ABBREVIATIONS.
Amalnerkar: Amalnerkar, Priority of the Vedanta-Sutras over the Bhagavadgītā.
Bose, H. C.: Bose, Hindu Civilization under British Rule.
Deussen: Deussen, Sechzig Upanishad’s des Veda.
Dutt, C. A. I.: Dutt, Civilization in Ancient India.
G.: The Gītā.
Garbe: Garbe, The Philosophy of Ancient India.
Gough: Gough, The Philosophy of the Upanishads.
Hopkins, R. I.: Hopkins, The Religions of India.
Hopkins, G. E. I.: Hopkins, The Great Epic of India.
Kaegi: Kaegi, The Rigveda (Arrowsmith’s translation).
Kidd, P. W. C.: Kidd, Principles of Western Civilization.
Krishnacharitra: Bunkim Chundra Chatterji, Krishnacharitra, fourth edition.
Macdonell: Macdonell, Sanskrit Literature.
Mommsen: Mommsen, History of Rome.
Monier-Williams: Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism.
Müller, A. S. L.: Müller, Ancient Sanskrit Literature, second edition.
Müller, S. S. I. P.: Müller, Six Systems of Indian Philosophy.
S. B. E.: The Sacred Books of the East.
Schürer, H. J. P.: Schürer, History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ.
Seal: Brajendra Nath Seal, Comparative Studies in Vaishnavism and Christianity.
Telang: Telang, The Bhagavadgītā, &c. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. VIII.)
Weber, I. L.: Weber, Indian Literature.
CHAPTER I.
WHAT IS THE BHAGAVADGITA?
In the whole literature of the world there are few poems worthy of comparison, either in point of general interest, or of practical influence, with the Bhagavadgītā. It is a philosophical work, yet fresh and readable as poetry; a book of devotion, yet drawing its main inspiration from speculative systems; a dramatic scene from the most fateful battle of early Indian story, yet breathing the leisure and the subtleties of the schools; founded on a metaphysical theory originally atheistic,[[1]] yet teaching the most reverent adoration of the Lord of all: where shall we find a more fascinating study? Then its influence on educated India has been and still is without a rival. Everybody praises the Upanishads, but very few read them; here and there one finds a student who turns the pages of a Sūtra or looks into Sankara or Rāmānuja, but the most are content to believe without seeing. The Gītā, on the other hand, is read and loved by every educated man. Nor is there any need to apologize for this partiality: the Divine Song is the loveliest flower in the garden of Sanskrit literature.
For the Western mind also the poem has many attractions. The lofty sublimity to which it so often rises, the practical character of much of its teaching, the enthusiastic devotion to the one Lord which breathes through it, and the numerous resemblances it shows to the words of Christ, fill it with unusual interest for men of the West. But while it has many points of affinity with the thought and the religion of Europe, it is nevertheless a genuine product of the soil;[[2]] indeed it is all the more fit to represent the genius of India that its thought and its poetry are lofty enough to draw the eyes of the West.
What, then, is the Gītā? Can we find our way to the fountain whence the clear stream flows?
A. When the dwelling-place of the ancient Aryan tribes was partly on the outer, partly on the inner, side of the Indus (primeval patronymic of both India and her religion), and the tribesmen were equally at home on the farm and on the battlefield, then it was that the mass of the lyrics that form the Rigveda were made. We need not stay to set forth the various ways in which this unique body of poetry is of value to modern thought. For us it is of interest because it gives us the earliest glimpse of the religion of the Indo-Aryans. That religion is polytheistic and naturalistic. The Vedic hymns laud the powers of nature and natural phenomena as personal gods. They praise also, as distinct powers, the departed fathers. Such is undoubtedly the general character of the religion of that age. On the other hand, the hymns to Varuna bring us very near monotheism indeed.[[3]]
It is, however, only at a later period when the Aryan conquest had moved out of the Punjab to the South and West, and just on the eve of the formation of the Rigveda as a collection of religious hymns, that we find the beginnings of philosophic speculation.[[4]] A few hymns, chiefly in the tenth Mondol, ask questions about the origin of the universe, and venture some naive guesses on that tremendous subject. Some of the hymns[[5]] take for granted the existence of primeval matter, and ask how or by whom it was transformed into a cosmos. In others[[6]] there is more monotheistic feeling, and a Creator, either Hiranyagarbha or Visvakarman, is described. In others[[7]] the strain of thought is agnostic.
