We turn now to the ethical side of religion. But, before leaving the sacrifice, one point should be explained clearly. The Hindu sacrifice can be performed only by the priest, and he must be of the highest caste. No other might or could perform it. For he alone understood the ancient texts, which to the laity were already only half intelligible. Again, as Barth has pointed out, the Hindu sacrifice is performed only for one individual or his family. It was an expensive rite (for the gaining of one object), addressed to many gods for the benefit of one man. To offset this, however, one must remember that there were popular fêtes and sacrifices of a more general nature, to which many were invited and in which even the lower castes took part; and these were also of remote antiquity.
Already current in the Br[=a]hmanas is the phrase 'man's debts.' Either three or four of such moral obligations were recognized, debts to the gods, to the seers, to the Manes, and to men. Whoever pays these debts, it is said, has discharged all his duties, and by him all is obtained, all is won. And what are these duties? To the gods he owes sacrifices; to the seers, study of the Vedas; to the Manes, offspring; to man, hospitality (Çat. Br. i. 7. 2. 1 ff.; in T[=a]itt. Br. vi. 3. 10. 5, the last fails). Translated into modern equivalents this means that man must have faith and good works. But more really is demanded than is stated here. First and foremost is the duty of truthfulness. Agni is the lord of vows among the gods (RV. viii. 11. 1; Çat. Br. iii. 2. 2. 24), and speech is a divinity (Sarasvat[=i] is personified speech, Çat. Br. iii. 1. 4. 9, etc). Truth is a religious as well as moral duty. "This (All) is two-fold, there is no third; all is either truth or untruth; now truth alone is the gods (satyam eva dev[=a]s) and untruth is man."[51] Moreover, "one law the gods observe, truth" (Çat. Br. i. 1.1. 4; iii. 3. 2. 2; 4. 2. 8). There is another passage upon this subject: "To serve the sacred fire means truth; he who speaks truth feeds the fire; he who speaks lies pours water on it; in the one case he strengthens his vital (spiritual) energy, and becomes better; in the other he weakens it and becomes worse" (ib. ii. 2. 2. 19). The second sin, expressly named and reprobated as such, is adultery. This is a sin against Varuna.[52] In connection with this there is an interesting passage implying a priestly confessional. At the sacrifice the sacrificer's wife is formally asked by the priest whether she is faithful to her husband. She is asked this that she may not sacrifice with guilt on her soul, for "when confessed the guilt becomes less."[53] If it is asked what other moral virtues are especially inculcated besides truth and purity the answer is that the acts commonly cited as self-evidently sins are murder, theft, and abortion; incidentally, gluttony, anger, and procrastination.[54]
As to the moral virtue of observing days, certain times are allowed and certain times are not allowed for worldly acts. But every day is in part a holy-day to the Hindu. The list of virtues is about the same, therefore, as that of the decalogue—the worship of the right divinity; the observance of certain seasons for prayer and sacrifice; honor to the parents; abstinence from theft, murder, adultery. Envy alone is omitted.[55]
What eschatological conceptions are strewn through the literature of this era are vague and often contradictory. The souls of the departed are at one time spoken of as the stars (T[=a]itt. S. v. 4. 1. 3.); at another, as uniting with gods and living in the world of the gods (Çal. Br.. ii. 6. 4. 8).
