In the conception of this triform god we have the fact at once brought home to us in the clearest way that the form of Spirit is not yet able to assert itself in its Truth if for no other reason than this, that here it is not the spiritual which constitutes the truly permeating significance. That is to say, this trinity of gods would only be Spirit if the third god were an essentially concrete unity, a unity which returned upon itself from the differentiation and reduplication of its substance. For God, according to the true conception of Godhead, is Spirit as this active and absolute self-differentiation and Unity, a conception which is generally what constitutes the notion of Spirit. In this Trimûrtis, however, the triune God is not by any means such a concrete totality, but merely a passage from this to that, a metamorphosis, a procreator, a destroyer, and so forth. We must be accordingly very careful not to imagine that we have discovered the highest Truth in these most primordial gropings of man's reason, and in this one note of concord which, no doubt, as mere rhythmic expression[50], contains the triune form of Deity, that is, the fundamental conception of Christian theology, believe that we already have before us a recognition of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
Starting from such fundamental conceptions as those of Brahman and Trimûrtis, Hindoo imagination expatiates still further without let in a countless number of the most varied formed Divinities. For those primary significances of universal application which are apprehended as essential Deity are of such a kind that they may be rediscovered in an infinite number of phenomena, which are again personified and symbolized as gods, and each and all combine in throwing the greatest obstacles in the way of any intelligible system by reason of the indefinite character and confusing volubility[51] of this type of imagination, which fails utterly to grasp the real nature of anything that it discovers, and merely wrests everything that it touches from its own appropriate sphere. For these gods of subordinate rank, at the head of which we may place such a Divinity as Indrus, who represents the Air and the Heavens, the chief material is furnished by the general forces of Nature, such as stars, rivers, and mountains conceived in the various phases of their activity, their change, their influence on mankind, whether beneficent or hurtful, preservative or destructive. One of the most important subjects, however, of Hindoo imagination and art is the origin of gods and the rest of creation, in other words its Theogony and Cosmogony. For this type of imagination is generally rooted in the continual effort to carry over that which is most removed from sense into the very heart of the external world, or in the reverse process once more to expunge that which stands nearest to sense and Nature by means of the barest abstraction. Consequently the origin of the gods is referred back to the primordial Godhead[52], and at the same time the workings and existence of Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Sivas are represented as actual in mountains, streams, and human events. A cosmological content of this kind can, on the one hand, contain an independent and specific order of Deities, while on the other these gods are made to merge in those universal significances of the supremest type of Godhead. Such theogonies and cosmogonies are numerous and of every conceivable variety. When anyone ventures, therefore, to say that the Hindoos have thus or thus portrayed the creation of the world or the origin of Nature, such a statement can only be taken to apply to a particular sect or book; you can very easily find a perfectly different account of these events elsewhere. The imagination of this people in the pictures and images they have created is exhaustless.
A mode of conception which is conspicuous throughout the entire series of these creation stories is the constantly repeated presentation of the creative act not in the form of spiritual fiat, but of a purely natural process of generation. Only after having made ourselves thoroughly conversant with this mode of imaginative vision shall we discover the key to unlock the meaning of many representations which at first totally confound all our feelings of shame, shamelessness being here apparently driven to its furthest limits, and in its utter sensuousness carried beyond all belief. A striking example of this mode of imaginative treatment is offered us by the notoriously popular episode from the Râmâyana, known as the descent of Gangâ. This tale is narrated on the occasion when Râmas happens by chance to come to the Ganges. The wintry and ice-covered Himavân, the prince of the mountains, was father by the slender Menâ of two daughters, Gangâ, the elder, and the beautiful Umâ the younger one. Certain gods, more particularly