The History of Antiquity, Vol. 4 (of 6)

This conception of the Indian castes is idealized in some points, and in others falls into errors, of which the causes are easily detected and pardonable. The happy, careless, and free life of the Kshatriyas is obviously exaggerated for all the states in which they had not maintained the position of a landed warlike nobility, as they did in the free nations,591 unless indeed among the monarchies a king sat on the throne who especially favoured the Kshatriyas, and was in a position to treat handsomely the soldiers in service, or registered for service. It has already been mentioned that all Kshatriyas did not serve (p. 244); and it would not occur to any prince to pay men who were not in service. Still less do the idyllic descriptions of the honoured and inviolable life of the husbandmen agree with the taxes and exactions and miserable position of the villagers, to which we find such frequent references in the native authorities. It is true that the Brahmanic law laid emphasis on settled life, and gave the preference to agriculture over trade and handicraft (p. 244), but of such a respect for husbandry as the Greeks describe we often find the opposite. These and similar traits in the Greek accounts owe in part their origin to the exaggerated picture of this distant land, which the fame of Indian marvels, of the wisdom and justice of the Indian nation, had produced among the Greeks. Yet we must not overlook the fact that agriculture was carried on with industry and care, that these accounts are essentially based on the impression which Megasthenes received of the condition of India circumstances in the period soon after Alexander, when a great prince on the throne of Magadha maintained peace and order in his wide dominions with a powerful hand. Even the sutras of the Buddhists dwell on the flourishing condition of agriculture at this period.

If the Greeks give seven orders instead of four, if they speak of the magistrates, spies, handicraftsmen, and finally of the hunters and herdmen, as separate tribes beside the priests, warriors, and husbandmen, the error is founded in the fact that they had a tendency to find the distinction of castes everywhere. Beside the chief castes were the castes of mixed origin, and it has been observed above how strong was the tendency of persons engaged in similar occupations to form into separate bodies within the castes. It was natural for an observant foreigner to think that the retired life of the sages was separated from the busy occupation of the magistrates by a sharper line, and to make the special calling of the magistrates into a caste, though on the other hand it did not escape the Greeks that the sages also were counsellors of the kings. Manu's law had wisely prescribed that kings should diligently avail themselves of the help of spies, whom they must select out of all the orders; these spies were more especially to watch the courtesans,592 and the Ramayana extols the ministers of king Daçaratha of Ayodhya for their skill in giving information of everything that went on in the land.593 If the Greeks could regard these spies as a special caste, many persons must have been employed by the system of secret police in the fourth century B.C. in India. That the unity of the caste, which comprised agriculturists, merchants, and handicraftsmen, and on the other hand the distinction between the Vaiçyas and the Çudras, was overlooked, is easily to be explained, for even Manu's law permitted the Çudras to be handicraftsmen, and the Brahmans and Kshatriyas to descend to the occupation of the other castes (p. 243), a permission which, in the case of the Brahmans, did not escape the Greeks. That the handicraftsmen and others had to perform tax-labour for the king, is an arrangement fixed by the book of the law (p. 212). Lastly, the Greeks apparently included among the hunters and the herdmen the impure and despised castes; the book of the law had also fixed what castes, i. e. what tribes of the pre-Arian or Arian population, were to occupy themselves with hunting and the capture of wild animals.594

Of the order of the sages the Greeks tell us that it assisted the king in the conduct of sacred worship, as the Magians assisted the Persians. Nor was it kings only, but communities and individuals who employed the services of these sages at sacrifices, because they stood nearest the gods, to whom a sacrifice offered by others could not be acceptable. Together with the sacrifice the sages conducted the burial and worship of the dead, as they were acquainted with the under world. They even occupied themselves with prediction, and soothsaying was in their hands. They rarely told individual persons their fate, for this was too insignificant and beneath the dignity of prophecy, but they foretold the fortunes of the state. At the new year the kings annually summoned the sages and a great assembly, when they announced whether the year would be good or bad, dry or wet; whether there would be sickness or not. At this assembly any sage also stated what he had observed that was of use in the affairs of the community, to promote the prosperity of the fruits and animals, etc. If any one prophesied falsely, no punishment awaited him; but any one who for the third time announced what did not take place was bound to keep silence for ever, a penalty so strictly observed by those on whom it was imposed, that nothing in the world could move them to utter another word.595

