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

In the Epos, as has been observed, Vishnu took the form of a dwarf in order to rescue the world from the Asura, Bali. According to the Vishnu-Purana, he had, even before the creation of the world, taken the form of a boar in order to raise the earth out of the waters. In the Matsya-Purana, beside three heavenly incarnations as Dharma, a dwarf, and a man-lion, he underwent seven earthly incarnations in consequence of a curse, as is strangely asserted, which an Asura had pronounced upon him, when Vishnu had slain the Asura's mother in order to aid Indra against him.724 The Bhagavata-Purana ascribes twenty incarnations to Vishnu; as creator, a boar, tortoise, fish, man-lion; as a sacrifice, a dwarf; as Paraçurama, Rama, Balarama, Krishna, etc. – twice more would he appear on the earth – and then it is added: "But the incarnations of Vishnu are innumerable as the streams which flow down from an inexhaustible lake; all saints and gods are parts of him."725

In order to transform the heroes of the Ramayana into incarnations of Vishnu, vigorous interpolations were required in the body of the poem. According to the old poem, king Daçaratha offered a horse-sacrifice in order to procure posterity (p. 278). When this sacrifice has been accurately described in all its parts, and we have been informed that the gods appeared and received each his portion, a second sacrifice is inserted because Daçaratha wished to have a famous son born to him.726 While Rishyaçringa is advising the king to make this new sacrifice and beginning it, the gods complain to Brahman that the Rakshasa Ravana of Lanka has subjugated them and made them his slaves; he oppressed the gods, the Brahmans, and the cows. Ravana's son, Indrashit, had conquered Indra himself, a victory which Brahman explains to be the consequence of the seduction of a rishi's wife by Indra.727 Brahman then announces to the helpless deities that Ravana had besought him that he might be invulnerable to Gandharvas, Yakshas, gods, Danavas, and Rakshasas, and had obtained his request; as he despised men he had not asked to be invulnerable to men, and this favour had not been granted to him. When the gods with Indra at their head heard this they were delighted. At that moment came the famous Vishnu, with the shell, the discus, the sun's disk, and the club in his hand, in a yellow robe, on the Garuda (his bird), like the sun sitting on the clouds, with a bracelet of fine gold, invoked by the head of the gods. The gods fell down before him and said: "Thou art he who removest the sorrows of the distressed worlds. We entreat thee, be our refuge, O unconquerable one." Then they besought him to take upon himself the son-ship of Daçaratha. When changed into a man, he might slay Ravana, the powerful enemy of the worlds, whom the gods could not overcome. He alone in the hosts of heaven can slay the wicked one. Then Vishnu, the "lord of the gods, the greatest of the immortals, entreated of all worlds," soothes the gods, and promises them to slay Ravana, and reign on earth for eleven thousand years.728 Meanwhile Rishyaçringa at Ayodhya is ready with the sacrifice, and out of the fire there appears a being of a brightness incomparable, clear as a burning flame, strong as a tiger, and his shoulders were as the shoulders of a lion; his garment was red, and his teeth like the stars in heaven; in both hands he held a golden cup, and spake to king Daçaratha: "Receive this draught, Maharaja, which the gods have prepared; it is the fruit of the sacrifice, let thy fair wives enjoy it; then wilt thou receive the sons for whom thou hast offered the sacrifice."729 Then Kauçalya bore Rama, the lord of the world, entreated of all worlds, and gained glory by this son of unlimited power, even as Aditi did by the birth of the chief of the gods, who brandishes the club; and Kaikeyi bore Bharata, who was the fourth part of Vishnu, and Sumitra bore Lakshmana and Çatrughna, each of whom was the eighth part of Vishnu. This division of Vishnu according to the valour of the sons, and the more or less prominent parts which they play in the poem, is entirely forgotten in the course of it; even Rama himself is entirely uninfluenced by this new introduction; when fighting with magic weapons and arts he feels as a virtuous man and an obedient son.730 Towards the end of the poem Brahman and the gods come in order to tell Rama who he is; the original creator of the universe and the worlds, the head of the divine host, whose eyes are the sun and the moon, whose ears are the Açvins. Brahman himself then declares to him: "Thou, O Being of primal force, thou art the famous lord armed with the discus, thou art the boar with one horn, the conqueror of present and future enemies, the true and imperishable Brahman in the middle and at the end. Thou art the supreme order of the world, the bearer of the bow, the supreme spirit, the unconquered, the brandisher of the sword. Thou art wisdom, patience, self-control. Thou art the source of birth, the cause of decay. Thou art Mahendra, the greater Indra; thou performest the functions of Indra. Thou hast formed the Vedas; they are thy thoughts, thou first-born, thou self-dependent lord. Thou art in all creatures, in the Brahmans and the cows; thou sustainest creatures and the earth with its hills; thou art at the end of the earth, in the waters, a mighty serpent which supports the three worlds. The whole world is thy body, Agni is thy anger, Soma thy joy, and I (Brahman) am thy heart."731 Rama is here identified with Vishnu, and the latter is at the same time set forth as including Brahman and all nature, as the world-soul and a personal god.

