Reading section 4

The word _brahma_ is a neuter noun, and in the Rig-veda it means something that can only be fully translated by a long circumlocution. It may be rendered as "the power of ritual devotion"; that is to say, it denotes the mystic or magic force which is put forth by the poet-priest of the Rig-veda when he performs the rites of sacrifice with appropriate chanting of hymns--in short, ritual magic. This mystic force the Rigvedic poets have represented in personal form as the god Brihaspati, in much the same way as they embodied the spirit of the sacrifice in Vishnu. Their successors, the orthodox ritualists of the Brahmanas, have not made much use of this term; but sometimes they speak of Brahma as an abstract first principle, the highest and ultimate source of all being, even of Prajapati (Samav. B. I. 1, Gop. B. I. i. 4); and when they speak of Brahma they think of him not as a power connected with religious ceremony but as a supremely transcendent and absolutely unqualified and impersonal First Existence. But the school of the Aupanishadas has gone further. Seeking through works mystic knowledge as the highest reality, they see in Brahma the perfect knowledge. To them the absolute First Existence is also transcendently full and unqualified Thought. As knowledge is power, the perfect Power is perfect Knowledge.

Brahma then is absolute knowledge; and all that exists is really Brahma, one and indivisible in essence, but presenting itself illusively to the finite consciousness as a world of plurality, of most manifold subjects and objects of thought. The highest wisdom, the greatest of all secrets, is to know this truth, to realise with full consciousness that there exists only the One, Brahma, the infinite Idea; and the sage of the Upanishads is he who has attained this knowledge, understanding that he himself, as individual subject of thought, is really identical with the universal Brahma. He has realised that he is one with the Infinite Thought, he has raised himself to the mystic heights of transcendental Being and Knowledge, immeasurably far above nature and the gods. He knows all things at their fountain-head, and life can nevermore bring harm to him; in his knowledge he has salvation, and death will lead him to complete union with Brahma.

The Aupanishadas have thus advanced from the pantheism of the orthodox ritualists to a transcendental idealism. The process has been gradual. It was only by degrees that they reached the idea of salvation in knowledge, the knowledge that is union with Brahma; and it was likewise only through slow stages that they were able to conceive of Brahma in itself. Many passages in the Upanishads are full of struggles to represent Brahma by symbols or forms perceptible to the sense, such as ether, breath, the sun, etc. Priests endeavoured to advance through ritual works to the ideas which these works are supposed to symbolise: the ritual is the training-ground for the higher knowledge, the leading-strings for infant philosophy. Gradually men become capable of thinking without the help of these symbols: philosophy grows to manhood, and looks with a certain contempt upon those supports of its infancy.

The nature of Brahma as conceived in the Upanishads is a subject on which endless controversies have raged, and we need not add to them. Besides, the Upanishads themselves are not strictly consistent on this point, or on others, for that matter; for they are not a single homogeneous system of philosophy, but a number of speculations, from often varying standpoints, and they are frequently inconsistent. But there are some ideas which are more or less present in all of them. They regard Brahma as absolute and infinite Thought and Being at once, and as such it is one with the consciousness, soul or self, of the individual when the latter rids himself of the illusion of a manifold universe and realises his unity with Brahma. Moreover, Brahma is bliss--the joy of wholly perfect and self-satisfied thought and being. Since Brahma as universal Soul is really identical with each individual soul or _atma_, and vice versa, it follows that each individual soul contains within itself, _qua_ Brahma, the whole of existence, nature, gods, mankind, and all other beings; it creates them all, and all depend upon it. Our Aupanishadas are thoroughgoing idealists.

Another new idea also appears for the first time in the early Upanishads, and one that henceforth will wield enormous influence in all Indian thought. This is the theory of _karma_ and _samsara_, rebirth of the soul in accordance with the nature of its previous works. Before the Upanishads we find no evidence of this doctrine: the nearest approach to it is in some passages of the Brahmanas which speak of sinful men dying again in the next world as a punishment for their guilt. But in the Upanishads the doctrine appears full-fledged, and it is fraught with consequences of immense importance. Samsara means literally a "wandering to and fro," that is, the cycle of births through which each soul must everlastingly pass from infinite time, and Karma means the "acts" of each soul. Each work or act performed by a living being is of a certain degree of righteousness or unrighteousness, and it is requited by a future experience of corresponding pleasure or pain. So every birth and ultimately every experience of a soul is determined by the righteousness of its previous acts; and there is no release for the soul from this endless chain of causes and effects unless it can find some supernatural way of deliverance. The Aupanishadas point to what they believe to be the only way: it is the Brahma-knowledge of the enlightened sage, which releases his soul from the chain of natural causation and raises him to everlasting union with Brahma.