The life of these sages was no easy one; on the contrary, it was the most burdensome of all. From their earliest childhood they were brought up to wisdom; nay, even before their birth guardians from among the sages were allotted to them, who visited the mothers in order to ensure them a happy delivery by magic arts; so at least it was believed; as a fact they gave them wise exhortations. After birth other sages undertook the education of the children, and with advancing years the boys ever received better instructors. When grown up they lived for the most part in groves, in solitary isolation from the cities, lay on the earth, clothed themselves with the skins of animals, ate nothing that had life, refrained from sexual intercourse, and exercised great firmness both in bearing pain and in endurance, inasmuch as they sometimes remained in one position for the whole day, or stood for a long time on one leg, and carried on conversations on important matters. These could be listened to even by the common people; but such listeners must sit in profound silence; they must neither speak nor cough nor spit. Any sage who had lived in this manner for thirty-six or forty years, which they call the years of practice (p. 398), departs to his possessions and henceforth lives a less severe life. He wears garments of cotton, and rings of gold of moderate size on his hands and in his ears; he may eat the flesh of animals which are useless, but he may not eat acid food. The sages then take several wives, because it is important to have many children, in order to propagate wisdom the better. Others, clad in cotton garments, wander through the cities and teach, and are accompanied by pupils. The greater part of the time they spend in the market-place, where they are visited by many persons for advice. Others again live in the forest under the huge trees and eat nothing but bark and ripe herbs. In summer they endured without clothing the burning heat of the midday sun, and the winter also they passed in the open air, amid torrents of rain. The sages who live in the forest do not go to the kings, even though requested to do so; but the kings from time to time ask questions of them by messengers, and entreat them to call upon and worship the gods on their behalf. Others of the sages, however, manage the business of the state, and accompany the kings as counsellors; others are physicians, who live simply on rice and barley, and heal sickness by diet more than by any other means;596 others again are soothsayers and magicians, and acquainted with the sacrifices to the dead and the ritual, and go about begging among the villages and cities. These were the least cultivated of the sages, but even the others did not contradict the fables of the under-world, "because they advanced piety and sanctity."597

The sages were one and all highly honoured by the kings and the nation. They paid no taxes, they had no duties and services to perform, but on the contrary received valuable presents. Those who lived in the cities and gave advice in the market-place could take whatever and as much as they pleased of the food exposed for sale there, especially of oil and sesame; any one who is carrying figs or grapes gives to them of his store without payment. All whom they visit feel themselves honoured, and every house is open to them, except the apartments of the women; they enter when they choose, and take part in the conversation and the meal. Even the physicians among the sages are hospitably entertained in all the houses, and receive rice and barley wherever they lodge.598

Megasthenes tells us that the sages were divided into two sects, of which the one was called Brahmans, the other Sarmans. There was also a third sect, wrangling and quarrelsome men, whom the Brahmans regarded as vain boasters and fools.599 The Brahmans were held in higher estimation than the Sarmans, because there was more agreement in their doctrines. They occupied themselves with researches into nature, and the knowledge of the stars, and taught everything like the Hellenes; maintaining that the world was created, and globular, and perishable, permeated by the Deity who created and governed it. The earth was the centre of the universe. In addition to the four elements of the Hellenes the sages of the Indians assumed a fifth, out of which arose the sky and the stars. About the nature of the soul, also, the Indians had the same notions as the Hellenes; but like Plato they interspersed many fables on the imperishable nature of the soul, on the judgment which will be held in the under-world on the souls, and other things of the kind. As a rule their acts were better than their words; their proofs were generally supported by the narration of extraordinary stories. They maintained that in itself there was nothing good or bad; otherwise it would be impossible that some persons should be in trouble about an event while others felt delighted at it; that even the same persons should be distressed and then in turn delighted at the selfsame occurrence.600 According to the account of Onesicritus quoted above (p. 398), the Brahmans of Takshaçila considered that doctrine the best which removed joy and sadness utterly from the soul. In order to attain this the body must be accustomed to pain that the power of the soul may thus be strengthened. That man is the best who has the fewest needs; he is the most free who needs neither presents nor anything else from another; who has to fear no threats; he who equally disregarded pleasure and toil and life and death will be second to no other. The Brahmans spoke a good deal of death, which they regarded as a deliverance from the flesh when rendered useless by age. Life on earth they regarded merely as the completion of birth in the flesh, death as the birth to true life, and to happiness for the wise. Diseases of the body appeared to them dishonourable; and if a man fell into sickness, he anointed himself, caused a pyre to be erected, placed himself on it, gave orders that it should be kindled, and was burnt, without moving. Others put an end to their lives by throwing themselves into water, or over precipices; others by hanging or by the sword. Yet Megasthenes maintains that suicide was no article in the Indian creed.601