B. With the collection of the hymns of the Rigveda we pass into a new and very different period, the literature of which is altogether priestly. To this age belong the two great sacerdotal manuals, the Sāmaveda[[8]] or Chant-book, and the Yajurveda[[9]] or Sacrifice-book, and those extraordinary collections of priestly learning, mythology and mysticism, the Brāhmanas.[[10]] These books introduce us to changed times and changed men, to new places and a new range of ideas. The fresh poetry of the youth of India has given place to the most prosaic and uninteresting disquisitions in the whole world.[[11]] The home of this literature is the great holy land of Brahman culture, stretching from the Sutlej on the West to the junction of the Jumna and the Ganges at Prayāga.[[12]] In this period the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul first appears.[[13]]
C. The Aranyakas[[14]] and Upanishads[[15]] place before us a further development of Indian religion. Reflection led to the perception of the great truth, that the kernel of religion is not the ritual act but the heart of piety behind it. Many a man who had found the endless formulæ and the showy ceremonial of the sacrifice a serious hindrance to real religion, sought refuge from the noise and distraction of the popular cult in the lonely silence of forest or desert. To run over the sacrifice in one’s own mind, they reasoned, was as acceptable to the gods as to kill the horse or to pour the ghee upon the altar fire. But they soon reached the further position, that for the man who has attained TRUE KNOWLEDGE sacrifice is altogether unnecessary. For knowledge of the world-soul emancipates a man from the chain of births and deaths and leads to true felicity. The main purpose, thus, of the Upanishads, is to expound the nature of the world-soul. Their teaching is by no means uniform. Not only do the separate treatises differ the one from the other; contradictory ideas are frequently to be met with in the same book. They all tend to idealistic monism; they all agree in identifying the soul of man with the world-soul; but on the questions, whether the latter is personal or impersonal, how spirit and matter are related, and how the human soul will join the divine soul after death, there is no unanimity.[[16]]
There is thus no speculative system to be drawn from these books. Those of their ideas that are held with settled, serious conviction, are taught rather dogmatically than philosophically; and, on the other hand, where there is freedom of thought, there is rather a groping after the truth than any definite train of illuminative reasoning. Yet this occasional, conversational, unconventional character gives these simple and sincere treatises their greatest charm, and fits them for that devotional use to which so many generations of pious readers have put them. To this early period there belong only the first great group of prose Upanishads, the Brihadāranyaka, Chāndogya, Taittirīya, Aitareya, Kaushītaki and parts of the Kena.[[17]]
D. In bold contrast to this unsystematic meditation on the Eternal Spirit there stands out the severe, clear-cut, scientific system of Kapila,[[18]] the first Indian thinker who dared to trust the unaided human mind. Buddhist tradition recognizes that he preceded Buddha, and connects him with Kapila-vastu, the birth-place of Buddha, the site of which was discovered as recently as December 1896.[[19]] He drew a sharp distinction between matter and spirit and declared both to be eternal, without beginning and without end. The material universe develops in accordance with certain laws out of primeval matter, prakriti. Spirit, on the other hand, exists as an indefinite number of individual souls, each eternal. There is no supreme divine spirit. The value of this system lies chiefly in its severely logical method, which demands that all reasoning shall proceed from the known elements of experience. It has exercised a very great influence on Indian thought, partly by its method, but still more perhaps through its cardinal ideas, the eternity of matter, the eternity of individual souls, the three gunas, the great cosmic periods, and kaivalya, i. e., the attainment of salvation through the separation of the soul from matter. This great system is known by the name Sānkhya, i. e., enumeration, seemingly on account of the numbering of the twenty-five tattvas, or principles, which it sets forth.[[20]]
Such is the Sānkhya system; but it would be dangerous to affirm that the whole came from Kapila; for no treatise written by him has come down. The earliest systematic manual of the philosophy extant to-day is the Sānkhya-Kārikā of Isvara-Krishna, which dates from the early Christian centuries.[[21]]
E. Shortly after the Sānkhya system, and in close dependence upon it, there appeared Buddhism and Jainism; but as these great religions exercised no very definite influence on the main stream of Indian thought for several centuries, we shall not linger over them.
F. We notice next the second great group of Upanishads, the Katha, Isā, Svetāsvatara, Mundaka, Mahānārāyana,[[22]] which are all written in verse. That this group is later than the great prose Upanishads is abundantly clear from the changed form as well as from the more developed matter. “As contrasted with the five above-mentioned Upanishads with their awkward Brāhmana style and their allegorical interpretations of the ritual, the Katha Upanishad belongs to a very different period, a time in which men began to coin the gold of Upanishad thought into separate metrical aphorisms, and to arrange them together in a more or less loose connection.”[[23]] Further signs of their belonging to another stage of thought are their references, more or less clear, to the Sānkhya and Yoga philosophies,[[24]] and their tendency to adopt the doctrine of Grace,[[25]] i.e., that salvation is not a fruit of true knowledge, but a gift of God. The idea of Bhakti, which became afterwards so popular, appears in this group of Upanishads only once.[[26]] Here also for the first time in Sanskrit literature the word Sānkhya occurs as the name of a system.[[27]]
But while these five metrical treatises are clearly later than the prose Upanishads, scholars are not agreed on the question of their relation to the great systems. Some[[28]] hold that the Katha is earlier, others[[29]] that it is later, than Buddhism; Weber[[30]] believes that the Svetāsvatara, Mundaka, and Mahānārāyana depend not only on Kapila’s system, but also on the Yoga Sūtras of Patanjali (see below), while others[[31]] believe that in these Upanishads we have scattered pieces of teaching which were later systematized. But whatever be the truth on these points, it is clear that these five are posterior to the first group, that their relative age is Katha, Isā, Svetāsvatara, Mundaka and Mahānārāyana,[[32]] and that this last belongs to quite a late date.[[33]] Along with these verse Upanishads we may take three prose works, which are manifestly still later,[[34]] the Prasna, Maitrāyanīya and Māndūkya.
G. Several centuries after the Sānkhya there appeared the Yoga philosophy, the text-book of which is the Yoga Sūtras. According to Indian tradition the founder of the school and the author of the Sūtras was Patanjali,[[35]] the well-known scholar who wrote the Mahābhāshya on Pānini’s grammar. He accepts the metaphysics of the Sānkhya system, but postulates the existence of a personal god, and urges the value of Yoga practices for the attainment of Kaivalya, that isolation of the soul from matter, which, according to Kapila, is true salvation. Thus not one of the three main elements of his system is original; for Yoga practices have existed from a very early date in India. Yet his system is sufficiently marked off from others, first by his combination of Yoga practices with Sānkhya principles and a theistic theology, and, secondly, by his systematic treatment of Yoga methods.[[36]]
H. Later still than the Yoga philosophy is the systematic statement of the Vedānta point of view by Bādarāyana in his Sūtras, which are known either as Brahma-sūtras, Sārīraka-sūtras or Vedānta-sūtras.[[37]]
I. We next notice the latest development of Upanishad teaching, namely, that found in the Upanishads of the Atharvaveda. With the exception of three, namely, the Mundaka, Prasna and Māndūkya Upanishads, which we have already noticed, they are all very late.[[38]] They fall into four great groups, according as they teach (a) pure Vedantism, (b) Yoga practices, (c) the life of the Sannyāsin, or (d) Sectarianism.[[39]] For our purpose the last of the four is of the most importance. “These sectarian treatises interpret the popular gods Siva (under various names, such as Isāna, Mahesvara, Mahādeva) and Vishnu (as Nārāyana and Nrishinha) as personifications of the Atman. The different Avatārs of Vishnu are here regarded as human manifestations of the Atman.”[[40]] Let readers note that the doctrine of Avatārs is quite unknown in the Vedas, the Brāhmanas, the early Upanishads and the Sūtras.[[41]] We may also note that in groups (a) and (b) we find what is not found in earlier Upanishads, namely, the phrase Sānkhya-Yoga used as the name of a system.[[42]] Here also the doctrines of Grace and Bhakti, the beginnings of which we found in the verse Upanishads, are regularly taught.
