Brahmanism: According to the Latest Researches

IT is more than forty years since the writer of this article, then a boy, was one day searching among the heavy works of a learned library in the country, to find some entertaining reading for a summer afternoon. It was a library rich in theology, in Greek and Latin classics, in French and Spanish literature, but contained little to amuse a child. Led by some happy fortune, in turning over a pile of the “ Monthly Anthology,” his eye was attracted by the title of a play, “ Sácontala,¹ or the Fatal Ring; an Indian Drama, translated from the original Sanskrit and Pracrit. Calcutta, 1789,” and reprinted in the “Anthology ” in successive numbers. Gathering them together, the boy took them into a great chestnut-tree, amid whose limbs he had constructed a study, and there, in the warm, fragrant shade, read, hour after hour, this bewitching story. The tale was suited to the day and the scene, — filled with images of tender girls and religious sages, who lived amid a tropical abundance of flowers and fruits; so blending the beauty of nature with the charm of love. Nature becomes in it alive, and is interpenetrated with human sentiments. Sákuntalá loves the flowers as sisters ; the Késara-tree beckons to her with its waving blossoms, and clings to her in affection as she bends over it. The jasmine, the wife of the mango-tree, embraces her lord, who leans down to protect his blooming bride, “the moonlight of the grove.” The holy hermits defend the timid fawn from the hunters, and the birds, grown tame in their peaceful solitudes, look tranquilly on the intruder. The demons occasionally disturb the sacrificial rites, but, like well-educated demons, retire at once, as soon as the protecting Raja enters the sacred grove. All breathes of love, gentle and generous sentiment, and quiet joys in the bosom of a luxuriant and beautiful summer land. Thus, in this poem, written a hundred years before Christ, we find that romantic view of nature, unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and first appearing in our own time in such writers as Rousseau, Goethe, and Byron.

He who translated this poem into a European language, and communicated it to modern readers, was Sir William Jones, one of the few firstclass scholars whom the world has produced. In him was joined a marvellous gift of language, with a love for truth and beauty, which detected by an infallible instinct what was worth knowing, in the mighty maze of Oriental literature. He had also the rare good fortune of being the first to discover this domain of literature in Asia, unknown to the West till he came to reveal it. The vast realm of Hindoo, Chinese, and Persian genius was as much a new continent to Europe, when discovered by Sir William Jones, as America was when made known by Columbus. Its riches had been accumulating during thousands of years, waiting till the fortunate man should arrive, destined to reveal to our age the barbaric pearl and gold of the gorgeous East, — the true wealth of Ormus and of Ind.

Sir William Jones came well equipped for his task. Some men are born philologians, loving words for their own sake, — men to whom the devious paths of language are open highways, who, as Lord Bacon says, “ have come forth from the second general curse, which was the confusion of tongues, by the art of grammar.” Sir William Jones was one of these, perhaps the greatest of them. A paper in his own handwriting tells us that he knew critically eight languages, — English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit; less perfectly eight others,—Spanish, Portuguese,German, Runic, Hebrew, Bengali, Hindi, Turkish ; and was moderately familiar with twelve more, — Tibetian, Pâli, Phalavi, Deri, Russian, Syriac, Ethiopia, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, and Chinese. There have been, perhaps, other scholars, who have known as many tongues as this. But usually they are crushed by their own accumulations, and we never hear of their accomplishing anything. Sir William Jones was not one of these, “ deep-versed in books, and shallow in himself.” Language was his instrument, but knowledge his aim. So, when he had mastered Sanskrit and other Oriental languages, he rendered into. English not only Sákuntalá, but a far more important work, “ The Laws of Manu ” ; “almost the only work in Sanskrit,” says Max Müller, “ the early date of which, assigned to it by Sir William Jones from the first, has not been assailed.” He also translated from the Sanskrit the fables of Hitopadesa, extracts from the Vedas, and shorter pieces. He formed a society in Calcutta for the study of Oriental literature, was its first president, and contributed numerous essays, all valuable, to its periodical, the “Asiatic Researches.” He wrote a grammar of the Persian language, and translated from Persian into French the history of Nadir Shah. From the Arabic he also translated many pieces, and among them the Seven Poems suspended in the temple at Mecca, which, in their subjects and style, seem an Arabic anticipation of Walt Whitman. He wrote in Latin a Book of Commentaries on Asiatic Poetry, in English several works on the Mohammedan and Civil Law, with a translation of the Greek Orations of Isæus. As a lawyer, a judge, a student of natural history, his ardor of study was equally apparent. He presented to the Royal Society in London a large collection of valuable Oriental manuscripts, and left a long list of studies in Sanskrit to be pursued by those who should come after him. His generous nature showed itself in his opposition to slavery and the slavetrade, and his open sympathy with the American Revolution. His correspondence was large, including such names as those of Benjamin Franklin, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Monboddo, Gibbon, Warren Hastings, Dr. Price, Edmund Burke, and Dr. Parr. Such a man ought to be remembered, especially by all who take an interest in the studies to which he has opened the way, for he was one who had a right to speak of himself, as he has spoken in these lines : —