In all essential points these accounts agree with the native authorities, though the view taken is here and there too favourable, in some points too advanced, in others not sufficiently discriminating. It is true that the Brahmans and the initiated of the Enlightened, the Çramanas, are confounded in the order of the sages; this is shown by the statement that any one could enter into this order.602 It would have required peculiar acuteness on the part of a stranger to distinguish matters so closely resembling each other in their external appearances; and the one were mendicants no less than the others. It is evidence of clear observation that the Brahmans like the Bhikshus were regarded by the Greeks as philosophers rather than priests; they give prominence to their position as advisers of the king and soothsayers as well as their philosophical inquiries and conduct of sacrifices. The custom of advising the princes agrees with the rules which are known to us from the book of the law, the statements of the sutras, the Epos, the Puranas, and the incidents in the land of the Indus which have been mentioned above (p. 405); and with regard to soothsaying we have already seen from the sutras how much the Brahmans were given to astrology after the year 600 B.C.; how they suggested fortunate names to parents for their children, and favourable times for investiture with the sacred girdle, for cutting the hair, and for marriage. The assemblies at the new year, of which the Greeks tell us, have reference no doubt to the establishment of the calendar, i. e. to the fixing of the proper and fortunate days for sacrifice and festivity, for seedtime, etc., as is done at this day in every village by the Brahmans, and for the court and kingdom by the Brahmans of the king. Even now nothing of importance is undertaken in the state or in the house, before the Brahmans have declared the signs of heaven to be favourable. As to the sacrifices to the departed, we are acquainted with the meals for the dead, and their importance, which the Brahmans retained, while the Bhikshus, as we shall see, had meanwhile gone so far as to worship the manes of Buddha and his chief disciples. The sutras have already informed us of the frequent use of physicians; they were Brahmans who carried on the art of healing on the basis of the Atharvaveda. The care of the young Brahmans and their instruction is correctly stated; the time of teaching which the book of the law fixes at thirty-six years (p. 179) is not forgotten; even among the Bhikshus a noviciate was customary. In the description of the life of the ascetics and wandering sages, the Brahmans and Bhikshus are again confounded, and if the Greeks tell us that the severe sages of the forest were too proud to go to the court at the request of the king, the statement holds good according to the evidence of the Epos of the Brahmanic saints, and the sutras of the great teachers among the Buddhists.603

In the examination of the doctrines of the Indian sages Megasthenes distinguished the Brahmans and the Buddhists, inasmuch as he opposes the less honoured sects to the first, and declares the Brahmans to be the most important. From his whole account it is clear that at his date, i. e. about the year 300 B.C., the Brahmans had distinctly the upper hand. But, according to him, the Çramanas took the next place to the Brahmans, among the less honoured sects. Among the Buddhists Çramana is the ordinary name for their clergy (p. 377). The doctrines of the Brahmans of the world-soul and the five elements (by the fifth, with which the Greeks were not acquainted, the æther or Akaça of the Brahmans is meant), the dogmas of liberation from sensuality and the body, are rightly stated by Megasthenes in all essentials, and his assertion that the Brahmans for the most part narrated fabulous stories in support of their doctrines is based very correctly on the numerous Brahman legends about the great saints. Megasthenes takes too favourable a view of the object of Brahmanic asceticism, but he brings out with sufficient prominence the mortification of the flesh, and remarks the diversity of the views on voluntary death or suicide, which, as we have seen, the book of the law, in case of incapacity, regards as a meritorious end to the later years of life, while the Buddhists condemned it altogether.

