Chapter II: Philosophy, and Ritualism

[Sidenote: Speculation begins. Rise of asceticism. Upanishads. They are pantheistic.] During the Vedic period--certainly toward its conclusion--a tendency to speculation had begun to appear. Probably it had all along existed in the Hindu mind, but had remained latent during the stirring period when the people were engaged in incessant wars. Climate, also, must have affected the temperament of the race; and, as the Hindus steadily pressed down the valley of the Ganges into warmer regions, their love of repose and contemplative quietism would continually deepen. And when the Brahmans became a fully developed hierarchy, lavishly endowed, with no employment except the performance of religious ceremonies, their minds could avoid stagnation only by having recourse to speculative thought. Again, asceticism has a deep root in human nature; earnest souls, conscious of their own weakness, will fly from the temptations of the world. Various causes thus led numbers of men to seek a life of seclusion; they dwelt chiefly in forests, and there they revolved the everlasting problems of existence, creation, the soul, and God. The lively Greeks, for whom, with all their high intellectual endowments, a happy sensuous existence was nearly all in all, were amazed at the numbers in northern India who appeared weary of the world and indifferent to life itself. By and for these recluses were gradually composed the Aranyakas, or forest treatises; and out of these grew a series of more regular works, called Upanishads.[13] At least two hundred and fifty of these are known to exist. They have been called "guesses at truth;" they are more so than formal solutions of great questions. Many of them are unintelligible rhapsodies; others rise almost to sublimity. They frequently contradict each other; the same writer sometimes contradicts himself. One prevailing characteristic is all-important; their doctrine is pantheism. The pantheism is sometimes not so much a coldly reasoned system as an aspiration, a yearning, a deep-felt need of something better than the mob of gods who came in the train of Indra, and the darker deities who were still crowding in. Even in spite of the counteracting power of the Gospel mysticism has run easily into pantheism in Europe, and orthodox Christians sometimes slide unconsciously into it, or at least into its language.[14] But, as has been already noted, a strain of pantheism existed in the Hindu mind from early times.

Accordingly, these hermit sages, these mystic dreamers, soon came to identify the human soul with God. And the chief end of man was to seek that the stream derived from God should return to its source, and, ceasing to wander through the wilderness of this world, should find repose in the bosom of the illimitable deep, the One, the All. The Brahmans attached the Upanishads to the Veda proper, and they soon came to be regarded as its most sacred part. In this way the influence these treatises have exercised has been immense; more than any other portion of the earlier Hindu writings they have molded the thoughts of succeeding generations. Philosophy had thus begun.

[Sidenote: Six philosophic schools.] The speculations of which we see the commencement and progress in the Upanishads were finally developed and classified in a series of writings called the six Sastras or _darsanas_. These constitute the regular official philosophy of India. They are without much difficulty reducible to three leading schools of thought--the Nyaya, the Sankhya, and the Vedanta.

Roundly, and speaking generally, we may characterize these systems as theistic, atheistic, and pantheistic respectively.

[Sidenote: The Nyaya.] It is doubtful, however, whether the earlier form of the Nyaya was theistic or not. The later form is so, but it says nothing of the moral attributes of God, nor of his government. The chief end of man, according to the Nyaya, is deliverance from pain; and this is to be attained by cessation from all action, whether good or bad.

[Sidenote: The Sankhya.] The Sankhya declares matter to be self-existent and eternal. Soul is distinct from matter, and also eternal. When it attains true knowledge it is liberated from matter and from pain. The Sankhya holds the existence of God to be without proof.

[Sidenote: The Vedanta.] But the leading philosophy of India is unquestionably the Vedanta. The name means "the end or scope of the Veda;" and if the Upanishads were the Veda, instead of treatises tacked on to it, the name would be correct; for the Vedanta, like the Upanishads, inculcates pantheism.

The form which this philosophy ultimately assumed is well represented in the treatise called the Vedanta Sara, or essence of the Vedanta. A few extracts will suffice to exhibit its character. "The unity of the soul and God--this is the scope of all Vedanta treatises." We have frequent references made to the "great saying," _Tat twam_--that is, That art thou, or Thou art God; and _Aham Brahma_, that is, I am God. Again it is said, "The whole universe is God." God is "existence (or more exactly an existent thing[15]), knowledge, and joy." Knowledge, not a knower; joy, not one who rejoices.

[Sidenote: It teaches absolute idealism.] Every thing else has only a seeming existence, which is in consequence of ignorance (or illusion). Ignorance makes the soul think itself different from God; and it also "projects" the appearance of an external world.

"He who knows God becomes God." "When He, the first and last, is discerned, one's own acts are annihilated."

Meditation, without distinction of subject and object, is the highest form of thought. It is a high attainment to say, "I am God;" but the consummation is when thought exists without an object.

There are four states of the soul--waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep, and the "fourth state," or pure intelligence. The working-man is in dense ignorance; in sleep he is freed from part of this ignorance; in dreamless sleep he is freed from still more; but the consummation is when he attains something beyond this, which it seems cannot be explained, and is therefore called the fourth state.

