Hindu gods and heroes

by Lionel D. Barnett

CHAPTER II

THE AGE OF THE BRĀHMAṆAS AND UPANISHADS

Centuries have passed since the hymns of the Ṛig-vēda were composed. The Aryans have now crossed the fateful ridge on the east of their former settlements, and have spread themselves over the lands of Northern Hindostan around the upper basins of the Ganges and Jamna, reaching eastward as far as Bihar and southward down to the Vindhya Mountains, and in the course of their growth they have absorbed not a little of the blood of the dark-skinned natives. The old organisation of society by tribes has come to an end, though the names of many ancient tribes are still heard; the Aryans are now divided laterally by the principle of what we call "caste," which is based upon a combination of religious and professional distinctions, and vertically by the rule of kings, while a few oligarchic governments still survive to remind them of Vēdic days. In these kingdoms the old tribes are beginning to be fused together; from these combinations new States are arising, warring with one another, constantly waxing and waning. Society is ruled politically by kings, spiritually by Brahmans. With the rise of the kingdom an Established Church has come into existence, and the Brahman priesthood works out its principles to the bitterest end of logic.

The Brahmans are now, more than they ever were before, a close corporation of race, religion, and profession, a religious fraternity in the strict sense of the words. While other classes of the Aryans have mixed their blood to a greater or less degree with that of the natives, the Brahmans have preserved much of the pure Aryan strain. They, moreover, have maintained the knowledge of the ancient Vēdic language in which the sacred hymns of their forefathers were composed, of the traditions associated with them, and of the priestly lore of Vēdic ritual. Proud of this heritage and resolved to maintain it undiminished, they have knitted themselves into a close spiritual and intellectual aristocracy, which stands fast like a lighthouse amidst the darkness and storms of political changes. They employ all the arts of the priest, the thinker, the statesman, and even the magician to preserve their primacy; and around them the manifold variety of the other castes, in all their divisions and subdivisions, groups itself to make up the multi-coloured web of Indian life.

In course of time this priesthood will spread out octopus-like tentacles over the whole of India. Becoming all things to all men, it will find a place in its pantheon for all gods and all ideas, baptising them by orthodox names or justifying them by ingenious fictions. It will send forth apostles and colonies even to the furthermost regions of the distant South, which, alien in blood and in tradition, will nevertheless accept them and surrender its best intellect to their control. It will even admit into the lower ranks of its own body men of foreign birth by means of legal fictions, in order to maintain its control of religion. Though itself splitting up into scores of divisions varying in purity of blood and tradition, it will still as a whole maintain its position as against all other classes of society. That the Brahman is the Deity on earth, and other classes shall accept this dogma and agree to take their rank in accordance with it, will become the principle holding together a vast agglomeration of utterly diverse elements within the elastic bounds of Catholic Brahmanism.

But as yet this condition of things has not arrived. The Brahmans are still comparatively pure in blood and homogeneous in doctrine, and they have as yet sent forth no colonies south of the Vindhya. They are established in the lands of the Ganges and Jamna as far to the east as Benares, and they look with some contempt on their kinsmen in the western country that they have left behind. They are busily employed in working out to logical conclusions the ideas and principles of their Ṛigvēdic forefathers. They have now three Vēdas; for to the old Ṛig-vēda they have added a Yajur-vēda for the use of the sacrificant orders of priests and a Sāma-vēda or hymnal containing Ṛigvēdic hymns arranged for the chanting of choristers. The result of these labours is that they have created a vast and intricate system of sacrificial ritual, perhaps the most colossal of its kind that the world has ever seen or ever will see. What is still more remarkable, the logical result of this immense development of ritualism is that the priesthood in theory is practically atheistic, while on the other hand a certain number of its members have arrived at a philosophy of complete idealism which is beginning to turn its back upon ritualism.