The form of Krishna goes through the same change in the Mahabharata, though the position, acts and counsels which the old poem ascribed to this hero of the tribe of the Yadavas were often, as we saw, neither honourable nor praiseworthy. Besides his relation to the sons of Pandu, the Mahabharata ascribed to him a long series of earlier achievements. While yet among the herdmen, he had slain Haya among the forests on the Yamuna, and overcome the mischievous bull which slew the oxen. Then he slew Pralambha, Naraka, Jambha, and Pitha, the great Asura, and conquered Kansa, king of Mathura, in battle. Supported by his brother Balarama, he overcame Kansa's brother, the bold prince of the Çurasenas. Jarasandha also, the king of Magadha and of the Chedis, was defeated by Krishna, and the victory over Panchajana who lived in Patala brought him into the possession of his divine shell. This assisted Krishna in his suit for the daughter of the king of the Gandharas, for no prince was his equal in weapons; he yoked the conquered princes to his bridal car.732 In the ancient form of the poem, Krishna was the son of the cowherd Nanda, and his wife Yaçoda. It is already an alteration of his original position when he is described as a son of Vasudeva and Devaki, who was changed with the child of the herdman's wife. In the Chandogya-Upanishad Krishna is still no more than the son of Devaki.733 Afterwards, the prayers of the gods to Vishnu that he would allow himself to be born upon earth, were inserted into the Mahabharata. Vishnu plucks out two hairs from himself, one white, the other black; these two hairs pass into two women of the tribe of Yadavas, the two wives of Vasudeva, Devaki and Rohini. From the white hair Rohini brought forth Balarama, and from the black Devaki brought forth Krishna.734 Hence Krishna is merely one part of Vishnu, and Balarama another; but of this no further notice is taken; wherever Krishna is treated as a god in the poem, he is the whole god. In the other parts of the poem he is no more than a mortal; in the earliest revision he fights his fight with the arms and the blessing of the gods, of which he would have no need if he were himself the supreme god; in the last revision he is the supreme god. Then it is imparted to him that in the beginning of days Brahman, who is the whole world, sprang from the lotus of his navel; that the lords of the gods proceeded from his body and carry out his commands.735 Brahman says to the gods: "Ye must worship this Vasudeva, whose son I, Brahman, the lord of the worlds, am. Never, ye great gods, can the mighty bearer of the shell, the discus, and the club be regarded as merely a mortal." This being is the supreme mystery, the supreme existence, the supreme Brahman, the supreme power, the supreme joy, the supreme truth. It is the Imperishable, the Indivisible, the Eternal. Vasudeva (Krishna) of unlimited power cannot therefore be despised by the gods, nor by Indra, nor by the Asuras, as merely a man. "He who says that he is only a man, his understanding is perverted; he who despises Krishna will be called the lowest of mankind. He who despises Vasudeva is full of darkness; as also is the man who knows not the glorious god whose self is the world. The man who despises this great being, who bears crowns and jewels, and liberates his worshippers from fear, is plunged into deep darkness."736 Assertions and statements of this kind show clearly that at the time of their insertion into the Mahabharata the deification of Krishna was by no means universally recognised.737

While a tendency at work within the circle of the Brahmans put Vishnu in the place of Brahman, another impulse was not less eagerly occupied in elevating the old storm-god Rudra-Çiva to be the highest deity. In the poem of the Veda the storm-god wears the plaited hair. He is called Kapardin, i. e. the bearer of the locks, an idea no doubt borrowed from the collected clouds driven by the storm. As the old priestly families plaited their hair in different ways (p. 29), and all penitents wore their hair in knots, the storm-god also became a penitent with the Brahman, and as the divine power resided pre-eminently in penance, and Çiva