The teaching of the Upanishads has had two very different practical results. On the one hand, it has moved many earnest thinkers to cast off the ties of the world and to wander about as homeless beggars, living on alms and meditating and discoursing upon the teachings of the Upanishads, while they await the coming of death to release their souls from the prison of the flesh and bring it to complete and eternal union with Brahma. These wandering ascetics--_sannyasis_, _bhikshus_, or _parivrajakas_ they are called--form a class by themselves, which is destined to have an immense influence in moulding the future thought of India. The teaching of Brahmanism is beginning to recognise them, too. It has already divided the life of the orthodox man into three stages, or _asramas_, studentship, the condition of the married householder, and thirdly the life of the hermit, or _vanaprastha_, to which the householder should retire after he has left a son to maintain his household; and now it is beginning to add to these as fourth stage the life of the homeless ascetic awaiting death and release. But this arrangement is for the most part a fiction, devised in order to keep the beggar-philosophers within the scheme of Brahmanic life; in reality they themselves recognise no such law.

The other current among the Aupanishadas is flowing in a very different direction. We have seen how the worship of Rudra-Siva has grown since the old Rigvedic days, and how some souls have been able to see amidst the terrors of the god a power of love and wisdom that satisfies their deepest hopes and longings, as none of the orthodox rituals can do. A new feeling, the spirit of religious devotion, _bhakti_ as it is called, is arising among them. To them--and they number many Brahmans as well as men of other orders--Siva has thus become the highest object of worship, Isvara or "the Lord"; and having thus enthroned him as supreme in their hearts, they are endeavouring to find for him a corresponding place in their intellects. To this end they claim that Siva as Isvara is the highest of all forms of existence; and this doctrine is growing and finding much favour. Among the Aupanishadas there are many who reconcile it with the teaching of the Upanishads by identifying Siva with Brahma. Thus a new light begins to flicker here and there in the Upanishads as the conception of Siva, a personal god wielding free grace, colours the pale whiteness of the impersonal Brahma; and at last in the Svetasvatara, which though rather late in date is not the least important of the Upanishads, this theistic movement boldly proclaims itself: the supreme Brahma, identified with Siva, is definitely contrasted with the individual soul as divine to human, giver of grace to receiver of grace. Later Upanishads will take up this strain, in honour of Siva and other gods, and finally they will end as mere tracts of this or that theistic church.

Yet another current is now beginning to stir men's minds, and it is one that is also destined to a great future. It starts from Krishna.

The teaching of the Upanishads, that all being is the One Brahma and that Brahma is the same as the individual soul, has busied many men, not only Brahmans but also Kshatriyas, noblemen of the warrior order. Some even say that it arose among the Kshatriyas; and at any rate it is likely that they, being less obsessed with the forms of ritual than the Brahmans and therefore able to think more directly and clearly, have helped the Brahmans in their discussions to clear their minds of ritual symbolism, and to realise more definitely the philosophic ideas which hitherto they had seen only dimly typified in their ceremonies.

Krishna was one of these Kshatriyas. He belonged to the Satvata or Vrishni tribe, living in or near the ancient city of Mathura. Sometimes in early writings he is styled Krishna Devakiputra, Krishna Devaki's son, because his mother's name was Devaki; sometimes again he is called Krishna Vasudeva, or simply Vasudeva, which is a patronymic said to be derived from the name of his father Vasudeva. In later times we shall find a whole cycle of legend gathering round him, in which doubtless there is a kernel of fact. Omitting the miraculous elements in these tales, we may say that the outline of the Krishna-legend is as follows: Krishna's father Vasudeva and his mother Devaki were grievously wronged by Devaki's cousin Kamsa, who usurped the royal power in Mathura and endeavoured to slay Krishna in his infancy; but the child escaped, and on growing to manhood killed Kamsa. But Kamsa had made alliance with Jarasandha king of Magadha, who now threatened Krishna; so Krishna prudently retired from Mathura and led a colony of his tribesmen to Dvaraka, on the western coast in Kathiawar, where he founded a new State. There seems to be no valid reason for doubting these statements. Sober history does not reject a tale because it is embroidered with myth and fiction.