J. The last development that we need mention is the teaching of the Mahābhārata and Manu. We take them together, not only because each of them is the final product of long centuries of growth and compilation, but because they are so closely related to each other in origin, that it is hardly possible to take them separately.[[43]] In the first book of the Mahābhārata we are told that the poem originally consisted of only 8,800 slokas, and that at a later date the number was 24,000. The complete work now contains over 100,000 slokas.[[44]] We need not here enquire when the simple heroic lays were composed, which lie at the basis of the great composition as it has come down to us; nor need we stay to decide at what period it finally reached its present labyrinthine structure and immense dimensions.[[45]] It is sufficient for our purpose to notice that scientific investigations have laid bare four stages in the formation of the Epic:—(a) early heroic songs, strung together into some kind of unity: this is the stage recognised in Book I, when the poem had only 8,800 slokas, and is in all probability the point at which it is referred to by Asvalāyana; (b) a Mahābhārata story with Pandu heroes, and Krishna as a demi-god: this is the form in which it had 24,000 slokas, and is the stage of the poem referred to by Pānini; (c) the Epic re-cast, with Krishna as All-god, and a great deal of didactic matter added; (d) later interpolations.[[46]] Scholars are able to fix, within certain limits, the dates of these various stages. We need not attempt to be so precise: for us it is enough that the representation of Krishna as the Atman belongs to the third stage of the growth of the Epic. Parallel with this third stage is the final redaction of Manu.[[47]] The philosophic standpoint of these two great works is practically the same, being now the Sānkhya-Yoga, now a mixture of Sānkhya, Yoga and Vedantic elements.[[48]]
But the main thing to notice is that in these books we are already in modern Hinduism. Turning from the Vedas to them we find ourselves in an altogether new world. There are many new gods; most of the old divinities have fallen to subordinate places. New customs, new names and ideas are found everywhere. The language too has changed: new words, new expressions and new forms occur in plenty; old words occur in new senses; while many others have disappeared.[[49]]
Let us now turn to the Gītā. What is its place in this long succession? Clearly it is posterior, not only to our first, but also to our second group of Upanishads. For it echoes the Katha, the Svetāsvatara, and several of the others repeatedly;[[50]] its versification is decidedly later in character;[[51]] the doctrines of Grace and of Bhakti, which are found in these Upanishads only in germ, are fully developed in the Gītā;[[52]] while the whole theory of Krishna is a fresh growth.
The Gītā may also be shewn to belong to the same age as the Atharvan Upanishads. It has in common with them (a) the identification of Krishna and Vishnu with the Atman, (b) the doctrine of Avatārs,[[53]] (c) the doctrines of Grace and Bhakti, (d) the Sānkhya-Yoga.
But we may go further, and show that the Gītā is in its teaching, in general, parallel with the third stage of the Mahābhārata and with Manu. For while the usual philosophic standpoint in the Song is Sānkhya-Yoga, there are frequent lapses to the Vedānta; and there is an evident effort here and there to combine all three.[[54]] This is precisely the position of Manu and the Epic, as we have seen. Note that in the Gītā the Yoga philosophy is already old, so old that it has fallen into decay, and requires to be resuscitated.[[55]] The Sānkhya is not a loose group of ideas, but a formed system, as appears from the phrases Sānkhya-Kritānta[[56]] and Guna-sankhyāna.[[57]] Kapila, its author, is so far in the past that he is canonized as the chief of the Siddhas.[[58]] There are many minor points which the Gītā holds in common with the Mahābhārata, and which are not found earlier. The latter half of the tenth chapter is full of Epic mythology. There Skanda is the great warrior-god,[[59]] as in the Mahābhārata,[[60]] there too we find the horse Uccaihsravas,[[61]] the elephant Airāvata,[[62]] the snake Vāsuki,[[63]] the fish Makara.[[64]] Nirvāna is used in the Gītā[[65]] for ‘highest bliss,’ ‘Brahmic bliss,’ precisely as in the Epic.[[66]] In the Mahābhārata Bhīshma, after receiving his mortal wound, has to wait for the Uttarāyana (the northward journey of the sun), i. e., he has to wait until the sun passes the southern solstice, before he can die in safety.[[67]] In the Gītā we find a similar idea: only those devotees who die during the Uttarāyana go to Brahman; those who die during the Dakshināvana return to earth.[[68]] This dogma is not found in the early Upanishads nor yet in the Sūtras.[[69]]
A study of the language of the Gītā[[70]] leads to the same conclusion. A portion of its vocabulary is the same as that of the first group of Upanishads; a larger portion coincides with our second group; a still larger coincides with the diction of the Atharvan group; and finally, much that is found in no Upanishad is characteristic of the Epic.
We need not attempt to fix the date[[71]] of the poem, for that is not only impossible as yet, but is quite unnecessary for our purpose. What we wish to do is to show that the religious literature of India displays a long, regular, evolutionary process, that the Gītā belongs to the same period as the third stage of the Mahābhārata, and is itself clearly the result of all the preceding development.
Can we then accept the declaration of the poem itself, that it was uttered by Krishna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra?—That necessarily depends upon the history and the chronology. At what point then in the historical development of the literature which we have been studying does the famous battle stand?—According to all scholars the great war and the compilation of the Vedas both belong to the same period.[[72]]
The results of our study may, therefore, be tabulated as follows, with the proviso that the long process of the growth of the Epic cannot be fully represented:—
The Hymns of the Vedas.
Compilation of the Vedas . . . KURUKSHETRA.
The Brāhmanas.
The prose Upanishads.
Kapila.
Buddhism and Jainism.
The verse Upanishads.
