amalgamate the Western Christ and the Eastern Christ. It is not a treaty of Christ with anti-Christ that is proposed, but the reconciliation of all in Christ. It is not the mixture of purity with impurity, of truth with falsehood, of light with darkness, but the fusion of all types of purity, truth, and light in all systems of faith into one integral whole. It is the expurgation of anti-Christian elements from the so-called Christian and heathen creeds of the world, and the amalgamation of the pure Christian residuum left. Such is the pure Christian electicism of the Church of the New Dispensation.”
Men of the type of Rammohun Roy could not, and did not, shut their eyes to the superiority of Christianity from an ethical point of view. They despised in their heart the idols, as worshipped by the vulgar, they saw through the pretensions of their priests, and had long learnt to doubt the efficacy of their sacrifices. But their social institutions were so intimately interwoven with their religion that it required no small amount of moral courage openly to break with it, and to lose caste, that is, to become estranged from all relations, friends, and acquaintances. But while they clearly perceived that their religion was behind the time, and, as a social institution, could not stand long against Christianity, they were by no means inclined to admit that from a philosophical point of view also it was inferior to Christianity. Then was the time when Christianity might have stepped forth in its strong armour and gained its greatest victories in India. Rammohun Roy and his friends were ready. He himself spoke with the greatest humility of the ancient Hindu religion; nay, in conversations with his English friends, he used language far too depreciatory, as it seems to me, of the religious and philosophical inheritance of India. Then was the time to act, but there were no Christian ambassadors to grasp the hands that were stretched out. Such missionaries as were in India then, wanted unconditional surrender and submission, not union or conciliation. In many cases they were themselves fettered by superstitions which men of the type of Rammohun Roy had long discarded. We keep religion and philosophy in different compartments, while with men such as Rammohun Roy the two were one, and the religion of the Veda led naturally on to the philosophy of the Vedânta, which became in turn the firm foundation of their religion. The Vedânta philosophy was so broad that it could well have served as a common ground for religions so different as Hinduism and Christianity undoubtedly are, both in the form of Gñâna (knowledge) and of Bhakti (devotion). Rammohun Roy went so far that, when he was in England, it was doubtful whether he, in his mind a Vedântist, was not in his heart a Christian. He spoke with the highest respect and enthusiasm of Christianity, he carefully studied the New Testament, and he willingly joined in Christian worship. Though after his death the Brâhmanic thread was found on his breast, this does not prove that he would not have been willing to surrender that also, if he had met with a real response from his Christian friends on more important subjects. We shall see that some of his followers surrendered even that outward badge of Brâhmanism, but they could not surrender that ineradicable belief in the substantial identity of the eternal element in God and in man. A man like Athanasius might easily have brought them to call this consubstantiality the divine sonship of man, if that expression had been fully explained to the Vedântists. But no one was there, nay, no one seems even now bold enough to speak out, and to separate the vital kernel from the perishable crust of religion. That vital kernel was more clearly seen by Rammohun Roy than by many of the missionaries who came to convert him. In Rammohun Roy’s translation of the Upanishads we can clearly see that in his view of the Deity and of the relation between the human and the Divine he had never yielded an inch of his old Hindu convictions, though his practical religion was saturated with Christian sentiments. The same mixture of Christian and Hindu thoughts and Christian sentiments may be seen in nearly all the recent reformers of the ancient Hindu religion. The history of these attempted reforms has been so often written that I need not enter more fully into it, beyond repeating my conviction that great opportunities were lost then for planting Christianity on the old and fertile soil of India.
