A Ghāsiya
(Mirzapur district)
I should like to suggest that at the stage of human evolution which we call animistic, man takes the facts of life in the lump, as it were, and does not sort them out into classes. If we are to judge by what we know of the history of Hinduism, the evolution of primitive man from this unclassifying stage is something as follows. Art comes into play. The practice of song and draughtsmanship introduces specialisation. From singing comes verse, from drawing comes some kind of rude writing. The first trains the memory, the second aids memory. Then comes the social classification which results from the breaking up of clans, and contact with other clans and communities. All men are not the same, and the difference is grasped and finds expression in language. The new power of classification is extended to other things. The difference between animate and inanimate things is understood, and their relative powers of helping or hurting the tribal community. When classification has proceeded thus far, the inference is easy that as what is known of the faculties of subter-human beings and things to benefit or hurt humans does not by any means account for the joys and calamities of life, there must be a class of superhuman beings who are to be conciliated. By their supposed deeds they are judged. If they are, on the whole, kindly and easily placated, they will be classified by some title which they will usually share with great and good men. If their action on mankind be harmful, they will bear the names given to malicious or inimical races or individuals. At a subsequent stage of analytical evolution their generic names will be confined to their own class; they will be gods or demons. Many Hindus have hardly gone beyond this stage, and we can hardly be surprised that some objection should be taken to too rigid a distinction between Hindus and Animists. In practice, it is often difficult to say whether a given observance is Animistic or Hindu. Here is one case, out of thousands that occur in India, from my own experience. In the seaport town of Chittagong is the shrine of the famous Muhammadan saint Pir Badr, a holy man often invoked by travellers on sea or river. In a niche in a little pillar in the open air, Christians and Buddhists, Hindus and Musalmāns alike place lighted candles by way of propitiation. This, surely, is an observance of the Animistic type. It has no part in any theorised or classified religious system. It is merely the attempt to gratify an influence which may help or harm. Animism is consistent with the most vivid, if childlike, curiosity. All is grist that comes to that primitive mill. But the resulting flour of thought is, as it were, coarse and unsifted. Artistic specialisation, the birth of literature, brings a need of classification. Out of propitiation comes ritual, a belief in the efficacy of sacramental gestures, offerings, formulæ. But, as time goes on, they are appropriated to the service of highly specialised deities. As man learns the advantage of a division of labour and a specialisation of function, so his gods become "departmental." The classification will not be that of modern times. Among animate things will be reckoned fire, and air, the sun and moon and the twinkling stars. But the process of analysing and sorting will have begun.
(2) The Vedas. The Aryan immigrants seem to have brought a scanty and summary theology with them, or it may be that in different surroundings they forgot their old religious ideas, and, with the help of Dravidian and other aboriginal speculations, evolved new ones. Sir G. Grierson has suggested that the fact that they migrated in two afterwards hostile bodies finds its reflection, in the Vedas, in the fabled antagonism of the rival priests Visvāmitra and Vasishta; in the Mahābhāratā in the famous war between the Kauravas and Pāndavas, the Eastern counterpart of the siege of Troy.
The Vedas are four collections of ritual hymns, used in connection with the oblation of the intoxicating juice of the Soma, the moon-plant, or with the sacrificial Fire. The Rig-veda (the oldest) and its supplement the Sāma-veda are now held to have been composed when the Aryans had reached the junction of the Panjāb rivers with the Indus: the Black and White Yajur-veda when they reached the Sutlej and the Jumna; the Atharva-veda, which contains the lower beliefs of aboriginal races, when they had reached Benares. There are gods and goddesses of the sky, the most important being the Sun, and Varuna (the Greek οὐρανός), afterwards a kind of Hindu Neptune, but in these early days represented as sitting in the vault of heaven, and having the sun and stars as the eyes with which he watches the doings of men. His function was to encourage personal holiness as a human ideal. In the mid-air Indra became pre-eminent on Indian soil, where the dependence of an agricultural people on periodical rains made the rain-god an important deity. On earth the most important deities are Soma and Agni (fire) already mentioned. There was also Yama, the beautiful and stately god of death, who though naturally immortal chose to die, and lead the way for mortal successors to the abodes of the dead. Besides the departmental gods, there is in the Vedas a distinct foreshadowing of Pantheism.
(3) The Brāhmanas. When the Aryans reached the "Midland," the upper Gangetic valley, the Vedic hymns were supplemented by new Scriptures, called Brāhmanas, which were digests of dicta on matters of ritual for the guidance of priests. These were the beginning of Brāhmanism. The elementary Pantheistic theory of the Vedas was developed into a belief in one Spiritual Being or Ātman. When manifested and impersonal, this Being was the neuter Brahma; when regarded as the Creator, he was the masculine Brahmā; but when manifested in the highest order of intellectual men, he was Brāhman, the Brāhman priestly class. Following the Brāhmanas, was a third order of religious literature, the Upanishads. Dr Hopkins has thus summarised the teaching of these three Scriptures. "In the Vedic hymns, man fears the gods. In the Brāhmanas man subdues the gods, and fears God. In the Upanishads man ignores the gods and becomes God." Not that these three kinds of Scripture, these three evolutions of religious speculation, followed one another in chronological order. But this was, roughly, the logical evolution. Finally the doctrine was established that knowledge leads to the supreme bliss of absorption into Brahmā, and with this was combined the theory of transmigration.
