Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1
by F. Max Müller · English · Gutenberg #24686 · 696,068 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1
Author: F. Max Müller
Release date: February 26, 2008 [eBook #24686]
Language: English
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Credits: Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Geetu Melwani, Thierry
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP, VOLUME 1 ***
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Geetu Melwani, Thierry
Alberto, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
This book had a number of typesetting errors such as missing text,
pages, duplicate pages, and text. The text has been verified with the
etext available with the Internet Archives
(http://www.archive.org/details/germanwork01mulluoft) and corrected
with the addition of missing text and removal of duplicate text. The
Internet archive edition is a 1872 edition whereas this is a 1867
edition.
Details of corrections and additions are given at the end of the book.
CHIPS
FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP.
BY
MAX MUeLLER, M.A.
FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD.
VOLUME I.
Essays on the Science of Religion.
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1867
* * * * *
_To the Memory_
OF
BARON BUNSEN,
MY FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR.
_et quanto diutius
Abes, magis cupio tanto et magis desidero._
* * * * *
PREFACE.
More than twenty years have passed since my revered friend Bunsen
called me one day into his library at Carlton House Terrace, and
announced to me with beaming eyes that the publication of the Rig-veda
was secure. He had spent many days in seeing the Directors of the
East-India Company, and explaining to them the importance of this
work, and the necessity of having it published in England. At last his
efforts had been successful, the funds for printing my edition of the
text and commentary of the Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans had been
granted, and Bunsen was the first to announce to me the happy result
of his literary diplomacy. 'Now,' he said, 'you have got a work for
life--a large block that will take years to plane and polish.' 'But
mind,' he added, 'let us have from time to time some chips from your
workshop.'
I have tried to follow the advice of my departed friend, and I have
published almost every year a few articles on such subjects as had
engaged my attention, while prosecuting at the same time, as far as
altered circumstances would allow, my edition of the Rig-veda, and of
other Sanskrit works connected with it. These articles were chiefly
published in the 'Edinburgh' and 'Quarterly Reviews,' in the 'Oxford
Essays,' in 'Macmillan's' and 'Fraser's Magazines,' in the 'Saturday
Review,' and in the 'Times.' In writing them my principal endeavour
has been to bring out even in the most abstruse subjects the points of
real interest that ought to engage the attention of the public at
large, and never to leave a dark nook or corner without attempting to
sweep away the cobwebs of false learning, and let in the light of real
knowledge. Here, too, I owe much to Bunsen's advice, and when last
year I saw in Cornwall the large heaps of copper ore piled up around
the mines, like so many heaps of rubbish, while the poor people were
asking for coppers to buy bread, I frequently thought of Bunsen's
words, 'Your work is not finished when you have brought the ore from
the mine: it must be sifted, smelted, refined, and coined before it
can be of real use, and contribute towards the intellectual food of
mankind.' I can hardly hope that in this my endeavour to be clear and
plain, to follow the threads of every thought to the very ends, and to
place the web of every argument clearly and fully before my readers, I
have always been successful. Several of the subjects treated in these
essays are, no doubt, obscure and difficult: but there is no subject,
I believe, in the whole realm of human knowledge, that cannot be
rendered clear and intelligible, if we ourselves have perfectly
mastered it. And now while the two last volumes of my edition of the
Rig-veda are passing through the press, I thought the time had come
for gathering up a few armfulls of these chips and splinters, throwing
away what seemed worthless, and putting the rest into some kind of
shape, in order to clear my workshop for other work.
The first and second volumes which I am now publishing contain essays
on the early thoughts of mankind, whether religious or mythological,
and on early traditions and customs. There is to my mind no subject
more absorbing than the tracing the origin and first growth of human
thought;--not theoretically, or in accordance with the Hegelian laws
of thought, or the Comtian epochs; but historically, and like an
Indian trapper, spying for every footprint, every layer, every broken
blade that might tell and testify of the former presence of man in his
early wanderings and searchings after light and truth.
In the languages of mankind, in which everything new is old and
everything old is new, an inexhaustible mine has been discovered for
researches of this kind. Language still bears the impress of the
earliest thoughts of man, obliterated, it may be, buried under new
thoughts, yet here and there still recoverable in their sharp original
outline. The growth of language is continuous, and by continuing our
researches backward from the most modern to the most ancient strata,
the very elements and roots of human speech have been reached, and
with them the elements and roots of human thought. What lies beyond
the beginnings of language, however interesting it may be to the
physiologist, does not yet belong to the history of man, in the true
and original sense of that word. Man means the thinker, and the first
manifestation of thought is speech.
But more surprising than the continuity in the growth of language, is
the continuity in the growth of religion. Of religion, too, as of
language, it may be said that in it everything new is old, and
everything old is new, and that there has been no entirely new
religion since the beginning of the world. The elements and roots of
religion were there, as far back as we can trace the history of man;
and the history of religion, like the history of language, shows us
throughout a succession of new combinations of the same radical
elements. An intuition of God, a sense of human weakness and
dependence, a belief in a Divine government of the world, a
distinction between good and evil, and a hope of a better life, these
are some of the radical elements of all religions. Though sometimes
hidden, they rise again and again to the surface. Though frequently
distorted, they tend again and again to their perfect form. Unless
they had formed part of the original dowry of the human soul, religion
itself would have remained an impossibility, and the tongues of
angels would have been to human ears but as sounding brass or a
tinkling cymbal. If we once understand this clearly, the words of St.
Augustine which have seemed startling to many of his admirers, become
perfectly clear and intelligible, when he says:[1] 'What is now called
the Christian religion, has existed among the ancients, and was not
absent from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the
flesh: from which time the true religion, which existed already, began
to be called Christian.' From this point of view the words of Christ
too, which startled the Jews, assume their true meaning, when He said
to the centurion of Capernaum: 'Many shall come from the east and the
west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the
kingdom of heaven.'
[Footnote 1: August. Retr. 1, 13. 'Res ipsa, quae nunc religio
Christiana nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nec defuit ab initio
generis humani, quousque Christus veniret in carnem, unde vera
religio, quae jam erat, coepit appellari Christiana.']
During the last fifty years the accumulation of new and authentic
materials for the study of the religions of the world, has been most
extraordinary; but such are the difficulties in mastering these
materials that I doubt whether the time has yet come for attempting to
trace, after the model of the Science of Language, the definite
outlines of the Science of Religion. By a succession of the most
fortunate circumstances, the canonical books of three of the
principal religions of the ancient world have lately been recovered,
the Veda, the Zend-Avesta, and the Tripi_t_aka. But not only have we
thus gained access to the most authentic documents from which to study
the ancient religion of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and the
Buddhists, but by discovering the real origin of Greek, Roman, and
likewise of Teutonic, Slavonic, and Celtic mythology, it has become
possible to separate the truly religious elements in the sacred
traditions of these nations from the mythological crust by which they
are surrounded, and thus to gain a clearer insight into the real faith
of the ancient Aryan world.
If we turn to the Semitic world, we find that although no new
materials have been discovered from which to study the ancient
religion of the Jews, yet a new spirit of inquiry has brought new life
into the study of the sacred records of Abraham, Moses, and the
Prophets; and the recent researches of Biblical scholars, though
starting from the most opposite points, have all helped to bring out
the historical interest of the Old Testament, in a manner not dreamt
of by former theologians. The same may be said of another Semitic
religion, the religion of Mohammed, since the Koran and the literature
connected with it were submitted to the searching criticism of real
scholars and historians. Some new materials for the study of the
Semitic religions have come from the monuments of Babylon and
Nineveh. The very images of Bel and Nisroch now stand before our
eyes, and the inscriptions on the tablets may hereafter tell us even
more of the thoughts of those who bowed their knees before them. The
religious worship of the Phenicians and Carthaginians has been
illustrated by Movers from the ruins of their ancient temples, and
from scattered notices in classical writers; nay, even the religious
ideas of the Nomads of the Arabian peninsula, previous to the rise of
Mohammedanism, have been brought to light by the patient researches of
Oriental scholars.
There is no lack of idols among the ruined and buried temples of Egypt
with which to reconstruct the pantheon of that primeval country: nor
need we despair of recovering more and more of the thoughts buried
under the hieroglyphics of the inscriptions, or preserved in hieratic
and demotic MSS., if we watch the brilliant discoveries that have
rewarded the patient researches of the disciples of Champollion.
Besides the Aryan and Semitic families of religion, we have in China
three recognised forms of public worship, the religion of Confucius,
that of Lao-tse, and that of Fo (Buddha); and here, too, recent
publications have shed new light, and have rendered an access to the
canonical works of these religions, and an understanding of their
various purports, more easy, even to those who have not mastered the
intricacies of the Chinese language.
Among the Turanian nations, a few only, such as the Finns, and the
Mongolians, have preserved some remnants of their ancient worship and
mythology, and these too have lately been more carefully collected and
explained by d'Ohson, Castren, and others.
In America the religions of Mexico and Peru had long attracted the
attention of theologians; and of late years the impulse imparted to
ethnological researches has induced travellers and missionaries to
record any traces of religious life that could be discovered among the
savage inhabitants of Africa, America, and the Polynesian islands.
It will be seen from these few indications, that there is no lack of
materials for the student of religion; but we shall also perceive how
difficult it is to master such vast materials. To gain a full
knowledge of the Veda, or the Zend-Avesta, or the Tripi_t_aka, of the
Old Testament, the Koran, or the sacred books of China, is the work of
a whole life. How then is one man to survey the whole field of
religious thought, to classify the religions of the world according to
definite and permanent criteria, and to describe their characteristic
features with a sure and discriminating hand?
Nothing is more difficult to seize than the salient features, the
traits that constitute the permanent expression and real character of
a religion. Religion seems to be the common property of a large
community, and yet it not only varies in numerous sects, as language
does in its dialects, but it really escapes our firm grasp till we can
trace it to its real habitat, the heart of one true believer. We speak
glibly of Buddhism and Brahmanism, forgetting that we are generalizing
on the most intimate convictions of millions and millions of human
souls, divided by half the world and by thousands of years.
It may be said that at all events where a religion possesses canonical
books, or a definite number of articles, the task of the student of
religion becomes easier, and this, no doubt, is true to a certain
extent. But even then we know that the interpretation of these
canonical books varies, so much so that sects appealing to the same
revealed authorities, as, for instance, the founders of the Vedanta
and the Sankhya systems, accuse each other of error, if not of wilful
error or heresy. Articles too, though drawn up with a view to define
the principal doctrines of a religion, lose much of their historical
value by the treatment they receive from subsequent schools; and they
are frequently silent on the very points which make religion what it
is.
A few instances may serve to show what difficulties the student of
religion has to contend with, before he can hope firmly to grasp the
facts on which his theories are to be based.
Roman Catholic missionaries who had spent their lives in China, who
had every opportunity, while staying at the court of Pekin, of
studying in the original the canonical works of Confucius and their
commentaries, who could consult the greatest theologians then living,
and converse with the crowds that thronged the temples of the capital,
differed diametrically in their opinions as to the most vital points
in the state religion of China. Lecomte, Fouquet, Premare, and Bouvet
thought it undeniable that Confucius, his predecessors and his
disciples, had entertained the noblest ideas on the constitution of
the universe, and had sacrificed to the true God in the most ancient
temple of the earth. According to Maigrot, Navarette, on the contrary,
and even according to the Jesuit Longobardi, the adoration of the
Chinese was addressed to inanimate tablets, meaningless inscriptions,
or, in the best case, to coarse ancestral spirits and beings without
intelligence.[2] If we believe the former, the ancient deism of China
approached the purity of the Christian religion; if we listen to the
latter, the absurd fetichism of the multitude degenerated amongst the
educated, into systematic materialism and atheism. In answer to the
peremptory texts quoted by one party, the other adduced the glosses of
accredited interpreters, and the dispute of the missionaries who had
lived in China and knew Chinese, had to be settled in the last
instance by a decision of the see of Rome.
[Footnote 2: Abel Remusat, 'Melanges,' p. 162.]
There is hardly any religion that has been studied in its sacred
literature, and watched in its external worship with greater care
than the modern religion of the Hindus, and yet it would be extremely
hard to give a faithful and intelligible description of it. Most
people who have lived in India would maintain that the Indian
religion, as believed in and practised at present by the mass of the
people, is idol worship and nothing else. But let us hear one of the
mass of the people, a Hindu of Benares, who in a lecture delivered
before an English and native audience defends his faith and the faith
of his forefathers against such sweeping accusations. 'If by
idolatry,' he says, "is meant a system of worship which confines our
ideas of the Deity to a mere image of clay or stone, which prevents
our hearts from being expanded and elevated with lofty notions of the
attributes of God, if this is what is meant by idolatry, we disclaim
idolatry, we abhor idolatry, and deplore the ignorance or
uncharitableness of those that charge us with this grovelling system
of worship.... But if, firmly believing, as we do, in the omnipresence
of God, we behold, by the aid of our imagination, in the form of an
image any of his glorious manifestations, ought we to be charged with
identifying them with the matter of the image, whilst during those
moments of sincere and fervent devotion, we do not even think of
matter? If at the sight of a portrait of a beloved and venerated
friend no longer existing in this world, our heart is filled with
sentiments of love and reverence; if we fancy him present in the
picture, still looking upon us with his wonted tenderness and
affection, and then indulge our feelings of love and gratitude, should
we be charged with offering the grossest insult to him--that of
fancying him to be no other than a piece of painted paper?... We
really lament the ignorance or uncharitableness of those who confound
our representative worship with the Phenician, Grecian, or Roman
idolatry as represented by European writers, and then charge us with
polytheism in the teeth of thousands of texts in the Pura_n_as
declaring in clear and unmistakable terms that there is but one God
who manifests Himself as Brahma, Vish_n_u, and Rudra (Siva), in His
functions of creation, preservation, and destruction."[3]
[Footnote 3: The modern pandit's reply to the missionary who accuses
him of polytheism is: "O, these are only various manifestations of the
one God; the same as, though the sun be one in the heavens, yet he
appears in multi-form reflections upon the lake. The various sects are
only different entrances to the one city." See W. W. Hunter, _Annals
of Rural Bengal_, p. 116.]
In support of these statements, this eloquent advocate quotes numerous
passages from the sacred literature of the Brahmans, and he sums up
his view of the three manifestations of the Deity in the words of
their great poet Kalidasa, as translated by Mr. Griffith:--
"In those Three Persons the One God was shown:
Each First in place, each Last,--not one alone;
Of Siva, Vish_n_u, Brahma, each may be
First, second, third, among the Blessed Three."
If such contradictory views can be held and defended with regard to
religious systems still prevalent amongst us, where we can
cross-examine living witnesses, and appeal to chapter and verse in
their sacred writings, what must the difficulty be when we have to
deal with the religions of the past? I do not wish to disguise these
difficulties which are inherent in a comparative study of the
religions of the world. I rather dwell on them strongly, in order to
show how much care and caution is required in so difficult a subject,
and how much indulgence should be shown in judging of the shortcomings
and errors that are unavoidable in so comprehensive a study. It was
supposed at one time that a comparative analysis of the languages of
mankind must transcend the powers of man: and yet by the combined and
well directed efforts of many scholars, great results have here been
obtained, and the principles that must guide the student of the
Science of Language are now firmly established. It will be the same
with the Science of Religion. By a proper division of labor, the
materials that are still wanting will be collected and published and
translated, and when that is done, surely man will never rest till he
has discovered the purpose that runs through the religions of mankind,
and till he has reconstructed the true _Civitas Dei_ on foundations as
wide as the ends of the world. The Science of Religion may be the last
of the sciences which man is destined to elaborate; but when it is
elaborated, it will change the aspect of the world, and give a new
life to Christianity itself.
The Fathers of the Church, though living in much more dangerous
proximity to the ancient religions of the Gentiles, admitted freely
that a comparison of Christianity and other religions was useful. "If
there is any agreement," Basilius remarked, "between their (the
Greeks') doctrines and our own, it may benefit us to know them: if
not, then to compare them and to learn how they differ, will help not
a little towards confirming that which is the better of the two."[4]
[Footnote 4: Basilius, _De legendis Graec._ libris, c. v. [Greek: Ei men oun
esti tis oikeiotes pros allelous tois logois, prourgou an hemin auton he
gnosis genoito. ei de me, alla to ge parallela thentas katamathein to
diaphoron, ou mikron eis bebaiosis beltionos.]]
But this is not the only advantage of a comparative study of
religions. The Science of Religion will for the first time assign to
Christianity its right place among the religions of the world; it will
show for the first time fully what was meant by the fulness of time;
it will restore to the whole history of the world, in its unconscious
progress towards Christianity, its true and sacred character.
Not many years ago great offence was given by an eminent writer who
remarked that the time had come when the history of Christianity
should be treated in a truly historical spirit, in the same spirit in
which we treat the history of other religions, such as Brahmanism,
Buddhism, or Mohammedanism. And yet what can be truer? He must be a
man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the
same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other
religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment
for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather
challenge for it the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would
for the good ship to which he entrusts his own life, and the lives of
those who are most dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can
decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as
little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahman,
or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu. And if we send
out our missionaries to every part of the world to face every kind of
religion, to shrink from no contest, to be appalled by no objections,
we must not give way at home or within our own hearts to any
misgivings, that a comparative study of the religions of the world
could shake the firm foundations on which we must stand or fall.
To the missionary more particularly a comparative study of the
religions of mankind will be, I believe, of the greatest assistance.
Missionaries are apt to look upon all other religions as something
totally distinct from their own, as formerly they used to describe the
languages of barbarous nations as something more like the twittering
of birds than the articulate speech of men. The Science of Language
has taught us that there is order and wisdom in all languages, and
that even the most degraded jargons contain the ruins of former
greatness and beauty. The Science of Religion, I hope, will produce a
similar change in our views of barbarous forms of faith and worship;
and missionaries, instead of looking only for points of difference,
will look out more anxiously for any common ground, any spark of the
true light that may still be revived, any altar that may be dedicated
afresh to the true God.