As to Keshub Chunder Sen he was more of a true Christian than many who call themselves Christians, and who are Christians in the ordinary sense of the word. And he knew it and did not deny it. Only he thought that Christianity should not be confined to a small sect, but should comprehend all religions. As Nânak had declared that what was wanted was a religion in which there were all religions, Keshub Chunder Sen also held that Jesus and Moses, Chaitanya and Buddha, Mohammed and Nânak should all become one before God. His New Dispensation was to embrace and unify all religions, all scriptures, and all prophets in God, and India was to be the birth-place of that all-embracing religion, because it was the birth-place of the Vedic and the Buddhist religions, and the meeting-place of Christianity and Islam. In one of the last numbers of the “New Dispensation,” the organ of the followers of Keshub Chunder Sen, we read:—
“Who rules India? What power is that which sways the destinies of India at the present moment? You are mistaken if you think that it is the ability of Lord Lytton in the cabinet or the military genius of Sir Frederick Haines in the field that rules India. It is not politics, it is not diplomacy that has laid a firm hold of the Indian heart. It is not the glittering bayonet nor the fiery cannon of the British army that can make our people loyal. No. None of these can hold India in subjection. Armies never conquered the heart of a nation. Muscular force and prowess never made a man’s head and heart bow before a foreign power. No. If you wish to secure the attachment and allegiance of India, it must be through spiritual influence and moral suasion. And such indeed has been the case in India. You cannot deny that your hearts have been touched, conquered, and subjugated by a superior power. That power need I tell you—is Christ. It is Christ who rules British India, and not the British Government. England has sent out a tremendous moral force in the life and character of that mighty prophet, to conquer and hold this vast empire. None but Jesus ever deserved this bright, this precious diadem, India, and Jesus shall have it.”
Is it not time to lay hold of these outstretched hands, and not reject them any longer with a cold non possumus?
After Rammohun Roy’s death there was a pause, for nothing moves in India without a leader, and, though there were followers of the enlightened Râjah, there was for a time no leader of sufficient strength to inspire enthusiasm and to command respect. What happens generally to religious reformers happened in India also. They all agreed in wishing for reform in general, but when it came to settling special reforms, some of no importance whatever, they soon diverged in different directions.
Those who are acquainted with the Vedas, I mean with the hymns and Brâhmanas, find it hard to understand how people of enlightened intellect could have hesitated for years and years before deciding against their revealed character. These hymns are not only old, they are antiquated and effete, they have no right, like megatheria of old, to hover about in the strata in which we live. We are ready to give them a place of honour in our museums, but we cannot allow ourselves to be swayed by them any longer. This may seem a harsh judgment, especially as coming from one who has devoted the best years of his life to the publication of the Rig-Veda, and who certainly has never regretted having done so, as little as he would regret having been the first to unearth the bones of the oldest of all megatheria, or the ruins of Babylon or Nineveh. I am not unaware that there are sparks of profound truth in some of the Vedic hymns, but they form a small portion only of that large collection, and have been brought into focus in the Upanishads and in the Vedânta-Sûtras. With these neither Rammohun Roy nor Keshub Chunder Sen nor Mozoomdar would be willing to part, but to break with anything called Veda was by no means an easy task, even for men of enlightened minds, nor can there be any doubt that the surrender when it took place at last, involved an enormous sacrifice. All that Keshub himself tells us in one of his Lectures is that there was a terrible strife, the strife of conscience against associations of mind and place; duty against prepossessions; truth against cherished convictions. But conscience triumphed over all; the Vedas were thrown overboard by Babu Debendranâth Tagore; and the Brâhma-Samâj bade farewell to their Bible. This step was particularly painful, because all these struggles had to go on before the eyes of foreign observers. In their controversies with the advocates of Christianity, who claimed all the privileges of a revelation for their own Bible, the invariable answer of men like Rammohun Roy had been for a long time “that the Veda also had for thousands of years been considered as divinely inspired.” And who could prove that it was not? Arguments in support of the revealed character of the Veda were quickly at hand, for they had been carefully prepared by the ancient theologians of India. And, if the truth must be told, the ideas which missionaries connected with revelation were mostly not very different from those familiar to the Brâhmans. “What argument is there,” the Indian apologists asked, “in support of the revealed character of your New Testament which is not equally applicable to the Vedas?” The Buddhists had already said the same to the Brâhmans, though for the sake of argument only, hundreds of years before. “If your Kapila is inspired,” they said, “why not our Buddha?” In the same spirit the Brâhmans now said, “If your Christian revelation is claimed as infallible, why should not the Vedic revelation be the