Even from this extremely crude and simplified statement, it will be evident that the priesthood had secured for themselves an unexampled supremacy, and, in the Midland at least, had placed the administrator and warrior in a state of marked inferiority. But in the surrounding territories, success in arms and government won men the consideration still considered their due among ourselves. In the Midland itself the territory was divided among a number of petty chiefs, who waged perpetual warfare with one another. They were not likely to ignore the prestige won by valour and warlike skill. One of them was Gautama, the Buddha (c. 596-508 B.C.). Another was Vardhamāna, his contemporary, the founder of Jainism. This is not the place to tell of Buddhism, which, as a recognised creed, though it has spread far to the north and east, and is the religion of Ceylon and Burma, only survives in India proper in faint influences on the belief and practice of various Hindu sects.
(4) Jainism. The Jain Reform still exists and numbers over a million of followers. Its doctrines have a vague and general resemblance to those of Buddhism, not because either copied the other, but because they sprang from a common origin. In both Nirvāna, the "blowing out," as it were, of the lamp of life is the goal aimed at. But to the Buddhist, Nirvāna means the peace of extinction; to the Jain, it is final escape from the body after various metamorphoses. Mr Crooke defines the fivefold vow of the Jains as prescribing (1) the sanctity of human life; (2) renunciation of lying, which proceeds from anger, greed, fear or mirth; (3) refusal to take things not given; (4) chastity; (5) renunciation of worldly attachments. The Jain pantheon consists of deified saints who are either Tīrthan-kara, "making a passage through the circuit of life," or Jina, "the victorious ones."
(5) Hinduism Proper. These reforms, joined with the spread of the Brāhmanical faith into lands where the authority of Aryan priests was not recognised, produced something which, in its way, resembles the Protestant Reformation. The Vedic religion had come to be the monopoly of a limited order of hereditary priests. This ritual supremacy was broken up by two influences. A new national ideal of worship found expression in the Epics, which to this day, in metrical translations, are the layman's scripture all over India. Secondly, the Vedic pantheon was enormously enlarged by the admission of non-Aryan deities and aboriginal modes of worship. Hence arose the body of writings known as the Purānas, or "ancient" books, not all really old in the trace of their composition, but perhaps deserving their title as containing very old beliefs. Of all these books and their teaching other authorities have written recently in various works on the early history and religious poetry of India, and it would therefore be presumptuous for me to say anything about the religious literature of Hinduism. It is sufficient to say that the Epics introduced, in place of the vague and shadowy Vedic gods, heroic incarnations of divine virtue, wisdom and valour, and thus led to the sectarian worship of the two active members of a new supreme triad of gods, Brahmā, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, and Siva, the destroyer. Most Hindus are now followers of one or other of the two latter in some incarnation. In early times this sectarian rivalry led to wars and persecutions, but Hinduism is singularly tolerant in matters of belief and doctrine. A Saiva is not a disbeliever in the divinity of the incarnations of Vishnu; a Vaishnava recognises the ascetic powers of Siva. But each has his favourite deity and chiefly studies the scriptures relating to him. The principal incarnations of Vishnu are Krishna and Rāma, who seem to have been originally deified heroes of the Midland. There were many Vishnuvite reformers, some of whom, it is interesting to note, may have derived suggestions from the early Christianity of Southern India.
The first of these was Rāmānuja, who lived in the eleventh century A.D. Fifth in succession to him was Rāmānanda, who lived in the fourteenth century and was the missionary of popular Vaishnavism in Northern India. To him that tract owes the prevalence of the cult of Rāma and his wife Sītā, the hero and heroine of the Epic known as the Rāmāyana. His chief innovation was the admission of low-caste disciples into the communion. His disciple, the famous Kabir (1380-1420 A.D.), went further. He even linked Hinduism with Islam. Himself a humble weaver, he taught the spiritual equality of all men. God is one, he argued, by whatever name men choose to call Him. The accidents of life, social station and caste, happiness and grief, prosperity and misfortune, are all the results of Māya or Illusion. Happiness comes not by formula or sacrifice but by passionate adoration (bhakti) of God. Kabir's chief importance in the history of Hindu evolution is in the fact that his doctrines were the origin of Sikhism.
Another great name in the democratic Vaishnava reformation was that of Chaitanya (1485-1527 A.D.). Mr E. A. Gait writes of him that he was "a Baidik Brāhman. He preached mainly in Central Bengal and Orissa, and his doctrine found ready acceptance among large numbers of the people, especially among those who were still, or had only recently ceased to be, Buddhists. This was mainly due to the fact that he drew his followers from all sources, so much so that even Muhammadans followed him. He preached vehemently against the immolation of animals in sacrifice, and the use of animal food and stimulants, and taught that the true road to salvation lay in bhakti, or fervent devotion to God. He recommended Rādhā worship, and taught that the love felt by her for Krishna was the highest form of devotion. The acceptable offerings were flowers, money, and the like; but the great form of worship was the Sankirtan, or procession of worshippers playing and singing. The peculiarity of Chaitanya's cult is that the post of spiritual guide, or Goshain, is not confined to Brāhmans, and several of those best known belong to the Baidya caste[5]."