India's Problem, Krishna or Christ

by John P. Jones

It has been the wont of Brahmanism not to directly antagonize and overthrow the old and the opposing cults, but rather to absorb them. Note here its fundamental contrast with Christianity. It meets its rival with a smile of appreciation, then seeks to fraternize with it, after which it approves and appropriates and finally absorbs it.

In the Madura District of South India, where I have lived, the Brahmans, upon their first arrival, found all the people given to the worship of their village demons. They said to them, practically,—“We do not wish to deprive you of your devil shrines and images and worship. We will take the leading demons which you worship and marry them to our great gods and then give to them a place in our pantheon and a part in our worship. Come ye also with them and we will welcome you into our temples and faith.” Thus “Meenatchi,” the old and the principal demoness of the primitive cult of that region, was married to the great god Siva and became the presiding goddess of the great Hindu temple of Madura; and all her old worshippers followed her into the new faith of Hinduism. So all those people are Hindus today. And yet they have not abated one jot of their interest in and practice of their demonolatry.

That which may be regarded as the more strictly Brahmanical development and manifestation of Hinduism is divided, at present, into two great cults. These are Saivism, or the worship of Siva, and [pg 065] Vaishnavism, or the worship of Vishnu. These two cults, while not mutually antagonistic, are nevertheless entirely separate—their devotees, respectively, being satisfied with their own god and his incarnation and manifestations.

The first god of the Hindu triad (Brahma, Vishnu and Siva)—has practically no shrines among Hindus today. His worship has been largely transferred to his so-called sons, the Brahmans; and Siva has, in the main, absorbed all his functions as creator. As it is only Vishnu, the preserver, and Siva, the destroyer and recreator that have anything to do with men, the Hindus devote themselves to these two only. Siva is the “great god,” the austere and terrible one whom the people fear. He is known chiefly through his phallic emblem, the linga, which emphasizes his creative activity. Vishnu is the benign god who has resorted to many incarnations whereby he might free the world of demons who were worrying and destroying our race. Siva has many manifestations; Vishnu alone has “descents” or incarnations, some of which were in brute, and some in human, form.

These two cults obtain universally throughout India. Vaishnavism (the worship of Vishnu) has many popular sects which wield extensive influence throughout the country. The one established by Vallabha-Swami, in the sixteenth century, is a worship of Krishna and is given to the indulgence of the passions and is characterised by gross licentiousness.

The sect founded by Chaitanya in the fourteenth century is one of the most celebrated, and is very popular in Bengal. It subordinates everything to [pg 066] faith (bhakti) even making this more important than caste. Contemplation, rather than ritual, was Chaitanya's pathway to salvation and he gave supreme value to the virtue of obedience to the “guru” or religious guide.

In South India the cult of the religious reformer, Ramanuja, who flourished in the twelfth century, has extensive popularity. He was a man of great thought, and his special type of Vedantic philosophy is much in vogue today. He proclaimed the unity of God under the name of Vishnu. He received converts from every caste. It is an interesting fact that nearly all, in the long list of religious reformers in India, took a position of hostility to the caste system. But it is also significant that none of these reform movements has persisted through the centuries in that attitude, but has fallen into line with orthodox Hinduism in absolute submission to the caste demon.

“Sakti” worship has also attained great influence and extensive predominance in many parts of India. This is the worship of the Sakti or the female half of the great deities of the land. The Saktar preëminently worship Kali, the goddess of blood, and the other consorts of Siva. It is a worship of power (“Sakti” means energy or power), and usually power of the maleficent type. It is perhaps the lowest form of Hinduism and easily lends itself to a gratification of the lowest passions of men. This tantric cult (the tantras are the sacred books of the Saktar) is the only one in modern Hinduism which indulges in bloody sacrifices—Kali and her sisters being satisfied by blood as by nothing else. This attests the non-Aryan origin and character of this worship, inasmuch [pg 067] as Brahmanism, since the days of Buddha, abjures all bloody sacrifice.

Let it not be supposed, however, from the above remarks, about the multiform and self-contradictory character of the amorphous thing called Hinduism, that it is therefore impossible for us to understand and measure its nature and power. For Brahmanism, through all ages, has not been without a definite tendency, an underlying philosophy and pervasive fundamental beliefs. It is indeed more a congeries of faiths than a simple religion, like Christianity. And yet, amid all its hosts of contradictions and ways of salvation and sects and cults there have sounded, as a diapason through all the centuries, the fundamental teachings of Vedantism. A few doctrines such as pantheism, transmigration, “karma,” “bhakti” and final absorption into the Supreme Soul are all but universally held by the people of all sects and divisions, however much at variance with these their peculiar beliefs may seem to be.

The prominent staple of Hindu religious thinking in all ages has doubtless been Vedantism—that subtle form of pantheism which has charmed and bewildered not a few of the great minds of the Occident also. The paramount influence of this philosophy upon all religious thought and life in India is unmistakable today, as it has been through the centuries. Of this Max Müller says,—“If the people of India can be said to have now any system of religion at all ... it is to be found in the Vedanta philosophy, the leading tenets of which are known to some extent in every village.... Nothing will extinguish that ancient spirit of Vedantism which is breathed by every Hindu [pg 068] from his earliest youth, and pervades, in various forms, even the prayers of the idolater, the speculations of the philosopher, and the proverbs of the beggar.”