was so strong and mighty a god, he became the greatest of all penitents. The old conception of Rudra assisted to retain for this mighty deity an angry and destructive aspect; but as rain and fructification also came from the storm Çiva was placed in relation to procreation. If Vishnu is celebrated in the passages quoted from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the same honour is allotted in other parts of the same poems to Çiva, who is now called Mahadeva, i. e. the great god. He also is the source, the unborn cause of the world, the framer of the all, the beginning of all beings, the shaper of the gods, the uncreated, imperishable lord, the origin of the past, the present, and the future. He is the highest spirit, the home of the lights, the sky, the wind, the creator of the ocean, the substance of the earth, Brahman itself. But he is also the supreme anger, the creator of the world and its destroyer.738 He, the all-penetrating god, is the creator and lord of Brahman, Vishnu, and Indra; they serve him, who extends beyond matter and spirit, who at once is and is not. When by his power he set matter and spirit in motion, Çiva, the god of the gods, the creator (Prajapati),739 created Brahman from his right side and Vishnu from his left. His attributes could not be set forth in a hundred years. He is Indra, he is Agni, he is the Açvins, he is Surya, he is Varuna. Nothing is above him, and nothing can withstand his divinity; the heart of the gods is terrified in the battle when they hear his awful voice; none can endure the sight of the angry bearer of the bow. He has two bodies, and these assume marvellous shapes. One of the bodies is full of sorrow, the other is gracious. If angry and passionate, he is an eater of flesh, blood, and marrow, and then he is called Rudra. When he is angry, all worlds are confounded at the sound of his bow-string, gods and Asuras are defeated and helpless, the waters are in tumult, and the earth quakes, the mountains sink, the light of the sun is quenched, heaven is torn asunder and veiled in thick darkness.740 There were three cities of the mighty Asuras which Indra could not overcome. At the entreaty of the gods that he would liberate the world Çiva made Vishnu his arrow, Agni the barbs, Yama the feathers, all the Vedas his bow, and the Gayatris (p. 172) his bow-string; Brahman was the leader of his chariot, and he burnt the three cities and the Asuras with the arrow of triple barbs, of the colour of the sun, and glowing like fire, which consumes the world.741 Çiva is the soul of all worlds; he dwells in the heart of all creatures, he knows all desires, he is visible and invisible; serpents are his girdle and the skins of serpents his robe; he carries the discus, the club, sword, and axe. He assumes the form of Brahman and Vishnu, of all gods, spirits, and demons, of all kinds of men. He laughs, and weeps, and hops, and dances, and sings, and speaks softly, and then again with the voice of a drunkard. Naked, with excited glances, he plays with the maidens.742

Thus does the Epos describe the forms of Vishnu and Çiva. The Brahmans had allowed the pure world-soul to drop out, in order to return again to living deities; nature, which was nothing but deception as opposed to Brahman, they had again assumed in the being of the new gods; the two new supreme deities absorbed Brahman, each into himself; each was also Brahman; each had given forth from himself all living and lifeless beings, the whole of nature; each governs and rules the life of nature, and is the cause of growth and decay. These were attempts made in combination with the national faith to personify once more the Pantheism of the Brahmanic system, without excluding the life of nature, to represent the divine power to the religious consciousness in an active, direct, living, impressive, helpful way. This process and change of the Brahmanic system took place about the same time that the Buddhists began to pay divine honour to the founder of their doctrine, and exalt him to the highest deity, or perhaps a little earlier. As compared with Buddhism the new conception of the Brahmanic idea of god had the disadvantage that there were two