Since the days of Sir William Jones, immense progress has been made in the study of Sanskrit literature, especially within the last thirty or forty years, from the time when the Schlcgels led the way in this department. Now, professors of Sanskrit are to be found in all the great European universities, and in this country we have at least one Sanskrit scholar of the very highest order, Professor William D. Whitney, of Yale. The system of Brahmanism, which a short time since could only be known to Western readers by means of the writings of Colebrooke, Wilkins, Wilson, and a few others, has now been made accessible by the works of Lassen, Max Müller, Burnouf, Muir, Pictet, Bopp, Weber, Windischmann, Vivien de Saint-Martin, and a multitude of eminent writers in France, England, and Germany.²

But, notwithstanding these many helps, Brahmanism remains a difficult study. Its source is not in a man, but in a caste. It is not the religion of a Confucius, a Zoroaster, a Mohammed, but the religion of the Brahmans. We call it Brahmanism, and it can be traced to no individual as its founder or restorer. There is no personality about it.³ It is a vast world of ideas, but wanting the unity which is given by the life of a man, its embodiment and representative.

But what a system ! How large, how difficult to understand! So vast, so complicated, so full of contradictions, so various and changeable, that its very immensity is our refuge! We say, It is impossible to do justice to such a system; therefore do not demand it of us.

India has been a land of mystery from the earliest times. From the most ancient days we hear of India, as the most populous nation of the world, full of barbaric wealth and a strange wisdom. It has attracted conquerors, and has been overrun by the armies of Semiramis, Darius, Alexander; by Mahmud, and Tamerlane, and Nadir Shah ; by Lord Clive and the Duke of Wellington. These conquerors, from the Assyrian Queen to the British Mercantile Company, have overrun and plundered India, but have left it the same unintelligible, unchangeable, and marvellous country as before. It is the same land now which the soldiers of Alexander described, — the land of grotto-temples dug out of solid porphyry ; of one of the most ancient Pagan religions of the world ; of social distinctions fixed and permanent as the earth itself; of the sacred Ganges ; of the idols of Juggernaut, with its bloody worship; the land of elephants and tigers; of fields of rice and groves of palm ; of treasuries filled with chests of gold, heaps of pearl, diamonds, and incense. But above all, it is the land of unintelligible systems of belief, of puzzling incongruities, and irreconcilable contradictions.

The Hindoos have sacred books of great antiquity, and a rich literature extending back twenty or thirty centuries; yet no history, no chronology, no annals. They have a philosophy as acute and profound and spiritual as any in the world, which is yet harmoniously associated with the coarsest superstition. With a belief so abstract that it almost escapes the grasp of the most speculative intellect, is joined the notion that sin can be atoned for by bathing in the Ganges or repeating a text of the Veda. With an ideal pantheism resembling that of Hegel, is united the opinion that Brahma and Siva can be driven from the throne of the universe by any one who will sacrifice a sufficient number of wild horses. To abstract one’s self from matter, to renounce all the gratifications of the senses, to macerate the body, is thought the true road to felicity ; and nowhere in the world are luxury and licentiousness and the gratification of the appetites carried so far. Every civil right and privilege of ruler and subject is fixed in a code of laws and a body of jurisprudence older far than the Christian era, and the object of universal reverence ; but the application of these laws rests (says Rhode) on the arbitrary decisions of the priests, and their execution on the will of the sovereign. The constitution of India is therefore like a house without a foundation and without a roof. It is a principle of Hindoo religion not to kill a worm, not even to tread on a blade of grass, for fear of injuring life; but the torments, cruelties, and bloodshed inflicted by Indian tyrants would shock a Nero or a Borgia. Half the best informed writers on India will tell you that the Brahmanical religion is pure monotheism ; the other half as confidently assert that they worship a million gods. Some teach us that the Hindoos are spiritualists and pantheists ; others that their idolatry is more gross than that of any living people.

Is there any way of reconciling these inconsistencies ? If we cannot find such an explanation, there is at least one central point where we may place ourselves ; one elevated position, from which this mighty maze will not seem wholly without a plan. In India the whole tendency of thought is ideal, the whole religion a pure spiritualism. An ultra, one-sided idealism is the central tendency of the Hindoo mind. The God of Brahmanism is an intelligence, absorbed in the rest of profound contemplation. The good man of the Vedas is he who withdraws from an evil world into abstract thought.

Nothing else explains the Hindoo character as this does. An eminently religious people, it is their one-sided spiritualism, their extreme idealism, which gives rise to all their incongruities. They have no history and no authentic chronology, for history belongs to this world, and chronology belongs to time. But this world and time are to them wholly uninteresting; God and eternity are all in all. They torture themselves with self-inflicted torments ; for the body is the great enemy of the soul’s salvation, and they must beat it down by ascetic mortifications. But asceticism, here as everywhere else, tends to self-indulgence, since one extreme produces another. In one part of India, therefore, devotees are swinging on hooks in honor of Siva, hanging themselves by the feet, head downwards, over a fire, rolling on a bed of prickly thorns, jumping on a couch filled with sharp knives, boring holes in their tongues, and sticking their bodies full of pins and needles, or perhaps holding the arms over the head till they stiffen in that position. Meantime in other places whole regions are given over to sensual indulgences, and companies of abandoned women are connected with different temples and consecrate their gains to the support of their worship.

