Reminiscences: The Story of an Emigrant

by Hans Mattson

[ CHAPTER XXII.]

Heathenism and Christianity—The Religion of the Hindoos—Caste—The Brahmins—Their Tyranny—Superstition—The Influence of Christianity—Keshub-Chunder-Sen, the Indian Reformer—His faith and Influence.

Having given a sketch of the divine worship, religious rites and sacrificial feasts of the Hindoos, I shall now call the attention of the reader to a brief description of their religion and spiritual culture in general.

“In the hoary past India had mighty religious leaders and authors who laid claim to divine authority. Religious systems were announced, and voluminous, erudite verses were published for the guidance of the people, or rather the Brahmins or priests, which writings are still the Bibles of the Hindoos. The most important of these books are called ‘Vedas,’ ‘Shastras,’ and ‘Puranas.’ The lively imagination of the authors and the religious enthusiasm of the people were not content with a few deities, therefore their number has been increased from time to time, until they now amount to thirty-three million gods and goddesses. The most important of the former are Brahma, Visnu and Shiva, and of the latter Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. The former are worshiped as the creating, preserving and destroying powers, and from these three all the others have originated; at first considered as representatives of certain attributes and principals of the three chief deities, but later as independent, individual deities. Many of these gods are represented by images and pictures, which originally the whole people, but at present only the learned, regard merely as representations of certain divine principals and attributes. Later on these were put in the place of the things which they represented, so that the stone image, the river, the tree, or the animal is regarded as the god himself by the ignorant multitude.

“According to the Hindoo doctrine of creation the earth rests on the back of a tortoise, and the human race was originally created members of four different classes or castes. Thus the class or caste distinction of India is closely incorporated with its religion, and shows that the priests have been very shrewd in founding a religious system which secured for themselves not only salvation after death, but, above all, an abundance of the good things of this world. Brahma was from the beginning, and from him emanated Vishnu and Shiva. Thereafter Brahma created first water, then the earth, then from out of his head a man who was the Brahmin, and became the chief of the caste of priests, or the highest class. After this he let a Kshatriya issue from out of his arms, a Vaisya from his loins and a Sudra from his feet, and which became respectively the progenitors of the three other castes, the warriors, the craftsmen and merchants, and the common laborers. These castes have gradually been divided into many subdivisions, but the four principal ones still remain with all their rigid distinctions. Through certain misdemeanors, which may be very insignificant, a person belonging to a higher may be degraded to a lower caste, but one of a lower caste can never rise to a higher, not even by the most meritorious achievements.”

Of all the cruel chains by which tyrants have fettered men, none has been a more formidable enemy of liberty or a greater impediment to human progress than this dreadful system of caste. It has stifled all noble efforts, all brotherly love and humane feelings; it has plunged the people into superstition, indifference and ignorance; it has doomed ninety-nine hundredths of the myriads of India to the most cruel slavery, in body and in soul; it has placed locks and fetters on the human mind and branded the infant in its mother’s womb to infamy and execration; and, the worst of all, it has stifled all incentive to progress and development. It has smothered many noble feelings, and taught men to hate and despise each other; and so strong is the class distinction of this system that a good Hindoo of our day would a thousand times rather die of thirst or hunger than take a glass of water or a piece of bread from a person of a lower caste. Like other evils it has also been a curse to its authors, the Brahmins themselves, by lulling the great majority of them into ignorance and indifference. For why should they take the trouble to study or work when the whole world with its joys, pleasures and honors is open to them anyway? Space does not allow discussing this matter more fully, hence I will simply cite some of the doctrines which the Brahmins claim to have found in the divine books, and which the people still regard as sacred:

“Whoever disturbs a Brahmin during his religious contemplations shall lose his life; if a person of a lower caste sits down on the mat of a Brahmin, his back shall be burned with red-hot irons; if he touches the hair, beard or neck of a Brahmin, the judge shall order both his hands to be cut off; if he listens to evil reports about the Brahmins, molten lead shall be poured into his ears; if he does not arise when a Brahmin approaches, he will be changed into a tree after death; if he casts an angry look at a Brahmin the god Yama shall pluck out his eyes. The Shastras teach that a gift to a Brahmin is of incalculable value to the giver. Whoever gives a Brahmin a cow shall gain a million years of bliss in heaven, and whoever wishes success in anything must fête the Brahmins and wash their feet. Whoever bequeathes land or other valuable property to the Brahmins on his death-bed immediately receives forgiveness of sins and the greatest bliss in heaven. To drink the water in which a Brahmin has washed his feet and to lick the dust from under a Brahmin’s feet are works of great merit for the life which is to come. No one but a Brahmin is allowed to give religious instruction, and all offerings to the gods must be brought to the Brahmin, because no ceremony will avail anything unless it is accompanied by an offering to them. Therefore a multitude of ceremonies have been introduced by the Brahmins in order that their coffers may be well filled. I will name a few of those ceremonies which relate to everybody’s life and death, and which cannot, therefore, be neglected.

“As soon as a mother knows she has conceived, a Brahmin must be sent for to read certain formulas; when the child is born a Brahmin must be called for the same purpose, also when it is a week, six months, two years and eight years old, and again when the young people are to be married; in all cases of sickness, at the death-bed, at the cremation of the body, and every month the first year after a person’s death; and at each one of these visits the Brahmin is entitled to money or other gifts. Also if a family is subject to any misfortune the Brahmin must be called to conjure the evil powers; if a bird of prey alights on the roof, the owner of the house must call a Brahmin to purify the house by his blessing; when he moves into a new house the Brahmin must bless it beforehand; when a man dies on an unlucky day his son must pay the Brahmin money to ward off a similar calamity from him; when a well is dug a Brahmin must bless it before its water can be used; during eclipses of the sun and the moon everybody sends gifts to the Brahmins; at every change of the moon the Brahmin is entitled to gifts as well as on forty regular holidays every year; during small-pox or cholera ravages he is called to ward off the plague; the farmer cannot reap his grain, the fisherman cannot go to sea, the merchant cannot make a bargain unless he has bought the blessing of the Brahmin and paid for the same.”

And still the Hindoos possess a high culture, and their civilization is one of the oldest in the world. They are endowed with a strong religious feeling. They are profound, peaceful, diligent, economical and law abiding; many of them have become distinguished in learning, art and science; they have been the teachers of the philosophers and scholars of other nations, and for thousands of years they have pondered deeply on questions pertaining to the human soul, immortality and the life to come, and endeavored to satisfy their craving and yearning for a closer union with the infinite by a devotion and self sacrifices which can well be compared with the sufferings of the Christian martyrs. Accordingly if any people could attain a higher development and a happy condition by other means than the influence of the Christian religion, that people ought to be the Hindoos. Yet, after all their struggles, we now find them on a lower level than they were thousands of years ago. What a picture! All these millions of civilized, peaceful, diligent, sensible people bend their knees before thirty-three millions of disgusting images and pictures, and among all this people, in all their thirty thousand cities there was not a hospital for the sick, not an asylum for the blind or deaf, not a home for lepers or insane, not one voice saying to the lowly and the poor: “Thou art my brother.”