supreme deities which contended side by side with Brahman for the first place. The worshippers of the one and the other equally inserted into the Epos their great deity and his praises. The exaltation of Vishnu and of Çiva, the repression of the idea of Brahman, cannot have begun later than the beginning of the fourth century B.C., since, as the Greeks have already told us, it was towards the end of the fourth century, about the year 300 B.C., that Çiva and Vishnu were worshipped by the Indians as their chief deities, the first by the inhabitants of the mountains, the second by the dwellers in the plains. At the same time it is clear, from the accounts of the Greeks, that the incarnations of Vishnu, assumed in order to benefit the world, in Paraçurama, Rama, and Krishna had already obtained recognition at the time mentioned, and received expression in the Epos and the worship. In any other case it would have been impossible for the Greeks to have regarded Vishnu as their own Heracles. From certain quotations in Panini, who lived about the middle or the last third of the fourth century,743 it follows that Krishna and Vishnu were identified about this time, and Vishnu was described by the name Vasudeva, the family name of Krishna.744

Buddhism appears to have had a two-fold influence on the ethical demands of the Brahmans; on the one hand, it challenged and therefore intensified them; on the other, it softened and diminished their force. According to the book of the law the Dvija satisfied the highest requirements of religion, when, after founding his house and seeing the children of his children, he renounced the world, retired into the forest, and there, occupied only with divine things, with salvation for the future, sought his return to Brahman by penances and meditation. It was the duty of the king when he became old and weak and was no longer in a position to protect his subjects and inflict punishment, as he ought, to seek death in battle, or if no war was being waged at the time, to put an end to his life by starvation. In a few cases the book allows suicide as a punishment for grievous offences. In the Epos we find an advance in this direction. Traits are introduced into it which represent voluntary death as the greatest act of merit, as the summit and perfection of asceticism. While yet in full vigour and equal to their duties, Yudhishthira and his brothers abandon their throne and kingdom, in order to seek and find death on a pilgrimage to the holy mountain, and by such penances and such an end to be rid of the earthly grossness still clinging to them. When Rama, even after his father Daçaratha is dead, refuses to ascend the throne, because he must keep the promise made to his dead father that he would live fourteen years in exile, the younger brother Bharata, conscientiously respecting the right of the elder, will not assume the government; for these fourteen years he lives in the garment of a penitent with a penitent's knot of hair, and five days after Rama's return from banishment, he "goes into the fire." The anchorite Çarabhanga, who by severe penances has obtained the highest reward, erects a pyre for himself, kindles it with his own hands, and burns himself in the presence of Rama in order to pass into the heaven of Brahman, for which in other revisions of the poem is substituted the heaven of Vishnu. The Greeks have already told us that the sages among the Indians regarded disease and weakness as disgraceful; if one of them fell ill he burned himself on a pyre (p. 422). The companions of Alexander of Macedon tell us that Calanus, one of the Brahmans of Takshaçila, whom Alexander had induced to join him (p. 398), fell sick in Persia and became weak. Alexander in vain attempted to move him from his resolution to burn himself. Too feeble to walk, Calanus was carried to the pyre, crowned after the Indian manner, and singing hymns in the Indian language. When the funeral pyre was kindled, he lay down without shrinking in the midst of the flames.745