As one-sided spiritualism will manifest itself in morals in the two forms of austerity and sensuality, so in religion it shows itself in the opposite direction of an ideal pantheism and a gross idolatry. Spiritualism first fills the world full of God, and this is a true and Christian view of things. But it takes another step, which is to deny all real existence to the world, and so runs into a false pantheism. It first says, truly, “ There is nothing without God.” It next says, falsely, “There is nothing but God.” This second step was taken in India by means of the doctrine of Maya, or Illusion. Maya means the delusive shows which spirit assumes. For there is nothing but spirit; which neither creates nor is created, neither acts nor suffers, which cannot change, and into which all souls are absorbed when they free themselves by meditation from the belief that they suffer or are happy, that they can experience either pleasure or pain. The next step is to polytheism. For if God neither creates nor destroys, but only seems to create and destroy, these appearances are not united together as being the acts of one Being, but are separate, independent phenomena. When you remove personality from the conception of God, as you do in removing will, you remove unity. Now if creation be an illusion, and there be no creation, still the appearance of creation is a fact. But as there is no substance but spirit, this appearance must have its cause in spirit, that is, is a di-vine appearance, is God. So destruction, in the same way, is an appearance of God, and reproduction is an appearance of God, and every other appearance in nature is a manifestation of God. But the unity of will and person being taken away, we have not one God, but a multitude of gods, — or polytheism.

Having begun this career of thought, no course was possible for the human mind to pursue but this. An ultra spiritualism must become pantheism, and pantheism must go on to polytheism. In India this is not a theory, but a history. We find, side by side, a spiritualism which denies the existence of anything but motionless spirit or Brahm, and a polytheism which believes and worships Brahma the Creator, Siva the Destroyer, Vischnu the Preserver, Indra the God of the Heavens, the Lactis or energies of the gods, Krishna the Hindoo Apollo, Doorga, and a host of others, innumerable as the changes and appearances of things.

But such a system as this must necessarily lead also to idolatry. There is in the human mind a tendency to worship, and men must worship something. But they believe in one Being, the absolute Spirit, the supreme and only God, — Para Brahm; him they cannot worship, for he is literally an unknown God. He has no qualities, no attributes, no activity. He is neither the object of hope, fear, love, nor aversion. Since there is nothing in the universe but spirit and illusive appearances, and they cannot worship spirit because it is absolutely unknown, they must worship these appearances, which are at any rate divine appearances, and which do possess some traits, qualities, character, are objects of hope and fear. But they cannot worship them as appearances, they must worship them as persons. But if they have an inward personality or soul, they become real beings, and also beings independent of Brahm, whose appearances they are. They must therefore have an outward personality ; in other words, a body, a shape, emblematical and characteristic; that is to say, they become idols.

Accordingly, idol worship is universal in India. The most horrible and grotesque images are carved in the stone of the grottos, stand in rude, block-like statues in the temple, or are coarsely painted on the walls. Figures of men with heads of elephants, or of other animals, or with six or seven human heads, sometimes growing in a pyramid, one out of the other, sometimes with six hands coming from one shoulder, — grisly and uncouth monsters, like nothing in nature, yet too grotesque for symbols, — such are the objects of the Hindoo worship.

We have seen how hopeless the task has appeared of getting any definite light on Hindoo chronology or history. To the ancient Egyptians, events were so important that the most trivial incidents of daily life were written on stone, and the imperishable records of the land, covering the tombs and obelisks, have patiently waited during long centuries, till their decipherer should come to read them. To the Hindoos, on the other hand, all events were equally unimportant. The most unhistoric people on earth, they cared more for the minutiæ of grammar, or the subtilties of metaphysics, than for the whole of their past. The only date which has emerged from this vague antiquity is that of Chandragupta, a contemporary of Alexander, and called by the Greek historians Sandracottus. He became king B. C. 315, and as, at his accession, Buddha had been dead (by Hindoo statement) one hundred and sixty-two years, Buddha may have died B. C. 477. We can thus import a single date from Greek history into that of India. This is the whole.

But, all at once, light dawns on us from an unexpected quarter. While we can learn nothing concerning the history of India from its literature, and nothing from its inscriptions or carved temples, language comes to our aid. The fugitive and airy sounds, which seem so fleeting and so changeable, prove to be more durable monuments than brass or granite. The study of the Sanskrit language has told us a long story concerning the origin of the Hindoos. It has rectified the ethnology of Blumenbach, has taught us who were the ancestors of the nations of Europe, and has given us the information that one great family, the Indo-European, has done most of the work of the world. It shows us that this family consists of seven races, — the Hindoos, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, who all emigrated to the south from the original ancestral home ; and the Kelts, the Teutons, and Slavi, who entered Europe on the northern side of the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. This has been accomplished by the new science of Comparative Philology. A comparison of languages has made it too plain to be questioned, that these seven races were originally one; that they must have emigrated from a region of Central Asia, at the east of the Caspian, and northwest of India ; that they were originally a pastoral race, and gradually changed their habits as they descended from those great plains into the valleys of the Indus and the Euphrates. In these seven linguistic families, the roots of the most common names are the same; the grammatical constructions are also the same; so that no scholar, who has attended to the subject, can doubt that the seven languages are all daughters of one common mother-tongue.

Pursuing the subject still further, it has been found possible to conjecture with no little confidence what was the condition of family life in this great race of Central Asia, before its dispersion. The original stock has received the name Aryan. This designation occurs in Manu (II. 22), who says: “As far as the eastern and western oceans, between the two mountains, lies the land which the wise have named Arya-vesta, or inhabited by honorable men.” The people of Iran receive this same appellation in the ZendAvesta, with the same meaning of honorable. Herodotus testifies that the Medes were formerly called " ΑAριοι (Herod. VII. 61). Strabo mentions that, in the time of Alexander, the whole region about the Indus was called Ariana. In modern times, the word Iran for Persia, and Erin for Ireland, are possible reminiscences of the original family appellation.