And even to us at home, a wider view of the religious life of the
world may teach many a useful lesson. Immense as is the difference
between our own and all other religions of the world--and few can know
that difference who have not honestly examined the foundations of
their own as well as of other religions--the position which believers
and unbelievers occupy with regard to their various forms of faith is
very much the same all over the world. The difficulties which trouble
us, have troubled the hearts and minds of men as far back as we can
trace the beginnings of religious life. The great problems touching
the relation of the Finite to the Infinite, of the human mind as the
recipient, and of the Divine Spirit as the source of truth, are old
problems indeed; and while watching their appearance in different
countries, and their treatment under varying circumstances, we shall
be able, I believe, to profit ourselves, both by the errors which
others committed before us, and by the truth which they discovered. We
shall know the rocks that threaten every religion in this changing and
shifting world of ours, and having watched many a storm of religious
controversy and many a shipwreck in distant seas, we shall face with
greater calmness and prudence the troubled waters at home.
If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in
the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion
is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion can
continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its
first apostles. Yet it is but seldom borne in mind that without
constant reformation, i. e. without a constant return to its
fountain-head, every religion, even the most perfect, nay the most
perfect on account of its very perfection, more even than others,
suffers from its contact with the world, as the purest air suffers
from the mere fact of its being breathed.
Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find
it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases.
The founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can
judge, were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning
for truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbours, examples of
purity and unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was
but seldom realised, and their sayings, if preserved in their original
form, offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who
profess to be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established,
and more particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful
state, the foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the
original foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity
of the plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart, and
matured in his communings with his God. Even those who lived with
Buddha, misunderstood his words, and at the Great Council which had to
settle the Buddhist canon, Asoka, the Indian Constantine, had to
remind the assembled priests that 'what had been said by Buddha, that
alone was well said;' and that certain works ascribed to Buddha, as,
for instance, the instruction given to his son, Rahula, were
apocryphal, if not heretical.[5] With every century, Buddhism, when it
was accepted by nations, differing as widely as Mongols and Hindus,
when its sacred writings were translated into languages as wide apart
as Sanskrit and Chinese, assumed widely different aspects, till at
last the Buddhism of the Shamans in the steppes of Tatary is as
different from the teaching of the original _S_ama_n_a, as the
Christianity of the leader of the Chinese rebels is from the teaching
of Christ. If missionaries could show to the Brahmans, the Buddhists,
the Zoroastrians, nay, even to the Mohammedans, how much their present
faith differs from the faith of their forefathers and founders, if
they could place into their hands and read with them in a kindly
spirit the original documents in which these various religions
profess to be founded, and enable them to distinguish between the
doctrines of their own sacred books and the additions of later ages,
an important advantage would be gained, and the choice between Christ
and other Masters would be rendered far more easy to many a
truth-seeking soul. But for that purpose it is necessary that we too
should see the beam in our own eyes, and learn to distinguish between
the Christianity of the nineteenth century and the religion of Christ.
If we find that the Christianity of the nineteenth century does not
win as many hearts in India and China as it ought, let us remember
that it was the Christianity of the first century in all its dogmatic
simplicity, but with its overpowering love of God and man, that
conquered the world and superseded religions and philosophies, more
difficult to conquer than the religious and philosophical systems of
Hindus and Buddhists. If we can teach something to the Brahmans in
reading with them their sacred hymns, they too can teach us something
when reading with us the Gospel of Christ. Never shall I forget the
deep despondency of a Hindu convert, a real martyr to his faith, who
had pictured to himself from the pages of the New Testament what a
Christian country must be, and who when he came to Europe found
everything so different from what he had imagined in his lonely
meditations at Benares! It was the Bible only that saved him from
returning to his old religion, and helped him to discern beneath
theological futilities, accumulated during nearly two thousand years,
beneath pharisaical hypocrisy, infidelity, and want of charity, the
buried, but still living seed, committed to the earth by Christ and
his Apostles. How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the
surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that
seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be; unless he may
show that like all other religions, Christianity, too, has had its
history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the
Christianity of the Middle Ages, that the Christianity of the Middle
Ages was not that of the early Councils, that the Christianity of the
early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and 'that what has been
said by Christ that alone was well said?'
[Footnote 5: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' Appendice, No. x. Sec.
4.]
The advantages, however, which missionaries and other defenders of the
faith will gain from a comparative study of religions, though
important hereafter, are not at present the chief object of these
researches. In order to maintain their scientific character, they must
be independent of all extraneous considerations: they must aim at
truth, trusting that even unpalatable truths, like unpalatable
medicine, will reinvigorate the system into which they enter. To
those, no doubt, who value the tenets of their religion as the miser
values his pearls and precious stones, thinking their value lessened
if pearls and stones of the same kind are found in other parts of the
world, the Science of Religion will bring many a rude shock; but to
the true believer, truth, wherever it appears, is welcome, nor will
any doctrine seem to be less true or less precious, because it was
seen, not only by Moses or Christ, but likewise by Buddha or Lao-tse.
Nor should it be forgotten that while a comparison of ancient
religions will certainly show that some of the most vital articles of
faith are the common property of the whole of mankind, at least of all
who seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him,
the same comparison alone can possibly teach us what is peculiar to
Christianity, and what has secured to it that pre-eminent position
which now it holds in spite of all obloquy. The gain will be greater
than the loss, if loss there be, which I, at least, shall never admit.
There is a strong feeling, I know, in the minds of all people against
any attempt to treat their own religion as a member of a class, and,
in one sense, that feeling is perfectly justified. To each individual,
his own religion, if he really believes in it, is something quite
inseparable from himself, something unique, that cannot be compared to
anything else, or replaced by anything else. Our own religion is, in
that respect, something like our own language. In its form it may be
like other languages; in its essence and in its relation to ourselves,
it stands alone and admits of no peer or rival.
But in the history of the world, our religion, like our own language,
is but one out of many; and in order to understand fully the position
of Christianity in the history of the world, and its true place among
the religions of mankind, we must compare it, not with Judaeism only,
but with the religious aspirations of the whole world, with all, in
fact, that Christianity came either to destroy or to fulfil. From this
point of view Christianity forms part, no doubt, of what people call
profane history, but by that very fact, profane history ceases to be
profane, and regains throughout that sacred character of which it had
been deprived by a false distinction. The ancient Fathers of the
Church spoke on these subjects with far greater freedom than we
venture to use in these days. Justin Martyr, in his 'Apology' (A.D
139), has this memorable passage ('Apol.' i. 46): 'One article of our
faith then is, that Christ is the first begotten of God, and we have
already proved Him to be the very Logos (or universal Reason), of
which mankind are all partakers; and therefore those who live
according to the Logos are Christians, notwithstanding they may pass
with you for Atheists; such among the Greeks were Sokrates and
Herakleitos and the like; and such among the Barbarians were Abraham,
and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others,
whose actions, nay whose very names, I know, would be tedious to
relate, and therefore shall pass them over. So, on the other side,
those who have lived in former times in defiance of the Logos or
Reason, were evil, and enemies to Christ and murderers of such as
lived according to the Logos; but _they who have made or make the
Logos or Reason the rule of their actions are Christians_, and men
without fear and trembling.'[5_1]
[Footnote 5_1:
[Greek: Ton christon prothotokon tou Theou einai edidhachthemen, kai
proemenhysamen Lhogon onta, ou pan ghenos anthrhopon methesche kai oi
meta Lhogou bihosantes christianohi eisi, kan atheoi enomhisthesan,
oion en Ellesi men Sokrhates kai Erhakleitos kai oi homoioi autois, en
barbarois de Abraam kai Ananias kai Asarias kai Misael kai Elhias kai
alloi polloi, on tas praxets e ta onomata katalegein makron einai
epistamenoi, tanyn paraitoymetha. oste kai oi progenomenoi aneu Ldgou
bihosantes, acrestoi ka.]]
'God,' says Clement,[6] 'is the cause of all that is good: only of
some good gifts He is the primary cause, as of the Old and New
Testaments, of others the secondary, as of (Greek) philosophy. But
even philosophy may have been given primarily by Him to the Greeks,
before the Lord had called the Greeks also. For that philosophy, like
a teacher, has guided the Greeks also, as the Law did the Hebrews,
towards Christ. Philosophy, therefore, prepares and opens the way to
those who are made perfect by Christ.'
[Footnote 6: Clem. Alex. Strom, lib. I, cap. v, Sec. 28.
[Greek: Panton
men gar aitios ton kalon d theos, alla ton men kata proegoumenon, hos
tes te diathekes tes palaias kai tes neas, ton de kat epakolouthema, hos
tes philosophias tacha de kai proegoumenos tois Ellesin edothe tote
prin e ton kurion kalesai kai tous Elleuas. Epaidagogei gar kai aute
to Ellenikon hos o nomos tous Ebraious eis Christon. proparaskeuixei
toinun e philosophia proodopoiousa ton hupo Christou teleioumenon.]]
And again: 'It is clear that the same God to whom we owe the Old and
New Testaments, gave also to the Greeks their Greek philosophy by
which the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks.'[7]
[Footnote 7: Strom, lib. VI, cap. V, Sec. 42.
[Greek: Eros de kai oti o
autos theos amphoin tain diathekain choregos, o kai tes Ellenikes
philosophias doter tois Ellesin, di es o pantokrator par Ellesi
doxazetai, parestesen, delon de kanthede.]]
And Clement was by no means the only one who spoke thus freely and
fearlessly, though, no doubt, his knowledge of Greek philosophy
qualified him better than many of his contemporaries to speak with
authority on such subjects.
St. Augustine writes: 'If the Gentiles also had possibly something
divine and true in their doctrines, our Saints did not find fault with
it, although for their superstition, idolatry, and pride, and other
evil habits, they had to be detested, and, unless they improved, to be
punished by divine judgment. For the apostle Paul, when he said
something about God among the Athenians, quoted the testimony of some
of the Greeks who had said something of the same kind: and this, if
they came to Christ, would be acknowledged in them, and not blamed.
Saint Cyprian, too, uses such witnesses against the Gentiles. For when
he speaks of the Magians, he says that the chief among them, Hostanes,
maintains that the true God is invisible, and that true angels sit at
His throne; and that Plato agrees with this, and believes in One God,
considering the others to be angels or demons; and that Hermes
Trismegistus also speaks of One God, and confesses that He is
incomprehensible.' (Augustinus, 'De Baptismo contra Donatistas,' lib.
VI, cap. xliv.)
Every religion, even the most imperfect and degraded, has something
that ought to be sacred to us, for there is in all religions a secret
yearning after the true, though unknown, God. Whether we see the Papua
squatting in dumb meditation before his fetish, or whether we listen
to Firdusi exclaiming: 'The heighth and the depth of the whole world
have their centre in Thee, O my God! I do not know Thee what Thou art:
but I know that Thou art what Thou alone canst be,'--we ought to feel
that the place whereon we stand is holy ground. There are
philosophers, no doubt, to whom both Christianity and all other
religions are exploded errors, things belonging to the past, and to be
replaced by more positive knowledge. To them the study of the
religions of the world could only have a pathological interest, and
their hearts could never warm at the sparks of truth that light up,
like stars, the dark yet glorious night of the ancient world. They
tell us that the world has passed through the phases of religious and
metaphysical errors, in order to arrive at the safe haven of positive
knowledge of facts. But if they would but study positive facts, if
they would but read, patiently and thoughtfully, the history of the
world, as it is, not as it might have been: they would see that, as in
geology, so in the history of human thought, theoretic uniformity does
not exist, and that the past is never altogether lost. The oldest
formations of thought crop out everywhere, and if we dig but deep
enough, we shall find that even the sandy desert in which we are asked
to live, rests everywhere on the firm foundation of that primeval, yet
indestructible granite of the human soul,--religious faith.
There are other philosophers again who would fain narrow the limits of
the Divine government of the world to the history of the Jewish and of
the Christian nations, who would grudge the very name of religion to
the ancient creeds of the world, and to whom the name of natural
religion has almost become a term of reproach. To them, too, I should
like to say that if they would but study positive facts, if they would
but read their own Bible, they would find that the greatness of Divine
Love cannot be measured by human standards, and that God has never
forsaken a single human soul that has not first forsaken Him. 'He hath
made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of
the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the
bounds of their habitation: that they should seek the Lord, if haply
they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from
every one of us,' If they would but dig deep enough, they too would
find that what they contemptuously call natural religion, is in
reality the greatest gift that God has bestowed on the children of
man, and that without it, revealed religion itself would have no firm
foundation, no living roots in the heart of man.
If by the essays here collected I should succeed in attracting more
general attention towards an independent, yet reverent study of the
ancient religions of the world, and in dispelling some of the
prejudices with which so many have regarded the yearnings after truth
embodied in the sacred writings of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and
the Buddhists, in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, nay, even in
the wild traditions and degraded customs of Polynesian savages, I
shall consider myself amply rewarded for the labour which they have
cost me. That they are not free from errors, in spite of a careful
revision to which they have been submitted before I published them in
this collection, I am fully aware, and I shall be grateful to any one
who will point them out, little concerned whether it is done in a
seemly or unseemly manner, as long as some new truth is elicited, or
some old error effectually exploded. Though I have thought it right in
preparing these essays for publication, to alter what I could no
longer defend as true, and also, though rarely, to add some new facts
that seemed essential for the purpose of establishing what I wished to
prove, yet in the main they have been left as they were originally
published. I have added to each the dates when they were written,
these dates ranging over the last fifteen years, and I must beg my
readers to bear these dates in mind when judging both of the form and
the matter of these contributions towards a better knowledge of the
creeds and prayers, the legends and customs of the ancient world.
M. M.
PARKS END, OXFORD:
_October_, 1867.
CONTENTS OF FIRST VOLUME.
I. LECTURE ON THE VEDAS OR THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE BRAHMANS,
DELIVERED AT LEEDS, 1865
II. CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS, 1858
III. THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA, 1853
IV. THE AITAREYA-BRAHMANA, 1864
V. ON THE STUDY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA IN INDIA, 1862
VI. PROGRESS OF ZEND SCHOLARSHIP, 1865
VII. GENESIS AND THE ZEND-AVESTA, 1864
VIII. THE MODERN PARSIS, 1862
IX. BUDDHISM, 1862
X. BUDDHIST PILGRIMS, 1857
XI. THE MEANING OF NIRVANA, 1857
XII. CHINESE TRANSLATIONS OF SANSKRIT TEXTS, 1861
XIII. THE WORKS OF CONFUCIUS, 1861
XIV. POPOL VUH, 1862
XV. SEMITIC MONOTHEISM, 1860
* * * * *
I.
LECTURE ON THE VEDAS
OR THE
SACRED BOOKS OF THE BRAHMANS,[8]
DELIVERED AT THE
PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION, LEEDS, MARCH, 1865.
I have brought with me one volume of my edition of the Veda, and I
should not wonder if it were the first copy of the work which has ever
reached this busy town of Leeds. Nay, I confess I have some misgivings
whether I have not undertaken a hopeless task, and I begin to doubt
whether I shall succeed in explaining to you the interest which I feel
for this ancient collection of sacred hymns, an interest which has
never failed me while devoting to the publication of this voluminous
work the best twenty years of my life. Many times have I been asked,
But what is the Veda? Why should it be published? What are we likely
to learn from a book composed nearly four thousand years ago, and
intended from the beginning for an uncultivated race of mere heathens
and savages,--a book which the natives of India have never published
themselves, although, to the present day, they profess to regard it as
the highest authority for their religion, morals, and philosophy? Are
we, the people of England or of Europe, in the nineteenth century,
likely to gain any new light on religious, moral, or philosophical
questions from the old songs of the Brahmans? And is it so very
certain that the whole book is not a modern forgery, without any
substantial claims to that high antiquity which is ascribed to it by
the Hindus, so that all the labour bestowed upon it would not only be
labour lost, but throw discredit on our powers of discrimination, and
make us a laughing-stock among the shrewd natives of India? These and
similar questions I have had to answer many times when asked by
others, and some of them when asked by myself, before embarking on so
hazardous an undertaking as the publication of the Rig-veda and its
ancient commentary. And, I believe, I am not mistaken in supposing
that many of those who to-night have honoured me with their presence
may have entertained similar doubts and misgivings when invited to
listen to a Lecture 'On the Vedas or the Sacred Books of the
Brahmans.'
[Footnote 8: Some of the points touched upon in this Lecture have been
more fully treated in my 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature.' As
the second edition of this work has been out of print for several
years, I have here quoted a few passages from it in full.]
I shall endeavour, therefore, as far as this is possible within the
limits of one Lecture, to answer some of these questions, and to
remove some of these doubts, by explaining to you, first, what the
Veda really is, and, secondly, what importance it possesses, not only
to the people of India, but to ourselves in Europe,--and here again,
not only to the student of Oriental languages, but to every student of
history, religion, or philosophy; to every man who has once felt the
charm of tracing that mighty stream of human thought on which we
ourselves are floating onward, back to its distant mountain-sources;
to every one who has a heart for whatever has once filled the hearts
of millions of human beings with their noblest hopes, and fears, and
aspirations;--to every student of mankind in the fullest sense of that
full and weighty word. Whoever claims that noble title must not
forget, whether he examines the highest achievements of mankind in our
own age, or the miserable failures of former ages, what man is, and in
whose image and after whose likeness man was made. Whether listening
to the shrieks of the Shaman sorcerers of Tatary, or to the odes of
Pindar, or to the sacred songs of Paul Gerhard: whether looking at the
pagodas of China, or the Parthenon of Athens, or the cathedral of
Cologne: whether reading the sacred books of the Buddhists, of the
Jews, or of those who worship God in spirit and in truth, we ought to
be able to say, like the Emperor Maximilian, 'Homo sum, humani nihil a
me alienum puto,' or, translating his words somewhat freely, 'I am a
man, nothing pertaining to man I deem foreign to myself.' Yes, we must
learn to read in the history of the whole human race something of our
own history; and as in looking back on the story of our own life, we
all dwell with a peculiar delight on the earliest chapters of our
childhood, and try to find there the key to many of the riddles of our
later life, it is but natural that the historian, too, should ponder
with most intense interest over the few relics that have been
preserved to him of the childhood of the human race. These relics are
few indeed, and therefore very precious, and this I may venture to
say, at the outset and without fear of contradiction, that there
exists no literary relic that carries us back to a more primitive, or,
if you like, more child-like state in the history of man[9] than the
Veda. As the language of the Veda, the Sanskrit, is the most ancient
type of the English of the present day, (Sanskrit and English are but
varieties of one and the same language,) so its thoughts and feelings
contain in reality the first roots and germs of that intellectual
growth which by an unbroken chain connects our own generation with the
ancestors of the Aryan race,--with those very people who at the rising
and setting of the sun listened with trembling hearts to the songs of
the Veda, that told them of bright powers above, and of a life to come
after the sun of their own lives had set in the clouds of the evening.