Now this man Krishna in the midst of his stirring life of war and government found time and taste also for the things that are of the spirit. He talked with men learned in the Upanishads about Brahma and the soul and the worship of God; and apparently he set up a little Established Church of his own, in which was combined something of the idealism of the Upanishads with the worship of a supreme God of grace and perhaps too a kind of religious discipline, about which we shall say more later on. It must be confessed that we know sadly little about his actual doctrine from first hand. All that we hear about it is a short chapter in the Chhandogya Upanishad (iii. 17), where the Brahman Ghora Angirasa gives a sermon to Krishna, in which he compares the phases of human life to stages in the _diksha_ or ceremony of consecration, and the moral virtues that should accompany them to the _dakshina_ or honorarium paid to the officiating priests, and he concludes by exhorting his hearer to realise that the Brahma is imperishable, unfailing, and spiritual, and quoting two verses from the Rig-veda speaking of the Sun as typifying the supreme bliss to which the enlightened soul arises. This does not tell us very much, and moreover we should remember that here our author, being an Aupanishada, is more interested in what Ghora preached to Krishna than in what Krishna accepted from Ghora's teaching. But we shall find centuries later in the Bhagavad-gita, the greatest textbook of the religion of Krishna, some distant echoes of this paragraph of the Chhandogya.

The beginnings of the religion of Krishna are thus very uncertain. But as we travel down the ages we find it growing and spreading. We see Krishna himself regarded as a half-divine hero and teacher, and worshipped under the name of _Bhagavan_, "the Lord," in association with other half-divine heroes. We see him becoming identified with old gods, and finally rising to the rank of the Supreme Deity whose worship he had himself taught in his lifetime, the Brahma of the philosophers and the Most High God of the theists. As has happened many a time, the teacher has become the God of his Church.

CHAPTER III

THE EPICS, AND LATER

I. VISHNU-KRISHNA

We now enter upon an age in which the old gods, Indra and Brahma, retire to the background, while Vishnu and Siva stand in the forefront of the stage.

The Hindus are of the same opinion as the Latin poet: _ferrea nunc aetas agitur_. We are now living in an Iron Age, according to them; and it began in the year 3102 B.C., shortly after the great war described in the Mahabharata. The date 3102, I need hardly remark, is of no historical value, being based merely upon the theories of comparatively late astronomers; but the statement as a whole is important. The Great War marks an epoch. It came at the end of what may be called the pre-historic period, and was followed by a new age. To be strictly correct, we must say that the age which followed the Great War was not new in the sense that it introduced any startling novelties that had been unknown previously; but it was new in the sense that after the Great War India speedily became the India that we know from historical records. A certain fusion of different races, cultures, and ideals had to take place in order that the peculiar civilisation of India might unfold itself; and this fusion was accomplished about the time of the Great War, and partly no doubt by means of the Great War, some ten centuries before the Christian era.

The story of the Great War is told with a wild profusion of mythical and legendary colouring in the Mahabharata, an epic the name of which means literally "The Great Tale of the Bharata Clan." It relates how the blind old King Dhritarashtra of Hastinapura had a hundred sons, known as the Kuru or Kaurava princes, the eldest of whom was Duryodhana, and Dhritarashtra's brother Pandu had five sons, the Pandava brethren; how the Pandavas were ousted by the Kauravas from the kingdom, the eldest Pandava prince Yudhishthira having been induced to stake the fortunes of himself and his brethren on a game of dice, in which he was defeated; how the five Pandavas, with their common wife Draupadi (observe this curious and ugly feature of polyandry, which is quite opposed to standard Hindu morals, but is by no means unparalleled in early Indian literature[20]) retired into exile for thirteen years, and then came back with a great army of allies, and after fierce and bloody battles with the Kauravas and their supporters in the plain of Kurukshetra at last gained the victory, slew the Kauravas, and established Yudhishthira as king in Hastinapura. Among the Pandavas the leading part is played by the eldest, Yudhishthira, and the third, Arjuna; of the others, Bhima, the second, is a Hercules notable only for his strength, courage, and fidelity, while the twins Nakula and Sahadeva are colourless figures. Krishna plays an important part in the story; for on the return of the Pandavas to fight the Kauravas he accompanies Arjuna as his charioteer, and on the eve of the first battle delivers to him a discourse on his religion, the Bhagavad-gita, or Lord's Song, which has become one of the most famous and powerful of all the sacred books of India.