The Aryans, long before the age of the Vedas or the Zend-Avesta, were living as a pastoral people on the great plains east of the Caspian Sea. What their condition was at that epoch is deduced by the following method : If it is found that the name of any fact is the same in two or more of the seven tribal languages of this stock, it is evident that the name was given to it before they separated. For there is no reason to suppose that two nations living wide apart would have independently selected the same word for the same object. For example, since we find that house is in Sanskrit, Damn and Dam; in Zend, Demand; in Greek, Δóμος; in Latin, Domus; in Irish, Dahm; inSlavonic, Domu, — from which root comes also our English word Domestic, — we may be pretty sure that the original Aryans lived in houses. When we learn that boat was in Sanskrit, Nau or nauka; in Persian, Naw, nawah; in Greek, Nαυ̂ς; in Latin, Navis; in Old Irish, Noi or Nai; in Old German, Nawa or Nawi; and in Polish, Nawa, we cannot doubt that they knew something of what we call in English Nautical affairs, or Navigation. But as the words designating masts, sails, yards, &c., differ wholly from each other in all these linguistic families, it is reasonable to infer that the Aryans, before their dispersion, went only in boats, with oars, on the rivers of their land, the Oxus and Jaxartes, and did not sail anywhere on the sea.

Pursuing this method, we see that we can ask almost any question concerning the condition of the Aryans, and obtain an answer by means of Comparative Philology.

Were they a pastoral people? The very word pastoral gives us the answer. For Pa in Sanskrit means to watch, to guard, as men guard cattle, — from which a whole company of words has come in all the Aryan languages.

The results of this method of inquiry, so far as given by Pictet, are these. Some 3000 years B. C.,⁴ the Aryans, as yet undivided into Hindoos, Persians, Kelts, Latins, Greeks, Teutons, and Slavi, were living in Central Asia, in a region of which Bactriana was their centre. Here they must have remained long enough to have developed their admirable language, the mother-tongue of those which we know. They were essentially a pastoral, but not a nomad people, having fixed homes. They had oxen, horses, sheep, goats, hogs, and domestic fowls. Herds of cows fed in pastures, each the property of a community, and each with a cluster of stables in the centre. The daughters ⁵ of the house were the dairy-maids, the food was chiefly the products of the dairy and the flesh of the cattle. The cow was, however, the most important animal, and gave its name to many plants, and even to the clouds and stars, in which men saw heavenly herds passing over the firmament above them.

But the Aryans were not an exclusively pastoral people ; they certainly had barley, and perhaps other cereals, before their dispersion. They possessed the plough, the mill for grinding grain ; they had hatchet,⁶ hammer, augur. The Aryans were acquainted with several metals, among which were gold, silver, copper, tin. They knew how to spin and weave to some extent; they were acquainted with pottery. How their houses were built we do not know, but they contained doors, windows, and fireplaces. They had cloaks or mantles, they boiled and roasted meat, and certainly used soup. They had lances, swords, the bow and arrow, shields, but not armor. They had family life, some simple laws, games, the dance, and wind instruments. They had the decimal numeration, and their year was of three hundred and sixty days. They worshipped the heaven, earth, sun, fire, water, wind ; but there are also plain traces of an earlier monotheism, from which this nature-worship proceeded.

So far Comparative Philology takes us, and the next step forward brings us to the Vedas, the oldest works in the Hindoo literature, but at least 1000 or 1500 years more recent than the times we have been describing. The Aryans have separated, and the Hindoos are now in India. It is eleven centuries before the time of Alexander. They occupy the region between the Punjaub and the Ganges, and here was accomplished the transition of the Aryans from warlike shepherds into agriculturalists and builders of cities.

The last hymns of the Vedas were written (says St. Martin) when they arrived from the Indus at the Ganges, and were building their oldest city, at the confluence of that river with the Jumna. Their complexion was then white, and they call the race whom they conquered, and who afterward were made Soudras, or lowest caste, blacks.⁷ The chief gods of the Vedic age were Indra, Varuna, Agni, Savitri, Soma. The first was the god of the Firmament, the second of the Waters, the third of Fire.⁸ the fourth of the Sun, and the fifth of the Moon. Yama was the god of death. All the powers of nature were personified in turn,—as earth, food, wine, months, seasons, day, night, and dawn. Among all these divinities, Indra and Agni were the chief. ⁹ But behind this incipient polytheism lurks the original monotheism, — for each of these gods, in turn, becomes the Supreme Being. The universal Deity seems to become apparent, first in one form of nature and then in another. Such is the opinion of Colebrooke, who says that “ the ancient Hindoo religion recognizes but one God, not yet sufficiently discriminating the creature from the Creator.”And Max Müller says : “The hymns celebrate Varuna, Indra, Agni, &c., and each in turn is called supreme. The whole mythology is fluent. The powers of nature become moral beings.”