Those men were the true ancestors of our race; and the Veda is the
oldest book we have in which to study the first beginnings of our
language, and of all that is embodied in language. We are by nature
Aryan, Indo-European, not Semitic: our spiritual kith and kin are to
be found in India, Persia, Greece, Italy, Germany; not in Mesopotamia,
Egypt, or Palestine. This is a fact that ought to be clearly
perceived, and constantly kept in view, in order to understand the
importance which the Veda has for us, after the lapse of more than
three thousand years, and after ever so many changes in our language,
thought, and religion.
[Footnote 9: 'In the sciences of law and society, old means not old in
chronology, but in structure: that is most archaic which lies nearest
to the beginning of human progress considered as a development, and
that is most modern which is farthest removed from that
beginning.'--J. F. McLennan, 'Primitive Marriage,' p. 8.]
Whatever the intrinsic value of the Veda, if it simply contained the
names of kings, the description of battles, the dates of famines, it
would still be, by its age alone, the most venerable of books. Do we
ever find much beyond such matters in Egyptian hieroglyphics, or in
Cuneiform inscriptions? In fact, what does the ancient history of the
world before Cyrus, before 500 B.C., consist of, but meagre lists of
Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian dynasties? What do the tablets of
Karnak, the palaces of Nineveh, and the cylinders of Babylon tell us
about the thoughts of men? All is dead and barren, nowhere a sigh,
nowhere a jest, nowhere a glimpse of humanity. There has been but one
oasis in that vast desert of ancient Asiatic history, the history of
the Jews. Another such oasis is the Veda. Here, too, we come to a
stratum of ancient thought, of ancient feelings, hopes, joys, and
fears,--of ancient religion. There is perhaps too little of kings and
battles in the Veda, and scarcely anything of the chronological
framework of history. But poets surely are better than kings, hymns
and prayers are more worth listening to than the agonies of butchered
armies, and guesses at truth more valuable than unmeaning titles of
Egyptian or Babylonian despots. It will be difficult to settle whether
the Veda is 'the oldest of books,' and whether some of the portions of
the Old Testament may not be traced back to the same or even an
earlier date than the oldest hymns of the Veda. But, in the Aryan
world, the Veda is certainly the oldest book, and its preservation
amounts almost to a marvel.
It is nearly twenty years ago that my attention was first drawn to
the Veda, while attending, in the years 1846 and 1847, the lectures of
Eugene Burnouf at the College de France. I was then looking out, like
most young men at that time of life, for some great work, and without
weighing long the difficulties which had hitherto prevented the
publication of the Veda, I determined to devote all my time to the
collection of the materials necessary for such an undertaking. I had
read the principal works of the later Sanskrit literature, but had
found little there that seemed to be more than curious. But to publish
the Veda, a work that had never before been published in India or in
Europe, that occupied in the history of Sanskrit literature the same
position which the Old Testament occupies in the history of the Jews,
the New Testament in the history of modern Europe, the Koran in the
history of Mohammedanism,--a work which fills a gap in the history of
the human mind, and promises to bring us nearer than any other work to
the first beginnings of Aryan language and Aryan thought,--this seemed
to me an undertaking not altogether unworthy a man's life. What added
to the charm of it was that it had once before been undertaken by
Frederick Rosen, a young German scholar, who died in England before he
had finished the first book, and that after his death no one seemed
willing to carry on his work. What I had to do, first of all, was to
copy not only the text, but the commentary of the Rig-veda, a work
which when finished will fill six of these large volumes. The author
or rather the compiler of this commentary, Saya_n_a A_k_arya, lived
about 1400 after Christ, that is to say, about as many centuries
after, as the poets of the Veda lived before, the beginning of our
era. Yet through the 3000 years which separate the original poetry of
the Veda from the latest commentary, there runs an almost continuous
stream of tradition, and it is from it, rather than from his own
brain, that Saya_n_a draws his explanations of the sacred texts.
Numerous MSS., more or less complete, more or less inaccurate, of
Saya_n_a's classical work, existed in the then Royal Library at Paris,
in the Library of the East-India House, then in Leadenhall Street, and
in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. But to copy and collate these MSS.
was by no means all. A number of other works were constantly quoted in
Saya_n_a's commentary, and these quotations had all to be verified. It
was necessary first to copy these works, and to make indexes to all of
them, in order to be able to find any passage that might be referred
to in the larger commentary. Many of these works have since been
published in Germany and France, but they were not to be procured
twenty years ago. The work, of course, proceeded but slowly, and many
times I doubted whether I should be able to carry it through. Lastly
came the difficulty,--and by no means the smallest,--who was to
publish a work that would occupy about six thousand pages in quarto,
all in Sanskrit, and of which probably not a hundred copies would ever
be sold. Well, I came to England in order to collect more materials at
the East-India House and at the Bodleian Library, and thanks to the
exertions of my generous friend Baron Bunsen, and of the late
Professor Wilson, the Board of Directors of the East-India Company
decided to defray the expenses of a work which, as they stated in
their letter, 'is in a peculiar manner deserving of the patronage of
the East-India Company, connected as it is with the early religion,
history, and language of the great body of their Indian subjects.' It
thus became necessary for me to take up my abode in England, which has
since become my second home. The first volume was published in 1849,
the second in 1853, the third in 1856, the fourth in 1862. The
materials for the remaining volumes are ready, so that, if I can but
make leisure, there is little doubt that before long the whole work
will be complete.
Now, first, as to the name. Veda means originally knowing or
knowledge, and this name is given by the Brahmans not to one work, but
to the whole body of their most ancient sacred literature. Veda is the
same word which appears in the Greek [Greek: oida], I know, and in the
English wise, wisdom, to wit.[10] The name of Veda is commonly given
to four collections of hymns, which are respectively known by the
names of Rig-veda, Ya_g_ur-veda, Sama-veda, and Atharva-veda; but for
our own purposes, namely for tracing the earliest growth of religious
ideas in India, the only important, the only real Veda, is the
Rig-veda.
[Footnote 10:
Sanskrit Greek Gothic Anglo-Saxon German
veda [Greek: oida] vait wat ich weiss
vettha [Greek: oistha] vaist wast du weisst
veda [Greek: oide] vait wat er weiss
vidva -- vitu -- --
vidathu_h_ [Greek: iston] vituts -- --
vidatu_h_ [Greek: iston] -- -- --
vidma [Greek: ismen] vitum witon wir wissen
vida [Greek: iste] vituth wite ihr wisset
vidu_h_ [Greek: isasi] vitun witan sie wissen.
]
The other so-called Vedas, which deserve the name of Veda no more than
the Talmud deserves the name of Bible, contain chiefly extracts from
the Rig-veda, together with sacrificial formulas, charms, and
incantations, many of them, no doubt, extremely curious, but never
likely to interest any one except the Sanskrit scholar by profession.
The Ya_g_ur-veda and Sama-veda may be described as prayer-books,
arranged according to the order of certain sacrifices, and intended to
be used by certain classes of priests.
Four classes of priests were required in India at the most solemn
sacrifices:
1. The officiating priests, manual labourers, and acolytes;
who have chiefly to prepare the sacrificial ground, to dress
the altar, slay the victims, and pour out the libations.
2. The choristers, who chant the sacred hymns.
3. The reciters or readers, who repeat certain hymns.
4. The overseers or bishops, who watch and superintend the
proceedings of the other priests, and ought to be familiar
with all the Vedas.
The formulas and verses to be muttered by the first class are
contained in the Ya_g_ur-veda-sanhita. The hymns to be sung by the
second class are in the Sama-veda-sanhita.
The Atharva-veda is said to be intended for the Brahman or overseer,
who is to watch the proceedings of the sacrifice, and to remedy any
mistake that may occur.[11]
[Footnote 11: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 449.]
Fortunately, the hymns to be recited by the third class were not
arranged in a sacrificial prayer-book, but were preserved in an old
collection of hymns, containing all that had been saved of ancient,
sacred, and popular poetry, more like the Psalms than like a ritual; a
collection made for its own sake, and not for the sake of any
sacrificial performances.
I shall, therefore, confine my remarks to the Rig-veda, which in the
eyes of the historical student is the Veda _par excellence_. Now
Rig-veda means the Veda of hymns of praise, for _R_ich, which before
the initial soft letter of Veda is changed to _R_ig, is derived from a
root which in Sanskrit means to celebrate.
In the Rig-veda we must distinguish again between the original collection
of the hymns or Mantras, called the Sanhita or the collection, being
entirely metrical and poetical, and a number of prose works, called
Brahma_n_as and Sutras, written in prose, and giving information on the
proper use of the hymns at sacrifices, on their sacred meaning, on their
supposed authors, and similar topics. These works, too, go by the name of
Rig-veda: but though very curious in themselves, they are evidently of a
much later period, and of little help to us in tracing the beginnings of
religious life in India. For that purpose we must depend entirely on the
hymns, such as we find them in the Sanhita or the collection of the
Rig-veda.
Now this collection consists of ten books, and contains altogether
1028 hymns. As early as about 600 B.C. we find that in the theological
schools of India every verse, every word, every syllable of the Veda
had been carefully counted. The number of verses as computed in
treatises of that date, varies from 10,402 to 10,622; that of the
words is 153,826, that of the syllables 432,000.[12] With these
numbers, and with the description given in these early treatises of
each hymn, of its metre, its deity, its number of verses, our modern
MSS. of the Veda correspond as closely as could be expected.
[Footnote 12: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' second
edition, p. 219 seq.]
I say, our modern MSS., for all our MSS. are modern, and very modern.
Few Sanskrit MSS. are more than four or five hundred years old, the
fact being that in the damp climate of India no paper will last for
more than a few centuries. How then, you will naturally ask, can it be
proved that the original hymns were composed between 1200 and 1500
before the Christian era, if our MSS. only carry us back to about the
same date after the Christian era? It is not very easy to bridge over
this gulf of nearly three thousand years, but all I can say is that,
after carefully examining every possible objection that can be made
against the date of the Vedic hymns, their claim to that high
antiquity which is ascribed to them, has not, as far as I can judge,
been shaken. I shall try to explain on what kind of evidence these
claims rest.
You know that we possess no MS. of the Old Testament in Hebrew older
than about the tenth century after the Christian era; yet the
Septuagint translation by itself would be sufficient to prove that the
Old Testament, such as we now read it, existed in MS. previous, at
least, to the third century before our era. By a similar train of
argument, the works to which I referred before, in which we find every
hymn, every verse, every word and syllable of the Veda accurately
counted by native scholars about five or six hundred years before
Christ, guarantee the existence of the Veda, such as we now read it,
as far back at least as five or six hundred years before Christ. Now
in the works of that period, the Veda is already considered, not only
as an ancient, but as a sacred book; and, more than this, its language
had ceased to be generally intelligible. The language of India had
changed since the Veda was composed, and learned commentaries were
necessary in order to explain to the people, then living, the true
purport, nay, the proper pronunciation, of their sacred hymns. But
more than this. In certain exegetical compositions, which are
generally comprised under the name of Sutras, and which are
contemporary with, or even anterior to, the treatises on the
theological statistics just mentioned, not only are the ancient hymns
represented as invested with sacred authority, but that other class of
writings, the Brahma_n_as, standing half-way between the hymns and the
Sutras, have likewise been raised to the dignity of a revealed
literature. These Brahma_n_as, you will remember, are prose treatises,
written in illustration of the ancient sacrifices and of the hymns
employed at them. Such treatises would only spring up when some kind
of explanation began to be wanted both for the ceremonial and for the
hymns to be recited at certain sacrifices, and we find, in
consequence, that in many cases the authors of the Brahma_n_as had
already lost the power of understanding the text of the ancient hymns
in its natural and grammatical meaning, and that they suggested the
most absurd explanations of the various sacrificial acts, most of
which, we may charitably suppose, had originally some rational
purpose. Thus it becomes evident that the period during which the
hymns were composed must have been separated by some centuries, at
least, from the period that gave birth to the Brahma_n_as, in order to
allow time for the hymns growing unintelligible and becoming invested
with a sacred character. Secondly, the period during which the
Brahma_n_as were composed must be separated by some centuries from the
authors of the Sutras, in order to allow time for further changes in
the language, and more particularly for the growth of a new theology,
which ascribed to the Brahma_n_as the same exceptional and revealed
character which the Brahma_n_as themselves ascribed to the hymns. So
that we want previously to 600 B.C., when every syllable of the Veda
was counted, at least two strata of intellectual and literary growth,
of two or three centuries each; and are thus brought to 1100 or 1200
B.C. as the earliest time when we may suppose the collection of the
Vedic hymns to have been finished. This collection of hymns again
contains, by its own showing, ancient and modern hymns, the hymns of
the sons together with the hymns of their fathers and earlier
ancestors; so that we cannot well assign a date more recent than 1200
to 1500 before our era, for the original composition of those simple
hymns which up to the present day are regarded by the Brahmans with
the same feelings with which a Mohammedan regards the Koran, a Jew the
Old Testament, a Christian his Gospel.
That the Veda is not quite a modern forgery can be proved, however, by more
tangible evidence. Hiouen-thsang, a Buddhist pilgrim, who travelled from
China to India in the years 629-645, and who, in his diary translated from
Chinese into French by M. Stanislas Julien, gives the names of the four
Vedas, mentions some grammatical forms peculiar to the Vedic Sanskrit, and
states that at his time young Brahmans spent all their time, from the
seventh to the thirtieth year of their age, in learning these sacred texts.
At the time when Hiouen-thsang was travelling in India, Buddhism was
clearly on the decline. But Buddhism was originally a reaction against
Brahmanism, and chiefly against the exclusive privileges which the Brahmans
claimed, and which from the beginning were represented by them as based on
their revealed writings, the Vedas, and hence beyond the reach of human
attacks. Buddhism, whatever the date of its founder, became the state
religion of India under A_s_oka, the Constantine of India, in the middle of
the third century B.C. This A_s_oka was the third king of a new dynasty
founded by _K_andragupta, the well-known contemporary of Alexander and
Seleucus, about 315 B.C. The preceding dynasty was that of the Nandas, and
it is under this dynasty that the traditions of the Brahmans place a number
of distinguished scholars whose treatises on the Veda we still possess,
such as _S_aunaka, Katyayana, A_s_valayana, and others. Their works, and
others written with a similar object and in the same style, carry us back
to about 600 B.C. This period of literature, which is called the Sutra
period, was preceded, as we saw, by another class of writings, the
Brahma_n_as, composed in a very prolix and tedious style, and containing
lengthy lucubrations on the sacrifices and on the duties of the different
classes of priests. Each of the three or four Vedas, or each of the three
or four classes of priests, has its own Brahma_n_as and its own Sutras;
and as the Brahma_n_as are presupposed by the Sutras, while no Sutra is
ever quoted by the Brahma_n_as, it is clear that the period of the
Brahma_n_a literature must have preceded the period of the Sutra
literature. There are, however, old and new Brahma_n_as, and there are in
the Brahma_n_as themselves long lists of teachers who handed down old
Brahma_n_as or composed new ones, so that it seems impossible to
accommodate the whole of that literature in less than two centuries, from
about 800 to 600 B.C. Before, however, a single Brahma_n_a could have been
composed, it was not only necessary that there should have been one
collection of ancient hymns, like that contained in the ten books of the
Rig-veda, but the three or four classes of priests must have been
established, the officiating priests and the choristers must have had their
special prayer-books, nay, these prayer-books must have undergone certain
changes, because the Brahma_n_as presuppose different texts, called sakhas,
of each of these prayer-books, which are called the Ya_g_ur-veda-sanhita,
the Sama-veda-sanhita, and the Atharva-veda-sanhita. The work of collecting
the prayers for the different classes of priests, and of adding new hymns
and formulas for purely sacrificial purposes, belonged probably to the
tenth century B.C., and three generations more would, at least, be required
to account for the various readings adopted in the prayer-books by
different sects, and invested with a kind of sacred authority, long before
the composition of even the earliest among the Brahma_n_as. If, therefore,
the years from about 1000 to 800 B.C. are assigned to this collecting age,
the time before 1000 B.C. must be set apart for the free and natural
growth of what was then national and religious, but not yet sacred and
sacrificial poetry. How far back this period extends it is impossible to
tell; it is enough if the hymns of the Rig-veda can be traced to a period
anterior to 1000 B.C.
Much in the chronological arrangement of the three periods of Vedic
literature that are supposed to have followed the period of the
original growth of the hymns, must of necessity be hypothetical, and
has been put forward rather to invite than to silence criticism. In
order to discover truth, we must be truthful ourselves, and must
welcome those who point out our errors as heartily as those who
approve and confirm our discoveries. What seems, however, to speak
strongly in favour of the historical character of the three periods of
Vedic literature is the uniformity of style which marks the
productions of each. In modern literature we find, at one and the same
time, different styles of prose and poetry cultivated by one and the
same author. A Goethe writes tragedy, comedy, satire, lyrical poetry,
and scientific prose; but we find nothing like this in primitive
literature. The individual is there much less prominent, and the
poet's character disappears in the general character of the layer of
literature to which he belongs. It is the discovery of such large
layers of literature following each other in regular succession which
inspires the critical historian with confidence in the truly
historical character of the successive literary productions of ancient
India. As in Greece there is an epic age of literature, where we
should look in vain for prose or dramatic poetry; as in that country
we never meet with real elegiac poetry before the end of the eighth
century, nor with iambics before the same date; as even in more
modern times rhymed heroic poetry appears in England with the Norman
conquest, and in Germany the Minnesaenger rise and set with the Swabian
dynasty--so, only in a much more decided manner, we see in the ancient
and spontaneous literature of India, an age of poets followed by an
age of collectors and imitators, that age to be succeeded by an age of
theological prose writers, and this last by an age of writers of
scientific manuals. New wants produced new supplies, and nothing
sprang up or was allowed to live, in prose or poetry, except what was
really wanted. If the works of poets, collectors, imitators,
theologians, and teachers were all mixed up together--if the
Brahma_n_as quoted the Sutras, and the hymns alluded to the
Brahma_n_as--an historical restoration of the Vedic literature of
India would be almost an impossibility. We should suspect artificial
influences, and look with small confidence on the historical character
of such a literary agglomerate. But he who would question the
antiquity of the Veda must explain how the layers of literature were
formed that are super-imposed over the original stratum of the poetry
of the Rishis; he who would suspect a literary forgery must show how,
when, and for what purpose the 1000 hymns of the Rig-veda could have
been forged, and have become the basis of the religious, moral,
political, and literary life of the ancient inhabitants of India.