[Footnote 20: See H. Raychaudhuri, _Materials for the Study of the Early History of the Vaishnava Sect, p. 27_.]

Now if the Mahabharata were as homogeneous even as the Iliad and Odyssey, which give us a fairly consistent and truthful picture of a single age, we should be in a very happy position. Unfortunately this is not the case. Our epic began as a Bharata, or Tale of the Bharata Clan, probably of very moderate bulk, not later than 600 B.C., and perhaps considerably earlier; and from that time onward it went on growing bigger and bigger for over a thousand years, as editors stuffed in new episodes and still longer discourses on nearly all the religious and philosophic doctrines admitted within the four walls of Hinduism, until it grew to its present immense bulk, which it claims to amount to 100,000 verses. Thus it pictures the thought not of one century but of more than ten, and we cannot feel sure of the date of any particular statement in it. Nevertheless we can distinguish in a general way between the old skeleton of the story, in which the theme is treated in simple epic fashion, society is far freer than in later days and no one objects to eating beef, from the additional matter, in which the tale is recast in a far more grandiose vein and is padded out with enormous quantities of moral, religious, and philosophic sermons. The religion too is different in the different parts. In the older portions the gods who are most popular are Indra, Agni, and Brahma--not the neuter abstract Brahma, but the masculine Brahma, the Demiurge, who corresponds more or less to Prajapati of the Brahmanas and is represented in classical art as a four-headed old man reciting the Vedas--and Krishna seems to figure only as a hero or at best as a demigod; but the later parts with fine impartiality claim the supremacy of heaven variously for Siva, Brahma, and Vishnu; and Vishnu, as we have seen, is sometimes identified with Krishna, notably in the chapters known as the Bhagavad-gita.

The gods have changed somewhat since earlier days. Indra has settled down in the constitutional monarchy of Paradise assigned to him by the Brahmanas; he now figures as the prototype of earthly kings, leading the armies of the gods to war against the demons when occasion requires, and passing the leisure of peace in the enjoyment of celestial dissipation. His morals have not improved: he is a debonair debauchee. Brahma the Creator, a more popular version of Prajapati, is still too impersonal to have much hold on the popular imagination; the same is the case with Agni the Fire-god. Plainly there was a vacancy for a supreme deity whose character was powerful enough to move men's souls, either through awe or love; and for this vacancy there were two strong candidates, Vishnu and Siva, who in course of time succeeded to the post and divided the supremacy between them.

Vishnu has altered immensely since last we met him. First, after an extraordinary change in his own character, he has been identified with Narayana, and then both of them have been equated with Krishna. The development is so portentous that it calls for a little study.

We have seen that in the Vedas Vishnu appears to be, and in the Brahmanas certainly is, the embodied Spirit of the Sacrifice, and that ritual mysticism has invented for him a supreme home in the highest heaven. But in the Epics he has developed into a radiant and gracious figure of ideal divinity, an almighty saviour with a long record of holy works for the salvation of mankind, a god who delights in moral goodness as well as in ritual propriety, and who from time to time incarnates himself in human or animal form so as to maintain the order of righteousness. Symbolism has further endowed him with a consort, the goddess Sri or Lakshmi, typifying fortune; sometimes also he is represented with another wife, the Earth-goddess. The divine hawk or kite Garuda, who seems to have been originally the same as the eagle who in the Rigvedic legend carried off the soma for Indra, has been pressed into his service; he now rides on Garuda, and bears his figure upon his banner. I have already suggested a possible explanation of this evolution (above, p. 41): owing to his close association with Indra, the most truly popular of Rigvedic deities, the laic imagination transfused some of the live blood of Indra into the veins of the priestly abstraction Vishnu. To the plain man Indra was very real; and as he frequently heard tales of Indra being aided in his exploits by Vishnu, he came to regard Vishnu as a very present helper in trouble. The friend of Indra became the friend of mankind. The post of Indra had already been fixed for him by the theologians; but the functions of Vishnu, outside the rituals, were still somewhat vaguely defined, and were capable of considerable expansion. Here was a great opportunity for those souls who were seeking for a supreme god of grace, and were not satisfied to find him in Siva; and they made full use of it, and wholly transformed the personality of Vishnu.