Max Müller adds : “ It would be easy to find, in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which almost every single god is represented as supreme and absolute. Agni is called 'Ruler of the Universe’; Indra is celebrated as the Strongest god, and in one hymn it is said, ‘Indra is stronger than all.’ It is said of Soma that ‘he conquers every one.’ ”

But clearer traces of monotheism are to be found in the Vedas. In one hymn of the Rig-Veda it is said: “ They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni; then he is the well-winged heavenly Garutmat; that which is One, the wise call it many ways ; they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan.” In one hymn the doctrine of creation is declared in language of wonderful force, it being said of the period previous to all existence: “ Nothing that is was then ; even what is not did not exist then. There was no death, therefore there was nothing immortal. The One breathed, breathless. Darkness was as of ocean without light.”

We subjoin one hymn from the oldest Veda, in which the unity of God seems very clearly expressed.

RIG-VEDA, X. 121.

“In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. He was the only born Lord of all that is. He established the earth, and this sky. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?

“ He who gives life. He who gives strength ; whose blessing all the bright gods desire; whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?

“ He who through his power is the only king of the breathing and awakening world. He who governs all, man and beast. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?

“ He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power the sea proclaims, with the distant river. He whose these regions are, as it were his two arms. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?

“ He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm. He through whom heaven was stablished ; nay, the highest heaven. He who measured out the light in the air. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?

“He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by his will, look up, trembling inwardly. He over whom the rising sun shines forth. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?

“ Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose he who is the only life of the bright gods. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?

“He who by his might looked even over the water-clouds, the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice ; he who is God above all gods. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?

“May he not destroy us, — he the creator of the earth, — or he, the righteous, who created heaven; he who also created the bright and mighty waters. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifices ? ” ¹⁰

Long after the age of the elder Vedas, Brahmanism begins. Its text-book is the Laws of Manu. As yet Vishnu and Siva are not known. The former is named once, the latter not at all. The writer only knows three Vedas. The Atharva-Veda is later. But as Siva is mentioned in the oldest Buddhist writings, it follows that the laws of Manu are older than these. In the time of Manu the Aryans are still living in the valley of the Ganges. The Caste system is now in full operation, and the authority of the Brahman is raised to its highest point. The Indus and Punjaub are not mentioned ; all this is forgotten. This work could not be later than B. C. 700, or earlier than B. C. 1200. It was probably written about B. C. 900 or B. C. 1000. In this view agree Wilson, Lassen, Max Muller, and Saint-Martin. The Supreme Deity is now Brahma, and sacrifice is still the act by which one comes into relation with heaven. Widow-burning is not mentioned in Manu ; but it appears in the Mahabharata, one of the great epics, which is later.

The pure nature-religion of India now begins to appear as a pantheistic philosophy, which is thus described by Bunsen and others.

Brahma, in his highest form as ParaBrahm, stands for the Absolute Being. The following extract from the Sama Veda (after Haug’s translation) expresses this : “ The generation of Brahma was before all ages, unfolding himself evermore in a beautiful glory ; everything which is highest and everything which is deepest belongs to him. Being and Not-Being are unveiled through Brahma.”

The following passage is from a Upanischad, translated by Windischmann : —

“ How can any one teach concerning Brahma ? he is neither the known nor the unknown. That which cannot be expressed by words, but through which all expression comes, this I know to be Brahma. That which cannot be thought by the mind, but by which all thinking comes, this I know is Brahma. That which cannot be seen by the eye, but by which the eye sees, is Brahma. If thou thinkest that thou canst know it, then in truth thou knowest it very little. To whom it is unknown, he knows it; but to whom it is known, he knows it not.”

This also is from Windischmann, from the Kathaka Upanischad: “One cannot attain to it through the word, through the mind, or through the eye. It is only reached by him who says, ‘It is! It is!’ He perceives it in its essence. Its essence appears when one perceives it as it is.”

The old German expression Istigkeit, according to Bunsen, corresponds to this. This also is the name of Jehovah as given to Moses from the burning bush: “And God said unto Moses, I AM THE I AM. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” The idea is that God alone really exists, and that the root of all being is in him. This is expressed in another Upanischad : “ He WHO EXISTS is the root of all creatures ; he WHO EXISTS is their foundation, and in him they rest.”

In the Vedanta philosophy this speculative pantheism is carried yet further. Thus speaks Sankara, the chief teacher of the Vedanta philosophy (“ Colebrooke’s Essays”): “I am the great Brahma, eternal, pure, free, one, constant, happy, existing without end. He who ceases to contemplate other things, who retires into solitude, annihilates his desires, and subjects his passions, he understands that Spirit is the One and the Eternal. The wise man annihilates all sensible things in spiritual things, and contemplates that one Spirit who resembles pure space. Brahma is without size, quality, character, or division.”

According to this philosophy (says Bunsen) the world is the Not-Being. It is, says Sankara, “appearance without Being ; it is like the deception of a dream.” “ The soul itself,” he adds, “has no actual being.”