Patanjali.
Bādarāyana.
The Atharvan Upanishads.
The third stage of the Epic and Manu . . . THE GITA.
It has thus become perfectly clear that The Gītā cannot have been uttered on the battlefield of Kurukshetra; for it is the last member of a long series, the final product of a clearly defined and elaborate process of development. To ascribe the Gītā to the age of Kurukshetra is much the same as if one were to ascribe the poetry of Tennyson to the age of Alfred the Great. A thousand years intervene; the thought and toil of a millennium were needed to produce the great result.
Had Krishna uttered these doctrines on the famous battlefield, we should inevitably have found references to them in the literature produced during the following centuries. But where in the Brāhmanas do we find any of the leading ideas of the Gītā? Even if men had disbelieved Krishna, his claim to be God incarnate would at least have drawn out a protest; but in no single Brāhmana or early Upanishad is there the slightest hint of anything of the kind. So far from there being any corroboration of the great myth in early literature, there is the clearest proof that it is false. In the Kāthaka recension of the Black Yajur Veda king Dhritarāshtra is mentioned as a well-known person[[73]]; yet in the whole literature of the Black Yajur there is no suggestion that Krishna claimed divine honours. The Satapatha Brāhmana, which is a product of the Kuru-Panchāla country,[[74]] contains the names of a number of the heroes of the great war,[[75]] but never refers to Krishna as God incarnate; while in the Chāndogya Upanishad,[[76]] which belongs to the same district,[[77]] he is spoken of merely as a man: he is mentioned as a pupil of Ghora Angirasa and is called Krishna Devakiputra.[[78]] Nay, even in the earliest part of the Mahābhārata itself Krishna is only a great chief, and not a deity at all.[[79]] Finally, the references to Pandu heroes and to the worship of Krishna and Arjuna in Pānini,[[80]] would lead to the conclusion that in Pānini’s day Krishna was not regarded as the supreme God, but as one among many;[[81]] and this cautious inference is corroborated by the fact that the Mahābhāshya itself does not recognize him as the incarnation of Brahma, but as a hero and demi-god.[[82]] Thus the whole of the Vedic literature, and the whole of the Sūtra literature, are destitute of a single reference to Krishna as the incarnation of the Supreme. There is only one conclusion to be drawn from this overwhelming mass of evidence.[[83]]
It is strange that educated Hindus should have clung so long to the idea that the Gītā is a real utterance of Krishna. The very fact that the poem has always been regarded, not as Sruti, but simply as Smriti, should have been enough to suggest the truth. A piece of genuine divine teaching, uttered in such circumstances, and before the composition of the earliest Upanishads, would have inevitably found a place among the most authoritative scriptures of the faith. The fact of its having been always regarded as Smriti is sufficient proof by itself that the book does not belong to the Vedic age at all. Another consideration ought also by itself to have been sufficient to save Hindus from such a grave error, namely, this, that no great religious advance or upheaval followed the time when Krishna is supposed to have lived and taught. Contrast the mighty revolutions that followed the work of Buddha, of Christ and of Mahommed; and the emptiness of the Krishna claim will become at once apparent.
Again, the subject of all the early Upanishads is the nature of the Supreme Spirit, whether called the Atman or Brahma. If on the field of Kurukshetra, Krishna had claimed to be the Supreme, as the Gītā says he did, can any one believe that the claim could have been passed unnoticed in the Upanishads? Krishna is mentioned in the Chāndogya; Brahma is the subject of the Chāndogya: yet there is not the slightest hint anywhere that Brahma has been incarnated, far less that Krishna is Brahma. Such evidence is surely irresistible.
One reason why the truth about this myth has been so long in finding its way into the minds of educated Hindus is undoubtedly to be found in the wretchedly inadequate way in which Sanskrit literature is taught in the Universities of India. In Calcutta at least most men who take Sanskrit as one of their subjects for the B. A. Degree get through their examination without having the slightest knowledge of the history of the literature.[[84]] For some curious results of this very deficient training, see the Appendix.
With Krishna, all the other so-called Avatārs vanish; for they rest on foundations still more flimsy and fanciful. They merely serve as signal proofs of the tendency inherent in the Hindu mind to believe in incarnations and to see such around them. This tendency was already living and creative long before the Christian era, and it has kept its vitality down to the present day; for though Chaitanya, the sixteenth-century reformer, is the most noteworthy of those who within recent times have been counted Avatārs, he is by no means the last: the late Ramkrishna Paramhamsa was regarded as such,[[85]] and some of her admirers claim the same honour for Mrs. Annie Besant.[[86]] Further, this making of Avatārs is but one aspect of that passion for deifying men which has characterized Hinduism from first to last,[[87]] a passion which has set many a modern Englishman among the gods. Even such a whole-hearted Christian as John Nicholson did not escape.[[88]]
The story, then, that Krishna uttered the Song on the battlefield, is a pious imagination. All scholars hold the war to be historical; Krishna’s name can be traced in the literature from the Upanishads downwards; it is possible, or even probable, that he was a Kshattriya prince[[89]] who fought in the war; but the assertion that on the field he claimed to be the supreme being, is absolutely negatived by all the early history and literature of India.
How then are we to account for the Gītā? Whence came its power and its beauty? and how did it reach the form it has?—We must recognise the action of three factors in the formation of the Song, the philosophy, the worship of Krishna, and the author. We have already traced in outline the genesis of the philosophy; there remain the cult and the author.
All our scholars recognize that Krishna-worship has existed in India since the fourth century B. C. at least; for there can be no doubt that, when Megasthenes says that Herakles was worshipped in Methora and Kleisobora,[[90]] he means that Krishna was worshipped in Mathura and Krishnapur. How much further back the cult goes we have no means of learning. Nor does it really matter for our purpose. The important thing to realize is the existence of this worship of Krishna, before his identification with Vishnu[[91]] and final exaltation to the place of the supreme pantheistic divinity.