same?” The fact was that on one side, as well as on the other, the idea of revelation had lost its original and true meaning; had become purely mechanical, a mere name to conjure with. But the more revelation had become something miraculous in the eyes of the people of India, the more creditable was it that the members of the Brâhma-Samâj, founded by Rammohun Roy, after becoming better acquainted with their own sacred writings than they ever had been before, should solemnly have declared in the year 1850, that the claim of being divinely inspired could no longer be maintained in favour of the hymns and Brâhmanas of the Veda. I know of no other instance in the whole history of religions that equals the honesty and self-denial of the members of the Brâhma-Samâj in their throwing down and levelling the ramparts of their own fortress, and opening the gates wide for any messengers of truth. Their honesty will appear all the more creditable when we remember that they were by no means inclined to discard the Vedas altogether, but only declared that reverence for the Deity prevented them from claiming any longer anything like divine workmanship or penmanship for the whole of it. It is a pity that we know so little of the mental struggles through which men like Keshub Chunder Sen and his friends had to pass before they could bring themselves to let go the chief anchor of their religious faith. But Hindus keep their agonies to themselves. No doubt they lose thereby much of that human sympathy which we feel for others who lay open their inmost hearts before us, while slowly surrendering their old for a new, a purer, and a better faith. It is very rare that we are allowed an insight into the home-life and heart-life of eminent Hindus. The female members of their families, the mothers, wives, and sisters, who with us take often so prominent a place in religious struggles, are excluded from our sight altogether. But we know that in India also their influence as mothers and wives is very great. I have several times heard from my more enlightened friends in India that they would like to come to England, or would like to do this or that, but that they shrink from offending their wives or mothers. Women in India, ignorant as they may be, wield great power in their own homes, and it is a common saying that it is easier to defy H. M.’s Secretary of State than to defy one’s own mother-in-law. Though mothers and wives are much less enlightened than their husbands and sons, it is for that very reason that they feel the apostasy of their beloved all the more deeply. It is everywhere a more severe trial for a woman than for a man to lose caste, and to lose caste means more in India than it does with us. When now and then we catch a glimpse of what is going on in the sanctuary of an Indian home, we learn that human nature is the same everywhere. Thus we read of the old mother of Keshub Chunder Sen, who must have felt her son’s discarding of his old religion very keenly, standing by his deathbed and lamenting that she, poor sinner, should be left behind, while the dearest jewel of her heart was being plucked away from her! And the dying one answers, “Don’t say so, dear mother. All that is good in me I have inherited from you; all that I call my own is yours.” So saying, he took the dust of her feet and put it upon his head.
When Keshub Chunder Sen arrived in England, he was received with open arms, particularly by the Unitarians. Wherever he spoke or preached, he attracted immense audiences, and his command of the English language, nay his real eloquence produced a deep impression on the religious public in London and elsewhere. I regretted that there was no opportunity of his addressing the young men when he came to Oxford. I was very anxious also that Dr. Pusey should see him, and the kind-hearted old Doctor, friendly as he always was to me, was willing to receive him and to hear what he had to say. Though Dr. Pusey was a scholar, and, as such, above many of the prejudices of his followers, he was not particularly pleased with the speeches made by Keshub Chunder Sen, nor was his close relation with the Unitarians to his theological taste. Still he received him with friendly sympathy, and some very serious questions of religion were discussed by the two men with great freedom. I never kept memoranda even of such important meetings and discussions at which I happened to be present. I thought they would remain engraved on my memory. But now, after the lapse of so many years, I find that it is not so. I have indeed the general impression remaining in my mind, but I cannot trust myself to repeat the actual words that passed, and it would not be fair to give what one thinks was said by such men as Dr. Pusey and Keshub Chunder Sen, when brought face to face, as if it were what was actually said by them. In conversation I have often repeated what passed between them, and this very repetition is apt to mislead a poor memory like my own. I know I cannot trust it as to minute details. I remember, however, very distinctly, how at the end of their conversation, the question turned up, whether those who were born and bred as members of a non-Christian religion could be saved. Keshub Chunder Sen and myself pleaded for it, Dr. Pusey held his ground against us. Much of course depended on what was meant by salvation, and Keshub defined it as an uninterrupted union with God. “My thoughts,” he said, “are never away from God;” and he added, “my life is a constant prayer, and there are but few moments in the day when I am not praying to God.” This, uttered with great warmth and sincerity, softened Dr. Pusey’s heart. “Then you are all right,” he said, and they parted as friends, both deeply moved.