The atheist is not so much the man who denies the existence of any god as the man to whom God is not God, who looks upon the Deity as subordinate to powers void of holiness and nobility, the man who will not see in God the highest force in the world of nature and in the realm of the spirit. In this sense the Brahmans are thorough atheists. According to them, the universe with all that is in it—gods, men, and lower things—is created and governed by an iron law of soulless natural necessity. It has arisen by emanation from a cosmic Principle, Prajāpati, "the Lord of Creatures," an impersonal being who shows no trace of moral purpose in his activity. Prajāpati himself is not absolutely the first in the course of nature. The Brāhmaṇas, the priestly books composed in this period to expound the rules and mystic significance of the Brāhmanic ceremonies, give us varying accounts of his origin, some of them saying that he arose through one or more intermediate stages from non-existence (TB. II. ii. 9, 1-10, ŚB. VI. i. 1, 1-5), others deriving him indirectly from the primitive waters (ŚB. XI. i. 6, 1), others tracing his origin back to the still more impersonal and abstract Brahma (Sāmav. B. I. 1-3, Gōp. B. I. i. 4). All these are attempts to express in the form of myth the idea of an impersonal Principle of Creation as arising from a still more abstract first principle. We have seen the poets of the Ṛig-vēda gradually moving towards the idea of a unity of godhead; in Prajāpati this goal is attained, but unfortunately it is attained by sacrificing almost all that is truly divine in godhead. The conception of Prajāpati that we find in the Brāhmaṇas is also expressed in some of the latest hymns of the Ṛig-vēda. Among these is the famous Purusha-sūkta (RV. X. 90), which throws a peculiar light on the character of Prajāpati. It is in praise of a primitive Purusha or Man, who is, of course, the same as Prajāpati; in some mysterious manner this Purusha is sacrificed, and from the various parts of his body arise the various parts of the world. The idea conveyed by this is that the universe came into existence by the operation of the mystic laws revealed in the Brahmanic rituals, and is maintained in its natural order by the same means. The Brāhmaṇas do not indeed often assert on their own authority that Prajāpati was himself sacrificed in order to produce the world, and in fact they usually give other accounts of the creation; but as their authors live in a rarefied atmosphere of mystical allegory in which fact and fancy are completely confused with one another and consistency ceases to have any meaning, none of them would have difficulty in accepting the Ṛigvēdic statement that he was sacrificed. Hence they tell us on the one hand that Prajāpati has created the world from a blind will for generation or increase, producing from each of his limbs some class of beings corresponding to it (e.g. MS. IV. vi. 3), or copulating with the earth, atmosphere, sky, and speech (ŚB. VI. i. 2, 1), or that he brought it into existence indirectly by entering with the Triple Science or mystic lore of the three Vēdas into the primeval waters and thence forming an egg from which was hatched the personal Demiurge Brahmā, who actually created the world (ŚB. VI. i. 1, 10); and on the other hand they relate that he created sacrifice and performed it, making of himself a victim in order that the gods, his offspring, might perform the rites for their own benefit, forming an image of himself to be the sacrifice, by which he redeemed himself from the gods (ŚB. XI. i. 8, 2-4; cf. AB. VII. 19, KB. XIII. 1, ŚB. III. ii. 1, 11), and that after creation he ascended to heaven (ŚB. X. ii. 2, 1). The thought that lies underneath these bewildering flights of fancy is one of mystic pantheism: all created existence has arisen by emanation from the one Creative Principle, Prajāpati, and in essence is one with Prajāpati; Prajāpati is an impersonal being, a creative force, in which are embodied the laws of Brahmanic ritual, which acts only in these laws, and which is above the moral influences that affect humanity; and the whole of created nature, animate and inanimate, is controlled in every process of its being by these laws, and by the priest who possesses the knowledge of them. Thus there lies a profound significance in the title of "gods on earth" which the Brahmans have assumed.

When we speak of sacrifice in India, we must clear our minds of the ideas which we have formed from reading the Bible. The Mosaic conception of sacrifice was that of a religious ceremony denoting a moral relation between a personal God and His worshippers: in the sin-offerings and trespass-offerings was symbolised a reconciliation between man and his God who was angered by man's conscious or unconscious breach of the laws which had been imposed upon him for his spiritual welfare, while meat-offerings and peace-offerings typified the worshipper's sense of gratitude for the Divine love and wisdom that guarded him. Of such relations there is to be found in the Brāhmaṇas no trace. If we may use a modern figure of speech, they conceive the universe of gods, men, and lower creatures as a single immense electric battery, and the sacrifice as a process of charging this battery with ever fresh electricity. The sacrifice is a process, at once material and mystic, which preserves the order of nature as established by the prototypic sacrifice performed by Prajāpati. The gods became divine and immortal through sacrifice (TS. VI. iii. 4, 7, VI. iii. 10, 2, VII. iv. 2, 1, ŚB. I. vi. 2, 1, MS. III. ix. 4, AB. VI. i. 1, etc.); and they live on the gifts of earth, as mankind lives on the gifts of heaven (TS. III. ii. 9, 7, ŚB. I. ii. 5, 24). The sacrifice is thus the life-principle, the soul, of all gods and all beings (ŚB. VIII. vi. 1, 10, IX. iii. 2, 7, XIV. iii. 2, 1); or, what amounts to the same thing, the Triple Science or the knowledge of the ceremonies of the Three Vēdas is their essence (ŚB. X. iv. 2, 21). As Prajāpati created the primeval sacrifice, and as the gods by following this rule obtained their divinity, so man should seek to follow their example and by means of sacrifice rise to godhead and immortality. As one Brāhmaṇa puts it, the sacrifice leads the way to heaven; it is followed by the dakshiṇā, or fee paid by the sacrificer to the sacrificant priests, which of course materially strengthens the efficacy of the sacrifice; and third comes the sacrificer, holding fast to the dakshiṇā. This ascent of heaven is symbolised in the ceremony called dūrōhaṇa, or "hard mounting" (AB. IV. 20, 21, KB. XXV. 7), and it is ensured by the rite of dīkshā, or consecration, in which the sacrificer is symbolically represented as passing through a new conception, gestation, and birth, by which he is supposed to obtain two bodies. One of these bodies is immortal and spiritual; the other is mortal and material, and is assigned as a victim to all the gods. He then ransoms his material body from the obligation of being sacrificed, as did Prajāpati, and thus ranks literally as a "god on earth," with the certainty of becoming in due course a god in heaven.

