Comparative Religion

by J. Estlin Carpenter

In the year 83 B.C. the temple which contained the books was burned. The greatest anxiety was displayed for their restoration. Envoys were sent to Sicily, Greece, and Asia Minor to collect fresh verses; they were deposited in a new temple, and prophecies were founded on them in the last days of the Republic. But it was believed that spurious verses had got into circulation, and Augustus ordered a rigid examination. Some two thousand volumes, it is alleged, were destroyed; those which were admitted as genuine were removed to a temple of Apollo which Augustus had himself dedicated on the Palatine hill. Here are the characteristics of a Canon. The books are kept under special charge in a temple. Their authority suffices to modify old cults and introduce new. When they perish, they must be restored. The false must be separated from the true, the genuine eliminated from the spurious. The Amoral element in them seems to have been entirely subordinated to the ritual; but they were believed to express in seasons of difficulty and danger the demands of the gods.

The transition to what are formally called "Sacred Books" leaves a considerable literature upon the boundary. The collection of the ancient national Finnic songs, made with so much patience by the Swedish Lonrott, under the name of the Kalevala, presents no claim to inspiration, but it is the poetical expression of the national religion. In the literature of the Eddas, the Volospa (p. [248]) is a product of the prophetic spirit. After Herodotus remarked that Homer and Hesiod made the gods of the Greeks, the Homeric poems acquired more and more authority, until by the usage of centuries they gained a semi-canonical position. Lectures were given upon their sacred text, and the most extravagant methods of interpretation were employed to reconcile them with the world-view of philosophy. The ancient Egyptian accepted the "Book of the Dead" as his guide to the next world. Chapters of it were inscribed on the walls of his tomb, engraved on his coffin, or laid inside it with his mummy. It contained the charms needful for the preservation of his soul on its journey to the land of the West. Its authors were unknown, but it contained the secrets of the life to come.

The "Bibles of Humanity," as the foundation-books of the great religions have been called, belong to one continent. Asia has been the mother of them all. The oldest takes shape in India in the Vedic hymns; and the immense literatures of Brahmanism, early and later Buddhism, and the Hinduism which finally drove Buddhism off the field, follow in due course. Cognate in language with the immigrant Aryans, the ancient Persians preserved, amid many losses, some of the compositions of their prophet Zarathustra, mingled with religious documents of later date, known to modern students by the name Zend Avesta. Palestine produces Judaism, with its collection of national literature embracing law, history, prophecy, poetry, and wisdom. Judaism gives birth to Christianity, which sets its New Testament beside the Old; and Judaism and Christianity lie behind Mohammed and the Koran, where the person and the book blend in the closest union.

In the Far East Chinese culture reposes on the so-called Classics, the five King and the four Shu, which had a chequered history till they finally acquired their position as fountains of knowledge and models of composition. The ancient odes of the Shî King, the traditions of rulers and the counsels of statesmen in the Shu King, the collections of the teaching of Confucius and Mencius, and the remaining works which need not be mentioned here, raise none of the claims which have been preferred for the Indian Veda, or the Christian Bible. Nor does the singular little book of aphorisms ascribed to Lao-Tsze, which serves as the starting-point for Taoism (p. [67]). The Shintoist of Japan finds the earliest records of his religion in the national chronicles known as the Kojiki and the Nihongi; and the modern believer, who has been offered an infallible Bible, responds with a profession of faith in the practical inerrancy of his own traditional books.

Some smaller communities claim a passing word. The Jains (p. [61]), once the rivals of the Buddhists, possess a sacred literature only less copious. Group after group appears in mediæval India singing the hymns of its founder, such as the Kabir-panthis, till the poet Tulsi-Das (born 1532) embodies in his version of the ancient Rāmāyana the essence of Hindu religion for some ninety millions from Bengal to the Punjab. The Sikhs (p. [62]) stay themselves upon the words of their holy teachers in the Ādi-Granth. The followers of Mani in the third century of our era, who threatened the progress of the Christian Church, and spread all the way from Carthage to Middle Asia, possessed a gospel and epistles of their Prophet, portions of which were brought to Berlin a few years ago from Chinese Turkestan. The Druzes of the Lebanon, whose origin goes back to the Caliph Hakim at Cairo in the eleventh century A.D., treasure the documents of the faith in 111 treatises and epistles, starting from Hakim's vizier, Hamza. And the hapless prophet of Persia, who designated himself the Bab (p. [70]), composed in the Beyyan (among numerous other works) an exposition of the Truth for his disciples. For such small communities a sacred literature is in fact a necessity. Without it they have no adequate cohesion. It is at least one of the conditions of permanent resistance to the forces of decay.

Around the Scriptures of the greater religions devout reverence has gathered with ardent faith. The Hindu term Veda (meaning literally "knowledge") has a narrower and a wider sense. In its limited application it denotes the four collections of hymns, of ritual formulæ, and sacrificial songs, of which the Rig-Veda is the most important (p. [10]). Their history must be inferred from their contents; of the circumstances of their formation there is no external evidence, save that the early Buddhist texts show that the fourth or Atharva-Veda had not acquired canonical value in the days of the Teacher Gotama. But the term Veda is also extended to include a mass of ceremonial compositions known as Brāhmanas, attached to one or other of the ancient collections, and handed down in different religious schools. These are all included more or less definitely in what a Western theologian might term "Revelation." They are technically designated as çruti or "hearing"; they form the matter of the sacred teaching transmitted orally, which must be reserved for a special order and not imparted to the world outside.