The idea of revelation, and I mean more particularly book-revelation,
is not a modern idea, nor is it an idea peculiar to Christianity.
Though we look for it in vain in the literature of Greece and Rome, we
find the literature of India saturated with this idea from beginning
to end. In no country, I believe, has the theory of revelation been
so minutely elaborated as in India. The name for revelation in
Sanskrit is _S_ruti, which means hearing; and this title distinguishes
the Vedic hymns and, at a later time, the Brahma_n_as also, from all
other works, which, however sacred, and authoritative to the Hindu
mind, are admitted to have been composed by human authors. The Laws of
Manu, for instance, according to the Brahmanic theology, are not
revelation; they are not _S_ruti, but only Sm_r_iti, which means
recollection or tradition. If these laws or any other work of
authority can be proved on any point to be at variance with a single
passage of the Veda, their authority is at once overruled. According
to the orthodox views of Indian theologians, not a single line of the
Veda was the work of human authors. The whole Veda is in some way or
other the work of the Deity; and even those who received the
revelation, or, as they express it, those who saw it, were not
supposed to be ordinary mortals, but beings raised above the level of
common humanity, and less liable therefore to error in the reception
of revealed truth. The views entertained of revelation by the orthodox
theologians of India are far more minute and elaborate than those of
the most extreme advocates of verbal inspiration in Europe. The human
element, called paurusheyatva in Sanskrit, is driven out of every
corner or hiding-place, and as the Veda is held to have existed in the
mind of the Deity before the beginning of time, every allusion to
historical events, of which there are not a few, is explained away
with a zeal and ingenuity worthy of a better cause.
But let me state at once that there is nothing in the hymns themselves
to warrant such extravagant theories. In many a hymn the author says
plainly that he or his friends made it to please the gods; that he
made it, as a carpenter makes a chariot (Rv. I. 130, 6; V. 2, 11), or
like a beautiful vesture (Rv. V. 29, 15); that he fashioned it in his
heart and kept it in his mind (Rv. I. 171, 2); that he expects, as his
reward, the favour of the god whom he celebrates (Rv. IV. 6, 21). But
though the poets of the Veda know nothing of the artificial theories
of verbal inspiration, they were not altogether unconscious of higher
influences: nay, they speak of their hymns as god-given ('devattam,'
Rv. III. 37, 4). One poets says (Rv. VI. 47, 10): 'O god (Indra) have
mercy, give me my daily bread! Sharpen my mind, like the edge of iron.
Whatever I now may utter, longing for thee, do thou accept it; make me
possessed of God!' Another utters for the first time the famous hymn,
the Gayatri, which now for more than three thousand years has been the
daily prayer of every Brahman, and is still repeated every morning by
millions of pious worshippers: 'Let us meditate on the adorable light
of the divine Creator: may he rouse our minds.'[13] This consciousness
of higher influences, or of divine help in those who uttered for the
first time the simple words of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, is
very different, however, from the artificial theories of verbal
inspiration which we find in the later theological writings; it is
indeed but another expression of that deepfelt dependence on the
Deity, of that surrender and denial of all that seems to be self,
which was felt more or less by every nation, but by none, I believe,
more strongly, more constantly, than by the Indian. "It is He that has
made it,"--namely, the prayer in which the soul of the poet has thrown
off her burden,--is but a variation of, "It is He that has made us,"
which is the key-note of all religion, whether ancient or modern,
whether natural or revealed.
I must say no more to-night of what the Veda is, for I am very anxious
to explain to you, as far as it is possible, what I consider to be the
real importance of the Veda to the student of history, to the student
of religion, to the student of mankind.
[Footnote 13: 'Tat Savitur vare_n_yam bhargo devasya dhimahi, dhiyo yo
na_h_ pra_k_odayat.'--Colebrooke, 'Miscellaneous Essays,' i. 30. Many
passages bearing on this subject have been collected by Dr. Muir in
the third volume of his 'Sanskrit Texts,' p. 114 seq.]
In the study of mankind there can hardly be a subject more deeply
interesting than the study of the different forms of religion; and
much as I value the Science of Language for the aid which it lends us
in unraveling some of the most complicated tissues of the human
intellect, I confess that to my mind there is no study more absorbing
than that of the Religions of the World,--the study, if I may so call
it, of the various languages in which man has spoken to his Maker, and
of that language in which his Maker "at sundry times and in divers
manners" spake to man.
To my mind the great epochs in the world's history are marked not by
the foundation or the destruction of empires, by the migrations of
races, or by French revolutions. All this is outward history, made up
of events that seem gigantic and overpowering to those only who cannot
see beyond and beneath. The real history of man is the history of
religion--the wonderful ways by which the different families of the
human race advanced towards a truer knowledge and a deeper love of
God. This is the foundation that underlies all profane history: it is
the light, the soul, and life of history, and without it all history
would indeed be profane.
On this subject there are some excellent works in English, such as Mr.
Maurice's "Lectures on the Religions of the World," or Mr. Hardwick's
"Christ and other Masters;" in German, I need only mention Hegel's
"Philosophy of Religion," out of many other learned treatises on the
different systems of religion in the East and the West. But in all
these works religions are treated very much as languages were treated
during the last century. They are rudely classed, either according to
the different localities in which they prevailed, just as in Adelung's
"Mithridates" you find the languages of the world classified as
European, African, American, Asiatic, etc.; or according to their age,
as formerly languages used to be divided into ancient and modern; or
according to their respective dignity, as languages used to be treated
as sacred or profane, as classical or illiterate. Now you know that
the Science of Language has sanctioned a totally different system of
classification; and that the Comparative Philologist ignores
altogether the division of languages according to their locality, or
according to their age, or according to their classical or illiterate
character. Languages are now classified genealogically, _i. e._
according to their real relationship; and the most important languages
of Asia, Europe, and Africa,--that is to say, of that part of the
world on which what we call the history of man has been acted,--have
been grouped together into three great divisions, the Aryan or
Indo-European Family, the Semitic Family, and the Turanian Class.
According to that division you are aware that English, together with
all the Teutonic languages of the Continent, Celtic, Slavonic, Greek,
Latin with its modern offshoots, such as French and Italian, Persian,
and Sanskrit, are so many varieties of one common type of speech: that
Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Veda, is no more distinct from
the Greek of Homer, or from the Gothic of Ulfilas, or from the
Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, than French is from Italian. All these
languages together form one family, one whole, in which every member
shares certain features in common with all the rest, and is at the
same time distinguished from the rest by certain features peculiarly
its own. The the world on which what we call the history of man has
been acted, have been grouped together into three great divisions, the
Aryan or Indo-European Family, the Semitic Family, and the Turanian
Class. According to that division you are aware that English together
with all the Teutonic languages of the Continent, Celtic, Slavonic,
Greek, Latin with its modern offshoots, such as French and Italian,
Persian, and Sanskrit, are so many varieties of one common type of
speech: that Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Veda, is no more
distinct from the Greek of Homer, or from the Gothic of Ulfilas, or
from the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, than French is from Italian. All these
languages together form one family, one whole, in which every member
shares certain features in common with all the rest, and is at the
same time distinguished from the rest by certain features peculiarly
its own. The same applies to the Semitic Family, which comprises, as
its most important members, the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the
Arabic of the Koran, and the ancient languages on the monuments of
Phenicia and Carthage, of Babylon and Assyria. These languages, again,
form a compact family, and differ entirely from the other family,
which we called Aryan or Indo-European. The third group of languages,
for we can hardly call it a family, comprises most of the remaining
languages of Asia, and counts among its principal members the
Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoyedic, and Finnic, together with the
languages of Siam, the Malay islands, Tibet, and Southern India.
Lastly, the Chinese language stands by itself, as monosyllabic, the
only remnant of the earliest formation of human speech.
Now I believe that the same division which has introduced a new and
natural order into the history of languages, and has enabled us to
understand the growth of human speech in a manner never dreamt of in
former days, will be found applicable to a scientific study of
religions. I shall say nothing to-night of the Semitic or Turanian or
Chinese religions, but confine my remarks to the religions of the
Aryan family. These religions, though more important in the ancient
history of the world, as the religions of the Greeks and Romans, of
our own Teutonic ancestors, and of the Celtic and Slavonic races, are
nevertheless of great importance even at the present day. For although
there are no longer any worshippers of Zeus, or Jupiter, of Wodan,
Esus,[14] or Perkunas,[15] the two religions of Aryan origin which
still survive, Brahmanism and Buddhism, claim together a decided
majority among the inhabitants of the globe. Out of the whole
population of the world,
31.2 per cent are Buddhists,
13.4 per cent are Brahmanists,
----
44.6
which together gives us 44 per cent for what may be called living
Aryan religions. Of the remaining 56 per cent, 15.7 are Mohammedans,
8.7 per cent non-descript Heathens, 30.7 per cent Christians, and only
O.3 per cent Jews.
[Footnote 14: Mommsen, 'Inscriptiones Helveticae,' 40. Becker, 'Die
inschriftlichen Ueberreste der Keltischen Sprache,' in 'Beitraege zur
Vergleichenden Sprachforschung,' vol. iii. p. 341. Lucau, Phars. 1,
445, 'horrensque feris altaribus Hesus.']
[Footnote 15: Cf. G. Buehler, 'Ueber Parjanya,' in Benfey's 'Orient und
Occident,' vol. i. p. 214.]
Now, as a scientific study of the Aryan languages became possible only
after the discovery of Sanskrit, a scientific study of the Aryan
religion dates really from the discovery of the Veda. The study of
Sanskrit brought to light the original documents of three religions,
the Sacred Books of the Brahmans, the Sacred Books of the Magians, the
followers of Zoroaster, and the Sacred Books of the Buddhists. Fifty
years ago, these three collections of sacred writings were all but
unknown, their very existence was doubted, and there was not a single
scholar who could have translated a line of the Veda, a line of the
Zend-Avesta, or a line of the Buddhist Tripi_t_aka. At present large
portions of these, the canonical writings of the most ancient and most
important religions of the Aryan race, are published and deciphered,
and we begin to see a natural progress, and almost a logical
necessity, in the growth of these three systems of worship. The
oldest, most primitive, most simple form of Aryan faith finds its
expression in the Veda. The Zend-Avesta represents in its language, as
well as in its thoughts, a branching off from that more primitive
stem; a more or less conscious opposition to the worship of the gods
of nature, as adored in the Veda, and a striving after a more
spiritual, supreme, moral deity, such as Zoroaster proclaimed under
the name of Ahura mazda, or Ormuzd. Buddhism, lastly, marks a decided
schism, a decided antagonism against the established religion of the
Brahmans, a denial of the true divinity of the Vedic gods, and a
proclamation of new philosophical and social doctrines.
Without the Veda, therefore, neither the reforms of Zoroaster nor the
new teaching of Buddha would have been intelligible: we should not
know what was behind them, or what forces impelled Zoroaster and
Buddha to the founding of new religions; how much they received, how
much they destroyed, how much they created. Take but one word in the
religious phraseology of these three systems. In the Veda the gods are
called Deva. This word in Sanskrit means bright,--brightness or light
being one of the most general attributes shared by the various
manifestations of the Deity, invoked in the Veda, as Sun, or Sky, or
Fire, or Dawn, or Storm. We can see, in fact, how in the minds of the
poets of the Veda, deva from meaning bright, came gradually to mean
divine. In the Zend-Avesta the same word daeva means evil spirit. Many
of the Vedic gods, with Indra at their head, have been degraded to the
position of daevas, in order to make room for Ahura mazda, the Wise
Spirit, as the supreme deity of the Zoroastrians. In his confession of
faith the follower of Zoroaster declares: 'I cease to be a worshipper
of the daevas.' In Buddhism, again, we find these ancient Devas, Indra
and the rest, as merely legendary beings, carried about at shows, as
servants of Buddha, as goblins or fabulous heroes; but no longer
either worshipped or even feared by those with whom the name of Deva
had lost every trace of its original meaning. Thus this one word Deva
marks the mutual relations of these three religions. But more than
this. The same word deva is the Latin deus, thus pointing to that
common source of language and religion, far beyond the heights of the
Vedic Olympus, from which the Romans, as well as the Hindus, draw the
names of their deities, and the elements of their language as well as
of their religion.
The Veda, by its language and its thoughts, supplies that distant
background in the history of all the religions of the Aryan race,
which was missed indeed by every careful observer, but which formerly
could be supplied by guess-work only. How the Persians came to worship
Ormuzd, how the Buddhists came to protest against temples and
sacrifices, how Zeus and the Olympian gods came to be what they are in
the mind of Homer, or how such beings as Jupiter and Mars came to be
worshipped by the Italian peasant:--all these questions, which used to
yield material for endless and baseless speculations, can now be
answered by a simple reference to the hymns of the Veda. The religion
of the Veda is not the source of all the other religions of the Aryan
world, nor is Sanskrit the mother of all the Aryan languages.
Sanskrit, as compared to Greek and Latin, is an elder sister, not a
parent: Sanskrit is the earliest deposit of Aryan speech, as the Veda
is the earliest deposit of Aryan faith. But the religion and incipient
mythology of the Veda possess the same simplicity and transparency
which distinguish the grammar of Sanskrit from Greek, Latin, or German
grammar. We can watch in the Veda ideas and their names growing, which
in Persia, Greece, and Rome we meet with only as full-grown or as fast
decaying. We get one step nearer to that distant source of religious
thought and language which has fed the different national streams of
Persia, Greece, Rome, and Germany; and we begin to see clearly, what
ought never to have been doubted, that there is no religion without
God, or, as St. Augustine expressed, that 'there is no false religion
which does not contain some elements of truth.'
I do not wish by what I have said to raise any exaggerated
expectations as to the worth of these ancient hymns of the Veda, and
the character of that religion which they indicate rather than fully
describe. The historical importance of the Veda can hardly be
exaggerated, but its intrinsic merit, and particularly the beauty or
elevation of its sentiments, have by many been rated far too high.
Large numbers of the Vedic hymns are childish in the extreme: tedious,
low, common-place. The gods are constantly invoked to protect their
worshippers, to grant them food, large flocks, large families, and a
long life; for all which benefits they are to be rewarded by the
praises and sacrifices offered day after day, or at certain seasons of
the year. But hidden in this rubbish there are precious stones. Only
in order to appreciate them justly, we must try to divest ourselves of
the common notions about Polytheism, so repugnant not only to our
feelings, but to our understanding. No doubt, if we must employ
technical terms, the religion of the Veda is Polytheism, not
Monotheism. Deities are invoked by different names, some clear and
intelligible, such as Agni, fire; Surya, the sun; Ushas, dawn; Maruts,
the storms; P_r_ithivi, the earth; Ap, the waters; Nadi, the rivers;
others such as Varu_n_a, Mitra, Indra, which have become proper names,
and disclose but dimly their original application to the great aspects
of nature, the sky, the sun, the day. But whenever one of these
individual gods is invoked, they are not conceived as limited by the
powers of others, as superior or inferior in rank. Each god is to the
mind of the supplicant as good as all gods. He is felt, at the time,
as a real divinity,--as supreme and absolute,--without a suspicion of
those limitations which, to our mind, a plurality of gods _must_
entail on every single god. All the rest disappear for a moment from
the vision of the poet, and he only who is to fulfill their desires
stands in full light before the eyes of the worshippers. In one hymn,
ascribed to Manu, the poet says: "Among you, O gods, there is none
that is small, none that is young; you are all great indeed." And this
is indeed the key-note of the ancient Aryan worship. Yet it would be
easy to find in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which
almost every important deity is represented as supreme and absolute.
Thus in one hymn, Agni (fire) is called "the ruler of the universe,"
"the lord of men," "the wise king, the father, the brother, the son,
the friend of man;" nay, all the powers and names of the other gods
are distinctly ascribed to Agni. But though Agni is thus highly
exalted, nothing is said to disparage the divine character of the
other gods. In another hymn another god, Indra, is said to be greater
than all: "The gods," it is said, "do not reach thee, Indra, nor men;
thou overcomest all creatures in strength." Another god, Soma, is
called the king of the world, the king of heaven and earth, the
conqueror of all. And what more could human language achieve, in
trying to express the idea of a divine and supreme power, than what
another poet says of another god, Varu_n_a: "Thou art lord of all, of
heaven and earth; thou art the king of all, of those who are gods, and
of those who are men!"
This surely is not what is commonly understood by Polytheism. Yet it
would be equally wrong to call it Monotheism. If we must have a name
for it, I should call it Kathenotheism. The consciousness that all the
deities are but different names of one and the same godhead, breaks
forth indeed here and there in the Veda. But it is far from being
general. One poet, for instance, says (Rv. I. 164, 46): "They call him
Indra, Mitra, Varu_n_a, Agni; then he is the beautiful-winged heavenly
Garutmat: that which is One the wise call it in divers manners: they
call it Agni, Yama, Matari_s_van." And again (Rv. X. 114, 5): "Wise
poets make the beautiful-winged, though he is one, manifold by words."
* * * * *
I shall read you a few Vedic verses, in which the religious sentiment
predominates, and in which we perceive a yearning after truth, and
after the true God, untrammeled as yet by any names or any
traditions[16] (Rv. X. 121):--
[Footnote 16: _History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature_, p. 569.]
1. In the beginning there arose the golden Child--He was the
one born lord of all that is. He stablished the earth, and
this sky;--Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
sacrifice?
2. He who gives life, He who gives strength; whose command
all the bright gods revere; whose shadow is immortality,
whose shadow is death;--Who is the God to whom we shall
offer our sacrifice?
3. He who through His power is the one king of the breathing
and awakening world--He who governs all, man and beast;--Who
is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
4. He whose greatness these snowy mountains, whose greatness
the sea proclaims, with the distant river--He whose these
regions are, as it were His two arms;--Who is the God to
whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
5. He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm--He
through whom the heaven was stablished,--nay, the highest
heaven,--He who measured out the light in the air;--Who is
the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
6. He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will,
look up, trembling inwardly--He over whom the rising sun
shines forth;--Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
sacrifice?
7. Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed
the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the sole
life of the bright gods;--Who is the God to whom we shall
offer our sacrifice?