[Sidenote: Doctrine of "the Self." Inconsistent statements.] The name, which in later writings is most frequently given to the "one without a second,"[16] is Atman, which properly means self. Much is said of the way in which the self in each man is to recover, or discover, its unity with the supreme or real self. For as the one sun shining in the heavens is reflected, often in distorted images, in multitudes of vessels filled with water, so the one self is present in all human minds.[17] There is not--perhaps there could not be--consistency in the statements of the relation of the seeming to the real. In most of the older books a practical or conventional existence is admitted of the self in each man, but not a real existence. But when the conception is fully formulated the finite world is not admitted to exist save as a mere illusion. All phenomena are a play--a play without plot or purpose, which the absolute plays with itself.[18] This is surely transcendent transcendentalism. One regrets that speculation did not take one step more, and declare that the illusion was itself illusory. Then we should have gone round the circle, and returned to _sensus communis_. We must be pardoned if we seem to speak disrespectfully of such fantastic speculations; we desire rather to speak regretfully of the many generations of men which successively occupied themselves with such unprofitable dreams; for this kind of thought is traceable even from Vedic days. It is more fully developed in the Upanishads. In them occurs the classical sentence so frequently quoted in later literature, which declares that the absolute being is the "one [thing] without a second."[19]

[Sidenote: The Gita.] The book which perhaps above all others has molded the mind of India in more recent days is the Bhagavad Gita, or Song of the Holy One. It is written in stately and harmonious verse, and has achieved the same task for Indian philosophy as Lucretius did for ancient Epicureanism.[20] It is eclectic, and succeeds, in a sort of way, in forcing the leading systems of Indian thought into seeming harmony.

[Sidenote: Intellectual pride.] Some have thought they could discern in these daring speculations indications of souls groping after God, and saddened because of the difficulty of finding him. Were it so, all our sympathies would at once be called forth. But no; we see in these writings far more of intellectual pride than of spiritual sadness. Those ancient dreamers never learned their own ignorance. They scarcely recognized the limitations of the human mind. And when reason could take them no farther they supplemented it by dreams and ecstasy until, in the Yoga philosophy, they rushed into systematized mysticisms and magic far more extravagant than the wildest _theurgy_ of the degraded Neoplatonism of the Roman Empire.

A learned writer thus expresses himself:

"The only one of the six schools that seem to recognize the
doctrine of divine providence is the Yoga. It thus seems that the
consistent followers of these systems can have, in their perfected
state, no religion, no action, and no moral character."[21]

[Sidenote: Indian philosophy a sad failure.] And now to take a brief review of the whole subject. The Hindu sages were men of acute and patient thought; but their attempt to solve the problem of the divine and human natures, of human destiny and duty, has ended in total failure. Each system baseless, and all mutually conflicting; systems cold and cheerless, that frown on love and virtuous exertion, and speak of annihilation or its equivalent, absorption, as our highest hope: such is the poor result of infinite speculation. "The world by wisdom knew not God." O, that India would learn the much-needed lesson of humility which the experience of ages ought to teach her!

[Sidenote: Sacerdotalism. The tyranny of sacerdotalism.] While speculation was thus busy Sacerdotalism was also continually extending its influence. The Brahman, the man of prayer, had made himself indispensable in all sacred rites. He alone--as we have seen--knew the holy text; he alone could rightly pronounce the words of awful mystery and power on which depended all weal or woe. On all religions occasions the priest must be called in, and, on all occasions, implicitly obeyed. For a considerable time the princes straggled against the encroachments of the priests; but in the end they were completely vanquished. Never was sacerdotal tyranny more absolute; the proudest pope in mediæval times never lorded it over Western Christendom with such unrelenting rigor as the Brahmans exercised over both princes and people. The feeling of the priests is expressed in a well-known stanza:

"All the world is subject to the gods; the gods are subject to the
holy texts; the holy texts are subject to the Brahman; therefore
the Brahman is my god."

Yes, the sacred man could breathe the spell which made earth and hell and heaven itself to tremble. He therefore logically called himself an earthly god. Indeed, the Brahman is always logical. He draws conclusions from premises with iron rigor of reasoning; and with side-issues he has nothing to do. He stands upon his rights. Woe to the being--god or man--who comes in conflict with him!

[Sidenote: Ritual becomes extravagant.] The priests naturally multiplied religious ceremonies, and made ritual the soul of worship. Sacrifice especially assumed still more and more exaggerated forms--becoming more protracted, more expensive, more bloody. A hecatomb of victims was but a small offering. More and more awful powers were ascribed to the rite.

[Sidenote: Reaction.] But the tension was too great, and the bow snapped. Buddhism arose. We may call this remarkable system the product of the age--an inevitable rebellion against intolerable sacerdotalism; and yet we must not overlook the importance of the very distinct and lofty personality of Buddha (Sakya Muni) as a power molding it into shape.

[Sidenote: Buddhism. Moral elements of this system. Conflict with Brahmanism. Victory of Brahmanism.] Wherever it extended it effected a vast revolution in Indian thought. Thus in regard to the institution of caste, Buddha did not attack it; he did not, it would appear, even formally renounce it; as a mere social institution he seems to have acknowledged it; but then he held that all the _religious_ were freed from its restrictions. "My law," said he, "is a law of mercy for all;" and forthwith he proceeded to admit men of every caste into the closest fellowship with himself and his followers. Then, he preached--he, though not a Brahman--in the vernacular languages--an immense innovation, which made his teachings popular. He put in the forefront of his system certain great fundamental principles of morality. He made religion consist in duty, not rites. He reduced duty mainly to mercy or kindness toward all living beings--a marvelous generalization. This set aside all slaughter of animals. The mind of the princes and people was weary of priestcraft and ritualism; and the teaching of the great reformer was most timely. Accordingly his doctrine spread with great rapidity, and for a long time it seemed likely to prevail over Brahmanism. But various causes gradually combined against it. Partly, it was overwhelmed by its own luxuriance of growth; partly, Brahmanism, which had all along maintained an intellectual superiority, adopted, either from conviction or policy, most of the principles of Buddhism, and skillfully supplied some of its main deficiencies. Thus the Brahmans retained their position; and, at least nominally, their religion won the day.