The author of the Gītā was clearly a man of wide and deep culture. He had filled his mind with the best religious philosophy of his country. He was catholic rather than critical, more inclined to piece things together than to worry over the differences between them. Each of the philosophic systems appealed to his sympathetic mind: he was more impressed with the value of each than with the distinctions between them. But his was not only a cultured but a most reverent mind. He was as fully in sympathy with Krishna-worship as with the philosophy of the Atman. Indeed, it was the union of these qualities in him that fitted him to produce the noblest and purest expression of modern Hinduism. For Hinduism is just the marriage of ancient Brāhmanical thought and law with the popular cults. But without his splendid literary gifts the miracle would not have been possible. The beauty, precision and power of the diction of the poem, and its dignity of thought, rising now and then to sublimity, reveal but one aspect of his masterly literary ability. Much of the success of the poem arises from his genuine appreciation of the early heroic poems, which he heard recited around him, and from his consequent decision to make his own Song, in one sense at least, a heroic poem. Lastly, there is the shaping spirit of imagination, without which no man can be a real poet. With him this power was introspective rather than dramatic. No poet with any genuine dramatic faculty would have dreamed of representing a warrior as entering on a long philosophic discussion on the field of battle at the very moment when the armies stood ready to clash. On the other hand, what marvellous insight is displayed in his representation of Krishna! Who else could have imagined with such success how an incarnate god would speak of himself? Nor must we pass on without noticing that, though the situation in which the Song is supposed to have been produced is an impossible one, yet for the author’s purpose it is most admirably conceived: how otherwise could the main thought of the book—philosophic calm leading to disinterested action—have been so vividly impressed on the imagination?
This author, then, formed the idea of combining the loftiest philosophy of his country with the worship of Krishna. He would intertwine the speculative thought that satisfied the intellect with the fervid devotion which even the uncultured felt for a god who was believed to have walked the earth. Philosophy would thus come nearer religion, while religion would be placed on far surer intellectual ground. His tastes led him to connect his work with the romantic poems of the day; his genius suggested the situation, a dialogue between a noble knight and the incarnate divinity; his catholicity taught him to interweave the Sānkhya with the Yoga and both with the Vedānta; and as we have seen, his penetrative imagination was equal to the creation of the subjective consciousness of a god-man.
We can now answer the question which stands at the head of this chapter, What is the Bhagavadgītā? It consists of two distinct elements, one old, one original. The philosophy is old; for it is only a very imperfect combination[[92]] of what is taught in earlier books. The original element is the teaching put into Krishna’s mouth about his own person and the relation in which he stands to his own worshippers and to others. Of this part of the teaching of the Gītā we here give a brief analysis:—
Krishna is first of all the source of the visible world. All comes from him,[[93]] all rests in him.[[94]] At the end of a Kalpa everything returns to him,[[95]] and is again reproduced.[[96]] He pervades all things;[[97]] and again, in another sense, he is all that is best and most beautiful in nature and in man.[[98]] But while Krishna is thus the supreme power in the universe,[[99]] he is altogether without personal interest in the activity therein displayed:[[100]] he sits unconcerned,[[101]] always engaged in action,[[102]] yet controlling his own nature,[[103]] and therefore never becoming bound by the results of his action.[[104]] This conception of the Supreme, as at once the centre of all activity and yet completely detached, enables the author, on the one hand, to soften the seemingly hopeless contradiction involved in identifying the king, warrior and demon-slayer, Krishna, with the passionless, characterless Atman[[105]] of the Upanishads, and, on the other to hold up Krishna as the supreme example of Action Yoga.
We now turn to Krishna’s relation to his worshippers. Knowledge is good;[[106]] mental concentration is better;[[107]] disinterested action is better than either;[[108]] but the supreme wisdom is faith in Krishna and boundless devotion to him.[[109]] Such is the teaching of the Gītā. The worst epithets are kept for those who fail to recognise him as the Supreme, who disregard him, carp at him, hate him.[[110]] To those who resort to Krishna,[[111]] who place faith in him,[[112]] who shower on him their love, devotion and worship,[[113]] who rest on him,[[114]] think of him[[115]] and remember him[[116]] at all times,—to them are promised forgiveness,[[117]] release from the bonds of action,[[118]] attainment of tranquillity,[[119]] true knowledge[[120]] and final bliss[[121]] in Krishna.[[122]]
Since all the gods come from Krishna,[[123]] and since he is in the last resort the sole reality,[[124]] worship offered to other gods is in a sense offered to him.[[125]] He accepts it and rewards it.[[126]] This is in accordance with his indifference to men: to him no one is hateful, no one dear.[[127]] Yet the highest blessings fall only to those who recognize him directly.[[128]]
Clearly our author formed his conception of the man-god with great skill, and fitted it into his general scheme with all the care and precision he was capable of. On this elaboration of the self-consciousness of Krishna he concentrated all his intellectual and imaginative powers. And with what unequalled success! Could any greater compliment be paid an author than to have sixty generations of cultured readers take the creation of his mind for a transcript from history?
The masses of evidence we have marshalled to prove that Krishna never claimed to be God, may be briefly summarised as follows:—
1. The situation in which the Gītā is said to have been uttered at once strikes the historical student as suspicious: one can scarcely believe that there was ever a battle in which such a thing could have taken place; and, on the other hand, it makes such an excellent background to the theory of Action Yoga, that one cannot help believing that it was invented for the very purpose. Further investigation leads to the following results:—
2. The characteristic religious and philosophical ideas of the Gītā are not found in any books produced immediately after the age of Kurukshetra. If we start with the teaching of that age, we have to trace the stages of a long and clearly-marked development before we reach the ideas of the Gītā.
3. The diction of the Gītā is not the Vedic Sanskrit of the early Brāhmanas (which are the literature of the period following Kurukshetra), but belongs to a very much later stage of the language.
4. The fact that the Gītā is not sruti, but smriti, proves that it comes neither from Krishna, nor from the time of Kurukshetra.
5. Krishna Devakiputra is known in the later Vedic literature as a man, and in the Sūtra literature as a hero or demi-god, but never as the supreme being.
