It is unnecessary to dwell upon the profound influence which this doctrine of transmigration, or round of births, has exerted upon the moral life of India. The tendency of this theory, as soon as elaborated, was to render still more intolerable the position of the lower castes, particularly that of the sudras, since it made their low place and hard lot to be the merited punishment of crimes and misdoings in previous lives; while at the same time it fed the pride and enhanced the arrogance of the Brahmans, since their superior lot was, according to the theory, attributable to merit acquired in other existences. Thus did the theory tend to give a more sinister aspect to the baneful caste system, to make it appear a part of the unchangeable order of things, and to render impossible the growth of any other than a class morality.
Indian pessimism
Hardly less important than the doctrine of transmigration for Hindu morality is the Indian conception of life—of all individual, conscious existence whether here on earth or in other worlds—as inseparable from misery, pain, decay, and death.
The Aryan immigrants into India seem to have been, like their kinsmen the Greeks, a light-hearted folk, filled with a strong joy in life. But as in their journeyings they pressed southward into the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges and came under the influences of the hot, depressing climate, and of an oppressive social and political system,[236] they appeared to have lost their buoyant spirits. The skies seemed less bright and life less worth living, and, weary of it all, they at last came to regard eternal death, annihilation, as the greatest of boons.
This pessimistic view of the world and of life, as we shall see a little further on, forms the basis of large sections of Indian ethics, since it makes the ultimate goal of rational or moral effort to be the getting rid of conscious existence.
The conception of sacrifice
Another conception which has exerted a profound influence upon the religious ethics of Brahmanism is that respecting sacrifice. This conception is that the gods need sustenance, and can only exist through the gifts and offerings made to them by men.[237] “The gods live by sacrifice” say the sacred scriptures; “the sun would not rise if the priests did not make sacrifice.”
To understand this teaching we must connect it with the belief of primitive man that the spirits of the dead have absolute need of meat and drink offerings at the hands of the living, and remember that in India there is no sharp distinction drawn between the gods and the souls of men. The gods, like the spirits of the dead, are dependent for life and strength upon the offerings laid on their altars. Without these gifts they would die or pine away, and all the movements of the universe controlled by them would cease.[238]
From this conception of the gods came the emphasis laid by Brahmanism upon sacrifice, and the prominence given the religious duty of bringing rich gifts to the priests and keeping the altars of the gods heaped with food.[239]