The principle of karma if not the theory, is already known, but the very thing that the completed philosopher abhors is looked upon as a blessing, viz., rebirth, body and all, even on earth.[56] Thus in one passage, as a reward for knowing some divine mystery (as often happens, this mystery is of little importance, only that 'spring is born again out of winter'), the savant is to be 'born again in this world' (punar ha v[=a] 'asmin loke bhavati, Çat. Br. i. 5. 3. 14). The esoteric wisdom is here the transfer of the doctrine of metempsychosis to spring. Man has no hope of immortal life (on earth);[57] but, by establishing the holy fires, and especially by establishing in his inmost soul the immortal element of fire, he lives the full desirable length of life (ib. ii. 2. 2. 14. To the later sage, length of life is undesirable). But in yonder world, where the sun itself is death, the soul dies again and again. All those on the other side of the sun, the gods, are immortal; but all those on this side are exposed to this death. When the sun wishes, he draws out the vitality of any one, and then that one dies; not once, but, being drawn up by the sun, which is death, into the very realm of death (how different to the conception of the sun in the Rig Veda!) he dies over and over again.[58] But in another passage it is said that when the sacrificer is consecrated he 'becomes one of the deities'; and one even finds the doctrine that one obtains 'union with Brahm[=a],' which is quite in the strain of the Upanishads; but here such a saying can refer only to the upper castes, for "the gods talk only to the upper castes" (Çal. Br.. xi. 4. 4. 1; iii. 1. 1. 8-10). The dead man is elsewhere represented as going to heaven 'with his whole body,' and, according to one passage, when he gets to the next world his good and evil are weighed in a balance. There are, then, quite diverse views in regard to the fate of a man after death, and not less various are the opinions in regard to his reward and punishment. According to the common belief the dead, on leaving this world, pass between two fires, agniçikhe raging on either side of his path. These fires burn the one that ought to be burned (the wicked), and let the good pass by. Then the spirit (or the man himself in body) is represented as going up on one of two paths. Either he goes to the Manes on a path which, according to later teaching, passes southeast through the moon, or he goes northeast (the gods' direction) to the sun, which is his 'course and stay.' In the same chapter one is informed that the rays of the sun are the good (dead), and that every brightest light is the Father-god. The general conception here is that the sun or the stars are the destination of the pious. On the other hand it is said that one will enjoy the fruit of his acts here on earth, in a new birth; or that he will 'go to the next world'; or that he will suffer for his sins in hell. The last is told in legendary form, and appears to us to be not an early view retained in folk-lore, but a late modification of an old legend. Varuna sends his son Bhrigu to hell to find out what happens after death, and he finds people suffering torture, and, again, avenging themselves on those that have wronged them. But, despite the resemblance between this and Grecian myth, the fact that in the whole compass of the Rik (in the Atharvan perhaps in v. 19) there is not the slightest allusion to torture in hell, precludes, to our mind, the possibility of this phase having been an ancient inherited belief.[59]
Annihilation or a life in under darkness is the first (Rik) hell. The general antithesis of light (as good) and darkness (as bad) is here plainly revealed again. Sometimes a little variation occurs. Thus, according to Çat. Br. vi. 5. 4. 8, the stars are women-souls, perhaps, as elsewhere, men also. The converse notion that darkness is the abode of evil appears at a very early date: "Indra brought down the heathen, dasyus, into the lowest darkness," it is said in the Atharva Veda (ix. 2. 17).[60]
In the later part of the great 'Br[=a]hmana of the hundred paths' there seems to be a more modern view inculcated in regard to the fate of the dead. Thus, in vi. 1. 2. 36, the opinion of 'some,' that the fire on the altar is to bear the worshipper to the sky, is objected to, and it is explained that he becomes immortal; which antithesis is in purely Upanishadic style, as will be seen below.
BRAHMANIC THEORIES OF CREATION.
In Vedic polytheism, with its strain of pantheism, the act of creating the world[61] is variously attributed to different gods. At the end of this period theosophy invented the god of the golden germ, the great Person (known also by other titles), who is the one (pantheistic) god, in whom all things are contained, and who himself is contain in even the smallest thing. The Atharvan transfers the same idea in its delineation of the pantheistic image to Varuna, that Varuna who is the seas and yet is contained "in the drop of water" (iv. 16), a Varuna as different to the Varuna of the Rik as is the Atharvan Indra to his older prototype. Philosophically the Rik, at its close, declares that "desire is the seed of mind," and that "being arises from not-being."
In the Br[=a]hmanas the creator is the All-god in more anthropomorphic form. The Father-god, Praj[=a]pati, or Brahm[=a] (personal equivalent of brahma) is not only the father of gods, men, and devils, but he is the All. This Father-god of universal sovereignty, Brahm[=a], remains to the end the personal creator. It is he who will serve as creator for the Puranic S[=a]nkhya philosophy, and even after the rise of the Hindu sects he will still be regarded in this light, although his activity will be conditioned by the will of Vishnu or Çiva. In pure philosophy there will be an abstract First Cause; but as there is no religion in the acknowledgment of a First Cause, this too will soon be anthropomorphized.