There is an essay on Vedantism in a book published in Calcutta, 1854, by a young Hindoo, Shoshee Chunder Dutt, which describes the creation as proceeding from Maya, in this way: “ Dissatisfied with his own solitude, Brahma feels a desire to create worlds, and then the volition ceases so far as he is concerned, and he sinks again into his apathetic happiness, while the desire, thus willed into existence, assumes an active character. It becomes Maya, and by this was the universe created, without exertion on the part of Brahma. This passing wish of Brahma carried, however, no reality with it. And the creation proceeding from it is only an illusion. There is only one absolute Unity really existing, and existing without plurality. But he is like one asleep. Krishna, in the Gita, says: ‘These works (the universe) confine not me, for I am like one who sitteth aloof uninterested in them all.’ The universe is therefore all illusion, holding a position between something and notiiing. It is real as an illusion, but unreal as being. It is not true, because it has no essence ; but not false, because its existence, even as illusion, is from God. The Vedanta declares: ‘From the highest state of Brahma to the lowest condition of a straw, all things are delusion.’ ” Chunder Dutt, however, contradicts Bunsen’s assertion that the soul also is an illusion according to the Vedanta. “ The soul,” he says, “is not subject to birth or death, but is in its substance, from Brahma himself.” The truth seems to be that the Vedanta regards the individuation of the soul as from Maya and illusive, but the substance of the soul is from Brahma, and destined to be absorbed into him. As the body of man is to be resolved into its material elements, so the soul of man is to be resolved into Brahma. Tins substance of the soul is neither born nor dies, nor is it a thing of which it can be said, “ It was, is, or shall be.” In the Gita, Krishna tells Arjun that he and the other princes of the world “ never were not.”

The Vedantist philosopher, however, though he considers all souls as emanations from God, does not believe that all of them will return into God at death. Those only who have obtained a knowledge of God are rewarded by absorption, but the rest continue to migrate from body to body so long as they remain unqualified for the same. “ The knower of God becomes God.” This union with the Deity is the total loss of personal identity, and is the attainment of the highest bliss, in which are no grades and from which is no return. This absorption comes not from good works or penances, for these confine the soul and do not liberate it. “ The confinement of fetters is the same whether the chain be of gold or iron.” “ The knowledge which realizes that everything is Brahm, alone liberates the soul. It annuls the effect both of our virtues and vices. We traverse thereby both merit and demerit, the heart’s knot is broken, all doubts are split, and all our works perish. Only by perfect abstraction, not merely from the senses, but also from the thinking intellect and by remaining in the knowing intellect, does the devotee become identified with Brahm. He then remains as pure glass when the shadow has left it. He lives destitute of passions and affections. He lives sinless ; for, as water wets not the leaf of the lotus, so sin touches not him who knows God.” He stands in no further need of virtue, for “ of what use can be a winnowing fan when the sweet southern wind is blowing.” His meditations are of this sort: “I am Brahm, I am life. I am everlasting, perfect, self-existent, undivided, joyful.”

If therefore, according to this system, knowledge alone unites the soul to God, the question comes, Of what use then are acts of virtue, penances, sacrifices, worship? The answer is, that they effect a happy transmigration from the lower forms of bodily life to higher ones. They do not accomplish the great end, which is absorption and escape from Maya, but they prepare the way for it by causing one to be born in a higher condition.

Thus all Hindoo religion seemed to have settled into a vast spiritual pantheism. But from this, at one epoch, emerged another system, that of the Trismurti, or Divine Triad ; the Indian Trinity of Brahma, Vischnu, and Siva. This Triad expresses the unity of Creation, Destruction, and Restoration. A foundation for this already existed in a Vedic saying, that the highest being exists in three states, that of creation, continuance, and destruction.

Neither of these three supreme deities of Brahmanism held any high rank in the Vedas. Siva (Civa) does not appear at all in the Veda, nor, according to Lassen, is Brahma mentioned in the Vedic hymns, but first in a Upanischad. Vischnu is spoken of in the Rig-Veda, but always as one of the names for the sun. He is the Sun-God. His three steps arc sunrise, noon, and sunset. He is mentioned as one of the sons of Aditi; he is called “the widestepping,” “measurer of the world,” “the strong,” “the deliverer,” “renewer of life,” “who sets in motion the revolutions of time,” “a protector,” “preserving the highest heaven.” Evidently he begins his career in this mythology as the sun.

BRAHMA, at first a word meaning prayer and devotion, becomes in the laws of Manu the primal God, firstborn of the creation, from the self-existent being, in the form of a golden egg. He became the creator of all things by the power of prayer. In the struggle for ascendency which took place between the priests and the warriors, Brahma naturally became the deity of the former. But, meantime, the worship of Vischnu had been extending itself in one region, and that of Siva in another. Then took place those mysterious wars between the kings of the Solar and Lunar races, of which the great epics contain all that we know. And at the close of these wars, a compromise was apparently accepted, by which Brahma, Vischnu, and Siva were united in one supreme God, as creator, preserver, and destroyer, all in one.

The oldest and most striking account of creation is in the eleventh chapter of the Rig-Veda. Colebrooke, Max Muller, Muir, and Goldstucker, all give a translation of this remarkable hymn and speak of it with admiration. We take that of Colebrooke, modified by that of Muir: —

“Then there was no entity nor nonentity ; no world, no sky, nor aught above it ; nothing anywhere, involving or involved ; nor water deep and dangerous. Death was not, and therefore no immortality, nor distinction of day or night. But THAT (or The One) breathed calmly alone with Nature, her who is sustained within him. Other than Him, nothing existed [which] since [has been]. Darkness there was ; [for] this universe was enveloped with darkness, and was undistinguishable waters; but that mass, which was covered by the husk, was [at length] produced by the power of contemplation. First desire was formed in his mind; and that became the original productive seed ; which the wise, recognizing it by the intellect in their hearts, distinguish, as the bond of nonentity with entity.