When the student on reading the Brāhmaṇas finds them full of interminable ceremonial rules with equally interminable commentaries interpreting them by wildest analogies as symbolical of details of myths or of laws of nature and hence as conferring mystic powers, besides all kinds of myths, some forcibly dragged into the interpretation of the ritual because of some imaginary point of resemblance, others invented or recast on purpose to justify some detail of ceremony, and when moreover he observes that many of these myths and some of the rites are brutally and filthily obscene, and that hardly any of them show the least moral feeling, he may be excused for thinking the Brāhmaṇas to be the work of madmen. But there is some method in their madness. However strangely they may express them, they have definite and strictly logical ideas about the sacrificial ritual and its cosmic function. It is more difficult to defend them against the charge of want of morality. It must be admitted that their supreme Being, Prajāpati, is in the main lines of his character utterly impersonal, and where incidentally he shows any human feelings they are as a rule far from creditable to him. He created the universe from mechanical instinct or blind desire, and committed or tried to commit incest with his daughter (the accounts are various). He has begotten both the gods and the demons, dēvas and asuras, who are constantly at war with one another. The gods, who are embodiments of "truth" (that is to say, correct knowledge of the law of ritual), have been often in great danger of being overwhelmed by the demons, who embody "untruth," and they have been saved by Prajāpati; but he has done this not from any sense of right, but merely from blind will or favour, for he can hardly distinguish one party from the other. The gods themselves, in spite of being of "truth," are sadly frail. Dozens of myths charge them with falsehood, hatred, lust, greed, and jealousy, and only the stress of the danger threatening them from their adversaries the demons has induced them to organise themselves into an ordered kingdom under the sovereignty of Indra, who has been anointed by Prajāpati. True, many of the offensive features in this mythology and ritual are survivals from a very ancient past, a pre-historic time in which morals were conspicuously absent from religion; the priesthood has forgotten very little, and as a rule has only added new rituals and new interpretations to this legacy from the days of old. Nevertheless it must be confessed that there is a tone of ritualistic professionalism in the Brāhmaṇas that is unpleasing; the priesthood are consciously superior to nature, God, and morals by virtue of their "Triple Science," and they constantly emphasise this claim. It is difficult for us to realise that these are the same men who have created the Brahmanic culture of India, which, however we may criticise it from the Western point of view, is essentially a gentle life, a field in which moral feeling and intellectual effort have born abundance of goodly fruit. Yet if we look more closely we shall see that even these ritualists, besotted as they may seem to be with their orgies of priestcraft, are not wholly untouched by the better spirit of their race. Extremes of sanctity, whether it be ritualistic or anti-ritualistic sanctity, always tend in India—and in other countries as well—to produce supermen. And if our priesthood in the Brāhmaṇas feel themselves in the pride of spiritual power lifted above the rules of moral law, they are not in practice indifferent to it. Their lives are for the most part gentle and good. Though "truth" in the Brāhmaṇas usually means only accordance with the ritual and mystic teachings of the Triple Science, it sometimes signifies even there veracity and honesty also. Truthfulness in speech is the hall-mark of the Brahman, says Hāridrumata Gautama to Satyakāma Jābāla (Chhānd. Up. IV. iv. 5); and even in the Brāhmaṇas a lie is sometimes a sin. If conservatism compels the priests to keep obscene old practices in their rituals, they are not always satisfied with them, and voices begin to be heard pleading that these rites are really obsolete. In short, a moral sense is beginning to arise among them.