History of Religion / A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems

by Allan Menzies

¹ Compare Hans Sachs, Die Ungleichen Kinder Eva's.

If the highest caste is strictly defined, so also are the others. The second caste is that of the Kshatriyas, warriors or rulers, the third that of the Vaisyas or farmers. These three have rank, they are the twice-born classes (their second birth answers to confirmation, and takes place when a young man is invested with the sacred thread). The Sudras are the fourth and lowest class; no duty is assigned to them in the law books but that of serving meekly the other castes. It has been thought that the Sudras represent the conquered aborigines, the three classes of rank belonging to the Aryan invaders, but this is open to question.

The student of religion has to fix his attention on the Brahmans, who have secured themselves in the position of the leading caste. We speak first of the literary movement in which they were concerned, then of the sacrifices they conducted, and of their gods. We shall then say something of the practical operation of their religion as a rule of life, and lastly we shall come to the speculative work of their period, which is not, however, to be set down to them alone.

1. The Growth of the Sacred Literature.—The Vedas rose in sacredness after the age which produced them passed away. A few centuries after they were written they were not generally intelligible; they needed interpretation, but at the same time the doctrine of their inspiration rose higher and higher. The brahmans had both to interpret the words of the old hymns and to explain how, when used at the sacrifice, they produced the effect ascribed to them. This led to the production of the earliest Indian prose, the brahmanas or ritual treatises. Primarily intended to be directories of worship for the priests, these works were enriched with all sorts of ideas about the sacrifices, their origin, and their effects; points in the ritual are explained in them by mythological stories which we should not otherwise know, and we see from them that many superstitions, to which the Vedas gave no encouragement, yet lived among the people. Each Samhita, or collection of hymns, had its Brahmana, and some of the collections had several. These works, though transcending in dreariness most directories of worship, are yet of great value for the light they throw on the history of Indian manners and ideas, as well as on that of mythology. And as it happened among the Jews in their later period so it happened here;—the sanctity of the text was extended to the commentary, the brahmana also was held to be god-given and inspired, and by some was even more highly esteemed than the hymns themselves. A third class of inspired writings consists of the Upanishads, or speculative treatises, of which we shall speak later. The "Veda" in the larger sense is made up of these three bodies of compositions, mantras, brahmanas, and upanishads. These three belong to revelation or "S'ruti," i.e. hearing; what is contained in these is to be regarded as having been heard by inspired men from a higher source. The counterpart of S'ruti is "smriti," i.e. recollection, tradition. This embraces the Sutras or works dealing with ceremonial in the way of short rules gathered from the older literature, with the exposition of the Vedas, with domestic rites and conventional usages. The law books, the epics, and the Puranas, or ancient legendary histories, also belong to this class.

The doctrine of the Vedas, of their sacredness and of their virtues, played a great part in Indian thought. They were revered not as a written word, for they were not written but handed down by memory,—the Brahman still knows his sacred literature by heart,—but as hymns possessing supernatural powers and of far higher than human origin. They were raised to the rank of a divinity, they were said to have had to do with the creation of the world, or to have been among the first created beings. The value of the study of them was not to be exaggerated; he who engages in it, we hear, offers a complete sacrifice, obtains for himself the world which does not pass away, and becomes united with Brahma. The class of men who had installed themselves as the authorised interpreters of the hymns, had evidently taken up a very strong position.

2. Sacrifice.—Indian ritual is an immense subject. In the Vedic period there were several orders of sacrifice—the hymns of the Rigveda have to do with the Soma-sacrifice alone—and several kinds of priests, and it stands to reason that an elaborate ritual derived from a distant age and cherished by a priestly caste which was growing in power, could not quickly change. In spite of the considerable amount of materials accessible in the Brahmanas and Sutras, a history of Indian sacrifice as a whole has still to be written.

It is characteristic of early Indian sacrifice that it is not confined to a temple or to any sacred spot, and that it does not require any image of the deity. Instructions are always given for choosing and preparing a place for the rite, and for erecting an altar; a place had to be prepared on each occasion. The gods were asked to come, or were thought to be seated in heaven looking on; the sacrifice is in the open air. While the celebration proceeded according to a certain ritual, it lay with the worshippers to fix to what god or gods the sacrifice should be addressed. There was not one ritual for Agni and another for Indra, but the same would serve for either or for both. The sacrifices of which we hear in the Brahmanas are domestic rites; they are offered by the heads of the household, who invite ancestors also to be present. A Brahman is present to direct those who sacrifice and the inferior priests who assist them, and the benefits of the act extend to all the dependants of the household. The time was determined by natural seasons or by household events. Some sacrifices were greater than others, the more elaborate ones requiring several days, months, or even years for their celebration. Among the kinds of offerings which might be made we find that of man enumerated; human sacrifice, however, if it had prevailed in earlier times, had now grown obsolete.