8. He who by His might looked even over the water-clouds,
the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice; He who
alone is God above all gods;--
9. May He not destroy us--He the creator of the earth; or
He, the righteous, who created the heaven; He also created
the bright and mighty waters;--Who is the God to whom we
shall offer our sacrifice?[17]
The following may serve as specimens of hymns addressed to individual
deities whose names have become the centres of religious thought and
legendary traditions; deities, in fact, like Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, or
Minerva, no longer mere germs, but fully developed forms of early
thought and language:
[Footnote 17: A last verse is added, which entirely spoils the
poetical beauty and the whole character of the hymn. Its later origin
seems to have struck even native critics, for the author of the Pada
text did not receive it. 'O Pra_g_apati, no other than thou hast
embraced all these created things; may what we desired when we called
on thee, be granted to us, may we be lords of riches.']
HYMN TO INDRA (Rv. I. 53).[18]
1. Keep silence well![19] we offer praises to the great
Indra in the house of the sacrificer. Does he find treasure
for those who are like sleepers? Mean praise is not valued
among the munificent.
2. Thou art the giver of horses, Indra, thou art the giver
of cows, the giver of corn, the strong lord of wealth: the
old guide of man, disappointing no desires, a friend to
friends:--to him we address this song.
3. O powerful Indra, achiever of many works, most brilliant
god--all this wealth around here is known to be thine alone:
take from it, conqueror! bring it hither! Do not stint the
desire of the worshipper who longs for thee!
4. On these days thou art gracious, and on these
nights,[20] keeping off the enemy from our cows and from
our stud. Tearing[21] the fiend night after night with the
help of Indra, let us rejoice in food, freed from haters.
5. Let us rejoice, Indra, in treasure and food, in wealth of
manifold delight and splendour. Let us rejoice in the
blessing of the gods, which gives us the strength of
offspring, gives us cows first and horses.
6. These draughts inspired thee, O lord of the brave! these
were vigour, these libations, in battles, when for the sake
of the poet, the sacrificer, thou struckest down
irresistibly ten thousands of enemies.
7. From battle to battle thou advancest bravely, from town
to town thou destroyest all this with might, when thou,
Indra, with Nami as thy friend, struckest down from afar the
deceiver Namu_k_i.
8. Thou hast slain Karanga and Par_n_aya with the
brightest spear of Atithigva. Without a helper thou didst
demolish the hundred cities of Vang_r_ida, which were
besieged by _R_i_g_i_s_van.
9. Thou hast felled down with the chariot-wheel these twenty
kings of men, who had attacked the friendless
Su_s_ravas,[22] and gloriously the sixty thousand and
ninety-nine forts.
10. Thou, Indra, hast succoured Su_s_ravas with thy
succours, Turvaya_n_a with thy protections. Thou hast made
Kutsa, Atithigva, and Ayu subject to this mighty youthful
king.
11. We who in future, protected by the gods, wish to be thy
most blessed friends, we shall praise thee, blessed by thee
with offspring, and enjoying henceforth a longer life.
[Footnote 18: I subjoin for some of the hymns here translated, the
translation of the late Professor Wilson, in order to show what kind
of difference there is between the traditional rendering of the Vedic
hymns, as adopted by him, and their interpretation according to the
rules of modern scholarship:
1. We ever offer fitting praise to the mighty Indra, in the dwelling
of the worshipper, by which he (the deity) has quickly acquired
riches, as (a thief) hastily carries (off the property) of the
sleeping. Praise ill expressed is not valued among the munificent.
2. Thou, Indra, art the giver of horses, of cattle, of barley, the
master and protector of wealth, the foremost in liberality, (the
being) of many days; thou disappointest not desires (addressed to
thee); thou art a friend to our friends: such an Indra we praise.
3. Wise and resplendent Indra, the achiever of great deeds, the riches
that are spread around are known to be thine: having collected them,
victor (over thy enemies), bring them to us: disappoint not the
expectation of the worshipper who trusts in thee.
4. Propitiated by these offerings, by these libations, dispel poverty
with cattle and horses: may we, subduing our adversary, and relieved
from enemies by Indra, (pleased) by our libations, enjoy together
abundant food.
5. Indra, may we become possessed of riches, and of food; and with
energies agreeable to many, and shining around, may we prosper through
thy divine favour, the source of prowess, of cattle, and of horses.
6. Those who were thy allies, (the Maruts,) brought thee joy:
protector of the pious, those libations and oblations (that were
offered thee on slaying V_r_itra), yielded thee delight, when thou,
unimpeded by foes, didst destroy the ten thousand obstacles opposed to
him who praised thee and offered thee libations.
7. Humiliator (of adversaries), thou goest from battle to battle, and
destroyest by thy might city after city: with thy foe-prostrating
associate, (the thunderbolt,) thou, Indra, didst slay afar off the
deceiver named Namu_k_i.
8. Thou hast slain Karanga and Par_n_aya with thy bright gleaming
spear, in the cause of Atithigva: unaided, thou didst demolish the
hundred cities of Vang_r_ida, when besieged by _R_i_g_i_s_van.
9. Thou, renowned Indra, overthrewest by thy not-to-be-overtaken
chariot-wheel, the twenty kings of men, who had come against
Su_s_ravas, unaided, and their sixty thousand and ninety and nine
followers.
10. Thou, Indra, hast preserved Su_s_ravas by thy succour,
Turvaya_n_a, by thy assistance: thou hast made Kutsa, Atithigva, and
Ayu subject to the mighty though youthful Su_s_ravas.
11. Protected by the gods, we remain, Indra, at the close of the
sacrifice, thy most fortunate friends: we praise thee, as enjoying
through thee excellent offspring, and a long and prosperous life.]
[Footnote 19: Favete linguis.]
[Footnote 20: Cf. Rv. I. 112, 25, 'dyubhir aktubhi_h_,' by day and by
night; also Rv. III. 31, 16. M. M., 'Todtenbestattung,' p. v.]
[Footnote 21: Professor Benfey reads durayanta_h_, but all MSS. that I
know, without exception, read darayanta_h_.]
The next hymn is one of many addressed to Agni as the god of fire, not
only the fire as a powerful element, but likewise the fire of the
hearth and the altar, the guardian of the house, the minister of the
sacrifice, the messenger between gods and men:
[Footnote 22: See Spiegel, 'Eran,' p. 269, on Khai Khosru =
Su_s_ravas.]
HYMN TO AGNI (Rv. II. 6).
1. Agni, accept this log which I offer to thee, accept this
my service; listen well to these my songs.
2. With this log, O Agni, may we worship thee, thou son of
strength, conqueror of horses! and with this hymn, thou
high-born!
3. May we thy servants serve thee with songs, O granter of
riches, thou who lovest songs and delightest in riches.
4. Thou lord of wealth and giver of wealth, be thou wise and
powerful; drive away from us the enemies!
5. He gives us rain from heaven, he gives us inviolable
strength, he gives us food a thousandfold.
6. Youngest of the gods, their messenger, their invoker,
most deserving of worship, come, at our praise, to him who
worships thee and longs for thy help.
7. For thou, O sage, goest wisely between these two
creations (heaven and earth, gods and men), like a friendly
messenger between two hamlets.
8. Thou art wise, and thou hast been pleased; perform thou,
intelligent Agni, the sacrifice without interruption, sit
down on this sacred grass!
The following hymn, partly laudatory, partly deprecatory, is addressed
to the Maruts or Rudras, the Storm-gods:
HYMN TO THE MARUTS (Rv. I. 39).[23]
1. When you thus from afar cast forward your measure, like a
blast of fire, through whose wisdom is it, through whose
design? To whom do you go, to whom, ye shakers (of the
earth)?
2. May your weapons be firm to attack, strong also to
withstand! May yours be the more glorious strength, not that
of the deceitful mortal!
3. When you overthrow what is firm, O ye men, and whirl
about what is heavy, ye pass through the trees of the earth,
through the clefts of the rocks.
4. No real foe of yours is known in heaven, nor in earth, ye
devourers of enemies! May strength be yours, together with
your race, O Rudras, to defy even now.
5. They make the rocks to tremble, they tear asunder the
kings of the forest. Come on, Maruts, like madmen, ye gods,
with your whole tribe.
6. You have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariots, a
red deer draws as leader. Even the earth listened at your
approach, and men were frightened.
7. O Rudras, we quickly desire your help for our race. Come
now to us with help, as of yore, thus for the sake of the
frightened Ka_n_va.
8. Whatever fiend, roused by you or roused by mortals,
attacks us, tear him from us by your power, by your
strength, by your aid.
9. For you, worshipful and wise, have wholly protected
Ka_n_va. Come to us, Maruts, with your whole help, as
quickly as lightnings come after the rain.
10. Bounteous givers, ye possess whole strength, whole
power, ye shakers (of the earth). Send, O Maruts, against
the proud enemy of the poets, an enemy, like an arrow.
[Footnote 23: Professor Wilson translates as follows:
1. When, Maruts, who make (all things) tremble, you direct
your awful (vigour) downwards from afar, as light (descends
from heaven), by whose worship, by whose praise (are you
attracted)? To what (place of sacrifice), to whom, indeed,
do you repair?
2. Strong be your weapons for driving away (your) foes, firm
in resisting them: yours be the strength that merits praise,
not (the strength) of a treacherous mortal.
3. Directing Maruts, when you demolish what is stable, when
you scatter what is ponderous, then you make your way
through the forest (trees) of earth and the defiles of the
mountains.
4. Destroyers of foes, no adversary of yours is known above
the heavens, nor (is any) upon earth: may your collective
strength be quickly exerted, sons of Rudra, to humble (your
enemies).
5. They make the mountains tremble, they drive apart the
forest trees. Go, divine Maruts, whither you will, with all
your progeny, like those intoxicated.
6. You have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariot; the
red deer yoked between them, (aids to) drag the car: the
firmament listens for your coming, and men are alarmed.
7. Rudras, we have recourse to your assistance for the sake
of our progeny: come quickly to the timid Ka_n_va, as you
formerly came, for our protection.
8. Should any adversary, instigated by you, or by man,
assail us, withhold from him food and strength and your
assistance.
9. Pra_k_etasas, who are to be unreservedly worshipped,
uphold (the sacrificer) Ka_n_va: come to us, Maruts, with
undivided protective assistances, as the lightnings (bring)
the rain.
10. Bounteous givers, you enjoy unimpaired vigour: shakers
(of the earth), you possess undiminished strength: Maruts,
let loose your anger, like an arrow, upon the wrathful enemy
of the Rishis.
]
The following is a simple prayer addressed to the Dawn:
HYMN TO USHAS (Rv. VII. 77).
1. She shines upon us, like a young wife, rousing every
living being to go to his work. When the fire had to be
kindled by men, she made the light by striking down
darkness.
2. She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving
everywhere. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant
garment. The mother of the cows, (the mornings) the leader
of the days, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to behold.
3. She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the gods, who
leads the white and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn was
seen revealed by her rays, with brilliant treasures,
following every one.
4. Thou who art a blessing where thou art near, drive far
away the unfriendly; make the pasture wide, give us safety!
Scatter the enemy, bring riches! Raise up wealth to the
worshipper, thou mighty Dawn.
5. Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou
who lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest
us food, who givest us wealth in cows, horses, and chariots.
6. Thou, daughter of the sky, thou high-born Dawn, whom the
Vasish_t_has magnify with songs, give us riches high and
wide: all ye gods, protect us always with your blessings.
I must confine myself to shorter extracts, in order to be able to show
to you that all the principal elements of real religion are present in
the Veda. I remind you again that the Veda contains a great deal of
what is childish and foolish, though very little of what is bad and
objectionable. Some of its poets ascribe to the gods sentiments and
passions unworthy of the deity, such as anger, revenge, delight in
material sacrifices; they likewise represent human nature on a low
level of selfishness and worldliness. Many hymns are utterly unmeaning
and insipid, and we must search patiently before we meet, here and
there, with sentiments that come from the depth of the soul, and with
prayers in which we could join ourselves. Yet there are such
passages, and they are the really important passages, as marking the
highest points to which the religious life of the ancient poets of
India had reached; and it is to these that I shall now call your
attention.
First of all, the religion of the Veda knows of no idols. The worship
of idols in India is a secondary formation, a later degradation of the
more primitive worship of ideal gods.
The gods of the Veda are conceived as immortal: passages in which the
birth of certain gods is mentioned have a physical meaning: they refer
to the birth of the day, the rising of the sun, the return of the
year.
The gods are supposed to dwell in heaven, though several of them, as,
for instance, Agni, the god of fire, are represented as living among
men, or as approaching the sacrifice, and listening to the praises of
their worshippers.
Heaven and earth are believed to have been made or to have been
established by certain gods. Elaborate theories of creation, which
abound in the later works, the Brahma_n_as, are not to be found in the
hymns. What we find are such passages as:
'Agni held the earth, he stablished the heaven by truthful words' (Rv.
I. 67, 3).
'Varu_n_a stemmed asunder the wide firmaments; he lifted on high the
bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the starry sky and
the earth' (Rv. VII. 86, 1).
More frequently, however, the poets confess their ignorance of the
beginning of all things, and one of them exclaims:
'Who has seen the first-born? Where was the life, the blood, the soul
of the world? Who went to ask this from any that knew it? (Rv. I. 164,
4).[24]
Or again, Rv. X. 81, 4: 'What was the forest, what was the tree out of
which they shaped heaven and earth? Wise men, ask this indeed in your
mind, on what he stood when he held the worlds?'
I now come to a more important subject. We find in the Veda, what few
would have expected to find there, the two ideas, so contradictory to
the human understanding, and yet so easily reconciled in every human
heart: God has established the eternal laws of right and wrong, he
punishes sin and rewards virtue, and yet the same God is willing to
forgive; just, yet merciful; a judge, and yet a father. Consider, for
instance, the following lines, Rv. I. 41, 4: 'His path is easy and
without thorns, who does what is right.'
And again, Rv. I. 41, 9: 'Let man fear Him who holds the four (dice),
before he throws them down (i. e. God who holds the destinies of men
in his hand); let no man delight in evil words!'
And then consider the following hymns, and imagine the feelings which
alone could have prompted them:
HYMN TO VARU_N_A (Rv. VII. 89).
1. Let me not yet, O Varu_n_a, enter into the house of clay;
have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
2. If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind;
have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
3. Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god,
have I gone wrong; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
4. Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the
midst of the waters; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
5. Whenever we men, O Varu_n_a, commit an offence before the
heavenly host, whenever we break the law through
thoughtlessness; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
[Footnote 24: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 20 note.]
And again, Rv. VII. 86:
1. Wise and mighty are the works of him who stemmed asunder
the wide firmaments (heaven and earth). He lifted on high
the bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the
starry sky and the earth.
2. Do I say this to my own self? How can I get unto
Varu_n_a? Will he accept my offering without displeasure?
When shall I, with a quiet mind, see him propitiated?
3. I ask, O Varu_n_a, wishing to know this my sin. I go to
ask the wise. The sages all tell me the same: Varu_n_a it is
who is angry with thee.
4. Was it an old sin, O Varu_n_a, that thou wishest to
destroy thy friend, who always praises thee? Tell me, thou
unconquerable lord, and I will quickly turn to thee with
praise, freed from sin.
5. Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from those
which we committed with our own bodies. Release Vasish_t_ha,
O king, like a thief who has feasted on stolen oxen; release
him like a calf from the rope.
6. It was not our own doing, O Varu_n_a, it was necessity
(or temptation), an intoxicating draught, passion, dice,
thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young; even
sleep brings unrighteousness.
7. Let me without sin give satisfaction to the angry god,
like a slave to the bounteous lord. The lord god enlightened
the foolish; he, the wisest, leads his worshipper to wealth.
8. O lord Varu_n_a, may this song go well to thy heart! May
we prosper in keeping and acquiring! Protect us, O gods,
always with your blessings!
The consciousness of sin is a prominent feature in the religion of the
Veda, so is likewise the belief that the gods are able to take away
from man the heavy burden of his sins. And when we read such passages
as 'Varu_n_a is merciful even to him who has committed sin' (Rv. VII.
87, 7), we should surely not allow the strange name of Varu_n_a to jar
on our ears, but should remember that it is but one of the many names
which men invented in their helplessness to express their ideas of the
Deity, however partial and imperfect.
The next hymn, which is taken from the Atharva-veda (IV. 16), will
show how near the language of the ancient poets of India may approach
to the language of the Bible:[25]
1. The great lord of these worlds sees as if he were near.
If a man thinks he is walking by stealth, the gods know it
all.
2. If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie down
or to get up, what two people sitting together whisper, king
Varu_n_a knows it, he is there as the third.
3. This earth, too, belongs to Varu_n_a, the king, and this
wide sky with its ends far apart. The two seas (the sky and
the ocean) are Varu_n_a's loins; he is also contained in
this small drop of water.
4. He who should flee far beyond the sky, even he would not
be rid of Varu_n_a, the king. His spies proceed from heaven
towards this world; with thousand eyes they overlook this
earth.
5. King Varu_n_a sees all this, what is between heaven and
earth, and what is beyond. He has counted the twinklings of
the eyes of men. As a player throws the dice, he settles all
things.
6. May all thy fatal nooses, which stand spread out seven by
seven and threefold, catch the man who tells a lie, may they
pass by him who tells the truth.
[Footnote 25: This hymn was first pointed out by Professor Roth in a
dissertation on the Atharva-veda (Tuebingen, 1856), and it has since
been translated and annotated by Dr. Muir, in his article on the
'Vedic Theogony and Cosmogony,' p. 31.]
Another idea which we find in the Veda is that of faith: not only in
the sense of trust in the gods, in their power, their protection,
their kindness, but in that of belief in their existence. The Latin
word credo, I believe, is the same as the Sanskrit _s_raddha, and this
_s_raddha occurs in the Veda:
Rv. I. 102, 2. 'Sun and moon go on in regular succession, that we may
see, Indra, and believe.'
Rv. I. 104, 6. 'Destroy not our future offspring, O Indra, for we have
believed in thy great power.'
