Of a far more complicated nature than these offerings are the Soma-sacrifices, which, besides the simpler ceremonies of this class, such as the Agnishtoma or “Praise of Agni,” also include great state functions, such as the Räjasūya or consecration of a king, and the Aśvamedha or horse-sacrifice, which, in addition to the sacrificial rites, have a considerable amount of extraneous, often highly interesting, ceremonial connected with them, which makes them seem to partake largely of the nature of public festivals. Whilst the oblations of Soma-juice, made thrice on each offering-day, amidst chants and recitations, constitute the central rites of those services, their ritual also requires numerous single oblations of the ishti kind, including at least three animal offerings, and in some cases the immolation of many hecatombs of victims. Moreover, a necessary preliminary to every Soma-sacrifice is the construction, in five layers, of a special fire-altar of large dimensions, consisting of thousands of bricks, formed and baked on the spot, to each, or each group, of which a special symbolic meaning is attached. The building of this altar is spread over a whole year, during which period the sacrificer has to carry about the sacrificial fire in an earthen pan for at least some time each day, until it is finally deposited on the completed altar to serve as the offering-fire for the Soma oblations. The altar itself is constructed in the form of a bird, because Soma was supposed to have been brought down from heaven by the metre Gāyatrī which had assumed the form of an eagle. Whilst the Soma-sacrifice has been thus developed by the Brāhmaṇas in an extraordinary degree, its essential identity with the Avestan Haoma-cult shows that its origin goes back at all events to the Indo-Iranian period.
Among the symbolic conceits in which the authors of the Brāhmaṇas so freely indulge, there is one overshadowing all others—if indeed they do not all more or less enter into it—which may be considered as the sum and substance of these speculations, and the esoteric doctrine of the sacrifice, involved by the Brāhmanical ritualists. This is what may conveniently be called the Prajāpati theory, by which the “Lord of Creatures,” the efficient cause of the universe, is identified with both the sacrifice (yajna) and the sacrificer (yajamāna). The origin of this theory goes back to the later Vedic hymns. In the so-called Purusha-sūkta (Ṛigv. x. 90) in which the supreme spirit is conceived of as the person or man (purusha), born in the beginning, and consisting of “whatever hath been and whatever shall be,” the creation of the visible and invisible universe is represented as originating from an “all-offered” (holocaust) sacrifice in which the Purusha himself forms the offering-material (havis), or, as we might say, the victim. In this primeval, or rather timeless because ever-proceeding, sacrifice, time itself, in the shape of its unit the year, is made to take its part, inasmuch as the three seasons—spring, summer and autumn—of which it consists, constitute the ghee (clarified butter), the offering-fuel and the oblation respectively. These speculations may be said to have formed the foundation on which the theory of the sacrifice, as propounded in the Brāhmaṇas, has been reared. Prajāpati—who (probably for practical considerations, as better representing the sacrificer, the earthly ruler, or “lord of the creatures”) here takes the place of the Purusha, the world-man or all-embracing personality—is offered up anew in every sacrifice; and inasmuch as the very dismemberment of the lord of creatures, which took place at that archtypal sacrifice, was in itself the creation of the universe, so every sacrifice is also a repetition of that first creative act. Thus the periodical sacrifice is nothing else than a microcosmic representation of the ever-proceeding destruction and renewal of all cosmic life and matter. The ritualistic theologians, however, go an important step further by identifying Prajāpati with the performer, or patron, of the sacrifice, the sacrificer; every sacrifice thus becoming invested—in addition to its cosmic significance—with the mystic power of regenerating the sacrificer by cleansing him of all guilt and securing for him a seat in the eternal abodes.