“ Did the luminous ray of these [creative acts] expand in the middle, or above, or below ? That productive energy became providence [or sentient souls], and matter [or the elements] ; Nature, who is sustained within, was inferior ; and he who sustains was above.

“ Who knows exactly, and who shall in this world declare, whence and why this creation took place ? The gods are subsequent to the production of this world : then who can know whence it proceeded, or whence this varied world arose, or whether it upholds [itself] or not ? He who in the highest heaven is the ruler of this universe, — he knows, or does not know.”

We have no doubt that the Hindoo Triad came from the effort of the Brahmans to resist the tendency to polytheism, and it may for a time have succeeded. Images of the Trismurti, or three-faced God, are frequent in India, and this is still the object of Brahmanical worship. But beside this practical motive, the tendency of thought is always toward a triad of law, force, or elemental substance, as the best explanation of the universe. Hence there have been Triads in so many religions : in Egypt, of Osiris the Creator, Typhon the Destroyer, and Horus the Preserver ; in Persia, of Ormuzd the Creator, Ahriman the Destroyer, and Mithra the Restorer ; in Buddhism of Buddha the Divine Man, Dharmma the Word, and Sangha the Communion of Saints. Simple monotheism does not long satisfy the speculative intellect, because, though it accounts for the harmonies of creation, it leaves its discords unexplained. But a dualism of opposing forces is found still more unsatisfactory, for the world does not appear as such a scene of utter warfare and discord as this. So the mind comes to accept a Triad, in which the unities of life and growth proceed from one element, the antagonisms from a second, and the higher harmonies of reconciled oppositions from a third. Hence, in Brahmanism came the Triad of Brahma, Vischnu, and Siva.¹¹

But one of the most curious features of this system, which must not he left wholly unexplained, is the doctrine of Avatars, or Incarnations, of Vischnu. There are ten of these Avatars, — nine have passed, and one is to come. The object of Vischnu is, each time, to save the gods from destruction impending over them in consequence of the immense power acquired by some king, giant, or demon, by superior acts of austerity and piety. For here, as elsewhere, extreme spiritualism is often divorced from morality ; and so these extremely pious, spiritual, and self-denying giants are the most cruel and tyrannical monsters, who must be destroyed at all hazards. Vischnu, by force or fraud, overcomes them all.

His first Avatar is of the Fish, as related in the Mahabharata. The object was to recover the Vedas, which had been stolen by a demon from Brahma when asleep. In consequence of this loss, the human race became corrupt, and were destroyed by a deluge, except a pious prince and seven holy men who were saved in a ship. Vischnu, as a large fish, drew the ship safely on the water, killed the demon, and recovered the Vedas. The second Avatar was in a Turtle, to make the drink of immortality. The third was in a Boar, the fourth in a Man-Lion, the fifth in the Dwarf who deceived Bali, who had become so powerful by austerities as to conquer the gods and take possession of Heaven. In the eighth Avatar be appears as Krishna, and in the ninth as Buddha.

This system of Avatars is so peculiar, and so deeply rooted in the system, that it would seem to indicate some law of Hindoo thought. Perhaps some explanation may be reached thus : —

We observe that, —

1. Vischnu does not mediate between Brahma and Siva, but between the deities, and the lower races of men or demons.

2. The danger arises from a certain fate or necessity which is superior both to gods and men. There are laws which enable a man to get away from the power of Brahma and Siva.

3. But what is fate or necessity but nature, and the nature of things, the laws of the outward world of active existences ? It is not till essence becomes existence, till spirit passes into action, that it becomes subject to law.

4. The danger then is from the world of nature. The gods are pure spirit, and spirit is everything. But now and then nature seems to be something, it will not be ignored or lost in God. Personality, activity, or human nature rebel against the pantheistic idealism, the abstract spiritualism of this system.

5. To conquer body, Vischnu or spirit enters into body, again and again. Spirit must appear as body to destroy Nature. For thus is shown that spirit cannot be excluded from anything, — that it can descend into the lowest forms of life, and work in law as well as above law.

But all the efforts of Brahmanism could not arrest the natural development of the system. It passed on into polytheism and idolatry. The worship of India for many centuries has been divided into a multitude of sects. While the majority of the Brahmans still profess to recognize the equal divinity of Brahma, Vischnu, and Siva, the mass of the people worship Krishna, Rama, the Lingam, and many other gods and idols. There are Hindoo atheists who revile the Vedas ; there are the Kabirs, who are a sort of Hindoo Quakers, and oppose all worship; the Ramanujas, an ancient sect of Vischnu worshippers ; the Ramavats, living in monasteries ; the Panthis, who oppose all austerities ; the Maharajas, whose religion consists with great licentiousness. Most of these are worshippers of Vischnu or of Siva, for Brahma worship has wholly disappeared.

Few Hindoos now read the Vedas. The Puranas and the two great epics constitute their sacred books. These epics are the Ramayana, and the MahaBhárata. The first contains about fifty thousand lines, and is held in great veneration by the Hindoos. It describes the youth of Rama, who is an incarnation of Vischnu, his banishment and residence in Central India, and his war with the giants and demons of the South, to recover his wife, Sita. It probably is founded on some real war between the early Aryan invaders of Hindostan, and the indigenous inhabitants.