6. The fact that there is not a single reference in the whole of the Vedic literature, nor yet in the Sūtra literature, to Krishna as the incarnation of Brahma, makes it impossible for us to believe that at the battle of Kurukshetra he claimed to be such.
7. The fact that there was no revival or reformation of religion in the age of Kurukshetra proves that God was not incarnated then.
CHAPTER II.
PLATO’S JUST MAN.
We must now leave the land of Bhārata and seek the shores of Greece.
In the fifth century, B. C., Athens became the focus of Hellenic culture. Her achievements in the Persian wars had given her very distinctly the leadership of all the Greek states; and the steady progress of her commerce brought her not only wealth but abundant intercourse with other cities. So that in the latter half of the century we find the peculiar genius of Hellas displayed in Athens with unexampled vigour, variety and splendour. But space will not allow us even to outline the achievements of that incomparable age in the various provinces of human culture. We must confine our attention to philosophy.
The general advance of intelligence, education and culture in Greece produced the only result possible in communities whose religion was a traditional polytheism and whose morality rested merely on custom and proverbial wisdom: scepticism, both religious and ethical, broke in like a flood. Tradition and custom could not withstand the corrosive influences of fresh thought fed by deepening experience and widening science. The Sophists were the exponents, but scarcely the creators, of this sceptical habit of thought. The philosophers had not done much to cause it, and they could do as little to cure it. Their theories dealt with nature rather than man, and stood in no clear relation to the problems that agitated every thinking mind.
It was at Athens that this sceptical spirit showed itself most conspicuously, now in the lectures of the chief Sophists of Hellas, naturally drawn to the centre of intellectual ferment, now in the stately tragedies of her Dionysiac festivals, now in the fin-de-siècle conversation of her gilded youth. The timid, the old-fashioned, the conservative scolded and sputtered and threatened, blaming individuals instead of the time spirit, but had no healing word to utter.[[129]]
From the very centre of the disturbance came the new spirit of order and restoration: Socrates, the Athenian, saved Greece. The older philosophers had discussed nature; he turned all his attention to practical human life. Like the Sophists, he trusted human reason; but unlike them, he aimed not at a display of intellectual dexterity but at reaching the actual basis of human morality, society and politics. Human conduct was the sole subject of his thought and his conversation. Hence the definite, practical value of his influence: his teaching stood in the closest possible relation to life and to the problems of the time. On the other hand, he began with introspection; self-knowledge was what he demanded of every disciple. Hence the inexhaustible significance of his work for philosophy. He gave no set lessons to his pupils, delivered no lectures, wrote no books. He spent his whole time in conversation with individuals, proceeding always by question and answer, thus compelling his companion to think for himself. His extraordinary intellectual skill and the loftiness and simplicity of his character drew all the best intellects of Athens around him. But what gives him his unchallenged supremacy in the history of Greek thought is the fact, that in his hands the sceptical thought, which had caused such dismay everywhere, proved to be the very means of revealing the great realities which men had feared for.[[130]]
In 399 B. C., when he was an old man of seventy years of age, a number of his fellow-citizens brought a criminal case against him, charging him with corrupting the youth of Athens and with impiety. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. A month later he drank the hemlock—such was the Athenian mode of execution—surrounded by his friends.[[131]]
How tragic! Athens, “the school of Hellas,”[[132]] kills her greatest teacher! Socrates, the father of ethical philosophy, the founder of the critical method, the ideal instructor, dies as an impious corruptor of the youth of Athens!
But Socrates was not merely the greatest teacher of his day. All subsequent Greek philosophy is filled with his spirit; indeed the leading schools of thought were founded by his pupils.[[133]] Consequently he is the fountain-head of all Western philosophy and science; for in both Greece was the school-mistress of Europe.
Among all the disciples, Plato best represents the master’s spirit. The Megarians, the Cynics, the Cyrenaics, and, at a later date, the Stoics and the Epicureans, certainly carried on the work of Socrates, but they are deflections from the straight line: they are “imperfect schools,” as Zeller calls them.[[134]] Plato is in the direct line of succession.
He was about twenty years of age when he began to listen to Socrates. Eight years later came the death of the great teacher. Plato then left Athens and spent a number of years in travel and in study in different places. About 390 B. C., however, he returned to the city and set up a philosophical school in a garden called Academia. For forty years thereafter he was the acknowledged leader of philosophic thought and teaching in Athens.[[135]] His influence since his death has rested chiefly on his Dialogues, one of the most perfect literary treasures in the Greek language. The form of these beautiful compositions still reflects the question-and-answer method of Plato’s master; and the debt of the pupil is everywhere acknowledged; for in most of the Dialogues Socrates is the chief interlocutor.[[136]] Among the Dialogues the Republic is universally recognized as the most precious; for it shows us not only his literary art at its highest, but the thought of his matured mind: it represents Plato in his strength.[[137]]
The subject of the Republic is “What is Justice?” It is thus the culmination of the ethical teaching of Socrates. Among the preliminary discussions in this book there occurs a very striking conversation between Glaucon and Socrates, in which the former gives two ideal portraits, one of a man consummately unjust, the other of a man altogether just. Here is the passage:—
“But in actually deciding between the lives of the two persons in question, we shall be enabled to arrive at a correct conclusion by contrasting together the thoroughly just and the thoroughly unjust man,—and only by so doing. Well then, how are we to contrast them? In this way. Let us make no deduction either from the injustice of the unjust, or from the justice of the just, but let us suppose each to be perfect in his own line of conduct. First of all then, the unjust man must act as skilful craftsmen do. For a first-rate pilot or physician perceives the difference between what is practicable and what is impracticable in his art, and while he attempts the former, he lets the latter alone; and, moreover, should he happen to make a false step, he is able to recover himself. In the same way, if we are to form a conception of a consummately unjust man, we must suppose that he makes no mistake in the prosecution of his unjust enterprises and that he escapes detection: but if he be found out, we must look upon him as a bungler; for it is the perfection of injustice to seem just without really being so. We must, therefore, grant to the perfectly unjust man, without any deduction, the most perfect injustice: and we must concede to him, that while committing the grossest acts of injustice, he has won himself the highest reputation for justice; and that should he make a false step, he is able to recover himself, partly by a talent for speaking with effect, in case he be called in question for any of his misdeeds, and partly because his courage and strength, and his command of friends and money, enable him to employ force with success, whenever force is required. Such being our unjust man, let us, in pursuance of the argument, place the just man by his side, a man of true simplicity and nobleness, resolved, as Æschylus says, not to seem, but to be, good. We must certainly take away the seeming; for if he be thought to be a just man, he will have honours and gifts on the strength of this reputation, so that it will be uncertain whether it is for justice’s sake, or for the sake of the gifts and honours, that he is what he is. Yes; we must strip him bare of everything but justice, and make his whole case the reverse of the former. Without being guilty of one unjust act, let him have the worst reputation for injustice, so that his virtue may be thoroughly tested, and shewn to be proof against infamy and all its consequences; and let him go on till the day of his death, steadfast in his justice, but with a lifelong reputation for injustice; in order that, having brought both the men to the utmost limits of justice and of injustice respectively, we may then give judgment as to which of the two is the happier.”
