Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1 / Essays on the Science of Religion

by F. Max Müller

IV.

THE AITAREYA-BRÂHMANA.[40]

he Sanskrit text, with an English translation of the Aitareya-brâhmana, just published at Bombay by Dr. Martin Haug, the Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies in the Poona College, constitutes one of the most important additions lately made to our knowledge of the ancient literature of India. The work is published by the Director of Public Instruction, in behalf of Government, and furnishes a new instance of the liberal and judicious spirit in which Mr. Howard bestows his patronage on works of real and permanent utility. The Aitareya-brâhmana, containing the earliest speculations of the Brahmans on the meaning of their sacrificial prayers, and the purport of their ancient religious rites, is a work which could be properly edited nowhere but in India. It is only a small work of about two hundred pages, but it presupposes so thorough a familiarity with all the externals of the religion of the Brahmans, the various offices of their priests, the times and seasons of their sacred rites, the form of their innumerable sacrificial utensils, and the preparation of their offerings, that no amount of Sanskrit scholarship, such as can be gained in England, would have been sufficient to unravel the intricate speculations concerning the matters which form the bulk of the Aitareya-brâhmana. The difficulty was not to translate the text word for word, but to gain a clear, accurate, and living conception of the subjects there treated. The work was composed by persons, and for persons, who, in a general way, knew the performance of the Vedic sacrifices as well as we know the performance of our own sacred rites. If we placed the English Prayer-book in the hands of a stranger who had never assisted at an English service, we should find that, in spite of the simplicity and plainness of its language, it failed to convey to the uninitiated a clear idea of what he ought and what he ought not to do in church. The ancient Indian ceremonial, however, is one of the most artificial and complicated forms of worship that can well be imagined; and though its details are, no doubt, most minutely described in the Brâhmanas and the Sûtras, yet, without having seen the actual site on which the sacrifices are offered, the altars constructed for the occasion, the instruments employed by different priests—the tout-ensemble, in fact, of the sacred rites—the reader seems to deal with words, but with words only, and is unable to reproduce in his imagination the acts and facts which were intended to be conveyed by them. Various attempts were made to induce some of the more learned Brahmans to edit and translate some of their own rituals, and thus enable European scholars to gain an idea of the actual performance of their ancient sacrifices, and to enter more easily into the spirit of the speculations on the mysterious meaning of these rituals, which are embodied in the so-called Brâhmanas, or 'the sayings of the Brahmans.' But although, thanks to the enlightened exertions of Dr. Ballantyne and his associates in the Sanskrit College of Benares, Brahmans might have been found knowing English quite sufficiently for the purpose of a rough and ready translation from Sanskrit into English, such was their prejudice against divulging the secrets of their craft that none could be persuaded to undertake the ungrateful task. Dr. Haug tells us of another difficulty, which we had hardly suspected,—the great scarcity of Brahmans familiar with the ancient Vedic ritual:

'Seeing the great difficulties, nay, impossibility of attaining to anything like a real understanding of the sacrificial art from all the numerous books I had collected, I made the greatest efforts to obtain oral information from some of those few Brahmans who are known by the name of Srotriyas or Srautis, and who alone are the possessors of the sacrificial mysteries as they descended from the remotest times. The task was no easy one, and no European scholar in this country before me ever succeeded in it. This is not to be wondered at; for the proper knowledge of the ritual is everywhere in India now rapidly dying out, and in many parts, chiefly in those under British rule, it has already died out.'

Dr. Haug succeeded, however, at last in procuring the assistance of a real Doctor of Divinity, who had not only performed the minor Vedic sacrifices, such as the full and new-moon offerings, but had officiated at some of the great Soma sacrifices, now very rarely to be seen in any part of India. He was induced, we are sorry to say by very mercenary considerations, to perform the principal ceremonies in a secluded part of Dr. Haug's premises. This lasted five days, and the same assistance was afterwards rendered by the same worthy and some of his brethren whenever Dr. Haug was in any doubt as to the proper meaning of the ceremonial treatises which give the outlines of the Vedic sacrifices. Dr. Haug was actually allowed to taste that sacred beverage, the Soma, which gives health, wealth, wisdom, inspiration, nay immortality, to those who receive it from the hands of a twice-born priest. Yet, after describing its preparation, all that Dr. Haug has to say of it is:

'The sap of the plant now used at Poona appears whitish, has a very stringent taste, is bitter, but not sour; it is a very nasty drink, and has some intoxicating effect. I tasted it several times, but it was impossible for me to drink more than some teaspoonfuls.'