Indras, beseech the father to send them Gangâ, in order that they may institute the sacred rites, and as Himavat proves himself quite ready to accede to their request Gangâ mounts on high to the blessed gods. After this follows the further story of Umâ, who after accomplishing wonderful actions of humility and penitence, is espoused to Rudras, that is, Sivas. From this union spring up wild and unfruitful mountains. For a hundred years long Sivas lay with Umâ in the bridal embrace, without intermission, so that the gods aghast at the procreative power of Sivas, and full of anxiety for the productive child, beseech him that he will divert the stream of his strength on the Earth. This passage the English translator has not ventured to translate literally, for the reason that it flings too much for him every shred of shame or modesty to the winds. Sivas hearkens to the beseechings of the gods, and staying his former procreative ardour, that he may not utterly confound the universe, he loosens the seminal flood over the Earth. Out of this, transpierced with fire, rises up the white mountain which separates India from Tartary. Umâ, however, falls into scorn and anger at this complaisance, and thereon curses all wedlock. In this section of the tale we have what are mainly fearful and distorted pictures which run so entirely counter to our ordinary notions of imagination and intelligent senses that the most we can do is to observe what they would appear to offer in default of either. Schlegel has omitted to translate this section of the episode and merely added in his own words how Gangâ descends once more on the Earth. And this took place in the following way. A certain forebear of Râmas, Sagaras, was father of a bad son, and by a second wife he was father of no less than 60,000 sons, who came into the world in a pumpkin, were, however, raised up into stalwart men on clarified butter in pitchers[53]. Now it chanced one day that Sagaras was of a mind to sacrifice a steed, which was, however, seized from him by Vishnu in the form of a serpent. On this Sagaras sends forth his 60,000 sons. But no sooner had they come to Vishnu after great hardships and a long searching than a breath of hers burns them all to ashes. After a weary waiting a certain grandson of Sagaras, by name Ansumân the Shining, son of Asamaschas, set forth to find his 60,000 uncles and the sacrificial steed. He actually comes upon both the steed Siwas and the heap of ashes. The king of birds, Garudas, however, notifies to him the fact that unless the stream of the holy Gangâ flows down from heaven over the heap of ashes his relations will be unable to return to life. Whereupon the stalwart Ansumân endures for 32,000 years on the mountain-top of Himavân the sternest mortifications. All in vain. Neither his own chastisements nor those of yet another 30,000 years of his son Dwilipas are of the slightest avail. At last the son of Dwilipas, the glorious Bhagîrathas, succeeds in accomplishing the feat, but only after mortifications which last 1,000 years. Then the Gangâ plunges down; but in order that the Earth may not thereby shiver in pieces, Siwas now bows his head so that the water runs into his mane. Thereupon yet further mortifications are enjoined upon Bhagîrathas, in order that Gangâ may be free to stream forth from these locks. Finally she is poured forth in six streams; the seventh Bhagîrathas conducts after mighty privations to the place of the 60,000, who mount up to heaven, and therewith Bhagîrathas rules for yet many a year over his people in peace.
Other theogonies such as the Scandinavian and the Greek are very similar in type to the Hindoo. The principal feature of them all is this of physical generation and production; but not one of them plunges so headlong into the subject or in general displays such caprice and impropriety in the images of its invention as the Hindoo. The theogony of Hesiod is in particular far more intelligible and succinct, so that at least one knows where one is, and is clear as to the general significance; and this is so because the impression is far more pronounced that the form and external embodiment of the myth is set forth by the narrator as something external. The mythos starts in this case[54] with Chaos, Erebos, Eros, and Gaia. The Earth (Gaia) brings forth Uranos of her own accord, and then is mother by him of the mountains, sea, and so forth, also of Cronos and the Cyclops, Centimani[55], whom Uranos, however, shortly after birth incarcerates in Tartaros. Gaia thereupon induces Cronos to castrate Uranos. The deed is accomplished. And from the blood that falls on the Earth spring to life the Erinnyes and the Giants. The castrated member is caught by the sea, and from the sea's foam arises Cytherea. In all this description the outlines are more clearly and decisively drawn. And we are thereby carried beyond the circle of mere gods of Nature.
