Reading section 7

[Footnote 35: This idea in germ is already suggested in Maitr. Upan., IV. 5 f., and V. 2.]

This idea of the three gods in one, though it is embodied in some important works of sculpture such as the famous Trimurti in the Caves of Elephanta, has not had much practical effect upon Hindu religion. But it has given birth to at any rate one interesting little sect, the worshippers of Dattatreya, who are to be found mainly in the Maratha country. The legend of the saint Dattatreya, which is already found in the Mahabharata and Puranas and is repeated with some modifications and amplifications in modern works of the sect,[36] relates that when the holy Rishi Atri subjected himself to terrific austerities in order to obtain worthy progeny, the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva visited him and promised him the desired boon; accordingly his wife Anasuya gave birth to three sons, of whom the first was the Moon, an incarnation of Brahma, the second Dattatreya, an incarnation of Vishnu, and the third the holy but irascible saint Durvasas, representing Siva. Dattatreya dwelt in a hermitage in the Dekkan: he indulged in marriage and wine-drinking, which however were not detrimental to his miraculous sanctity and wisdom, and he became famous as a benefactor to humanity. He is said to have lived in the time of Kartavirya Arjuna, the Haihaya king, and to have counselled the latter to remain on his throne when he wished to resign it. In older works of plastic art he is sometimes represented by the simple expedient of placing the three gods side by side, sometimes by figuring him as Vishnu in the guise of a Yogi with some of the attributes of the other two; but in modern times he usually appears as a single figure with three heads, one for each of the great gods, and four or six arms bearing their several attributes (usually the rosary and water-pot of Brahma, the conch and discus of Vishnu, and the trident and drum of Siva), while he is accompanied by four dogs of different colours, supposed to represent the four Vedas, and a bull.[37] Observe that in all these types Dattatreya is conceived as an embodiment of the three gods, which is comparatively a later idea, for in the oldest version of the legend he was simply an incarnation of Vishnu; but as Vishnu was regarded not only as a member of the Trinity but also the Supreme Being over and above it, Dattatreya as his representative has come to include in his personality the nature of all the trio. There is, moreover, something curious in his character. His love of wine and woman is a singular trait, and is quite incompatible with the nature of an ideal saint. It smells of reality, and strongly suggests that he was not a figment of the religious imagination but an actual man; and this is supported by the tradition of his association with Kartavirya Arjuna, who, in spite of all the mythical tales that are related of him, really seems to have been a king of flesh and blood. Thus we may venture to see in him yet another example of the metamorphosis so common in India from a saint to an incarnation of the god worshipped by him.

[Footnote 36: See Vasudevananda Sarasvati's _Datta-purana_ and Ganesa Narayana Karve's _Dattatreya-sarvasva_.]

[Footnote 37: On these figures see Gopinatha Rau, _Elements of Hindu Iconography_, i. p. 252 ff. The dogs seem to be connected with the Vedic Sarama, on whom see Charpentier, _Die Suparnasage_, p. 91.]

V. TWO MODERN INSTANCES

In Northern India, and especially in Bengal, you will often find Hindus worshipping a god whom they call Satya-narayana and believe to be an embodiment of Vishnu himself. The observance of this ritual is believed to bring wealth and all kinds of good fortune; a Sanskrit sacred legend in illustration of this belief has been created, and you may buy badly lithographed copies of it in most of the bazaars if you like, besides which you will find elegant accounts of the god's career on earth written by quite a number of distinguished Bengali poets of the last three centuries. But curiously enough this "god," though quite real, was not a Hindu at all; he was a Bengali Moslem, a fakir, and the Muhammadans of Bengal, among whom he is known as Satya Pir, have their own versions of his career, which seem to be much nearer the truth than those of the Hindus. In their stories he figures simply as a saint, who busied himself in performing miracles for the benefit of pious Moslems in distress; and as one legend says that he was the son of a daughter of [H.]usain Shah, the Emperor of Gaur, and another brings him into contact with Man Singh, it is evident that tradition ascribed him to the sixteenth century, which is probably quite near enough to the truth.[38]

[Footnote 38: See Dineshchandra Sen, _Folk-literature of Bengal_, p. 99 ff.]