Rv. I. 55, 5. 'When Indra hurls again and again his thunderbolt, then
they believe in the brilliant god.'[26]
[Footnote 26: During violent thunderstorms the natives of New Holland
are so afraid of War-ru-gu-ra, the evil spirit, that they seek shelter
even in caves haunted by Ingnas, subordinate demons, which at other
times they would enter on no account. There, in silent terror, they
prostrate themselves with their faces to the ground, waiting until the
spirit, having expended his fury, shall retire to Uta (hell) without
having discovered their hiding-place.--'Transactions of Ethnological
Society,' vol. iii. p. 229. Oldfield, 'The Aborigines of Australia.']
A similar sentiment, namely, that men only believe in the gods when
they see their signs and wonders in the sky, is expressed by another
poet (Rv. VIII. 21, 14):
'Thou, Indra, never findest a rich man to be thy friend;
wine-swillers despise thee. But when thou thunderest, when
thou gatherest (the clouds), then thou art called, like a
father.'
And with this belief in god, there is also coupled that doubt, that
true scepticism, if we may so call it, which is meant to give to faith
its real strength. We find passages even in these early hymns where
the poet asks himself, whether there is really such a god as Indra,--a
question immediately succeeded by an answer, as if given to the poet
by Indra himself. Thus we read Rv. VIII. 89, 3:
'If you wish for strength, offer to Indra a hymn of praise:
a true hymn, if Indra truly exist; for some one says, Indra
does not exist! Who has seen him? Whom shall we praise?'
Then Indra answers through the poet:
'Here I am, O worshipper, behold me here! in might I surpass
all things.'
Similar visions occur elsewhere, where the poet, after inviting a god
to a sacrifice, or imploring his pardon for his offences, suddenly
exclaims that he has seen the god, and that he feels that his prayer
is granted. For instance:
HYMN TO VARU_N_A (Rv. I. 25).
1. However we break thy laws from day to day, men as we are,
O god, Varu_n_a,
2. Do not deliver us unto death, nor to the blow of the
furious; nor to the wrath of the spiteful!
3. To propitiate thee, O Varu_n_a, we unbend thy mind with
songs, as the charioteer a weary steed.
4. Away from me they flee dispirited, intent only on gaining
wealth; as birds to their nests.
5. When shall we bring hither the man, who is victory to the
warriors; when shall we bring Varu_n_a, the wide-seeing, to
be propitiated?
[6. This they (Mitra and Varu_n_a) take in common; gracious,
they never fail the faithful giver.]
7. He who knows the place of the birds that fly through the
sky, who on the waters knows the ships;--
8. He, the upholder of order, who knows the twelve months
with the offspring of each, and knows the month that is
engendered afterwards;--
9. He who knows the track of the wind, of the wide, the
bright, the mighty; and knows those who reside on high;--
10. He, the upholder of order, Varu_n_a, sits down among his
people; he, the wise, sits there to govern.
11. From thence perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what
has been and what will be done.
12. May he, the wise Aditya, make our paths straight all our
days; may he prolong our lives!
13. Varu_n_a, wearing golden mail, has put on his shining
cloak; the spies sat down around him.
14. The god whom the scoffers do not provoke, nor the
tormentors of men, nor the plotters of mischief;--
15. He, who gives to men glory, and not half glory, who
gives it even to our own selves;--
16. Yearning for him, the far-seeing, my thoughts move
onwards, as kine move to their pastures.
17. Let us speak together again, because my honey has been
brought: that thou mayst eat what thou likest, like a
friend.
18. Did I see the god who is to be seen by all, did I see
the chariot above the earth? He must have accepted my
prayers.
19. O hear this my calling, Varu_n_a, be gracious now;
longing for help, I have called upon thee.
20. Thou, O wise god, art lord of all, of heaven and earth:
listen on thy way.
21. That I may live, take from me the upper rope, loose the
middle, and remove the lowest!
In conclusion, let me tell you that there is in the Veda no trace of
metempsychosis or that transmigration of souls from human to animal
bodies which is generally supposed to be a distinguishing feature of
Indian religion. Instead of this, we find what is really the sine qua
non of all real religion, a belief in immortality, and in personal
immortality. Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely
is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an
abyss. We cannot wonder at the great difficulties felt and expressed
by bishop Warburton and other eminent divines, with regard to the
supposed total absence of the doctrine of immortality or personal
immortality in the Old Testament; and it is equally startling that the
Sadducees who sat in the same council with the high-priest, openly
denied the resurrection.[27] However, though not expressly asserted
anywhere, a belief in personal immortality is taken for granted in
several passages of the Old Testament, and we can hardly think of
Abraham or Moses as without a belief in life and immortality. But
while this difficulty, so keenly felt with regard to the Jewish
religion, ought to make us careful in the judgments which we form of
other religions, and teach us the wisdom of charitable interpretation,
it is all the more important to mark that in the Veda passages occur
where immortality of the soul, personal immortality and personal
responsibility after death, are clearly proclaimed. Thus we read:
[Footnote 27: Acts xxii. 30, xxiii. 6.]
'He who gives alms goes to the highest place in heaven; he
goes to the gods' (Rv. I. 125, 56).
Another poet, after rebuking those who are rich and do not
communicate, says:
'The kind mortal is greater than the great in heaven!'
Even the idea, so frequent in the later literature of the Brahmans,
that immortality is secured by a son, seems implied, unless our
translation deceives us, in one passage of the Veda (VII. 56, 24):
'Asme (iti) vira_h_ maruta_h_ sushmi astu _g_ananam ya_h_ asura_h_ vi
dharta, apa_h_ yena su-kshitaye tarema, adha svam oka_h_ abhi vah
syama.' 'O Maruts, may there be to us a strong son, who is a living
ruler of men: through whom we may cross the waters on our way to the
happy abode; then may we come to your own house!'
One poet prays that he may see again his father and mother after death
(Rv. I. 24, 1); and the fathers (Pit_r_is) are invoked almost like
gods, oblations are offered to them, and they are believed to enjoy,
in company with the gods, a life of never ending felicity (Rv. X. 15,
16).
We find this prayer addressed to Soma (Rv. IX. 113, 7):
'Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is
placed, in that immortal imperishable world place me, O
Soma!'
'Where king Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place of
heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me
immortal!
'Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where
the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal!'
'Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the bright
sun is, where there is freedom and delight, there make me
immortal!
'Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and
pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are
attained, there make me immortal!'[28]
Whether the old Rishis believed likewise in a place of punishment for
the wicked, is more doubtful, though vague allusions to it occur in
the Rig-veda, and more distinct descriptions are found in the
Atharva-veda. In one verse it is said that the dead is rewarded for
his good deeds, that he leaves or casts off all evil, and glorified
takes his body (Rv. X. 14, 8).[29] The dogs of Yama, the king of the
departed, present some terrible aspects, and Yama is asked to protect
the departed from them (Rv. X. 14, 11). Again, a pit (karta) is
mentioned into which the lawless are said to be hurled down (Rv. IX.
73, 8), and into which Indra casts those who offer no sacrifices (Rv.
I. 121, 13). One poet prays that the Adityas may preserve him from the
destroying wolf, and from falling into the pit (Rv. II. 29, 6). In one
passage we read that 'those who break the commandments of Varu_n_a and
who speak lies are born for that deep place' (Rv. IV. 5, 5).[30]
[Footnote 28: Professor Roth, after quoting several passages from the
Veda in which a belief in immortality is expressed, remarks with great
truth: 'We here find, not without astonishment, beautiful conceptions
on immortality expressed in unadorned language with child-like
conviction. If it were necessary, we might here find the most powerful
weapons against the view which has lately been revived, and proclaimed
as new, that Persia was the only birthplace of the idea of
immortality, and that even the nations of Europe had derived it from
that quarter. As if the religious spirit of every gifted race was not
able to arrive at it by its own strength.'--('Journal of the German
Oriental Society,' vol. iv. p. 427.) See Dr. Muir's article on Yama,
in the 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' p. 10.]
[Footnote 29: M. M., Die Todtenbestattung bei den Brahmanen
'Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft,' vol. ix. p.
xii.]
[Footnote 30: Dr. Muir, article on Yama, p. 18.]
Surely the discovery of a religion like this, as unexpected as the
discovery of the jaw-bone of Abbeville, deserves to arrest our
thoughts for a moment, even in the haste and hurry of this busy life.
No doubt for the daily wants of life, the old division of religions
into true and false is quite sufficient; as for practical purposes we
distinguish only between our own mother-tongue on the one side, and
all other foreign languages on the other. But, from a higher point of
view, it would not be right to ignore the new evidence that has come
to light; and as the study of geology has given us a truer insight
into the stratification of the earth, it is but natural to expect that
a thoughtful study of the original works of three of the most
important religions of the world, Brahmanism, Magism, and Buddhism,
will modify our views as to the growth or history of religion, as to
the hidden layers of religious thought beneath the soil on which we
stand. Such inquires should be undertaken without prejudice and
without fear: the evidence is placed before us; our duty is to sift it
critically, to weigh it honestly, and to wait for the results.
Three of these results, to which, I believe, a comparative study of
religions is sure to lead, I may state before I conclude this Lecture:
1. We shall learn that religions in their most ancient form,
or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from
many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times.
2. We shall learn that there is hardly one religion which
does not contain some truth, some important truth; truth
sufficient to enable those who seek the Lord and feel after
Him, to find Him in their hour of need.
3. We shall learn to appreciate better than ever what we
have in our own religion. No one who has not examined
patiently and honestly the other religions of the world, can
know what Christianity really is, or can join with such
truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul: 'I am not
ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.'
II.
CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS.[31]
In so comprehensive a work as Mr. Hardwick's 'Christ and other
Masters,' the number of facts stated, of topics discussed, of
questions raised, is so considerable that in reviewing it we can
select only one or two points for special consideration. Mr. Hardwick
intends to give in his work, of which the third volume has just been
published, a complete panorama of ancient religion. After having
discussed in the first volume what he calls the religious tendencies
of our age, he enters upon an examination of the difficult problem of
the unity of the human race, and proceeds to draw, in a separate
chapter, the characteristic features of religion under the Old
Testament. Having thus cleared his way, and established some of the
principles according to which the religions of the world should be
judged, Mr. Hardwick devotes the whole of the second volume to the
religions of India. We find there, first of all, a short but very
clear account of the religion of the Veda, as far as it is known at
present. We then come to a more matter-of-fact representation of
Brahmanism, or the religion of the Hindus, as represented in the
so-called Laws of Manu, and in the ancient portions of the two epic
poems, the Ramaya_n_a and Mahabharata. The next chapter is devoted to
the various systems of Indian philosophy, which all partake more or
less of a religious character, and form a natural transition to the
first subjective system of faith in India, the religion of Buddha. Mr.
Hardwick afterwards discusses, in two separate chapters, the apparent
and the real correspondences between Hinduism and revealed religion,
and throws out some hints how we may best account for the partial
glimpses of truth which exist in the Vedas, the canonical books of
Buddhism, and the later Pura_n_as. All these questions are handled
with such ability, and discussed with so much elegance and eloquence,
that the reader becomes hardly aware of the great difficulties of the
subject, and carries away, if not quite a complete and correct, at
least a very lucid, picture of the religious life of ancient India.
The third volume, which was published in the beginning of this year,
is again extremely interesting, and full of the most varied
descriptions. The religions of China are given first, beginning with
an account of the national traditions, as collected and fixed by
Confucius. Then follows the religious system of Lao-tse, or the
Tao-ism of China, and lastly Buddhism again, only under that modified
form which it assumed when introduced from India into China. After
this sketch of the religious life of China, the most ancient centre of
Eastern civilisation, Mr. Hardwick suddenly transports us to the New
World, and introduces us to the worship of the wild tribes of America,
and to the ruins of the ancient temples in which the civilised races
of that continent, especially the Mexicans, once bowed themselves down
before their god or gods. Lastly, we have to embark on the South Sea,
and to visit the various islands which form a chain between the west
coast of America and the east coast of Africa, stretching over half of
the globe, and inhabited by the descendants of the once united race of
the Malayo-Polynesians.
[Footnote 31: 'Christ and other Masters.' An Historical Inquiry into
some of the chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christianity and
the Religious Systems of the Ancient World, with special reference to
prevailing Difficulties and Objections. By Charles Hardwick, M.A.,
Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge. Parts I, II, III.
Cambridge, 1858.]
The account which Mr. Hardwick can afford to give of the various
systems of religion in so short a compass as he has fixed for himself,
must necessarily be very general; and his remarks on the merits and
defects peculiar to each, which were more ample in the second volume,
have dwindled down to much smaller dimensions in the third. He
declares distinctly that he does not write for missionaries. 'It is
not my leading object,' he says, 'to conciliate the more thoughtful
minds of heathendom in favour of the Christian faith. However laudable
that task may be, however fitly it may occupy the highest and the
keenest intellect of persons who desire to further the advance of
truth and holiness among our heathen fellow-subjects, there are
difficulties nearer home which may in fairness be regarded as
possessing prior claims on the attention of a Christian Advocate.'
We confess that we regret that Mr. Hardwick should have taken this
line. If, in writing his criticism on the ancient or modern systems of
Pagan religion, he had placed himself face to face with a poor
helpless creature, such as the missionaries have to deal with--a man
brought up in the faith of his fathers, accustomed to call his god or
gods by names sacred to him from his first childhood--a man who had
derived much real help and consolation from his belief in these
gods--who had abstained from committing crime, because he was afraid
of the anger of a Divine Being--who had performed severe penance,
because he hoped to appease the anger of the gods--who had given, not
only the tenth part of all he valued most, but the half, nay, the
whole of his property, as a free offering to his priests, that they
might pray for him or absolve him from his sin--if, in discussing any
of the ancient or modern systems of Pagan religion, Mr. Hardwick had
tried to address his arguments to such a person, we believe he would
himself have felt a more human, real, and hearty interest in his
subject. He would more earnestly have endeavoured to find out the good
elements in every form of religious belief. No sensible missionary
could bring himself to tell a man who has done all that he could do,
and more than many who have received the true light of the Gospel,
that he was excluded from all hope of salvation, and by his very birth
and colour handed over irretrievably to eternal damnation. It is
possible to put a charitable interpretation on many doctrines of
ancient heathenism, and the practical missionary is constantly obliged
to do so. Let us only consider what these doctrines are. They are not
theories devised by men who wish to keep out the truth of
Christianity, but sacred traditions which millions of human beings are
born and brought up to believe in, as we are born and brought up to
believe in Christianity. It is the only spiritual food which God in
his wisdom has placed within their reach. But if we once begin to
think of modern heathenism, and how certain tenets of Lao-tse resemble
the doctrines of Comte or Spinoza, our equanimity, our historical
justice, our Christian charity, are gone. We become advocates
wrangling for victory--we are no longer tranquil observers,
compassionate friends and teachers. Mr. Hardwick sometimes addresses
himself to men like Lao-tse or Buddha, who are now dead and gone more
than two thousand years, in a tone of offended orthodoxy, which may or
may not be right in modern controversy, but which entirely disregards
the fact that it has pleased God to let these men and millions of
human beings be born on earth without a chance of ever hearing of the
existence of the Gospel. We cannot penetrate into the secrets of the
Divine wisdom, but we are bound to believe that God has His purpose in
all things, and that He will know how to judge those to whom so little
has been given. Christianity does not require of us that we should
criticise, with our own small wisdom, that Divine policy which has
governed the whole world from the very beginning. We pity a man who is
born blind--we are not angry with him; and Mr. Hardwick, in his
arguments against the tenets of Buddha or Lao-tse, seems to us to
treat these men too much in the spirit of a policeman who tells a poor
blind beggar that he is only shamming blindness. However, if, as a
Christian Advocate, Mr. Hardwick found it impossible to entertain, or
at least express, any sympathy with the Pagan world, even the cold
judgment of the historian would have been better than the excited
pleading of a partisan. Surely it is not necessary, in order to prove
that our religion is the only true religion, that we should insist on
the utter falseness of all other forms of belief. We need not be
frightened if we discover traces of truth, traces even of Christian
truth, among the sages and lawgivers of other nations. St. Augustine
was not frightened by this discovery, and every thoughtful Christian
will feel cheered by the words of that pious philosopher, when he
boldly declares, that there is no religion which, among its many
errors, does not contain some real and divine truth. It shows a want
of faith in God, and in His inscrutable wisdom in the government of
the world, if we think we ought to condemn all ancient forms of faith,
except the religion of the Jews. A true spirit of Christianity will
rather lead us to shut our eyes against many things which are
revolting to us in the religion of the Chinese, or the wild Americans,
or the civilised Hindus, and to try to discover, as well as we can,
how even in these degraded forms of worship a spark of light lies
hidden somewhere--a spark which may lighten and warm the heart of the
Gentiles, 'who by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory,
and honour, and immortality.' There is an undercurrent of thought in
Mr. Hardwick's book which breaks out again and again, and which has
certainly prevented him from discovering many a deep lesson which may
be learnt in the study of ancient religions. He uses harsh language,
because he is thinking, not of the helpless Chinese, or the dreaming
Hindu whose tenets he controverts, but of modern philosophers; and he
is evidently glad of every opportunity where he can show to the latter
that their systems are mere _rechauffes_ of ancient heathenism. Thus
he says, in his introduction to the third volume:
'I may also be allowed to add, that, in the present
chapters, the more thoughtful reader will not fail to
recognise the proper tendency of certain current
speculations, which are recommended to us on the ground that
they accord entirely with the last discoveries of science,
and embody the deliberate verdicts of the oracle within us.
Notwithstanding all that has been urged in their behalf,
those theories are little more than a return to
long-exploded errors, a resuscitation of extinct volcanoes;
or at best, they merely offer to introduce among us an array
of civilising agencies, which, after trial in other
countries, have been all found wanting. The governing class
of China, for example, have long been familiar with the
metaphysics of Spinoza. They have also carried out the
social principles of M. Comte upon the largest possible
scale. For ages they have been what people of the present
day are wishing to become in Europe, with this difference
only, that the heathen legislator who had lost all faith in
God attempted to redress the wrongs and elevate the moral
status of his subjects by the study of political science, or
devising some new scheme of general sociology; while the
positive philosopher of the present day, who has relapsed
into the same positions, is in every case rejecting a
religious system which has proved itself the mightiest of
all civilisers, and the constant champion of the rights and
dignity of men. He offers in the stead of Christianity a
specious phase of paganism, by which the nineteenth century
after Christ may be assimilated to the golden age of Mencius
and Confucius; or, in other words, may consummate its
religious freedom, and attain the highest pinnacle of human
progress, by reverting to a state of childhood and of moral
imbecility.'