Whilst forming the central feature of the ritualistic symbolism, this triad—Prajāpati, sacrifice (oblation, victim), sacrificer—is extended in various ways. An important collateral identification is that of Prajāpati (and the sacrificer) with Agni, the god of fire, embodied not only in the offering-fire, but also in the sacred Soma-altar, the technical name of which is agni. For this reason the altar, as representative of the universe, is built in five layers, representing earth, air and heaven, and the intermediate regions; and in the centre of the altar-site, below the first layer, on a circular gold plate (the sun), a small golden man (purusha) is laid down with his face looking upwards. This is Prajāpati, and the sacrificer, who when regenerated will pass upwards through the three worlds to the realms of light, naturally perforated bricks being for this purpose placed in the middle of the three principal altar-layers. One of the fourteen sections of the Śatapatha-brāhmana, the tenth, called Agni-rahasya or “the mystery of Agni (the god and altar),” is entirely devoted to this feature of the sacrificial symbolism. Similarly the sacrificer, as the human representatiye of the Lord of Creatures, is identified with Soma (as the supreme oblation), with Time, and finally with Death: by the sacrificer thus becoming Death himself, the fell god ceases to have power over him and he is assured of everlasting life. And now we get the Supreme Lord in his last aspect; nay, his one true and real aspect, in which the sacrificer, on shuffling off this mortal coil, will himself come to share—that of pure intellectuality, pure spirituality—he is Mind: such is the ultimate source of being, the one Self, the Purusha, the Brahman. As the sum total of the wisdom propounded in the mystery of Agni, the searcher after truth is exhorted to meditate on that Self, made up of intelligence, endowed with a body of spirit, a form of light, and of an ethereal nature; holding sway over all the regions and pervading this All, being itself speechless and devoid of mental states; and by so doing he shall gain the assurance that “even as a grain of rice, or the smallest granule of millet, so is the golden Purusha in my heart; even as a smokeless light, it is greater than the sky, greater than the ether, greater than the earth, greater than all existing things;—that Self of the Spirit is my Self; on passing away from hence, I shall obtain that Self. And, verily, whosoever has this trust, for him there is no uncertainty.”
(J. E.)
BRAHMANISM, a term commonly used to denote a system of religious institutions originated and elaborated by the Brāhmans, the sacerdotal and, from an early period, the dominant caste of the Hindu community (see [Brahman]). In like manner, as the language of the Āryan Hindūs has undergone continual processes of modification and dialectic division, so their religious belief has passed through various stages of development broadly distinguished from one another by certain prominent features. The earliest phases of religious thought in India of which a clear idea can now be formed are exhibited in a body of writings, looked upon by later generations in the light of sacred writ, under the collective name of Veda (“knowledge”) or Śruti (“revelation”). The Hindū scriptures consist of four separate collections, or Samhitās, of sacred texts, or mantras, including hymns, incantations and sacrificial forms of prayer, viz. the Ṛich (nom. sing. ṛik) or Ṛigveda, the Sāman or Sāmaveda, the Yajus or Yajurveda, and the Atharvan or Atharvaveda. Each of these four text-books has attached to it a body of prose writings, called Brāhmaṇas (see [Brāhmaṇa]), intended to explain the ceremonial application of the texts and the origin and import of the sacrificial rites for which these were supposed to have been composed. Usually attached to these works, and in some cases to the Saṃhitās, are two kinds of appendages, the Āraṇyakas and Upanishads, the former of which deal generally with the more recondite rites, while the latter are taken up chiefly with speculations on the problems of the universe and the religious aims of man—subjects often touched upon in the earlier writings, but here dealt with in a more mature and systematic way. Two of the Saṃhitās, the Sāman and the Yajus, owing their existence to purely ritual purposes, and being, besides, the one almost entirely, the other partly, composed of verses taken from the Ṛigveda, are only of secondary importance for our present inquiry. The hymns of the Ṛigveda constitute the earliest lyrical effusions of the Āryan settlers in India which have been handed down to posterity. They are certainly not all equally old; on the contrary they evidently represent the literary activity of many generations of bards, though their relative age cannot as yet be determined with anything like certainty. The tenth (and last) book of the collection, however, at any rate has all the characteristics of a later appendage, and in language and spirit many of its hymns approach very nearly to the level of the contents of the Atharvan. Of the latter collection about one-sixth is found also in the Ṛigveda, and especially in the tenth book; the larger portion peculiar to it, though including no doubt some older pieces, appears to owe its origin to an age not long anterior to the composition of the Brāhmaṇas.