According to the statement of Megasthenes the Indian sages put an end to their lives not by fire only but also by throwing themselves from a precipice or into water.746 By this kind of sacrifice can only be meant suicide or pilgrimage to the sacred places in the Himalayas, near the pools, to which a peculiar power of purification was ascribed. Pilgrimages to the sacred waters are mentioned even in Manu's laws. Bathing in the Ganges, in the lakes of the Himalayas, which lay near the holy mountain, in the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges, was supposed to have the power of washing away many sins, and thus relieving men from the torturing penances imposed by the Brahmans. "If," we are told in the book of the law, "thou art not at variance with Vivasvati's son Yama, who dwells in thy heart (i. e. with thy conscience), go not to the Ganges nor the Kurus." In the lands formerly governed by the Kurus, lay the places of sacrifice of the ancient kings; there, at this or that place, the great rishis of the ancient time were said to have sacrificed; on the lakes Ravanahrada and Manasa, in the high Himalayas, under Kailasa, the old sutras of the Buddhists showed us the settlements of penitent Brahmans. We cannot doubt that the pilgrimage of the Buddhists to the places where Buddha lived, preached, and died, increased the pilgrimages of the Brahmans, and that, to match the blessing which the Buddhists attached to their journeys, they estimated and commended more highly than before the expiating and redeeming power of their holy shrines. In the Mahabharata a considerable number of shrines of pilgrimage are mentioned together with their legends; the visitation of these seems to be quite common; the especial effects of the various places are stated;747 in fact, the pilgrimages to the sacred pools and places of purification must have been so common and so zealously undertaken among the Brahmans that about the middle of the third century B.C. the Buddhists denote their Brahmanic opponents by the names Tirthyas and Tirthikas, i. e. men who live at the pools of purification or hold them in especial estimation.748 Not merely to bathe in the waters at the sacred places, which take away sins, but to end life there, could not but have a most efficacious and meritorious influence on the future of the soul in the next world, and the regenerations. Hence sinners would seek death in the sacred waters as the best and most perfect expiation; and even those who did not think themselves under the burden of special offences could find in a voluntary death in the sacred flood the highest expiation for the impurity entailed upon them, according to the Brahmanic system, by their life in the body. Thus even then, as now, many died by a voluntary death at these places. The strict consequences of the Brahmanic system pointed to suicide. Did not the ethical aim of the Brahmans consist in the elevation of the Ego by meditation, in the annihilation of the body by asceticism? It was a step farther to end and escape the torments of long penances at a single bound. The more prominence the Buddhists gave to the fact that their doctrine ensured liberation from regenerations, the keener must be the attention paid by the Brahmans to this object. According to their view of the world, and the basis of their system – that the body was the adulteration of Brahman in men, the hindrance in the way of his return to Brahman – the end of the bodily life, which they had constantly sought to subdue, at a consecrated place, by a holy act in the midst of purification in the sacred bath, could not but bring salvation; the man who offered his body and himself for sacrifice was at once purified for his return into the world-soul. If the Buddhists avoided regenerations by taming desire, and annihilating the soul, the Brahmans could now prevent them by the sacrifice of the body at a holy place. That all Brahmans were not of this opinion we may conclude from the assertion of Megasthenes that death by suicide was not a dogma of the Indian sages; those who put themselves to death were looked on as rash and perverse. There was, therefore, an opposite view. Nor was it the Buddhists only, who, in accordance with the whole conception of their faith, represented this opposition; even among the Brahmanic castes, as we shall see, there was a variety of opinions.