3. If we endeavour now to seize some point where the transition is emphasized to the stage of real symbolism, we shall find the same already in the first beginnings of Hindoo imagination. That is to say, however preoccupied the Hindoo imagination may be in its efforts to contort the sensuous phenomenon into a plurality of Divinities, a preoccupation which no other people has displayed with anything like the same exhaustless scope and countless transformations, yet from another point of view in many of its visions and narratives it remains throughout constant to that spiritual abstraction of a God supreme over all, in contrast with whom the particular, sensuous, and phenomenal is undivine, inadequate, and consequently is apprehended as something negative, something which has finally to be cancelled. For, as we have from the first noticed, it is precisely this continual involution of one side on the other which constitutes the fundamental type of the Hindoo imagination, and makes it for ever incapable of finding a true principle of reconciliation. The art is consequently never tired of representing, in every imaginable way, the surrender of the sensuous and the power of spiritual abstraction and self-absorption. Of this kind are the representations of toilsome mortifications and profound meditations, of which not merely the most ancient epical poems, such as the "Râmâyana" and the "Mahâbhârata," but also many other works of art furnish most important examples. No doubt many of these self-chastisements are undergone on grounds of ambition, or at least with a view to definite objects, which do conduct the devotee to the highest and most final union with Brahman, and to the mortification of everything carnal and finite. An object of this kind is the endeavour to secure the power of a Brahmin; but even in this there is always the fact present to consciousness that the expiation and the continuance of a meditation that is ever more and more diverted from the objects of sense will raise the devotee over his birth-place in a particular caste, no less than help him resist the power of Nature and the gods of Nature. For this reason, that prince of Divinities of this class, Indras, opposes most signally strenuous aspirants, and strives to entice them away; or, in the case where all his seductions fail, he invokes assistance from the supreme gods lest the entire heaven fall into confusion.
In the representation of mortifications of this kind and the several kinds and grades according to which they are ranked, Hindoo art is almost as fertile in its invention as in its system of Divinities, and it pursues the theme with the most thorough earnestness.
This, then, is the point from which we may now extend our survey in a forward direction.
C. REAL SYMBOLISM
In the case of symbolical, no less than that of Fine Art, it is necessary that the significance which it seeks to embody should not merely be set forth, as is the case in Hindoo art, from the first immediate unity of the same with its objective existence, such as obtains before any severation or distinction has as yet been emphasized, but that this significance should itself be independent and free from the immediate sensuous content. This deliverance can only so far assert itself as the sensuous and natural medium is both grasped and envisaged as itself essentially negative, as that which has to be and has been absorbed. It is a further requirement, moreover, that the negativity, which is successful in making its appearance as the passing off and the self-dissolution of the Natural, should be accepted and receive embodiment as the absolute import of the object generally, as a phase, that is to say, of the Divine. But with a fulfilment of such claims we are already beyond the limits of Hindoo art. It is true that the consciousness of this negative side is not wholly absent from the Hindoo imagination. Sivas is the destroyer no less than the producer. Indras dies, nay, more, the Destroyer Time, personified as Kâla the terrible giant, confounds the entire universe and all gods, even Trimûrtis, who passes away at the same time in Brahman, just as the individual in his self-identification with the highest form of Divinity suffers his Ego and all his wisdom and will to vanish away. In these conceptions, however, the negative element is in part merely a transformation and change, in part only an abstraction, which allows all definition to drop away, in order that it may thrust its path to an indefinite and consequently vacuous and content-less universality. The substance of the Divine on the other hand persists through change of form, passage over and advance to a system of many Deities, and the abrogation of that system once more in the one highest form of God unalterably one and the same. It is not that conception of the one God, which itself essentially possesses, as this unity, the negative aspect as its own determination, both necessary and appropriate to its own essential notion. In an analogous way the destructive and hurtful element is placed according to the Parsee view of existence outside the personality of Ormuzd in Ahriman, and consequently only makes a contradiction and conflict manifest belonging under no form of relation to Ormuzd, as a distinct phase of his own substance.
The actual point in the advance which we have now to make consists, therefore, in this that, on the one hand, the negative aspect, fixed by consciousness in an independent relation as the Absolute, is, however, on the other, merely regarded as a phase of the Divine, as a phase, however, which is not only as outside the true Absolute incidental to another Godhead[56], but is to be so ascribed to the Absolute, that the true God appears as a process in which He negates Himself, and thereby contains this negative element as an inherent self-determination of His own substance.