“Good heavens! my dear Glaucon,” said I, “how vigorously you work, scouring the two characters clean for our judgment, like a pair of statues.”
“I do it as well as I can,” he said. “And after describing the men as we have done, there will be no further difficulty, I imagine, in proceeding to sketch the kind of life which awaits them respectively. Let me therefore describe it. And if the description be somewhat coarse, do not regard it as mine, Socrates, but as coming from those who commend injustice above justice. They will say that in such a situation the just man will be scourged, racked, fettered, will have his eyes burnt out, and at last, after suffering every kind of torture, will be crucified; and thus learn that it is best to resolve, not to be, but to seem, just.”[[138]]
The picture of the just man here is surely a very remarkable one. It is dramatically put into the mouth of Glaucon, and part of it is by him attributed to those who commend injustice; but these are but literary forms; the picture is Plato’s own. It is his ideal of the just man; and the extraordinary thing is his belief, here stated so plainly, that a man whose heart is perfectly set on righteousness may be so completely misunderstood by those around him, as to be regarded by them as utterly unjust, and may in consequence be subjected to the extremest torture and the most shameful death.
No one can doubt that it was the death of his master that led Plato to perceive the great truth to which he here gives such energetic expression. The charges against Socrates were a complete inversion of the truth: his reverence was called impiety; his brilliant work for the character of the youth of his day brought him the charge of baneful corruption. From his tragic end Plato learned that the good man who brings new truth is very likely to be completely misunderstood and to be classed with the worst wrong-doers.
CHAPTER III.
THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH.
The history of Israel is unique in the annals of the nations. In size scarcely worthy of regard, in politics only for one brief reign of any serious account, with no special genius for art or war, for speculative thinking or scientific research, failing to keep even their racial unity in the day of their greatest strength, torn in pieces by every conqueror, deported out of their own land, and even after their return kept in subjection by other imperial races, finally stripped of their temple and sacred city by the Romans, and shattered into fragments, this feeble people has yet set its name high beside Greece and Rome, has given the world the only book which all the world reads,[[139]] and the religion which has produced Western civilization.
The one duty of which the best spirits in Israel were conscious throughout the history of the people was faithfulness to Jehovah. Indeed the whole consciousness of the race might be summed up in two phrases: Jehovah is the God of Israel, and, Israel is the people of Jehovah. War, government, philosophy, art might be for other peoples: Israel’s one duty was to serve her God, religion the sole activity of her spirit.
The relation between Jehovah and Israel was a peculiarly tender one;—“When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt,”[[140]] says Jehovah by the mouth of one of His prophets. As Israel was Jehovah’s son, he had to be taught, trained, disciplined. The history of the people, then, is simply the record of Jehovah’s dealings with them in this process of loving and patient training.
Israel’s education was chiefly in the hard school of experience, in national disaster and disgrace, in national recovery and victory. But not in events alone: Jehovah spoke His will out clearly through a series of most remarkable men known as the Prophets. What is most noticeable in these men is the directness and the certainty of the message they brought from Jehovah to His people. Usually it was criticism and condemnation, with a definite declaration of coming punishment; but now and then it was comfort and consolation, with the promise of speedy help and relief.
It would be most interesting to trace the history in detail and to watch how the people were led step by step to fuller and clearer knowledge of God, but we must not stay for that here. We need only say sufficient to enable readers to understand the circumstances in which the great prophecy which we wish to discuss came to be uttered.
The people were slaves in Egypt. They were brought out under Moses; and in the peninsula of Sinai a Covenant was made between them and Jehovah, which laid the foundation of their religion and their national life. Joshua was their leader in the conquest of Palestine, an event which probably took place in the thirteenth century B. C. During the first two centuries of their residence in the land they had no settled form of government, but acknowledged as their rulers from time to time certain great personalities known as Judges. Towards the end of the eleventh century the pressure of the Philistines led to the establishment of a monarchy. Saul knit the people together; David built up a petty empire; Solomon gave his attention to commerce and internal organization.
But after these three reigns the nation fell in two. From 937 B. C. onward for two centuries, instead of one state there are two rival kingdoms, the northern called Israel and the southern Judah. The great events of these centuries occur in Israel. Through the prophets Elijah and Elisha the people were taught that Jehovah would never consent to be one among many gods: They must worship Jehovah alone. Later, Amos prophesied that Jehovah would bring about the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, because the people would not live righteously. They offered God sacrifices, while He demanded righteous conduct between man and man. But they could not believe that Jehovah would destroy His own chosen people: “How can we believe that He will destroy the only people in all the world that He has made Himself known to?” Swift comes the answer, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”[[141]] Israel had had greater privileges than any other people; therefore Israel had a deeper responsibility, and would receive a severer punishment. In 722 B. C. the Assyrians overthrew Israel, and carried away 27,290 of the leading inhabitants and settled them in Mesopotamia and Media.[[142]] The prophecy of Amos was thus literally fulfilled.