The companions of Alexander tell us that among some Indians widows voluntarily burnt themselves with the corpses of their husbands, and those who did not do this were in no esteem.749 Among the Indians, says Nicolaus of Damascus, the favourite wife was burnt with the dead husband. The wives contended for this mark of honour with the greatest eagerness, and each was supported by her friends.750 The captain of the Indians who with Eudemus attacked the army of Eumenes (p. 442) – the Greeks call him Ceteus – fell in the battle, which took place between Eumenes and Antigonus in Parætacene in the year 316 B.C. The two wives of Ceteus had accompanied him to the field and now contended for the honour of being burnt with him, since the law of the Indians, as Diodorus observes, allowed one wife only to be so burnt. The younger of the two maintained that the elder was pregnant; the elder declared that precedence in years carried precedence in honour. When the pregnancy of the elder had been established, the captains of the army decided that the younger was to ascend the pyre. "Then the elder took the diadem from her head, tore her hair and cried aloud, as though she had met with a great misfortune, while the younger, rejoicing in her victory, went to the funeral pile, crowned and adorned as if for marriage, accompanied by her women, who sang a hymn. When she approached the pyre, she divided her ornaments among her relations, servants, and friends, as memorials of herself: a number of rings set with precious stones of various colours, gold stars with brilliant stones from her head-dress, and a great quantity of necklaces, large and small. When she had bidden farewell to her relations and servants, her brother conducted her to the pyre; she bowed herself before the corpse of her husband, and when the flames blazed up she uttered no sound of lamentation. In such a heroic manner did she end her life, and moved all who saw her death to sympathy or admiration."751 Western accounts from the first century B.C. and later times represent the burning of widows as an established custom.752

We are acquainted with the hymns of the Rigveda in which the widow, when she has led her husband to the place of burial, is exhorted to "elevate herself to the world of life," for her marriage is at an end; we know the rule in the law that a widow should not marry again after the death of her husband; if she did so, she would fall into disrepute in this world, and in the next be excluded from the abode of her husband. She must live alone, avoid all sensual pleasure, starve herself, and do acts of piety, then after her death she would ascend to heaven. Neither the sutras of the Buddhists nor the Brahmanas mention the burning of widows. On the other hand, in the Mahabharata the two wives of Pandu, Kunti and Madri, contend after his death precisely as the two wives of Ceteus, which is to ascend the pyre. Kunti founds her claims on the fact that she had been the wife of Pandu before Madri, and his first queen; Madri asserts that Pandu had loved her more than Kunti, that she had been his favourite wife. The Brahmans decide that Madri is to go. In the Ramayana the burial of king Daçaratha is described in great detail, but none of his wives, neither Kauçalya, nor Kaikeyi, nor Sumitra is burnt with him. In other passages also the Epos speaks of widowed queens with all honour. If, then, the Epos of the Indians, even in the form in which we have it, wavers about the custom of the cremation of widows, and on the other hand the Greeks assert and prove the existence of the custom in the last thirty years of the fourth century B.C., we may assume that the sacrifice of widows came into practice in the course of the fourth century B.C. in connection with the increase in the requirements of self-annihilation, of which we have just read. It was, no doubt, the consequence derived from the unconditional dependence of the wife on the husband, required by the Indians, and the command to bear any fortune joyfully together with the husband, of that extreme wifely love and devotion, of which we have found touching examples in the Epos. From the idea of self-annihilation, which was the summit of all good actions, the Brahmans might arrive at the demand that women also ought in certain cases to practise such annihilation; that a widow must sacrifice herself on the pyre of her husband as an offering for his sins. This is never stated as a law, but at a subsequent time the demand of the Brahmans obtained general observance and recognition, supported as it was by the doctrine that only the widow, who burnt herself with the corpse of her husband, found an entrance into the better world. According to the rules, which have come down to us from a later time, the widow of the Dvija, when she had bathed and anointed herself, coloured herself with sandal wood, and put on her ornaments, more especially her jewels, with butter, kuça-grass, and sesame in her hands, offered a prayer to all the gods, with the reflection that her life was nothing, that her lord was her all. Then she walks round the pyre, gives her jewels to the Brahmans, comforts her relatives, and bids farewell to her friends. Afterwards she says: "That I may enjoy the happiness of heaven with my husband and purify my ancestors and his I ascend the pyre in expiation of the sins of my husband, even though he has murdered a Brahman, torn asunder the bonds of gratitude, or slain a friend. On you I call, ye eight protectors of the world (p. 160), as witnesses of this action, ye sun and moon, air, fire, earth, æther, and water. Be witnesses, my own soul and conscience, and thou, Yama, Day and Night, and Ushas, be ye witnesses, be witnesses! I follow the corpse of my husband to the burning pyre." Then the widow ascends the pile of wood, which must be kindled by her son or her nearest relation, embraces the corpse of her husband, with the words, I pray, adoration, and commits herself to the flames, crying Satya, Satya, Satya.753