One of the stages in this transformation was the absorption of Narayana in Vishnu. Narayana was originally a god of a different kind. The earliest reference to him is in a Brahmana which calls him Purusha Narayana, which means that it regards him as being the same as the Universal Spirit which creates from itself the cosmos; it relates that Purusha Narayana pervaded the whole of nature (SB. XII. iii. 4, 1), and that he made himself omnipresent and supreme over all beings by performing a _pancha-ratra sattra_, or series of sacrifices lasting over five days (ib. XIII. vi. 1, 1). Somewhat later we find prayers addressed to Narayana, Vasudeva, and Vishnu as three phases of the same god (Taitt. Aran. X. i. 6). But was Narayana in origin merely a variety of the Vedic Purusha or our old acquaintance Prajapati? His name must give us pause. The most simple explanation of it is that it is a family name: as Karshnayana means a member of the Krishna-family and Ranayana a man belonging to the family of Rana, so Narayana would naturally denote a person of the family of Nara. But Nara itself signifies a _man_: is the etymology therefore reduced to absurdity? Not at all: Nara is also used as a proper name, as we shall see.[21] Probably the name really means what naturally it would seem to mean, "a man of the Nara family"; that Narayana was originally a divine or deified saint, a _rishi_, as the Hindus would call him; and that somehow he became identified with Vishnu and the Universal Spirit.

[Footnote 21: It must be admitted that ancient writers give different etymologies of the name: thus, a poet in the Mahabharata (III. clxxxix. 3) derives it from _narah_, "waters," and _ayanam_, "going," understanding it to mean "one who has the waters for his resting-place"; Manu (I. 10, with Medhatithi's commentary), accepting the same etymology, interprets it as "the dwelling-place of all the Naras"; and in the Mahabharata XII. cccxli. 39, it is also explained as "the dwelling-place of mankind." But these interpretations are plainly artificial concoctions.]

This theory really is not by any means as wild as at first sight it may seem to be. Divine saints are sometimes mentioned in the Rig-veda and Brahmanas as being the creators of the universe[22]; and they appear again and again in legend as equals of the gods, attaining divine powers by their mystic insight into the sacrificial lore. But there is more direct evidence than this.

[Footnote 22: RV. X. cxxix. 5, SB. VI. i. 1, 1-5. Cf. Charpentier, _Suparnasage_, p. 387.]

In the Mahabharata there are incorporated two documents of first-rate importance for the doctrines of the churches that worshipped Vishnu. One of these is the Bhagavad-gita, or Lord's Song (VI. xxv.-xlii.); the other is the Narayaniya, or Account of Narayana (XII. cccxxxvi.-cccliii.). Their teachings are not the same in details, though on most main points they agree; for they belong to different sections of the one religious body. Leaving aside the Bhagavad-gita for the moment, we note that the Narayaniya relates a story that there were born four sons of Dharma, or Righteousness, viz. Nara, Narayana, Hari or Vishnu, and Krishna. In other places (I. ccxxx. 18, III. xii. 45, xlvii. 10, V. xlviii. 15, etc.) we are plainly told that Nara is a previous incarnation of Arjuna the Pandava prince, and Narayana is, of course, the supreme Deity, who in the time of Arjuna was born on earth as Krishna Vasudeva, and that in his earlier birth Nara and Narayana were both ascetic saints. This tradition is very important, for it enables us to see something of the early character of Narayana. He was an ancient saint of legend, who was connected with a hero Nara, just as Krishna was associated with Arjuna; and the atmosphere of saintliness clings to him obstinately. Tradition alleges that he was the _rishi_, or inspired seer, who composed the Purusha-sukta of the Rig-veda (X. 90), and represents him by choice as lying in a _yoga-nidra_, or mystic sleep, upon the body of the giant serpent Sesha in the midst of the Ocean of Milk. Thus the worship of Vishnu, like the worship of Siva, has owed much to the influence of live yogis idealised as divine saints; though it must be admitted that the yogis of the Vaishnava orders have usually been more agreeable and less ambiguous than those of the Saiva community.