The rise of the Brahmans into a caste changed the character of the sacrifice by making its due celebration depend more on special knowledge, and by increasing its elaborate mystery. Once the hymn was recognised as an essential element of such an act, the person who could interpret the hymn and explain its effects acquired great importance. And when the explanation of all the various features of the sacrifice was once begun, a wide door was opened to minute ingenuity. It is astonishing to what trifles these priestly directories descend, what explanations are brought from every part of earth and heaven of the most trivial circumstances, and what sacredness is found in the very blades of grass around the altar. Now the effect of such a treatment of ritual is inevitably that the rite itself, the outward mechanical performance, comes to be regarded as important, and that the ethical and religious end which was originally aimed at, is lost sight of. The priest and those he acts for are so intent on the minutiæ of their celebration that they forget about the god it is intended for. And as they are quite convinced that the sacrifice, if offered with perfect correctness and with nothing left out, must produce its effect, the sacrifice itself comes to appear as the agent of the desired blessing; the god grows less but the sacrifice grows more. This process, which may be observed wherever ritualism exists, was carried in the period of Brahmanism to its utmost length. In this period the old gods lost the strong hold they had before over the people's mind; men ceased to look for their gods to the sky or to the tempest, and began to look instead to the long ceremonies of the priest or to the hymn he chanted at the altar, or to the austerities he practised. Gods of a new type now make their appearance. As in the Vedic period we saw that Brahmanaspati, lord of prayer, had a place beside Indra and Varuna, so now we see that the supreme deity is named Brahma. The prayer connected with the sacrifice has given its name to the ruler of the universe. Other names for the supreme are also found to be making their way to general use, as the old historical and mythological gods fall into the background, and an abstract divine unity is sought after. Prajapati, lord of creatures, who is little heard of in the hymns, is frequently invoked as the head of all the gods, and a triad of gods is heard of, consisting of Agni, Vayu, Surya, fire, the air, the sun, and summing up the divine energies. The attributes of the gods are personified, and a set of pale abstractions is thus added to the Pantheon; and spirits and goblins not heard of in the hymns, though not therefore necessarily unknown in the former period, make their appearance. These are, perhaps, the gods of the aborigines, who thus revenge themselves, as the religion of the invaders which at first suppressed them loses its earlier vigour. The strong gods retire and weak gods, many and shadowy, and bad as well as good, are worshipped. The Asuras were formerly the gods generally, now they are evil beings with whom the good gods have to contend.

3. Practical Life.—We possess very complete pictures of Indian life and manners in the period of Brahmanism. Of the codes of ancient sages by which Hindu society was supposed to be governed many are extant to us; and in Mr. Max Müller's Sacred Books of the East the English reader may make himself acquainted with several of these. The most famous and the longest, is the laws of Manu, a mythical progenitor of mankind. In the form in which we have it this work dates probably from the second century A.D., but the body of the work is much older. Originally a local collection of rules, it extended its authority gradually over the entire Hindu population of India. With other collections, also of local origin, it represents to us the condition of Indian society after the caste system became fixed; but much of the law thus handed down to us must have had its origin in prehistoric times.

The law of Manu hinges on the superiority of the Brahman over the other castes. The Brahmans form the centre of the state and really control everything; but their life, in turn, is framed in strict rules, and their whole history and actions are laid down for them to the last detail from the moment of their birth. The life of the Brahman is divided into four periods. For a quarter of his life he is a student living with a teacher and learning from him the sacred knowledge of the Vedas. Every act of study begins with the so-called Savitri-verse, "Let us meditate on that excellent glory of the divine Vivifier. May he enlighten our understandings." This prayer, with the mystic syllable, Om (thought to have to do with the three gods of a triad, but probably the original meaning is Yes, an abstract all-embracing yes, in which nothing but pure being is affirmed), is repeated at every return to study, and also with great frequency at other times. The teacher is more to the student than his father, and is to be treated with the greatest deference and courtesy; these years are a training in gentle and seemly conduct as well as in law. His student days completed, the Brahman offers his first sacrifice, marries, and becomes a householder. Little is said of earning a living; the Brahman is not to be worldly, but he is to be independent if he can. He is, however, allowed to beg if in want. But more stress is laid on the continued pursuit of knowledge, and on the domestic sacrifices to gods and manes which are to be his daily care. After he has brought up a son to take charge of his house and goods, the third stage of his life is reached; he may retire from the world and become a recluse, giving himself to contemplation and austerities. The fourth stage is that of the ascetic, bhikku or sannyasin, the aged man who having given up all possessions, all human society, and the practice of all rites, and subsisting only on alms, seeks to purge his heart of all desire and to become united by deep meditation with the supreme soul, thus attaining union with Brahma and final liberation. In this section of the laws of Manu an ideal of moral perfection is set forth, which is not demanded at the earlier stages of life.