Beginning with the idea of a holy spirit, without admixture of anything material, and forming the abstract opposite of nature, the Brahmans had discovered that it is the duty of man to raise the spiritual above the corporeal. The more excitable the nerves, the more receptive the senses, the warmer the passions in that climate and nation, the more energetic was the reaction of the spirit against the flesh, the more stringent the command to become master of the senses and the body, to annihilate the senses. It is true that the material world also had emanated from Brahman; even matter had come from him. But this was an adulteration of the pure Brahman; it was the non-sensual, not the material side of the world which was the pure Brahman. Hence for the Brahmans these two factors, the material and spiritual side, were again completely separated. Hence the ethical problem was not to arrange the world of sense for the objects of the spirit, to raise the soul to the mastery over the body, and purify the sensual action by the spirit, but the annihilation of the sensual elements by the soul, the removal and destruction of the body—in a word, asceticism. Out of the absolute annihilation of the material existence of man, his true intellectual being—his real nature, i. e. Brahman—is to arise; it is only after the complete destruction of the life of sense and the body that man can plunge into the pure spirit. As this pure spirit could only be looked upon as a negation of nature and the world, and was only regarded in that light, and as it had no other quality but that of being non-material, the command to think of Brahman and nothing but Brahman, amounted to nothing less than this: on the one hand, every distinct individual intuition was to be rejected and avoided; on the other, it was a duty to develop the conception of an indefinite and indefinable unity, in opposition to the multitudinous variety of the world and nature. A conception of unity which altogether disregards the plurality comprising it is nothing more than persistence in vacuity. Thus the negation of the spiritual life was demanded beside that of the bodily life; and this command was equivalent to bodily and spiritual self-annihilation.
The doctrine of Brahman, with the practical and ethical requirements included in it, along with the command of obedience to the existing order of the world, of subjugation of the senses and renouncement, of severe treatment of self, and tender feeling for plants and cows, finally of annihilation of the body by asceticism, were in sharp contrast to the earlier motives which governed the life of the Indians of the heroic age. Nothing was to be left of the old vigour in action, the old warrior life, and heroic deeds; and as a fact, in spite of earnest attempts in other directions, nothing did remain beyond the courage for lingering suicide by mortification, the reckless asceticism in which the Indians are not surpassed by any nation, and which increased as the centuries went on, and ever assumed more fantastic forms.
FOOTNOTES:
[188] The participation of all the Gotras of the Brahmans, who claim to be derived from the Rishis, in the composition of the Rigveda, has been acutely and convincingly proved by M. Müller. "Hist. of Sansk. Lit." p. 461 ff.
[189] A. Weber, "Z. D. M. G." 10, 389 ff.
[190] Strabo, p. 717. Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 1, 840; 2, 215-223. M. Müller considers that the use of writing was known to the Indians before 600 B.C., but nevertheless is of opinion that the Veda was written down later, and allows no written work to the Indians before 350 B.C., the date at which he fixes Panini: "Hist. of Sansk. Lit." p. 311, p. 477 ff. Since, however, the Brahmanas date from between 800 and 600 B.C., which is M. Müller's opinion, it is hardly credible that controversies, and discussions, and examples, such as we find largely in the Brahmanas, could have received a fixed form if they merely referred to groups of poems retained in the memory only, though of considerable extent. That the Brahmanas existed in memory only seems to me to be quite impossible, considering their form. How could Çaunaka, about the year 400 B.C. as M. Müller supposes, write sutras to facilitate the understanding of the Brahmanas, if the latter were not in existence in writing? A. Weber has observed that in Panini the 60 pathas of the first nine books of the Çatapatha-Brahmana are quoted, and the 30 and 40 Adhyayas of the Aitareya and Kaushitaki-Brahmanas. In my opinion, the fact so acutely and convincingly proved by M. Müller—that the Rigveda is allotted to all the Gotras of the Brahmans, is strongly in favour of the composition of the Vedas in a written form; the tradition of the Gotras and the schools would never have given equal attention to all. If the Brahmanas, which cite the Vedas accurately in their present arrangement, and speak not only of syllables but of letters, arose between 800 and 600 B.C., it appears to me an inevitable conclusion that the Vedas must have existed in writing about the year 800 B.C.
[191] Kaegi, "Rigveda," s. 3.
[192] Madhusudana, in M. Müller, "Hist. of Sansk. Lit." p. 122; cf. p. 173, 467.
[193] Roth, "Zur Literatur des Veda," s. 11. A. Weber, "Vorlesungen," s. 83, 84. Westergaard, "Aeltester Zeitraum der Ind. Gesch." s. 11. For the legends of the Puranas on the origin of the black and white Yajus, which allow the superior antiquity of the first, see M. Müller, loc. cit. p. 174, 349 ff.
[194] Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 1, 776.