The state of religious thought among the ancient bards, as reflected in the hymns of the Ṛigveda, is that of a worship of the grand and striking phenomena of nature regarded in the light of personal conscious beings, endowed with a power beyond the control of man, though not insensible to his praises and actions. It is a nature worship purer than that met with in any other polytheistic form of belief we are acquainted with—a mythology still comparatively little affected by those systematizing tendencies which, in a less simple and primitive state of thought, lead to the construction of a well-ordered pantheon and a regular organization of divine government. To the mind of the early Vedic worshipper the various departments of the surrounding nature are not as yet clearly defined, and the functions which he assigns to their divine representatives continually flow into one another. Nor has he yet learned to care to determine the relative worth and position of the objects of his adoration; but the temporary influence of the phenomenon to which he addresses his praises bears too strongly upon his mind to allow him for the time to consider the claims of rival powers to which at other times he is wont to look up with equal feelings of awe and reverence. It is this immediateness of impulse under which the human mind in its infancy strives to give utterance to its emotions that imparts to many of its outpourings the ring of monotheistic fervour.
The generic name given to these impersonations, viz. deva (“the shining ones”), points to the conclusion, sufficiently justified by the nature of the more prominent objects of Vedic adoration as well as by common natural occurrences, that it was the striking phenomena of light which first and most powerfully swayed the Āryan mind. In the primitive worship of the manifold phenomena of nature it is not, of course, so much their physical aspect that impresses the human heart as the moral and intellectual forces which are supposed to move and animate them. The attributes and relations of some of the Vedic deities, in accordance with the nature of the objects they represent, partake in a high degree of this spiritual element; but it is not improbable that in an earlier phase of Āryan worship the religious conceptions were pervaded by it to a still greater and more general extent, and that the Vedic belief, though retaining many of the primitive features, has on the whole assumed a more sensuous and anthropomorphic character. This latter element is especially predominant in the attributes and imagery applied by the Vedic poets to Indra, the god of the atmospheric region, the favourite figure in their pantheon.
While the representatives of the prominent departments of nature appear to the Vedic bard as co-existing in a state of independence of one another, their relation to the mortal worshipper being the chief subject of his anxiety, a simple method of classification was already resorted to at an early time, consisting in a triple division of the deities into gods residing in the sky, in the air, and on earth. It is not, however, until a later stage,—the first clear indication being conveyed in a passage of the tenth book of the Ṛigveda—that this attempt at a polytheistic system is followed up by the promotion of one particular god to the dignity of chief guardian for each of these three regions. On the other hand, a tendency is clearly traceable in some of the hymns towards identifying gods whose functions present a certain degree of similarity of nature; attempts which would seem to show a certain advance of religious reflection, the first steps from polytheism towards a comprehension of the unity of the divine essence. Another feature of the old Vedic worship tended to a similar result. The great problems of the origin and existence of man and the universe had early begun to engage the Hindū mind; and in celebrating the praises of the gods the poet was frequently led by his religious, and not wholly disinterested, zeal to attribute to them cosmical functions of the very highest order. At a later stage of thought, chiefly exhibited in the tenth book of the Ṛigveda and in the Atharvaveda, inquiring sages could not but perceive the inconsistency of such concessions of a supremacy among the divine rulers, and tried to solve the problem by conceptions of an independent power, endowed with all the attributes of a supreme deity, the creator of the universe, including the gods of the pantheon. The names under which this monotheistic idea is put forth are mostly of an attributive character, and indeed some of them, such as Prajāpati (“lord of creatures”), Viśvakarman (“all-worker”), occur in the earlier hymns as mere epithets of particular gods. But to other minds this theory of a personal creator left many difficulties unsolved. They saw, as the poets of old had seen, that everything around them, that man himself, was directed by some inward agent; and it needed but one step to perceive the essential sameness of these spiritual units, and to recognize their being but so many individual manifestations of one universal principle or spiritual essence. Thus a pantheistic conception was arrived at, put forth under various names, such as Purusha (“soul”), Kāma (“desire”), Brahman (neutr.; nom. sing. bráhma) (“devotion, prayer”). Metaphysical and theosophic speculations were thus fast undermining the simple belief in the old gods, until, at the time of the composition of the Brāhmanas and Upanishads, we find them in complete possession of the minds of the theologians. Whilst the theories crudely suggested in the later hymns are now further matured and elaborated, the tendency towards catholicity of formula favours the combination of the conflicting monotheistic and pantheistic conceptions; this compromise, which makes Prajāpati, the personal creator of the world, the manifestation of the impersonal Brahma, the universal self-existent soul, leads to the composite pantheistic system which forms the characteristic dogma of the Brāhmanical period (see [Brahman]).