Few serious-minded persons will like the temper of this paragraph. The
history of ancient religion is too important, too sacred a subject to
be used as a masked battery against modern infidelity. Nor should a
Christian Advocate ever condescend to defend his cause by arguments
such as a pleader who is somewhat sceptical as to the merits of his
case, may be allowed to use, but which produce on the mind of the
Judge the very opposite effect of that which they are intended to
produce. If we want to understand the religions of antiquity, we must
try, as well as we can, to enter into the religious, moral, and
political atmosphere of the ancient world. We must do what the
historian does. We must become ancients ourselves, otherwise we shall
never understand the motives and meaning of their faith. Take one
instance. There are some nations who have always regarded death with
the utmost horror. Their whole religion may be said to be a fight
against death, and the chief object of their prayers seems to be a
long life on earth. The Persian clings to life with intense tenacity,
and the same feeling exists among the Jews. Other nations, on the
contrary, regard death in a different light. Death is to them a
passage from one life to another. No misgiving has ever entered their
minds as to a possible extinction of existence, and at the first call
of the priest--nay, sometimes from a mere selfish yearning after a
better life--they are ready to put an end to their existence on earth.
Feelings of this kind can hardly be called convictions arrived at by
the individual. They are national peculiarities, and they exercise an
irresistible sway over all who belong to the same nation. The loyal
devotion which the Slavonic nations feel for their sovereign will
make the most brutalized Russian peasant step into the place where
his comrade has just been struck down, without a thought of his wife,
or his mother, or his children, whom he is never to see again. He does
not do this because, by his own reflection, he has arrived at the
conclusion that he is bound to sacrifice himself for his emperor or
for his country--he does it because he knows that every one would do
the same; and the only feeling of satisfaction in which he would allow
himself to indulge is, that he was doing his duty. If, then, we wish
to understand the religions of the ancient nations of the world, we
must take into account their national character. Nations who value
life so little as the Hindus, and some of the American and Malay
nations, could not feel the same horror of human sacrifices, for
instance, which would be felt by a Jew; and the voluntary death of the
widow would inspire her nearest relations with no other feeling but
that of compassion and regret at seeing a young bride follow her
husband into a distant land. She herself would feel that, in following
her husband into death, she was only doing what every other widow
would do--she was only doing her duty. In India, where men in the
prime of life throw themselves under the car of Jaggernath, to be
crushed to death by the idol they believe in--where the plaintiff who
cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his
judge--where the philosopher who thinks he has learnt all which this
world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity,
quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore
of existence--in such a country, however much we may condemn these
practices, we must be on our guard and not judge the strange religions
of such strange creatures according to our own more sober code of
morality. Let a man once be impressed with a belief that this life is
but a prison, and that he has but to break through its walls in order
to breathe the fresh and pure air of a higher life--let him once
consider it cowardice to shrink from this act, and a proof of courage
and of a firm faith in God to rush back to that eternal source from
whence he came--and let these views be countenanced by a whole nation,
sanctioned by priests, and hallowed by poets, and however we may blame
and loathe the custom of human sacrifices and religious suicides, we
shall be bound to confess that to such a man, and to a whole nation of
such men, the most cruel rites will have a very different meaning from
what they would have to us. They are not mere cruelty and brutality.
They contain a religious element, and presuppose a belief in
immortality, and an indifference with regard to worldly pleasures,
which, if directed in a different channel, might produce martyrs and
heroes. Here, at least, there is no danger of modern heresy aping
ancient paganism; and we feel at liberty to express our sympathy and
compassion, even with the most degraded of our brethren. The Fijians,
for instance, commit almost every species of atrocity; but we can
still discover, as Wilkes remarked in his 'Exploring Expedition,' that
the source of many of their abhorrent practices is a belief in a
future state, guided by no just notions of religious or moral
obligations. They immolate themselves; they think it right to destroy
their best friends, to free them from the miseries of this life; they
actually consider it a duty, and perhaps a painful duty, that the son
should strangle his parents, if requested to do so. Some of the
Fijians, when interrupted by Europeans in the act of strangling their
mother, simply replied that she was their mother, and they were her
children, and they ought to put her to death. On reaching the grave
the mother sat down, when they all, including children, grandchildren,
relations, and friends, took an affectionate leave of her. A rope,
made of twisted tapa, was then passed twice around her neck by her
sons, who took hold of it and strangled her--after which she was put
into her grave, with the usual ceremonies. They returned to feast and
mourn, after which she was entirely forgotten, as though she had not
existed. No doubt these are revolting rites; but the phase of human
thought which they disclose is far from being simply revolting. There
is in these immolations, even in their most degraded form, a grain of
that superhuman faith which we admire in the temptation of Abraham;
and we feel that the time will come, nay, that it is coming, when the
voice of the Angel of the Lord will reach those distant islands, and
give a higher and better purpose to the wild ravings of their
religion.
It is among these tribes that the missionary, if he can speak a
language which they understand, gains the most rapid influence. But he
must first learn himself to understand the nature of these savages,
and to translate the wild yells of their devotion into articulate
language. There is, perhaps, no race of men so low and degraded as the
Papuas. It has frequently been asserted they had no religion at all.
And yet these same Papuas, if they want to know whether what they are
going to undertake is right or wrong, squat before their karwar, clasp
the hands over the forehead, and bow repeatedly, at the same time
stating their intentions. If they are seized with any nervous feeling
during this process, it is considered as a bad sign, and the project
is abandoned for a time--if otherwise, the idol is supposed to
approve. Here we have but to translate what they in their helpless
language call 'nervous feeling' by our word 'conscience,' and we shall
not only understand what they really mean, but confess, perhaps, that
it would be well for us if in our own hearts the karwar occupied the
same prominent place which it occupies in the cottage of every Papua.
_March, 1858._
III.
THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA.
THE VEDA.
The main stream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the
north-west. No historian can tell us by what impulse these adventurous
Nomads were driven on through Asia towards the isles and shores of
Europe. The first start of this world-wide migration belongs to a
period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the
soil of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans,
Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks. But whatever it was, the impulse was as
irresistible as the spell which, in our own times, sends the Celtic
tribes towards the prairies or the regions of gold across the
Atlantic. It requires a strong will, or a great amount of inertness,
to be able to withstand the impetus of such national, or rather
ethnical, movements. Few will stay behind when all are going. But to
let one's friends depart, and then to set out ourselves--to take a
road which, lead where it may, can never lead us to join those again
who speak our language and worship our gods--is a course which only
men of strong individuality and great self-dependence are capable of
pursuing. It was the course adopted by the southern branch of the
Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryas of India and the Zoroastrians of
Iran.
At the first dawn of traditional history we see these Aryan tribes
migrating across the snow of the Himalaya southward towards the 'Seven
Rivers' (the Indus, the five rivers of the Penjab, and the Sarasvati),
and ever since India has been called their home. That before this time
they had been living in more northern regions, within the same
precincts with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians,
Germans, and Celts, is a fact as firmly established as that the
Normans of William the Conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia. The
evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence
worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods. It would
have been next to impossible to discover any traces of relationship
between the swarthy natives of India and their conquerors whether
Alexander or Clive, but for the testimony borne by language. What
other evidence could have reached back to times when Greece was not
yet peopled by Greeks, nor India by Hindus? Yet these are the times of
which we are speaking. What authority would have been strong enough to
persuade the Grecian army, that their gods and their hero ancestors
were the same as those of king Porus, or to convince the English
soldier that the same blood might be running in his veins and in the
veins of the dark Bengalese? And yet there is not an English jury
now-a-days, which, after examining the hoary documents of language,
would reject the claim of a common descent and a spiritual
relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live
in India and in England that have witnessed the first separation of
the northern and southern Aryans, and these are witnesses not to be
shaken by any cross-examination. The terms for God, for house, for
father, mother, son, daughter, for dog and cow, for heart and tears,
for axe and tree, identical in all the Indo-European idioms, are like
the watchwords of soldiers. We challenge the seeming stranger; and
whether he answer with the lips of a Greek, a German, or an Indian, we
recognise him as one of ourselves. Though the historian may shake his
head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea,
all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a
time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavonians, the
Greeks and Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living together
beneath the same roof, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and
Turanian races.
It is more difficult to prove that the Hindu was the last to leave
this common home, that he saw his brothers all depart towards the
setting sun, and that then, turning towards the south and the east, he
started alone in search of a new world. But as in his language and in
his grammar he has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each
of the northern dialects singly, as he agrees with the Greek and the
German where the Greek and the German differ from all the rest, and as
no other language has carried off so large a share of the common Aryan
heirloom--whether roots, grammar, words, mythes, or legends--it is
natural to suppose that, though perhaps the eldest brother, the Hindu
was the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family.
The Aryan nations who pursued a north-westerly direction, stand before
us in history as the principal nations of north-western Asia and
Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of
history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of
active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected
society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of
art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of
philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and
Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history,
and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world
together by the chains of civilisation, commerce, and religion. In a
word, they represent the Aryan man in his historical character.
But while most of the members of the Aryan family followed this
glorious path, the southern tribes were slowly migrating towards the
mountains which gird the north of India. After crossing the narrow
passes of the Hindukush or the Himalaya, they conquered or drove
before them, as it seems without much effort, the aboriginal
inhabitants of the Trans-Himalayan countries. They took for their
guides the principal rivers of Northern India, and were led by them to
new homes in their beautiful and fertile valleys. It seems as if the
great mountains in the north had afterwards closed for centuries their
Cyclopean gates against new immigrations, while, at the same time, the
waves of the Indian Ocean kept watch over the southern borders of the
peninsula. None of the great conquerors of antiquity,--Sesostris,
Semiramis, Nebuchadnezzar, or Cyrus,--disturbed the peaceful seats of
these Aryan settlers. Left to themselves in a world of their own,
without a past, and without a future before them, they had nothing but
themselves to ponder on. Struggles there must have been in India also.
Old dynasties were destroyed, whole families annihilated, and new
empires founded. Yet the inward life of the Hindu was not changed by
these convulsions. His mind was like the lotus leaf after a shower of
rain has passed over it; his character remained the same, passive,
meditative, quiet, and thoughtful. A people of this peculiar stamp was
never destined to act a prominent part in the history of the world;
nay, the exhausting atmosphere of transcendental ideas in which they
lived could not but exercise a detrimental influence on the active and
moral character of the Indians. Social and political virtues were
little cultivated, and the ideas of the useful and the beautiful
hardly known to them. With all this, however, they had, what the Greek
was as little capable of imagining, as they were of realising the
elements of Grecian life. They shut their eyes to this world of
outward seeming and activity, to open them full on the world of
thought and rest. The ancient Hindus were a nation of philosophers,
such as could nowhere have existed except in India, and even there in
early times alone. It is with the Hindu mind as if a seed were placed
in a hothouse. It will grow rapidly, its colours will be gorgeous, its
perfume rich, its fruits precocious and abundant. But never will it be
like the oak growing in wind and weather, and striking its roots into
real earth, and stretching its branches into real air beneath the
stars and the sun of heaven. Both are experiments, the hothouse flower
and the Hindu mind; and as experiments, whether physiological or
psychological, both deserve to be studied.
We may divide the whole Aryan family into two branches, the northern
and the southern. The northern nations, Celts, Greeks, Romans,
Germans, and Slavonians, have each one act allotted to them on the
stage of history. They have each a national character to support. Not
so the southern tribes. They are absorbed in the struggles of thought,
their past is the problem of creation, their future the problem of
existence; and the present, which ought to be the solution of both,
seems never to have attracted their attention, or called forth their
energies. There never was a nation believing so firmly in another
world, and so little concerned about this. Their condition on earth is
to them a problem; their real and eternal life a simple fact. Though
this is said chiefly with reference to them before they were brought
in contact with foreign conquerors, traces of this character are still
visible in the Hindus, as described by the companions of Alexander,
nay, even in the Hindus of the present day. The only sphere in which
the Indian mind finds itself at liberty to act, to create, and to
worship, is the sphere of religion and philosophy; and nowhere have
religious and metaphysical ideas struck root so deep in the mind of a
nation as in India. The shape which these ideas took amongst the
different classes of society, and at different periods of
civilisation, naturally varies from coarse superstition to sublime
spiritualism. But, taken as a whole, history supplies no second
instance where the inward life of the soul has so completely absorbed
all the other faculties of a people.
It was natural, therefore, that the literary works of such a nation,
when first discovered in Sanskrit MSS. by Wilkins, Sir W. Jones, and
others, should have attracted the attention of all interested in the
history of the human race. A new page in man's biography was laid
open, and a literature as large as that of Greece or Rome was to be
studied. The Laws of Manu, the two epic poems, the Ramaya_n_a and
Mahabharata, the six complete systems of philosophy, works on
astronomy and medicine, plays, stories, fables, elegies, and lyrical
effusions, were read with intense interest, on account of their age
not less than their novelty.
Still this interest was confined to a small number of students, and in
a few cases only could Indian literature attract the eyes of men who,
from the summit of universal history, survey the highest peaks of
human excellence. Herder, Schlegel, Humboldt, and Goethe, discovered
what was really important in Sanskrit literature. They saw what was
genuine and original, in spite of much that seemed artificial. For the
artificial, no doubt, has a wide place in Sanskrit literature.
Everywhere we find systems, rules and models, castes and schools, but
nowhere individuality, no natural growth, and but few signs of strong
originality and genius.
There is, however, one period of Sanskrit literature which forms an
exception, and which will maintain its place in the history of
mankind, when the name of Kalidasa and _S_akuntala will have been long
forgotten. It is the most ancient period, the period of the Veda.
There is, perhaps, a higher degree of interest attaching to works of
higher antiquity; but in the Veda we have more than mere antiquity. We
have ancient thought expressed in ancient language. Without insisting
on the fact that even chronologically the Veda is the first book of
the Aryan nations, we have in it, at all events, a period in the
intellectual life of man to which there is no parallel in any other
part of the world. In the hymns of the Veda we see man left to himself
to solve the riddle of this world. We see him crawling on like a
creature of the earth with all the desires and weaknesses of his
animal nature. Food, wealth, and power, a large family and a long
life, are the theme of his daily prayers. But he begins to lift up his
eyes. He stares at the tent of heaven, and asks who supports it? He
opens his ears to the winds, and asks them whence and whither? He is
awakened from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and him
whom his eyes cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily
pittance of his existence, he calls 'his life, his breath, his
brilliant Lord and Protector.' He gives names to all the powers of
nature, and after he has called the fire Agni, the sun-light Indra,
the storms Maruts, and the dawn Ushas, they all seem to grow naturally
into beings like himself, nay, greater than himself. He invokes them,
he praises them, he worships them. But still with all these gods
around him, beneath him, and above him, the early poet seems ill at
rest within himself. There too, in his own breast, he has discovered a
power that wants a name, a power nearer to him than all the gods of
nature, a power that is never mute when he prays, never absent when he
fears and trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers, and yet to
listen to them; it seems to live in him, and yet to support him and
all around him. The only name he can find for this mysterious power is
Brahman; for brahman meant originally force, will, wish, and the
propulsive power of creation. But this impersonal brahman, too, as
soon as it is named, grows into something strange and divine. It ends
by being one of many gods, one of the great triad, worshipped to the
present day. And still the thought within him has no real name; that
power which is nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the
heavens, and every living being, floats before his mind, conceived but
not expressed. At last he calls it Atman; for atman, originally breath
or spirit, comes to mean Self and Self alone--Self whether divine or
human, Self whether creating or suffering, Self whether one or all,
but always Self, independent and free. 'Who has seen the first-born,'
says the poet, 'when he who has no bones (i. e. form) bore him that
had bones? Where was the life, the blood, the Self of the world? Who
went to ask this from any that knew it?' (Rv.I. 164, 4). This idea of
a divine Self once expressed, everything else must acknowledge its
supremacy, 'Self is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all
things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the
circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all selves are
contained in this Self.[32] Brahman itself is but Self.'[33]
[Footnote 32: B_r_ihad-ara_n_yaka, IV. 5, 15 ed. Roer, p. 487.]
[Footnote 33: Ibid. p. 478. _K_handogya-upanishad, VIII. 3, 3-4.]
This Atman also grew; but it grew, as it were, without attributes. The
sun is called the Self of all that moves and rests (Rv. I. 115, 1),
and still more frequently self becomes a mere pronoun. But Atman
remained always free from mythe and worship, differing in this from
the Brahman (neuter), who has his temples in India even now, and is
worshipped as Brahman (masculine), together with Vish_n_u and _S_iva,
and other popular gods. The idea of the Atman or Self, like a pure
crystal, was too transparent for poetry, and therefore was handed over
to philosophy, which afterwards polished, and turned, and watched it
as the medium through which all is seen, and in which all is reflected
and known. But philosophy is later than the Veda, and it is of the
Vaidik period only I have here to speak.[34]
[Footnote 34: In writing the above, I was thinking rather of the
mental process that was necessary for the production of such words as
brahman, atman, and others, than of their idiomatic use in the ancient
literature of India. It might be objected, for instance, that brahman,
neut. in the sense of creative power or the principal cause of all
things, does not occur in the Rig-veda. This is true. But it occurs in
that sense in the Atharva-veda, and in several of the Brahma_n_as.
There we read of 'the oldest or greatest Brahman which rules
everything that has been or will be.' Heaven is said to belong to
Brahman alone (Atharva-veda X. 8, 1). In the Brahma_n_as, this Brahman
is called the first-born, the self-existing, the best of the gods, and
heaven and earth are said to have been established by it. Even the
vital spirits are identified with it (_S_atapatha-brahma_n_a VIII. 4,
9, 3).
In other passages, again, this same Brahman is represented as existing
in man (Atharva-veda X. 7, 17), and in this very passage we can watch
the transition from the neutral Brahman into Brahman, conceived of as
a masculine:
Ye purushe brahma vidus te vidu_h_ paramesh_t_hina_m_,
Yo veda paramesh_t_hina_m_, ya_s_ _k_a veda pra_g_apatim,
_G_yesh_t_ha_m_ ye brahma_n_a_m_ vidus, te skambham anu sa_m_vidu_h_.
'They who know Brahman in man, they know the Highest,
He who knows the Highest, and he who knows Pra_g_apati (the lord of
creatures),
And they who know the oldest Brahma_n_a, they know the Ground.'
