Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 2

by Charles Eliot

It is curious that both the sacred texts—the Veda and the Koran—to which this supernatural position is ascribed should be collections of obviously human, incongruous, and often insignificant documents connected with particular occasions, and in no way suggesting or claiming that they are anterior to the ordinary life of man on earth. It is still more extraordinary that systems of philosophy should profess to base themselves on such works. But in reality Hindu metaphysicians are not more bound by the past than their colleagues in other lands. They do not take scripture and ask what it means, but evolve their own systems and state that they are in accordance with it. Sometimes scripture is ignored in the details of argument. More often the metaphysician writes a commentary on it and boldly proves that it supports his views, though its apparent meaning may be hostile. It is clear that many philosophic commentaries have been written not because the authors really drew their inspiration from the Upanishads or Bhagavad-gîtâ but because they dared not neglect such important texts. All the Vedântist schools labour to prove that they are in harmony not only with the Upanishads but with the Brahma-sûtras. The philosophers of the Sâṅkhya are more detached from literature but though they ignore the existence of the deity, they acknowledge the Veda as a source of knowledge. Their recognition, however, has the air of a concession to Brahmanic sentiment. Isolated theories of the Sâṅkhya can be supported by isolated passages of the Upanishads, but no impartial critic can maintain that the general doctrines of the two are compatible. That the Brahmans should have been willing to admit the Sâṅkhya as a possible form of orthodoxy is a testimony both to its importance and to their liberality.

It is remarkable that the test of orthodoxy should have been the acceptance of the authority of the Veda and not a confession of some sort of theism. But on this the Brahmans did not insist. The Vedânta is truly and intensely pantheistic or theistic, but in the other philosophies the Supreme Being is either eliminated or plays a small part. Thus while works which seem to be merely scientific treatises (like the Nyâya) set before themselves a religious object, other treatises, seemingly religious in scope, ignore the deity. There is a strong and ancient line of thought in India which, basing itself on the doctrine of Karma, or the inevitable consequences of the deed once done, lays stress on the efficacy of ceremonies or of asceticism or of knowledge without reference to a Supreme Being because, if he exists, he does not interfere with the workings of Karma, or with the power of knowledge to release from them.

Even the Vedânta, although in a way the quintessence of Indian orthodoxy, is not a scholastic philosophy designed to support recognized dogma and ritual. It is rather the orthodox method of soaring above these things. It contemplates from a higher level the life of religious observances (which is the subject of the Pûrva Mîmâṃsâ) and recognizes its value as a preliminary, but yet rejects it as inadequate. The Sannyâsi or adept follows no caste observances, performs no sacrifices, reads no scriptures. His religion is to realize in meditation the true nature, and it may be the identity, of the soul and God. Good works are of no more importance for him than rites, though he does well to employ his time in teaching. But Karma has ceased to exist for him: "the acts of a Yogi are neither black nor white," they have no moral quality nor consequences. This is dangerous language and the doctrine has sometimes been abused. But the point of the teaching is not that a Sannyâsi may do what he likes but that he is perfectly emancipated from material bondage. Most men are bound by their deeds; every new act brings consequences which attach the doer to the world of transmigration and create for him new existences. But the deeds of the man who is really free have no such trammelling effects, for they are not prompted by desire nor directed to an object. But since to become free he must have suppressed all desire, it is hardly conceivable that he should do anything which could be called a sin. But this conviction that the task of the sage is not to perfect any form of good conduct but to rise above both good and evil, imparts to the Darśanas and even to the Upanishads a singularly non-ethical and detached tone. The Yogi does no harm but he has less benevolence and active sympathy than the Buddhist monk. It was a feeling that such an attitude has its dangers and is only for the few who have fought their way to the heights where it can safely be adopted, that led the Brahmans in all ages to lay stress on the householder's life as the proper preparation for a philosophic old age. Despite utterances to the contrary, they never as a body approved the ideal of a life entirely devoted to asceticism and not occupied with social duties during one period. The extraordinary ease with which the higher phases of Indian thought shake off all formalities, social, religious and ethical, was counterbalanced by the multitudinous regulations devised to keep the majority in a law-abiding life.

None of the six Darśanas concern themselves with ethics. The more important deal with the transcendental progress of sages who have avowedly abandoned the life of works, and even those which treat of that lower life are occupied with ritual and logic rather than with anything which can be termed moral science. We must not infer that Indian literature is altogether unmoral. The doctrine of Karma is intensely ethical and ethical discussions are more prominent in the Epics than in Homer, besides being the subject of much gnomic and didactic poetry. But there is no mistaking the fact that the Hindu seeks for salvation by knowledge. He feels the power of deeds, but it is only the lower happiness which lies in doing good works and enjoying their fruits. The higher bliss consists in being entirely free from the bondage of deeds and Karma.

All the Darśanas have as a common principle this idea of Karma with the attendant doctrines that rebirth is a consequence of action and that salvation is an escape from rebirth. They all treat more or less of the sources and standards of knowledge, and all recognize the Veda as one of them. There is not much more that can be said of them all in common, for the Vedânta ignores matter and the Sâṅkhya ignores God, but they all share a conviction which presents difficulties to Europeans. It is that the state in which the mind ceases to think discursively and is concentrated on itself is not only desirable but the summum bonum. The European is inclined to say that such a state is distinguished from non-existence only by not being permanent. But the Hindu will have none of this. He holds that mind and thought are material though composed of the subtlest matter, and that when thought ceases, the immaterial soul (purusha or âtman) far from being practically non-existent is more truly existent than before and enjoys untroubled its own existence and its own nature.

Of the three most important systems, the Sâṅkhya, Yoga and Vedânta, the first and last are on most points opposed: both are ancient, but perhaps the products of different intellectual centres. In one sense the Yoga may be described as a theistic modification of the Sâṅkhya: from another and perhaps juster point of view it appears rather as a very ancient science of asceticism and contemplation, susceptible of combination with various metaphysical theories.

2

We may consider first of all the Sâṅkhya.[740] Tradition ascribes its invention to Kapila, but he is a mere name unconnected with any date or other circumstance. It is probable that the principal ideas of the Sâṅkhya germinated several centuries before our era but we have no evidence whatever as to when they were first formulated in Sûtras. The name was current as the designation of a philosophical system fairly early[741] but the accepted text-books are all late. The most respected is the Sâṅkhya-pravacana,[742] attributed to Kapila but generally assigned by European critics to the fourteenth century A.D. Considerably more ancient, but still clearly a metrical epitome of a system already existing, is the Sâṅkhya-Kârikâ, a poem of seventy verses which was translated into Chinese about 560 A.D. and may be a few centuries older. Max Müller regarded the Tattva-samâsa, a short tract consisting chiefly of an enumeration of topics, as the most ancient Sâṅkhya formulary, but the opinion of scholars as to its age is not unanimous. The name Sâṅkhya is best interpreted as signifying enumeration in allusion to the predilection of the school for numbered lists, a predilection equally noticeable in early Buddhism.

The object of the system set forth in these works is strictly practical. In the first words of the Sâṅkhya-pravacana, the complete cessation of suffering is the end of man, and the Sâṅkhya is devised to enable him to attain it. Another formula divides the contents of the Sâṅkhya into four topics—(a) that from which man must liberate himself, or suffering, (b) liberation, or the cessation of suffering, (c) the cause of suffering, or the failure to discriminate between the soul and matter, (d) the means of liberation, or discriminating knowledge. This division obviously resembles the four Truths of Buddhism. The object proposed is the same and the method analogous, though not identical, for Buddhism speaks as a religion and lays greater stress on conduct.