In the Vedic hymns two classes of society, the royal (or military) and the priestly classes, were evidently recognized as being raised above the level of the Viś, or bulk of the Āryan community. These social grades seem to have been in existence even before the separation of the two Asiatic branches of the Indo-Germanic race, the Āryans of Iran and India. It is true that, although the Athrava, Rathaēstāo, and Vāśtrya of the Zend Avesta correspond in position and occupation to the Brāhman, Rājan and Viś of the Veda, there is no similarity of names between them; but this fact only shows that the common vocabulary had not yet definitely fixed on any specific names for these classes. Even in the Veda their nomenclature is by no means limited to a single designation for each of them. Moreover, Atharvan occurs not infrequently in the hymns as the personification of the priestly profession, as the proto-priest who is supposed to have obtained fire from heaven and to have instituted the rite of sacrifice; and although ratheshtha (“standing on a car”) is not actually found in connexion with the Rājan or Kshatriya, its synonym rathin is in later literature a not unusual epithet of men of the military caste. At the time of the hymns, and even during the common Indo-Persian period, the sacrificial ceremonial had already become sufficiently complicated to call for the creation of a certain number of distinct priestly offices with special duties attached to them. While this shows clearly that the position and occupation of the priest were those of a profession, the fact that the terms brāhmaṇa and brahmaputra, both denoting “the son of a brahman,” are used in certain hymns as synonyms of brahman, seems to justify the assumption that the profession had already, to a certain degree, become hereditary at the time when these hymns were composed. There is, however, with the exception of a solitary passage in a hymn of the last book, no trace to be found in the Ṛigveda of that rigid division into four castes separated from one another by insurmountable barriers, which in later times constitutes the distinctive feature of Hindū society. The idea of caste is expressed by the Sanskrit term varna, originally denoting “colour,” thereby implying differences of complexion between the several classes. The word occurs in the Veda in the latter sense, but it is used there to mark the distinction, not between the three classes of the Āryan community, but between them on the one hand and a dark-coloured hostile people on the other. The latter, called Dāsas or Dasyus, consisted, no doubt, of the indigenous tribes, with whom the Āryans had to carry on a continual struggle for the possession of the land. The partial subjection of these comparatively uncivilized tribes as the rule of the superior race was gradually spreading eastward, and their submission to a state of serfdom under the name of Śūdras, added to the Āryan community an element, totally separated from it by colour, by habits, by language, and by occupation. Moreover, the religious belief of these tribes being entirely different from that of the conquering people, the pious Āryas, and especially the class habitually engaged in acts of worship, could hardly fail to apprehend considerable danger to the purity of their own faith from too close and intimate a contact between the two races. What more natural, therefore, than that measures should have been early devised to limit the intercourse between them within as narrow bounds as possible? In course of time the difference of vocation, and the greater or less exposure to the scorching influence of the tropical sky, added, no doubt, to a certain admixture of Śūdra blood, especially in the case of the common people, seem to have produced also in the Āryan population different shades of complexion, which greatly favoured a tendency to rigid class-restrictions originally awakened and continually fed by the lot of the servile race. Meanwhile the power of the sacerdotal order having been gradually enlarged in proportion to the development of the minutiae of sacrificial ceremonial and the increase of sacred lore, they began to lay claim to supreme authority in regulating and controlling the religious and social life of the people. The author of the so-called Purusha-sūkta, or hymn of Purusha, above referred to, represents the four castes—the Brāhmaṇa, Kshatriya, Vaiśya and Śūdra—as having severally sprung respectively from the mouth, the arms, the thighs and the feet of Purusha, a primary being, here assumed to be the source of the universe. It is very doubtful, however, whether at the time when this hymn was composed the relative position of the two upper castes could already have been settled in so decided a way as this theory might lead one to suppose. There is, on the contrary, reason to believe that some time had yet to elapse, marked by fierce and bloody struggles for supremacy, of which only imperfect ideas can be formed from the legendary and frequently biased accounts of later generations, before the Kshatriyas finally submitted to the full measure of priestly authority.