Of the religion of the Indians the Greeks ascertained that they worshipped Zeus, who brought the rain, and other native, i. e. peculiar, deities, and the Ganges. Of the gods of the Greeks Dionysus was the first to come to India; he instructed the Indians in the culture of the field and the vine, founded the monarchy, and taught them how to wear the mitra and to dance the cordax (a Bacchic dance).604 Heracles also had been in India, but fifteen generations later than Dionysus. The Indians called Heracles one of the earth-born, who had attained divine honours after his death, because he surpassed all men in power and boldness. This Indian Heracles had cleared land and sea from wild and hurtful animals, and, like the Theban Heracles, had carried the lion's skin and club. He had many sons, among whom India was equally divided, and these had bequeathed their dominions to many descendants, from generation to generation; some of these kingdoms existed even when Alexander came to India. Beside these sons Heracles had one daughter, Pandæa, whom he had also made a queen, and had given her for a kingdom the land in which she was born, the most southern part of India;605 and when on one of his voyages Heracles had discovered pearls he gathered together all that could be found in the Indian sea in order to adorn his daughter with them. As he had never seen a man worthy of her, when in old age he made her though but seven years old of full age for marriage in order that he might beget with her a successor for her land. After this time, all the women in the land named after her were of marriageable age in their seventh year.606 The Indians on the mountains worshipped Dionysus, those in the plains Heracles;607 the latter was chiefly worshipped among the Çurasenas on the Yamuna,608 and the Çibis (p. 403), who wore the skins of animals and carried clubs like Heracles, and branded their oxen and mules with the mark of a club.609 The Indians did not slaughter the animals for sacrifice, but strangled them.610

The rain-bringing Zeus is the ancient sky-god of the Indians, Indra, who cleaves the clouds with the lightning, and sends down the fructifying water, even as he causes the springs imprisoned in the rocks to bubble forth in freedom. Concerning the sacredness of the Ganges we are sufficiently instructed in Indian authorities. With regard to Dionysus, the Greeks tell us that when Alexander was in the land of the Açvakas, an embassy came from the Nysæans with the message that Dionysus had founded their city, had given it the name of Nysa, and had called the neighbouring hill Meron. In the valleys and on the hills of the Açvakas the Greeks saw the vine growing wild, the thick creepers of a plant not unlike ivy, myrtles, bay, box-trees, and other evergreens, along with luxuriant orchards,611 a vegetation which reminded them of their own homes and the sacred places of Dionysus. When in the Hindu Kush they heard the name of the tribe of the Nishadas and of the divine mountain Meru, which with the Indians lay beyond the Himalayas (the highest ranges were with them the southern slopes of the divine mountain), there was no longer any doubt that the god of Nysa, who had grown up in the Nysæan cave, and on the Nysæan mountain, had marched to India, just as he had reduced the nations of Asia Minor as far as the Euphrates.612 In this way the Nysæan mountain, which the Greeks first placed in B[oe]otia and Thrace, was then removed to the borders of Egypt, afterwards to Arabia and Ethiopia,613 and even to India. To the Greeks the Nishadas were Nysæans and their city Nysa; they were at once convinced that Meru received the name from Dionysus or in honour of Dionysus, whom his divine father had once carried in his thigh (μηρός).614 Diodorus, after his manner, gives this pragmatic explanation of the story: Dionysus was compelled to refresh his wearied army on a mountain, which was then called Meros after him. Further, the processions of the Indian princes to sacrifices and the chase reminded the Greeks of the Dionysiac processions at home. They caught the sound of cymbals and drums; they saw the number of the royal women with their female servants in these trains; the king and his company in their long gay and flowered robes, with turbans on their heads,615 which reminded them of the fillet of Dionysus; they saw great cups and goblets, the treasures of the king's palace, and finally, lions and panthers, the animals of Dionysus, brought forth in these processions; coloured masks and beards, just as the Greeks were accustomed to paint the face at the festival of Dionysus.616

Among the Indians, as we saw, in the course of the sixth century, the worship of Rudra-Çiva grew up first and chiefly in the high mountains and valleys, where the storms were the most violent. He was a wild deity like Dionysus; like him he was invoked as "lord of the hills" (p. 330), a god of increase and fertility, of nature creating through moisture, of reproduction. And if ecstasy and frenzy were peculiar to the worship of Dionysus, there was also a certain wildness in the nature of Çiva-Rudra, a trait which gradually became more strongly marked among the Indians in contrast to the form of Vishnu.