I must say for Dr. Pusey, much as I differed from his views, and much as I regretted some of the steps he took at Oxford, where his influence for a time was very great, he always tolerated me, and befriended me on different occasions. We had a common ground as scholars, and whenever I seemed to go too far for him, I well remember his looking up to the clouds and saying, “Oh, I see you are a German still.” When my friends first submitted to the Delegates of the University Press at Oxford my plan of publishing, whether at Oxford or at Vienna, translations of all the Sacred Books of the East, Dr. Pusey, being a Delegate and a very influential Delegate, strongly supported my plan, only stipulating that the Old and New Testaments should not be included. In vain did I explain to him that these two books could never have a better setting than in the frame formed by the other Sacred Books, and my firm conviction that the time would come when the gap thus left would be greatly regretted; but he remained unshaken. I had to give up a wish that was very near to my heart in order to save the rest, but I still hope that hereafter these two, the most important of the Sacred Books of the East, will find their proper place in my collection. Nothing will serve better to show the difference between these and the rest of the Sacred Books, and to make us see both what they share in common with the rest, and what it is that has given to them the overwhelming influence which they have exercised on the highest destinies of the human race.
When Keshub Chunder Sen was staying with me at Oxford, I had a good opportunity of watching him. I always found him perfectly tranquil, even when most in earnest, and all his opinions were clear and settled. He never claimed any merit for the sacrifices he had made, he rather smiled at what was past, and seldom complained of his opponents, except when they accused him of having been a traitor to his own cause by allowing his daughter to be betrothed and married to the Mahârâjah of Kuch Behar, before she had reached, by a few months, the marriageable age which he and his friends had themselves fixed for all members of the Brâhma-Samâj. This is too long and too complicated a story to be told here; but, whether the father had shown any paternal weakness or not, there was surely no cause for his former friends to separate from him on so paltry a ground, to insult him and to break his heart, and in the end to produce a fatal schism in the Brâhma-Samâj. When Keshub Chunder Sen introduced new reforms, surrendering the Vedas, abandoning the Brâhmanic thread, sanctioning widow marriages, and forbidding child-marriages, his society, hitherto called the Brâhma-Samâj, assumed the new name of the Brâhma-Samâj of India (1861), while the more conservative Brâhmas[[6]] under Debendranâth Tagore, were distinguished by the name of Âdi Brâhma-Samâj, or the first Brâhma-Samâj. Those who later on separated again from Keshub Chunder Sen, because they disapproved of the marriage of his daughter, and objected to his claiming, or seeming to claim for himself the gift of inspiration and a higher authority than was right for any human being, assumed the new name of Sadhârana Brâhma-Samâj or the Catholic Society of Brâhmas. These different sections carry on the same work, each in its own way. Some see in these divisions signs of healthy vitality, others regret them, as impeding the more rapid advance of a powerful army. The points of difference are so few and so insignificant that it only requires a strong arm to weld them together once more. Protâp Chunder Mozoomdar seemed pointed out for this, and it is to be hoped that he may still succeed in the great work of conciliation.
Many of those who bore the burden of the day, and without whose ready help Keshub Chunder Sen would hardly have been able to achieve what he did achieve in his short life, are by this time dead and forgotten. Even Debendranâth Tagore’s constant help and patronage are seldom recognised as they deserve to be in the history of the Brâhma-Samâj. The memory of Hurrish Chunder Mookerjee has lately been revived by the republication of his Three Lectures on Religious Subjects (Calcutta, 1887); and it was his recent death (August, 1898) that reminded the friends of India of the sacrifices made by Râmtonoo Lahari and others in support of the reforms initiated by Rammohun Roy.