The Mahá-Bhárata, which is probably of later date, contains about two hundred and twenty thousand lines, and is divided into eighteen books, each of which would make a large volume. It is supposed to have been collected by Vyusa, who also collected the Vedas and Puranas. These legends are very old, and seem to refer to the early history of India. There appear to have been two Aryan dynasties in ancient India; the Solar and Lunar. Rama belonged to the first, and Bharata to the second. Pandu, a descendant of the last, has five brave sons, who are the heroes of this book. One of them, Arjuna, is especially distinguished. One of the episodes is the famous Bhagavat-gita. Another is called the Brahman’s Lament. Another describes the deluge, showing the tradition of a flood existing in India many centuries before Christ. Another gives the story of Savitri and Satyavan. These episodes occupy three fourths of the poem, and from them are derived most of the legends of the Puranas. A supplement, which is itself a longer poem than the Iliad and Odyssey combined (which together contain about thirty thousand lines), is the source of the modern worship of Krishna. The whole poem represents the multilateral character of Hinduism. It indicates a higher degree of civilization than that of the Homeric poems, and describes a vast variety of fruits and flowers existing under culture. The characters are much nobler and purer than those of Homer. The pictures of domestic and social life are very touching; children are dutiful to their parents, parents careful of their children; wives are loyal and obedient, yet independent in their opinions; and peace reigns in the domestic circle.

Having thus attempted, in the brief space we can here use, to give an account of Brahmanism, we close by showing its special relation as a system of thought to Christianity.

Brahmanism teaches the truth of the reality of spirit, and that spirit is infinite, absolute, perfect, one ; that it is the substance underlying all existence. Brahmanism glows through and through with this spirituality. Its literature, no less than its theology, teaches it. It is in the dramas of Calidasa, as well as in the sublime strains of the Bhagavat-gita. Something divine is present in all nature and all life, —

Now, with this Christianity is in fullest agreement. We have such passages in the Scripture as these: “ God is a Spirit”; “God is love; whoso dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him”; “In him we live, and move, and have our being”; “He ts above all, and through all, and in us all.” But beside these texts, which strike the key-note of the music which was to come after, there are divine strains of spiritualism, of God all in all, which come through a long chain of teachers of the Church, sounding on in the Confessions of Augustine, the prayers of Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Bonaventura, St. Bernard, through the Latin hymns of the Middle Ages, and develop themselves at last in what is called romantic art and romantic song. A Gothic cathedral like Antwerp or Strasburg, — what is it but a striving upward of the soul to lose itself in God ? A symphony of Beethoven, — what is it but the same unbounded longing and striving toward the Infinite and Eternal? The poetry of Wordsworth, of Goethe, Schiller, Dante, Byron, Victor Hugo, Manzoni, all partake of the same element. It is opposed to classic art and classic poetry in this, that instead of limits, it seeks the unlimited ; that is, it believes in spirit, which alone is the unlimited ; the infinite, that which is, not that which appears ; the essence of things, not their listence or outwardness.

Thus Christianity meets and accepts the truth of Brahmanism. But how does it fulfil Brahmanism ? The deficiencies of Brahmanism are these, — that holding to eternity, it omits time, and so loses history. It therefore is incapable of progress, for progress takes place in time. Believing in spirit, or infinite unlimited substance, it loses person, or definite substance, whether infinite or finite. The Christian God is the infinite, definite substance, selflimited or defined by lus essential nature. He is good and not bad, righteous and not the opposite, perfect love, not perfect self-love. Christianity, therefore, gives us God as a person, and man also as a person, and so makes it possible to consider the universe as order, kosmos, method, beauty, and providence. For, unless we can conceive the Infinite Substance as definite, and not undefined ; that is, as a person with positive characters ; there is no difference between good and bad, right and wrong, to-day and to-morrow, this and that, but all is one immense chaos of indefinite spirit. The moment that creation begins, that the Spirit of the Lord moves on the face of the waters, and says, “ Let there be light,” and so divides light from darkness, God becomes a person, and man can also be a person. Things then become “separate and divisible ” which before were “ huddled and lumped.”

Christianity, therefore, fulfils Brahmanism by adding to eternity time, to the infinite the finite, to God as spirit God as nature and providence. God in himself is the unlimited, unknown, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; hidden, not by darkness, but by light. But God, as turned toward us in nature and providence, is the infinite definite substance, that is, having certain defined characters, though these have no bounds as regards extent. This last view of God Christianity shares with other religions, which differ from Brahmanism in the opposite direction. For example, the religion of Greece and of the Greek philosophers never loses the definite God, however high it may soar. While Brahmanism, seeing eternity and Infinity, loses time and the finite, the Greek religion, dwelling in time, often loses the eternal and the spiritual. Christianity is the mediator, able to mediate, not by standing between both, but by standing beside both. It can lead the Hindoos to an Infinite Friend, a perfect Father, a Divine Providence, and so make the possibility for them of a new progress, and give to that ancient and highly endowed race another chance in history. What they want is evidently moral power, for they have all intellectual ability. The effeminate quality which has made them slaves of tyrants during two thousand years will be taken out of them, and a virile strength substituted, when they come to see God as law and love, — perfect law and perfect love, — and to see that communion with him comes, not from absorption, contemplation, and inaction, but from active obedience, moral growth, and personal development. For Christianity certainly teaches that we unite ourselves with God, not by sinking and losing our personality in him, but by developing it, so that it may be able to serve and love him.