The culture of the vine on the Indus, the green mountain valleys, the sound of the names Nishada and Meru, the procession of the Indian kings, and the worship of Çiva, convinced the Greeks that they had found the worship of their god. That they restricted this to the inhabitants of the mountains is due, no doubt, to the fact that they were more closely acquainted with the mountain land of the west, that the vine-clad valleys and the names Nysa and Meru belonged to the region of the high mountains, that even in the land of the Ganges the Himalayas passed as the abode of Çiva (p. 330). Moreover, the plains of India did not produce the vine, which indeed does not nourish in India, with the exception of some districts on the Indus, and the inhabitants of the Ganges valley did not drink wine.

As the Indians of the mountains, according to the account of the Greeks, worshipped Dionysus, so were the Indians of the plains worshippers of Heracles. According to the statement of Megasthenes, he was worshipped especially among the Çurasenas on the Yamuna and in the cities of Mathura and Krishnapura, and therefore Krishna must be meant (p. 105). Among the Indians Vishnu-Krishna carries the club, which Varuna once gave to him, and is called the club-bearer (gadadhara); with the club Krishna smote the wild tribes, the heroes, and the monsters. The weapon carried by Krishna's nation, the extinct Yadavas, was the club. The Greeks tell us that the Indian Heracles begot many sons; in the Mahabharata Krishna entreats Mahadeva, i. e. Çiva, the god of fertility, for hundreds of sons; the Vishnu-Purana ascribes to Krishna 16,100 wives and 180,000 sons.617 According to the Greeks, Krishna was first placed among the gods after his death; in the ancient conception of the Indians, Krishna, as we know, was a strong herdman, who overcame bulls, kings, and giants, gave crafty counsel in the great wars, and at length died, wounded by the arrows of a hunter (p. 95); he becomes a deity by amalgamation with Vishnu. That the Greeks overlook the peaceful side of the deity in the incarnations of Vishnu as Paraçurama, Rama, and Krishna, and their heroic achievements, is easily explained from their tendency to find their native gods in India. The derivation of the royal races of India from Heracles has reference only to the dynasties which claimed to be derived from the Pandus, the extinct royal houses of the Bharatas and Panchalas, the Pandus in Guzerat and southern Mathura, whose ancestors the Epos places in such close connection with Vishnu-Krishna. This derivation might easily be extended to the families which carried their lineage beyond the Pandus to Kuru, Puru, and Pururavas, like the Pauravas on the Panjab (p. 399), and the oldest dynasty of the kings of Magadha (p. 74). The most southern part of India is said to have fallen to Pandæa, the daughter of Heracles, and to have received its name from her; the pearls were procured from the sea for her adornment. We know that a Pandu family ruled there; among the heroic achievements of Krishna, the Mahabharata mentions the conquest of the giant Panchajana;618 Vishnu is the bearer of the mussel, the lord of the jewel, and the pearl fishery can only be carried on in the gulf between Mathura and Ceylon. That a daughter and not a son of Heracles founded the kingdom here, is perhaps due to an Indian legend, woven into the history of this kingdom of Mathura. Sampanna-Pandya, the king mentioned above, worshipped the protecting goddess of the city so zealously that in order to reward him she caused herself to be born as his daughter. She succeeds her father on the throne, marches through India performing great deeds as far as the lake of Kailasa, the lofty Himalayas, where she overcomes even Çiva by her beauty, so that he follows her to Mathura, and there reigns at Sundara-Pandya (i. e. the beautiful Pandya), and gives prosperity to the land.619 Hence it is possible that the protecting deity of Mathura and her warlike achievements are the basis underlying the story of the daughter of Heracles. If Heracles begets a son with this daughter in her seventh year, and all the women of the land became henceforth marriageable at that age, the latter part of the statement is correct; the fact is due to the position of the country under the equator. Even the law of Manu, which is adapted to the land on the central Ganges, permits marriage in the twelfth and even in the eighth year (p. 254).