The next instance belongs to the twentieth century. A few years ago there died in the village of Eral, in Tinnevelly District, a local gentleman of the Shanar caste named Arunachala Nadar. There was nothing remarkable about his career: he had lived a highly respectable life, scrupulously fulfilled his religious duties, and served with credit as chairman of the municipal board in his native village. If he had done something prodigiously wicked, one might have expected him to become a local god at once, in accordance with Dravidian precedent; but he being what he was, his post-mortem career is rather curious. For a legend gradually arose that his kindly spirit haunted a certain place, and little by little it has grown until now there is a regular worship of him in Eral, and pilgrims travel thither to receive his blessings, stimulated by a lively literary propaganda. He is worshipped under the name of "The Chairman God," in affectionate memory of his municipal career, and as Jagadisa, or "Lord of the Universe," a phase of the god Siva.

CONCLUSION

Can we trace any uniform principle running through the bewildering variety of changes that we have observed?

Consider the changes through which Vishnu has passed. At the beginning a spirit of vaguely defined personality, he appears successively as a saviour-god, as the mystic saint Narayana, as the epic warriors Krishna and Rama, as a wanton blue-skinned herd-boy fluting and dancing amidst a crowd of wildly amorous women, and as the noble ideal of God preached by the great Maratha and Ramanandi votaries, not to mention the many other incarnations that have delighted the Hindu imagination. What does all this mean? It means that the history of a god is mainly moulded by two great factors, the growth of the people's spiritual experience and the character of its religious teachers. As the stream of history rolls on, it fills men's souls with deeper and wider understanding of life. Old conceptions are pondered upon, explored, tested, sometimes rejected, sometimes accepted with a new and profounder content, and thus enlarged they are applied to the old ideals of godhead. When Indian society had organised itself out of tribal chaos and settled down under an established monarchical government, it made Indra the king of the gods, ruling with the same forms and under the same conditions as a human sovereign. When men of finer cast realised that the kingdom of the spirit is higher than earthly royalty, they turned away from Indra and set their souls upon greater conceptions, ideals of vaster spiritual forces, mystic infinitudes. Attracted thus to worships such as those of Siva and Vishnu, they filled them with their own visions and imparted to these gods the ideals of their own strivings, making them into Yogisvaras, Supreme Mystics. And so the sequence of change has gone on through the generations. Most potently it has been effected by the characters of the preachers and teachers of religion. Almost every teacher who has a personality of his own, whose soul contains thoughts other than those of the common sort, stamps something of his own type upon the ideal of his god which he imparts to his followers, and which may thereby come to be authoritatively recognised as a canonical character of the god. India is peculiarly liable to this transference of personality from the guru to the god whom the guru preaches, because from immemorial times India has regarded the guru as representative of the god, and often deifies him as a permanent phase of the deity. Saivas declare that in the guru who teaches the way of salvation Siva himself is manifested: Vaishnavas tell the same tale, and find a short road to salvation by surrendering their souls to him. We have seen cases of apotheosis of the guru in modern and medieval times; reasoning from the known to the unknown, we may be sure that it took place no less regularly in ancient ages, and brought about most of the surprising changes in the character of gods which we have noticed. Sometimes the gurus have only preached some new features in the characters of their gods; sometimes, as is the Hindu fashion, they have also exhibited in their own persons, their dress and equipment, their original ideas of divinity, as, for example, Lakulisa with his club; and their sanctity and apotheosis have ratified their innovations in theology and iconology, which have spread abroad as their congregations have grown. Thus the gurus and their congregations have made the history of their deities, recasting the gods ever anew in the mould of man's hopes and strivings and ideals. There is much truth in the saying of the Brahmanas: "In

the beginning the gods were mortal."

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End of Project Gutenberg's Hindu Gods And Heroes, by Lionel D. Barnett