After having gone through all these ordeals, Dr. Haug may well say that his explanations of sacrificial terms, as given in the notes, can be relied upon as certain; that they proceed from what he himself witnessed, and what he was able to learn from men who had inherited the knowledge from the most ancient times. He speaks with some severity of those scholars in Europe who have attempted to explain the technical terms of the Vedic sacrifices without the assistance of native priests, and without even availing themselves carefully of the information they might have gained from native commentaries.

In the preface to his edition of the Aitareya-brâhmana, Dr. Haug has thrown out some new ideas on the chronology of Vedic literature which deserve careful consideration. Beginning with the hymns of the Rig-veda, he admits, indeed, that there are in that collection ancient and modern hymns, but he doubts whether it will be possible to draw a sharp line between what has been called the Khandas period, representing the free growth of sacred poetry, and the Mantra period, during which the ancient hymns were supposed to have been collected and new ones added, chiefly intended for sacrificial purposes. Dr. Haug maintains that some hymns of a decidedly sacrificial character should be ascribed to the earliest period of Vedic poetry. He takes, for instance, the hymn describing the horse sacrifice, and he concludes from the fact that seven priests only are mentioned in it by name, and that none of them belongs to the class of the Udgâtars (singers) and Brahmans (superintendents), that this hymn was written before the establishment of these two classes of priests. As these priests are mentioned in other Vedic hymns, he concludes that the hymn describing the horse sacrifice is of a very early date. Dr. Haug strengthens his case by a reference to the Zoroastrian ceremonial, in which, as he says, the chanters and superintendents are entirely unknown, whereas the other two classes, the Hotars (reciters) and Adhvaryus (assistants) are mentioned by the same names as Zaotar and Rathwiskare. The establishment of the two new classes of priests would, therefore, seem to have taken place in India after the Zoroastrians had separated from the Brahmans; and Dr. Haug would ascribe the Vedic hymns in which no more than two classes of priests are mentioned to a period preceding, others in which the other two classes of priests are mentioned to a period succeeding, that ancient schism. We must confess, though doing full justice to Dr. Haug's argument, that he seems to us to stretch what is merely negative evidence beyond its proper limits. Surely a poet, though acquainted with all the details of a sacrifice and the titles of all the priests employed in it, might speak of it in a more general manner than the author of a manual, and it would be most dangerous to conclude that whatever was passed over by him in silence did not exist at the time when he wrote. Secondly, if there were more ancient titles of priests, the poet would most likely use them in preference to others that had been but lately introduced. Thirdly, even the ancient priestly titles had originally a more general meaning before they were restricted to their technical significance, just as in Europe bishop meant originally an overseer, priest an elder, deacon a minister. In several hymns, some of these titles—for instance, that of hotar, invoker—are clearly used as appellatives, and not as titles. Lastly, one of the priests mentioned in the hymn on the horse sacrifice, the Agnimindha, is admitted by Dr. Haug himself to be the same as the Âgnîdhra; and if we take this name, like all the others, in its technical sense, we have to recognise in him one of the four Brahman priests.[41] We should thus lose the ground on which Dr. Haug's argument is chiefly based, and should have to admit the existence of Brahman priests as early at least as the time in which the hymn on the horse sacrifice was composed. But, even admitting that allusions to a more or less complete ceremonial[42] could be pointed out in certain hymns, this might help us no doubt in subdividing and arranging the poetry of the second or Mantra period, but it would leave the question, whether allusions to ceremonial technicalities are to be considered as characteristics of later hymns, entirely unaffected. Dr. Haug, who holds that, in the development of the human race, sacrifice comes earlier than religious poetry, formulas earlier than prayers, Leviticus earlier than the Psalms, applies this view to the chronological arrangement of Vedic literature; and he is, therefore, naturally inclined to look upon hymns composed for sacrificial purposes, more particularly upon the invocations and formulas of the Yagur-veda, and upon the Nivids preserved in the Brâhmanas and Sûtras, as relics of greater antiquity than the free poetical effusions of the Rishis, which defy ceremonial rules, ignore the settled rank of priests and deities, and occasionally allude to subjects more appropriate for profane than for sacred poetry: