Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 2

The infant Kṛishṇa is commonly adored in the form known as Makhan Chor or the Butter Thief.389 This represents him as a crawling child holding out one hand full of curds or butter which he has stolen. We speak of idolizing a child, and when Hindu women worship this image they are unconsciously generalizing the process and worshipping childhood, its wayward pranks as well as its loveable simplicity, and though it is hard for a man to think of the freaks of the butter thief as a manifestation of divinity, yet clearly there is an analogy between these childish escapades and the caprices of mature deities, which are respectfully described as mysteries. If one admits the worship of the Bambino, it is not unreasonable to include in it admiration of his rogueries, and the tender playfulness which is permitted to enter into this cult appeals profoundly to Indian women. Images of the Makhan Chor are sold by thousands in the streets of Muttra.

Even more popular is the image known as Kanhaya, which represents the god as a young man playing the flute as he stands in a careless attitude, which has something of Hellenic grace. Kṛishṇa in this form is the beloved of the Gopîs, or milk-maids, of the land of Braj, and the spouse of Râdhâ, though she had no monopoly of him. The stories of his frolics with these damsels and the rites instituted in memory thereof have brought his worship into merited discredit. Krishnaism offers the most extensive manifestation to be found in the world of what W. James calls the theopathic condition as illustrated by nuns like Marguérite Marie Alacoque, Saint Gertrude and the more distinguished Saint Theresa. "To be loved by God and loved by him to distraction (jusqu'à la folie), Margaret melted away with love at the thought of such a thing.... She said to God, 'Hold back, my God, these torrents which overwhelm me or else enlarge my capacity for their reception'."390 These are not the words of the Gîtâ-govinda or the Prem Sagar, as might be supposed, but of a Catholic Bishop describing the transports of Sister Marguérite Marie, and they illustrate the temper of Kṛishṇa's worshippers. But the verses of the Marathi poet, Tukaram, who lived about 1600 A.D. and sang the praises of Kṛishṇa, rise above this sentimentality though he uses the language of love. In a letter to Sivaji, who desired to see him, he wrote, "As a chaste wife longs only to see her lord, such am I to Viṭṭhala.391 All the world is to me Viṭṭhala and nothing else: thee also I behold in him." He also wrote elsewhere, "he that taketh the unprotected to his heart and doeth to a servant the same kindness as to his own children, is assuredly the image of God." More recently Râmakṛishṇa, whose sayings breathe a wide intelligence as well as a wide charity, has given this religion of love an expression which, if somewhat too sexual to be perfectly in accordance with western taste, is nearly related to emotional Christianity. "A true lover sees his god as his nearest and dearest relative" he writes, "just as the shepherd women of Vṛindâvana saw in Kṛishṇa not the Lord of the Universe but their own beloved.... The knowledge of God may be likened to a man, while the love of God is like a woman. Knowledge has entry only up to the outer rooms of God, and no one can enter into the inner mysteries of God save a lover.... Knowledge and love of God are ultimately one and the same. There is no difference between pure knowledge and pure love."392

These extracts show how Kṛishṇa as the object of the soul's desire assumes the place of the Supreme Being or God. But this surprising transformation393 is not specially connected with the pastoral and erotic Kṛishṇa: the best known and most thorough-going exposition of his divinity is found in the Bhagavad-gîtâ, which represents him as being in his human aspect, a warrior and the charioteer of Arjuna. Probably some seventy-five millions to-day worship Kṛishṇa, especially under the name of Hari, as God in the pantheistic sense and naturally the more his identity with the supreme spirit is emphasized, the dimmer grow the legendary features which mark the hero of Muttra and Dvârakâ, and the human element in him is reduced to this very important point that the tie uniting him to his worshippers is one of sentiment and affection.

In the following chapters I shall treat of this worship when describing the various sects which practise it. A question of some importance for the history of Kṛishṇa's deification is the meaning of the name Vâsudeva. One explanation makes it a patronymic, son of Vasudeva, and supposes that when this prince Vâsudeva was deified his name, like Râma, was transferred to the deity. The other regards Vâsudeva as a name for the deity used by the Sâttvata clan and supposes that when Kṛishṇa was deified this already well-known divine name was bestowed on him. There is much to be said for this latter theory. As we have seen the Jains give the title Vâsudeva to a series of supermen, and a remarkable legend states394 that a king called Paundraka who pretended to be a deity used the title Vâsudeva and ordered Kṛishṇa to cease using it, for which impertinence he was slain. This clearly implies that the title was something which could be detached from Kṛishṇa and not a mere patronymic. Indian writings countenance both etymologies of the word. As the name of the deity they derive it from vas to dwell, he in whom all things abide and who abides in all.395

5

Śiva and Vishṇu are not in their nature different from other Indian ideas, high or low. They are the offspring of philosophic and poetic minds playing with a luxuriant popular mythology. But even in the epics they have already become fixed points in a flux of changing fancies and serve as receptacles in which the most diverse notions are collected and stored. Nearly all philosophy and superstition finds its place in Hinduism by being connected with one or both of them. The two worships are not characteristic of different periods: they coexist when they first become known to us as they do at the present day and in essential doctrines they are much alike. We have no name for this curious double theism in which each party describes its own deity as the supreme god or All-god, yet without denying the god of the other. Something similar might be produced in Christianity if different Churches were avowedly to worship different persons of the Trinity.

Śiva and Vishṇu are sometimes contrasted and occasionally their worshippers quarrel.396 But the general inclination is rather to make the two figures approximate by bestowing the same attributes on both. A deity must be able to satisfy emotional devotion: hence the Tamil Śivaite says of Śiva the destroyer, "one should worship in supreme love him who does kindness to the soul." But then the feature in the world which most impresses the Hindu is the constant change and destruction, and this must find a place in the All-god. Hence the sportive kindly Kṛishṇa comes to be declared the destroyer of the worlds.397 It is as if in some vast Dravidian temple one wandered through two corridors differently ornamented and assigned to the priests of different rites but both leading to the same image. Hence it is not surprising to find that there is actually a deity—if indeed the term is suitable, but European vocabularies hardly provide one which meets the case—called Harihara (or Śankara-Nârâyaṇa), that is Śiva and Vishṇu combined. The Harivaṃsa contains a hymn addressed to him: fairly ancient sculptures attest the prevalence of his worship in the Deccan, especially at Badâmi, he was once the chief deity of Camboja and he is still popular in south India. Here besides being worshipped under his own name he has undergone a singular transformation and has probably been amalgamated with some aboriginal deity. Under the designation of Ayenâr (said to be a corruption of Harihara) he is extensively worshipped as a village god and reputed to be the son of Śiva and Vishṇu, the latter having kindly assumed the form of a woman to effect his birth.

Another form of this inclination to combine and unite the various manifestations of the Divine is the tendency to worship groups of gods, a practice as old as the Vedas. Thus many temples are dedicated to a group of five, namely, Śiva, Vishṇu, Durgâ, Gaṇeśa and the Sun and it is stated that every Hindu worships these five deities in his daily prayers.398 The Trimûrti, or figure of Brahmâ, Śiva and Vishṇu, illustrates the worship of groups. Its importance has sometimes been over-estimated by Europeans from an idea that it corresponded to the Christian Trinity, but in reality this triad is late and has little significance. No stress is laid on the idea of three in one and the number of persons can be increased. The Brahma-vaivarta Purâṇa for instance adds Kṛishṇa to Brahmâ, Śiva and Vishṇu. The union of three personalities is merely a way of summing up the chief attributes of the All-God. Thus the Vishṇu Purâṇa399 extols Vishṇu as being "Hiraṇyagarbha, Hari and Śaṅkara (i.e. Brahmâ, Vishṇu and Śiva), the creator, preserver and destroyer," but in another passage as him who is "Brahma, Îśvara and spirit (Puṁs), who with the three Guṇas (qualities of matter) is the cause of creation, preservation and destruction...." The origin of the triad, so far as it has any doctrinal or philosophical meaning, is probably to be sought in the personification of the three Guṇas.400

CHAPTER XXVI

FEATURES OF HINDUISM: RITUAL, CASTE, SECT, FAITH

1

In the last chapter I traced the growth of the great gods Śiva and Vishṇu. The prominence of these figures is one of the marks which distinguish the later phase of Indian religion from the earlier. But it is also distinguished by various practices, institutions and beliefs, which are more or less connected with the new deities. Such are a new ritual, the elaboration of the caste system, the growth of sects, and the tendency to make devotion to a particular deity the essence of religion. In the present chapter I shall say something of these phenomena.

Hinduism has often and justly been compared to a jungle. As in the jungle every particle of soil seems to put forth its spirit in vegetable life and plants grow on plants, creepers and parasites on their more stalwart brethren, so in India art, commerce, warfare and crime, every human interest and aspiration seek for a manifestation in religion, and since men and women of all classes and occupations, all stages of education and civilization, have contributed to Hinduism, much of it seems low, foolish and even immoral. The jungle is not a park or garden. Whatever can grow in it, does grow. The Brahmans are not gardeners but forest officers. To attempt a history or description of Indian creeds seems an enterprise as vast, hopeless and pathless as a general account of European politics. As for many centuries the life of Europe has expressed itself in politics, so for even longer ages the life of India, which has more inhabitants than western Europe,401 has found expression in religion, speculation and philosophy, and has left of all this thought a voluminous record, mighty in bulk if wanting in dates and events. And why should it chronicle them? The truly religious mind does not care for the history of religion, just as among us the scientific mind does not dwell on the history of science.

Yet in spite of their exuberance Hinduism and the jungle have considerable uniformity. Here and there in a tropical forest some well-grown tree or brilliant flower attracts attention, but the general impression left on the traveller by the vegetation as he passes through it mile after mile is infinite repetition as well as infinite luxuriance. And so in Hinduism. A monograph on one god or one teacher is an interesting study. But if we continue the experiment, different gods and different teachers are found to be much the same. We can write about Vishnuism and Śivaism as if they were different religions and this, though incomplete, is not incorrect. But in their higher phases both show much the same excellences and when degraded both lead to much the same abuses, except that the worship of Vishṇu does not allow animal sacrifices. This is true even of externals. In the temples of Madura, Poona and Benares, the deities, the rites, the doctrines, the race of the worshippers and the architecture are all different, yet the impression of uniformity is strong. In spite of divergences the religion is the same in all three places: it smacks of the soil and nothing like it can be found outside India.

Hinduism is an unusual combination of animism and pantheism, which are commonly regarded as the extremes of savage and of philosophic belief. In India both may be found separately but frequently they are combined in startling juxtaposition. The same person who worships Vishṇu as identical with the universe also worships him in the form of a pebble or plant.402 The average Hindu, who cannot live permanently in the altitudes of pantheistic thought, regards his gods as great natural forces, akin to the mighty rivers which he also worships, irresistible and often beneficent but also capricious and destructive. Whereas Judaism, Christianity and Islam all identify the moral law with the will and conduct of the deity, in Hinduism this is not completely admitted in practice, though a library might be filled with the beautiful things that have been said about man and God. The outward forms of Indian religion are pagan after the fashion of the ancient world, a fashion which has in most lands passed away. But whereas in the fourth century A.D. European paganism, despite the efforts of anti-Christian eclectics, proved inelastic and incapable of satisfying new religious cravings, this did not happen in India. The bottles of Hinduism have always proved capable of holding all the wine poured into them. When a new sentiment takes possession of men's souls, such as love, repentance, or the sense of sin, some deity of many shapes and sympathies straightway adapts himself to the needs of his worshippers. And yet in so doing the deity, though he enlarges himself, does not change, and the result is that we often meet with strange anachronisms, as if Jephthah should listen appreciatively to the Sermon on the Mount and then sacrifice his daughter to Christ. Many Hindu temples are served by dancing girls who are admittedly prostitutes,403 an institution which takes us back to the cultus of Corinth and Babylon and is without parallel in any nation on approximately the same level of civilization. Only British law prevents widows from being burned with their dead husbands, though even in the Vedic age the custom had been discontinued as barbarous.404 But for the same legislation, human sacrifice would probably be common. What the gods do and what their worshippers do in their service cannot according to Hindu opinion be judged by ordinary laws of right and wrong. The god is supra-moral: the worshipper when he enters the temple leaves conventionality outside.

Yet it is unfair to represent Hinduism as characterized by licence and cruelty. Such tendencies are counterbalanced by the strength and prevalence of ideas based on renunciation and self-effacement. All desire, all attachment to the world is an evil; all self-assertion is wrong. Hinduism is constantly in extremes: sometimes it exults in the dances of Kṛishṇa or the destructive fury of Kâlî: more often it struggles for release from the transitory and for union with the permanent and real by self-denial or rather self-negation, which aims at the total suppression of both pleasure and pain. This is on the whole its dominant note.

In the records accessible to us the transition from Brahmanism—that is, the religion of the Vedas and Brâhmaṇas—to Hinduism does not appear as direct but as masked by Buddhism. We see Buddhism grow at the expense of Brahmanism. We are then conscious that it becomes profoundly modified under the influence of new ideas. We see it decay and the religion of the Brahmans emerge victorious. But that religion is not what it was when Buddhism first arose, and is henceforth generally known as Hinduism. The materials for studying the period in which the change occurred—say 400 B.C. to 400 A.D.—are not scanty, but they do not facilitate chronological investigation. Art and architecture are mainly Buddhist until the Gupta period (c. 320 A.D.) and literature, though plentiful, is undated. The Mahâbhârata and Râmâyaṇa must have been edited in the course of these 800 years, but they consist of different strata and it is not easy to separate and arrange them without assuming what we want to prove. From 400 B.C. (if not from an earlier date) onwards there grew up a great volume of epic poetry, founded on popular ballads, telling the stories of Râma and the Pâṇḍavas.405 It was distinct from the canonical literatures of both Brahmans and Buddhists, but though it was not in its essential character religious, yet so general in India is the interest in religion that whole theological treatises were incorporated in these stories without loss, in Indian opinion, to the interest of the narrative. If at the present day a congregation is seen in a Hindu temple listening to a recitation, the text which is being chanted will often prove to be part of the Mahâbhârata. Such a ceremony is not due to forgetfulness of the Veda but is a repetition of what happened long before our era when rhapsodists strung together popular narratives and popular theology. Such theology cannot be rigidly separated from Brahmanism and Buddhism. It grew up under their influence and accepted their simpler ideas. But it brought with it popular beliefs which did not strictly speaking belong to either system. By attacking the main Brahmanic doctrines the Buddhists gave the popular religion its opportunity. For instance, they condemned animal sacrifices and derided the idea that trained priests and complicated rites are necessary. This did not destroy the influence of the Brahmans but it disposed them to admit that the Vedic sacrifices are not the only means of salvation and to authorize other rites and beliefs. It was about this time, too, that a series of invasions began to pour into India from the north-west. It may be hard to distinguish between the foreign beliefs which they introduced and the Indian beliefs which they accepted and modified. But it is clear that their general effect was to upset traditional ideas associated with a ritual and learning which required lifelong study.

2

It has been well said406 that Buddhism did not waste away in India until rival sects had appropriated from it everything they could make use of. Perhaps Hinduism had an even stronger doctrinal influence on Buddhism. The deification of the Buddha, the invention of Bodhisattvas who are equivalent to gods and the extraordinary alliance between late Buddhism and Śivaism, are all instances of the general Indian view overcoming the special Buddhist view. But Buddhism is closely connected with the theory of incarnations and the development of the Advaita philosophy, and in the externals of religion, in rites, ceremonies and institutions, its influence was great and lasting. We may take first the doctrine of Ahiṃsâ, non-injury, or in other words the sanctity of animal life. This beautiful doctrine, the glory of India, if not invented by the Buddha at least arose in schools which were not Brahmanic and were related to the Jain and Buddhist movements. It formed no part of the Vedic religion in which sacrifice often meant butchery. But in Hinduism, it meets with extensive though not universal acceptance. With the Vaishṇavas it is an article of faith nor do the worshippers of Śiva usually propitiate him with animal sacrifices, though these are offered by the Śâktas and also by the small class of Brahmans who still preserve the Vedic ritual.407 Hardly any Hindus habitually eat meat and most abhor it, especially beef. Yet beef-eating seems to have been permitted in Vedic times and even when parts of the Mahâbhârata were composed.

Apart from animal sacrifices Buddhism was the main agent in effecting a mighty revolution in worship and ritual. One is tempted to regard the change as total and complete, but such wide assertions are rarely true in India: customs and institutions are not swept away by reformers but are cut down like the grass and like the grass grow up again. They sometimes die out but they are rarely destroyed. The Vedic sacrifices are still occasionally offered,408 but for many centuries have been almost entirely superseded by another form of worship associated with temples and the veneration of images. This must have become the dominant form of Hindu cultus in the first few centuries of our era and probably earlier. It is one of the ironies of fate that the Buddha and his followers should be responsible for the growth of image worship, but it seems to be true. He laughed at sacrifices and left to his disciples only two forms of religious exercise, sermons and meditation. For Indian monks, this was perhaps sufficient, but the laity craved for some outward form of worship. This was soon found in the respect shown to the memory of the Buddha and the relics of his body, although Hinduism never took kindly to relic worship. We hear too of Cetiyas. In the Piṭakas this word means a popular shrine unconnected with either Buddhist or Brahmanic ceremonial, sometimes perhaps merely a sacred tree or stone, probably honoured by such simple rites as decorating it with paint or flowers. A little later, in Buddhist times, the Cetiya became a cenotaph or reliquary, generally located near a monastery and surrounded by a passage for reverential circumambulation.

Allusions in the Piṭakas also indicate that then as now there were fairs. The early Buddhists thought that though such gatherings were not edifying they might be made so. They erected sacred buildings near a monastery, and held festivals so that people might collect together, visit a holy place, and hear sermons. In the earliest known sanctuaries, the funeral monument (for we can scarcely doubt that this is the origin of the stûpa)409 has already assumed the conventional form known as Dagoba, consisting of a dome and chest of relics, with a spire at the top, the whole surrounded by railings or a colonnade, but though the carving is lavish, no figure of the Buddha himself is to be seen. He is represented by a symbol such as a footprint, wheel, or tree. But in the later school of sculpture known as Gandhara or Græco-Buddhist he is frequently shown in a full length portrait. This difference is remarkable. It is easy to say that in the older school the Buddha was not depicted out of reverence, but less easy to see why such delineation should have shocked an Indian. But at any rate there is no difficulty in understanding that Greeks or artists influenced by Greeks would think it obvious and proper to make an effigy of their principal hero.

In these shrines we have if not the origin of the Hindu temple, at any rate a parallel development more nearly allied to it than anything in the Vedic religion.410 For the Buddhist shrine was a monument built over a receptacle containing relics and the essential feature of Hindu temples is a cell containing an image or emblem and generally surmounted by a tower. The surrounding courts and corridors may assume gigantic proportions, but the central shrine is never large. Images had no place in the Vedic sacrifices and those now worshipped in temples are generally small and rude, and sometimes (as at Bhuvaneshwar and Srirangam) the deity is represented by a block or carved stone which cannot be moved, and may have been honoured as a sacred rock long before the name of Vishṇu or Śiva was known in those regions.411 The conspicuous statues often found outside the shrine are not generally worshipped and are merely ornaments. Buddhism did not create the type of ritual now used in Hindu temples, yet it contributed towards it, for it attacked the old Brahmanic sacrifices, it countenanced the idea that particular places and objects are holy, and it encouraged the use of images. It is strange that these widespread ideas should find no place in the Vedic religion, but even now-a-days whenever the old Vedic sacrifices are celebrated they are uncontaminated by the temple ceremonial. More than this, the priests or Pujâris who officiate in temples are not always Brahmans and they rarely enjoy much consideration.412 This curious and marked feature may be connected with the inveterate Indian feeling that, though it is well to multiply rites and rules for neophytes, no great respect is due to men occupied with mere ceremonial. But it also testifies to a dim consciousness that modern temples and their ceremonies have little to do with the thoughts and mode of life which made the Brahmans a force in India. In many ways the Brahmans dissociate themselves from popular religion. Those of good family will not perform religious rites for Śûdras and treat the Brahmans who do so as inferiors.413