The books of household law, on the other hand, prescribing the domestic ceremonies for birth, marriage, and death, regulating caste-privileges, and laying down rules for the conduct of life, were open to all. But just as the Rig-Veda was exalted into a reproduction on earth of what existed eternally in heaven, so endeavours were made to convert the legal works current in particular schools into sacred codes of divine origin. One was boldly ascribed to Vishnu, who communicated it to the goddess of the earth. Another, most famous of all, was attached to Manu, the eponymous hero of the human race. "Father Manu" he is called in the Rig-Veda, and as the sire of mankind he was the founder of social and moral order. First king, and Rishi (or seer) privileged to behold the sacred texts, he was the inventor of rites and author of the maxims of law. And yet higher dignity belonged to him, for he sprang from the Self-Existent and could thus be identified with Brahma himself; and as Prajāpati (p. [143]) he took part in the creation of the world. In due course poetry and philosophy had their turn. The immense epic known as the Mahābhārata, where tradition and myth and imaginative speculation are blended in rich confusion, was put in the scales by the gods against the four Vedas, and its sanctity outweighed them all.

The Buddhist Scriptures were early grouped in three divisions under the title of the Three Baskets. The teachings of the Supremely Enlightened were of course absolutely true, and his rules for the members of his Order were of compelling authority. It was assumed that they were recited correctly at an assembly held immediately after his decease. The "Buddha-Word" thus became the infallible standard of faith and practice. There are traces of provision to meet difficulties in case different elders should believe themselves to possess varying traditions of the Buddha's commands: but not even the enormous expansion of the Scriptures of the Great Vehicle, as preserved in China and Japan, shook the faith of the disciple in the authentic character of their doctrine. The higher teaching belonged to the later years of the Buddha's life, and was transmitted by special channels. It is much as if Gnosticism had established itself in the Christian Church of the second century, and had formed its literature into a Canon beside our New Testament. Nepal, according to the testimony of Bryan Hodgson, raised its sacred books into objects of worship. Chinese respect was satisfied when they were issued from time to time (p. [66]) with a preface by the imperial Son of Heaven.

The oldest portion of the sacred literature collected under the name of the Zend Avesta consists of five hymns (called Gathas), ascribed to Zarathustra himself. They bear many marks of high antiquity, and they acquired a peculiar sanctity, so that the later sacrificial hymns already regard them as objects of homage to which worship should be offered. Above the actual Scriptures rose a radiant figure, in which the conception of revelation was impersonated. Iranian thought was markedly idealist; each earthly object had its spiritual type, its antecedent or counterpart in the heavenly realm. The religion and law of Zarathustra had their representative in Daena, who is already celebrated with pious praise in the Avesta. Sacrifice is offered to her as she dwells in the Heavenly House, the Abode of Song. Thence Zarathustra summons her, beseeching her fellowship—she is associated with Cista, "religious knowledge"—and he asks of her mystic powers and righteousness in thought and speech and deed. Later teaching declared her to be produced by Vohu Mano, the "Good Mind" of Ahura Mazda himself (p. [131]). As the actual utterance of the Lord Omniscient, the sacred Law might also be called his mãthra çpenta or "Holy Word."

Jewish theology was not altogether deficient in similar conceptions. Corresponding to the Torah or Law imparted to Moses, was a heavenly Torah, infinitely richer in content. It formed one of a mysterious group of seven Realities which existed, like the Throne of Glory, Eden, and Gehenna, before the making of the earth and sky. It was a kind of epitome of all possible cosmic relations, so that as an architect frames his plan for a city, God looked into the Torah when he would create the world. Christian theology has never employed this imagery to express its conception of Revelation. But it lies at the back of the curious language of the Koran concerning the "Mother of the Book" (p. [13]). Mohammedan theologians reckoned no less than ten ways in which the Prophet received his revelations. Sometimes the divine inspiration came in a dream, sometimes like the noise of a bell through which he recognised the words which Gabriel wished him to understand. Other books had been given previously to Moses, to David, to Jesus, and each nation would be summoned to its own book at the judgment. The believer in Islam recognised in the "Mother of the Book" the pre-existent or Eternal Word, which God from time to time "sent down" to his Prophet. It had definite size and aspect for Arab imagination. The commentator Jalâlain described it as existing in the air above the seventh heaven. There angel guardians defended it from theft by Satan or the change of any of its contents. It was as long as from heaven to earth, and as broad as from east to west; and its consistency was of one white pearl. Was it surprising that Mohammedan faith should support the utterance of the pious Câdi Iyâd (who died in Morocco, A.D. 1149): "The Koran, as it lies between the two covers is God's own word, which he imparted by way of inspiration to the Prophet. Therefore is it in every way inimitable, and no man can produce anything like it"?