The kingdom of Judah, which was not involved in the fate of Israel, stood for rather more than a century longer. Isaiah was the prophet of Jehovah in Judah when Israel fell. He condemned his own people just as Amos had condemned Israel, because they identified religion with ritual, and would not give Jehovah what He wanted, namely, righteousness. The state of the people was so bad that Isaiah declared that nothing could cure them. Jehovah would intervene: the bulk of the people would be destroyed, but a righteous remnant would be saved. Towards the end of Isaiah’s life Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came, devastated the land of Judah, took many of the cities, and demanded the surrender of the capital, Jerusalem. Isaiah advised the king not to yield, and prophesied that the Assyrian would not be able to touch the city. His prophecy was fulfilled to the letter. The huge Assyrian army was suddenly annihilated by some unknown cause, probably pestilence, and Sennacherib hastened back to Assyria.[[143]]
A century later Judah was in a still worse condition: idolatry, polytheism, immorality were eating out the vitals of the nation. In 604 B. C. Jeremiah prophesied that Jehovah would bring Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, into Syria, and that he would destroy Judah and all the nations round about, that they would groan under the rule of Babylon for seventy years, but that at the end of that period Jehovah would punish the Babylonians for their iniquity, and would make their land desolate forever.[[144]] But his countrymen would not listen. Jehovah had saved His people from the Assyrian in the time of Isaiah: why should He allow the Babylonian to touch them now? Yet in 585 B. C. Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem, burned the city and the temple, and carried away the king and all the leading families to Babylon.[[145]] Once more the word of Jehovah, as spoken by His prophets, was literally fulfilled.
But what was to be the end?—Jehovah seemed to have utterly destroyed His chosen people: what was His purpose? what good was to come out of it?
The people of the northern kingdom, carried away in 722 B. C., soon lost their religion, and were in consequence speedily lost themselves among the peoples of the East. Not so the captives of Judah: the training of Isaiah and his disciples and of Jeremiah and his friends had taken fast hold of their hearts, so that even in a foreign land, far away from home and temple, they held by the religion of Jehovah. Nor is that all: they began to take their religion seriously; they began to perceive that the prophets were right in declaring that Jehovah was a very different God from the gods of the nations around them, that He would not be satisfied with sacrifice and song, but demanded heart-worship and righteousness. But although they clung to their faith in Jehovah, they were naturally greatly depressed by the seeming hopelessness of their captivity.[[146]] To rebel against the Babylonians, and by the sword regain their freedom and their land, was an utter impossibility: they were altogether helpless under the omnipotent empire.
But about 550 B. C. Cyrus, an Elamite king, began a great career of conquest. In 549 he overthrew the Cimmerians under their king Astyages, and by 546 he was master of Persia. He then went further west to subdue Asia Minor.[[147]]
It was at this juncture, according to all scholars, that a great prophet, whose name is unknown, began to comfort and encourage the Jewish exiles in Babylon. His prophecy is preserved for us in the latter part of the book of Isaiah.[[148]] His message is that the sufferings of the exiles are nearly at an end, that Cyrus is to capture Babylon and give them leave to return to their native land.[[149]]
In 538 B. C. Cyrus marched into Babylonia, defeated the Babylonian army, and seized the city, thus fulfilling in a very striking way the second part of Jeremiah’s prophecy.[[150]] Soon after, the Judean captives received permission to return to Palestine. They were also allowed to carry with them the sacred vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from the temple in Jerusalem.[[151]] The prophecy of restoration was thus triumphantly fulfilled. One company of exiles went at once, and others followed them later.
The people of Jehovah in this way began life afresh after the great national punishment of the Captivity. They had thoroughly learned one lesson at least, namely, this, that Jehovah spoke through His prophets. So in their new system, while they retained the old ritual of the temple, they made careful provision for the preservation of the writings of the prophets and for the instruction of the people in the Mosaic Law.
We need trace the history no farther; for it was this post-exilic Judaism, with its great care for the Scriptures, and its energetic attempts to instil them into the minds of the people, that formed the environment of Jesus and His work.
But we must now return to the great prophet who spoke consolation to the exiles in Babylon, and study his ideas. His conception of God is very lofty. He illustrates in many ways His holiness, His faithfulness, His tender sympathy, His omnipotence, His absolute sway among nations, and His power of foretelling future events by the mouth of His prophets. On the other hand, the prophet’s conception of the duty and destiny of the people of Jehovah is correspondingly high. Israel has been created and chosen by Jehovah, and therefore is precious in His sight; but He did not choose them out of favouritism, nor was it His purpose to heap blessings on them merely for their pleasure and aggrandizement. Israel is the Servant of Jehovah. The service they have to render is to reveal God’s character and purposes to all the nations of the earth. This is the end of their election and of their long training. But, as in the past the nation has fallen far short of Jehovah’s ideal, so now in Babylon the people as a whole is very far from fit for the work which God has for them to do: “Who is blind but my servant? or deaf as my messenger that I send?”[[152]]
Consequently there is a further choice within the chosen people. The use of the title, the Servant of Jehovah, is narrowed. The prophet knows that God’s ends will be worked out, that through Israel Jehovah’s name will be carried to the ends of the earth; he also sees as clearly that the nation as a nation is unfit for this lofty duty; so he recognises that the Servant who shall do this work will be found within the people. Whether he identified the Servant of Jehovah in this narrower sense with the small group of really God-fearing men who formed the soul of Israel in his own day, or whether he thought of an individual to be specially prepared for the task by Jehovah, we do not know. Most probably this point was not clear to the prophet himself.[[153]]
It is in four poems of peculiar dignity and surpassing spiritual penetration that this narrower use of the title occurs. In the first[[154]] of these Jehovah describes His Servant’s character and work; in the second[[155]], the Servant tells how Jehovah prepared him for his task; in the third,[[156]] we have a portrait of the Servant as a martyr; while in the fourth[[157]], he is represented, though righteous himself, as dying a shameful death as an atonement for the sins of the unrighteous. It is to this fourth poem that we would direct the attention of our readers.