There are many other places of pilgrimage in India, generally of less importance than Benares and Jagannath. The shores of the Ganges are sacred from source to mouth, and many of the faithful come from afar to visit them. The water of the river is sacred and is carried at great expense from one end of the peninsula to the other. The Hindus attribute a sacred character to all watercourses, but none approaches the holy Ganges in the veneration it inspires. This cult of waters, like that of the clouds and the monsoons, goes back to a very remote antiquity; it is entirely natural in a country of drought, where water brings life and whole populations die of famine when it fails.
Between the religion and the morals of the Hindu there is an abyss which it is difficult for the occidental mind to comprehend. It has been truthfully said that the Hindus are the most religious of all peoples. From the point of view of European ideas it might be said with no less justice that they are perhaps the least moral.
To please the gods and gain their favour is the end that the Hindu has ever before his eyes. But he would be greatly astonished if one should try to persuade him that the gods have the least particle of interest in the honesty of his relations with his fellowmen, the chastity of his life or the integrity of his word and his conduct, or that these all-powerful beings have the slightest disposition to be angry when he steals his neighbour’s goods or practices infanticide.
Their vengeance will smite him severely if he neglects to say his prayers, if he does not read the sacred books, if he is absent from the religious ceremonies, if he kills a cow, or if he does not perform the required purifications. These are the faults that arouse the anger of the gods. They demand sacrifices, pilgrimages, penances, prayers, the performance of a thousand external rites; they are concerned about nothing else. The rest is man’s affair, the material, utilitarian, practical side of life, quite beneath divine care.
If we turn to the laws of Manu, we find that the infraction of apparently puerile rites constitutes for the Hindu a fearful crime that can be atoned only by torture or even death, while robberies and murders may be expiated by the lightest penances. With the exception of adultery, which so deeply disturbs the constitution of families and consequently that of the race, all the sins of the flesh are of little importance to the Hindus. The voluptuous cults which they practice, rather impel them to license, and love becomes criminal only when its object is a being of an inferior caste. Murder derives its culpability from the rank of the person upon whom it is committed. If the victim is a cow or a Brahman, the crime is a grave one; in any other case it becomes a peccadillo. Certain murders, like the infanticide of girls, are not even faults.
The only great moral element that has penetrated the nature of the Hindu is the spirit of Buddhist charity. This spirit has even crept into the rigid code invented for the pleasure of fantastic and cruel gods and not for the true good of mankind. It has softened it and added precepts of love and liberality to its harsh and severe directions. The Buddhist period was the most moral in the history of India, and its beneficent influence still makes itself felt. The good qualities that the Hindu possesses, such as gentleness, faithfulness to his masters, love of family, an admirable spirit of tolerance, belong to his character and are independent of his morals. The most of his virtues are, moreover, altogether passive; he can obey, and he is never so good as when he yields to the yoke of a master. Let him command in his turn and he quickly becomes unjust, arrogant, and tyrannical. One could not say of a single one of his virtues that it is the fruit of a morality grounded upon the powerful base of religious faith and strengthened by ages of development.
The Hindu is, then, an essentially religious being, but he is not a moral being. His yielding and gentle nature is accustomed to submit to the force of a climate that has sapped all his energy and to a long slavery. If he had no curb but his moral conscience, he would perhaps be one of the most fierce and dangerous peoples of the globe. His character alone has made him one of the most inoffensive.[f]
FOOTNOTES
[21] [This picturesque account by Diodorus has already been given in the history of Mesopotamia.]