The word Brahma_n_a which is here used, is a derivative form of
Brahman; but what is most important in these lines is the mixing of
neuter and masculine words, of impersonal and personal deities. This
process is brought to perfection by changing Brahman, the neuter, even
grammatically into Brahman, a masculine,--a change which has taken
place in the Ara_n_yakas, where we find Brahman used as the name of a
male deity. It is this Brahman, with the accent on the first, not, as
has been supposed, brahman, the priest, that appears again in the
later literature as one of the divine triad, Brahman, Vish_n_u,
_S_iva.
The word brahman, as a neuter, is used in the Rig-veda in the sense of
prayer also, originally what bursts forth from the soul, and, in one
sense, what is revealed. Hence in later times brahman is used
collectively for the Veda, the sacred word.
Another word, with the accent on the last syllable, is brahman, the
man who prays, who utters prayers, the priest, and gradually the
Brahman by profession. In this sense it is frequently used in the
Rig-veda (I. 108, 7), but not yet in the sense of Brahman by birth or
caste.]
In the Veda, then, we can study a theogony of which that of Hesiod is
but the last chapter. We can study man's natural growth, and the
results to which it may lead under the most favourable conditions. All
was given him that nature can bestow. We see him blest with the
choicest gifts of the earth, under a glowing and transparent sky,
surrounded by all the grandeur and all the riches of nature, with a
language 'capable of giving soul to the objects of sense, and body to
the abstractions of metaphysics.' We have a right to expect much from
him, only we must not expect in his youthful poems the philosophy of
the nineteenth century, or the beauties of Pindar, or, with some
again, the truths of Christianity. Few understand children, still
fewer understand antiquity. If we look in the Veda for high poetical
diction, for striking comparisons, for bold combinations, we shall be
disappointed. These early poets thought more for themselves than for
others. They sought rather, in their language, to be true to their own
thought than to please the imagination of their hearers. With them it
was a great work achieved for the first time to bind thoughts and
words together, to find expressions or to form new names. As to
similes, we must look to the words themselves, which, if we compare
their radical and their nominal meaning, will be found full of bold
metaphors. No translation in any modern language can do them justice.
As to beauty, we must discover it in the absence of all effort, and in
the simplicity of their hearts. Prose was, at that time, unknown, as
well as the distinction between prose and poetry. It was the attempted
imitation of those ancient natural strains of thought which in later
times gave rise to poetry in our sense of the word, that is to say, to
poetry as an art, with its counted syllables, its numerous epithets,
its rhyme and rhythm, and all the conventional attributes of 'measured
thought.'
In the Veda itself, however--even if by Veda we mean the Rig-veda only
(the other three, the Saman, Ya_g_ush, and Atharva_n_a, having solely
a liturgical interest, and belonging to an entirely different
sphere)--in the Rig-veda also, we find much that is artificial,
imitated, and therefore modern, if compared with other hymns. It is
true that all the 1017 hymns of the Rig-veda were comprised in a
collection which existed as such before one of those elaborate
theological commentaries, known under the name of Brahma_n_a, was
written, that is to say, about 800 B.C. But before the date of their
collection these must have existed for centuries. In different songs
the names of different kings occur, and we see several generations of
royal families pass away before us with different generations of
poets. Old songs are mentioned, and new songs. Poets whose
compositions we possess are spoken of as the seers of olden times;
their names in other hymns are surrounded by a legendary halo. In some
cases, whole books or chapters may be pointed out as more modern and
secondary, in thought and language. But on the whole the Rig-veda is a
genuine document, even in its most modern portions not later than the
time of Lycurgus; and it exhibits one of the earliest and rudest
phases in the history of mankind; disclosing in its full reality a
period of which in Greece we have but traditions and names, such as
Orpheus and Linus, and bringing us as near the beginnings in language,
thought, and mythology as literary documents can ever bring us in the
Aryan world.
Though much time and labour have been spent on the Veda, in England
and in Germany, the time is not yet come for translating it as a
whole. It is possible and interesting to translate it literally, or in
accordance with scholastic commentaries, such as we find in India from
Yaska in the fifth century B.C. down to Saya_n_a in the fourteenth
century of the Christian era. This is what Professor Wilson has done
in his translation of the first book of the Rig-veda; and by strictly
adhering to this principle and excluding conjectural renderings even
where they offered themselves most naturally, he has imparted to his
work a definite character and a lasting value. The grammar of the
Veda, though irregular, and still in a rather floating state, has
almost been mastered; the etymology and the meaning of many words,
unknown in the later Sanskrit, have been discovered. Many hymns, which
are mere prayers for food, for cattle, or for a long life, have been
translated, and can leave no doubt as to their real intention. But
with the exception of these simple petitions, the whole world of Vedic
ideas is so entirely beyond our own intellectual horizon, that instead
of translating we can as yet only guess and combine. Here it is no
longer a mere question of skilful deciphering. We may collect all the
passages where an obscure word occurs, we may compare them and look
for a meaning which would be appropriate to all; but the difficulty
lies in finding a sense which we can appropriate, and transfer by
analogy into our own language and thought. We must be able to
translate our feelings and ideas into their language at the same time
that we translate their poems and prayers into our language. We must
not despair even where their words seem meaningless and their ideas
barren or wild. What seems at first childish may at a happier moment
disclose a sublime simplicity, and even in helpless expressions we may
recognise aspirations after some high and noble idea. When the scholar
has done his work, the poet and philosopher must take it up and finish
it. Let the scholar collect, collate, sift, and reject--let him say
what is possible or not according to the laws of the Vaidik
language--let him study the commentaries, the Sutras, the Brahma_n_as,
and even later works, in order to exhaust all the sources from which
information can be derived. He must not despise the tradition of the
Brahmans, even where their misconceptions and the causes of their
misconceptions are palpable. To know what a passage cannot mean is
frequently the key to its real meaning; and whatever reasons may be
pleaded for declining a careful perusal of the traditional
interpretations of Yaska or Saya_n_a, they can all be traced back to
an ill-concealed argumentum paupertatis. Not a corner in the
Brahma_n_as, the Sutras, Yaska, and Saya_n_a should be left unexplored
before we venture to propose a rendering of our own. Saya_n_a, though
the most modern, is on the whole the most sober interpreter. Most of
his etymological absurdities must be placed to Yaska's account, and
the optional renderings which he allows for metaphysical, theological,
or ceremonial purposes, are mostly due to his regard for the
Brahma_n_as. The Brahma_n_as, though nearest in time to the hymns of
the Rig-veda, indulge in the most frivolous and ill-judged
interpretations. When the ancient Rishi exclaims with a troubled
heart, 'Who is the greatest of the gods? Who shall first be praised by
our songs?'--the author of the Brahma_n_a sees in the interrogative
pronoun 'Who' some divine name, a place is allotted in the sacrificial
invocations to a god 'Who,' and hymns addressed to him are called
'Whoish' hymns. To make such misunderstandings possible, we must
assume a considerable interval between the composition of the hymns
and the Brahma_n_as. As the authors of the Brahma_n_as were blinded by
theology, the authors of the still later Niruktas were deceived by
etymological fictions, and both conspired to mislead by their
authority later and more sensible commentators, such as Saya_n_a.
Where Saya_n_a has no authority to mislead him, his commentary is at
all events rational; but still his scholastic notions would never
allow him to accept the free interpretation which a comparative study
of these venerable documents forces upon the unprejudiced scholar. We
must therefore discover ourselves the real vestiges of these ancient
poets; and if we follow them cautiously, we shall find that with some
effort we are still able to walk in their footsteps. We shall feel
that we are brought face to face and mind to mind with men yet
intelligible to us, after we have freed ourselves from our modern
conceits. We shall not succeed always: words, verses, nay, whole hymns
in the Rig-veda, will and must remain to us a dead letter. But where
we can inspire those early relics of thought and devotion with new
life, we shall have before us more real antiquity than in all the
inscriptions of Egypt or Nineveh; not only old names and dates, and
kingdoms and battles, but old thoughts, old hopes, old faith, and old
errors, the old Man altogether--old now, but then young and fresh, and
simple and real in his prayers and in his praises.
The thoughtful bent of the Hindu mind is visible in the Veda also, but
his mystic tendencies are not yet so fully developed. Of philosophy we
find but little, and what we find is still in its germ. The active
side of life is more prominent, and we meet occasionally with wars of
kings, with rivalries of ministers, with triumphs and defeats, with
war-songs and imprecations. Moral sentiments and worldly wisdom are
not yet absorbed by phantastic intuitions. Still the child betrays the
passions of the man, and there are hymns, though few in number, in the
Veda, so full of thought and speculation that at this early period no
poet in any other nation could have conceived them. I give but one
specimen, the 129th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-veda. It is a
hymn which long ago attracted the attention of that eminent scholar H.
T. Colebrooke, and of which, by the kind assistance of a friend, I am
enabled to offer a metrical translation. In judging it we should bear
in mind that it was not written by a gnostic or by a pantheistic
philosopher, but by a poet who felt all these doubts and problems as
his own, without any wish to convince or to startle, only uttering
what had been weighing on his mind, just as later poets would sing the
doubts and sorrows of their heart.
Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
There was not death--yet was there nought immortal,
There was no confine betwixt day and night;
The only One breathed breathless by itself,
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound--an ocean without light--
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
Then first came love upon it, the new spring
Of mind--yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
Pondering, this bond between created things
And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth
Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?
Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose--
Nature below, and power and will above--
Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
The Gods themselves came later into being--
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
He from whom all this great creation came,
Whether his will created or was mute,
The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it--or perchance even He knows not.
The grammar of the Veda (to turn from the contents to the structure of
the work) is important in many respects. The difference between it and
the grammar of the epic poems would be sufficient of itself to fix the
distance between these two periods of language and literature. Many
words have preserved in these early hymns a more primitive form, and
therefore agree more closely with cognate words in Greek or Latin.
Night, for instance, in the later Sanskrit is ni_s_a, which is a form
peculiarly Sanskritic, and agrees in its derivation neither with nox
nor with [Greek: nyx]. The Vaidik na_s_ or nak, night, is as near to
Latin as can be. Thus mouse in the common Sanskrit is mushas or
mushika, both derivative forms if compared with the Latin mus, muris.
The Vaidik Sanskrit has preserved the same primitive noun in the
plural mush-as = Lat. mures. There are other words in the Veda which
were lost altogether in the later Sanskrit, while they were preserved
in Greek and Latin. Dyaus, sky, does not occur as a masculine in the
ordinary Sanskrit; it occurs in the Veda, and thus bears witness to
the early Aryan worship of Dyaus, the Greek Zeus. Ushas, dawn, again
in the later Sanskrit is neuter. In the Veda it is feminine; and even
the secondary Vaidik form Ushasa is proved to be of high antiquity by
the nearly corresponding Latin form Aurora. Declension and conjugation
are richer in forms and more unsettled in their usage. It was a
curious fact, for instance, that no subjunctive mood existed in the
common Sanskrit. The Greeks and Romans had it, and even the language
of the Avesta showed clear traces of it. There could be no doubt that
the Sanskrit also once possessed this mood, and at last it was
discovered in the hymns of the Rig-veda. Discoveries of this kind may
seem trifling, but they are as delightful to the grammarian as the
appearance of a star, long expected and calculated, is to the
astronomer. They prove that there is natural order in language, and
that by a careful induction laws can be established which enable us to
guess with great probability either at the form or meaning of words
where but scanty fragments of the tongue itself have come down to us.
_October, 1853._
THE ZEND-AVESTA.
By means of laws like that of the Correspondence of Letters,
discovered by Rask and Grimm, it has been possible to determine the
exact form of words in Gothic, in cases where no trace of them
occurred in the literary documents of the Gothic nation. Single words
which were not to be found in Ulfilas have been recovered by applying
certain laws to their corresponding forms in Latin or Old High-German,
and thus retranslating them into Gothic. But a much greater conquest
was achieved in Persia. Here comparative philology has actually had to
create and reanimate all the materials of language on which it was
afterwards to work. Little was known of the language of Persia and
Media previous to the Shahnameh of Firdusi, composed about 1000 A.D.,
and it is due entirely to the inductive method of comparative
philology that we have now before us contemporaneous documents of
three periods of Persian language, deciphered, translated, and
explained. We have the language of the Zoroastrians, the language of
the Achaemenians, and the language of the Sassanians, which represent
the history of the Persian tongue in three successive periods--all now
rendered intelligible by the aid of comparative philology, while but
fifty years ago their very name and existence were questioned.
The labours of Anquetil Duperron, who first translated the
Zend-Avesta, were those of a bold adventurer--not of a scholar. Rask
was the first who, with the materials collected by Duperron and
himself, analysed the language of the Avesta scientifically. He
proved--
1. That Zend was not a corrupted Sanskrit, as supposed by W.
Erskine, but that it differed from it as Greek, Latin, or
Lithuanian differed from one another and from Sanskrit.
2. That the modern Persian was really derived from Zend as
Italian was from Latin; and
3. That the Avesta, or the works of Zoroaster, must have
been reduced to writing at least previously to Alexander's
conquest. The opinion that Zend was an artificial language
(an opinion held by men of great eminence in Oriental
philology, beginning with Sir W. Jones) is passed over by
Rask as not deserving of refutation.
The first edition of the Zend texts, the critical restitution of the
MSS., the outlines of a Zend grammar, with the translation and
philological anatomy of considerable portions of the Zoroastrian
writings, were the work of the late Eugene Burnouf. He was the real
founder of Zend philology. It is clear from his works, and from Bopp's
valuable remarks in his 'Comparative Grammar,' that Zend in its
grammar and dictionary is nearer to Sanskrit than any other
Indo-European language. Many Zend words can be retranslated into
Sanskrit simply by changing the Zend letters into their corresponding
forms in Sanskrit. With regard to the Correspondence of Letters in
Grimm's sense of the word, Zend ranges with Sanskrit and the classical
languages. It differs from Sanskrit principally in its sibilants,
nasals, and aspirates. The Sanskrit s, for instance, is represented by
the Zend h, a change analogous to that of an original s into the
Greek aspirate, only that in Greek this change is not general. Thus
the geographical name hapta hendu, which occurs in the Avesta, becomes
intelligible if we retranslate the Zend h into the Sanskrit s. For
sapta sindhu, or the Seven Rivers, is the old Vaidik name of India
itself, derived from the five rivers of the Penjab, together with the
Indus, and the Sarasvati.
Where Sanskrit differs in words or grammatical peculiarities from the
northern members of the Aryan family, it frequently coincides with
Zend. The numerals are the same in all these languages up to 100. The
name for thousand, however, sahasra, is peculiar to Sanskrit, and does
not occur in any of the Indo-European dialects except in Zend, where
it becomes haza_n_ra. In the same manner the German and Slavonic
languages have a word for thousand peculiar to themselves; as also in
Greek and Latin we find many common words which we look for in vain in
any of the other Indo-European dialects. These facts are full of
historical meaning; and with regard to Zend and Sanskrit, they prove
that these two languages continued together long after they were
separated from the common Indo-European stock.
Still more striking is the similarity between Persia and India in
religion and mythology. Gods unknown to any Indo-European nation are
worshipped under the same names in Sanskrit and Zend; and the change
of some of the most sacred expressions in Sanskrit into names of evil
spirits in Zend, only serves to strengthen the conviction that we have
here the usual traces of a schism which separated a community that had
once been united.
Burnouf, who compared the language and religion of the Avesta
principally with the later classical Sanskrit, inclined at first to
the opinion that this schism took place in Persia, and that the
dissenting Brahmans immigrated afterwards into India. This is still
the prevailing opinion, but it requires to be modified in accordance
with new facts elicited from the Veda. Zend, if compared with
classical Sanskrit, exhibits in many points of grammar, features of a
more primitive character than Sanskrit. But it can now be shown, and
Burnouf himself admitted it, that when this is the case, the Vaidik
differs on the very same points from the later Sanskrit, and has
preserved the same primitive and irregular form as the Zend. I still
hold, that the name of Zend was originally a corruption of the
Sanskrit word _k_handas (i. e. metrical language, cf. scandere),[35]
which is the name given to the language of the Veda by Pa_n_ini and
others. When we read in Pa_n_ini's grammar that certain forms occur in
_k_handas, but not in the classical language, we may almost always
translate the word _k_handas by Zend, for nearly all these rules apply
equally to the language of the Avesta.
[Footnote 35: The derivation of _k_handas, metre, from the same root
which yielded the Latin scandere, seems to me still the most
plausible. An account of the various explanations of this word,
proposed by Eastern and Western scholars, is to be found in Spiegel's
'Grammar of the Parsi Language' (preface, and p. 205), and in his
translation of the Vendidad (pp. 44 and 293). That initial _k_h in
Sanskrit may represent an original sk, has never, as far as I am
aware, been denied. (Curtius, 'Grundzuege,' p. 60.) The fact that the
root _k_hand, in the sense of stepping or striding, has not been fixed
in Sanskrit as a verbal, but only as a nominal base, is no real
objection either. The same thing has happened over and over again, and
has been remarked as the necessary result of the dialectic growth of
language by so ancient a scholar as Yaska. ('Zeitschrift der Deutschen
Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft, vol. viii. p. 373 seq.) That scandere
in Latin, in the sense of scanning is a late word, does not affect the
question at all. What is of real importance is simply this, that the
principal Aryan nations agree in representing metre as a kind of
stepping or striding. Whether this arose from the fact that ancient
poetry was accompanied by dancing or rhythmic choral movements, is a
question which does not concern us here. (Carmen descindentes
tripodaverunt in verba haec: Enos Lases, etc. Orelli, 'Inscript.' No.
2271.) The fact remains that the people of India, Greece, and Italy
agree in calling the component elements of their verses feet or steps
([Greek: pous], pes, Sanskrit pad or pada; padapankti, a row of
feet, and _g_agati, i. e. andante, are names of Sanskrit metres). It
is not too much, therefore, to say that they may have considered metre
as a kind of stepping or striding, and that they may accordingly have
called it 'stride.' If then we find the name for metre in Sanskrit
_k_handas, i. e. skandas, and if we find that scando in Latin (from
which sca(d)la), as we may gather from ascendo and descendo, meant
originally striding, and that skand in Sanskrit means the same as
scando in Latin, surely there can be little doubt as to the original
intention of the Sanskrit name for metre, viz. _k_handas. Hindu
grammarians derive _k_handas either from _k_had, to cover, or from
_k_had, to please. Both derivations are possible, as far as the
letters are concerned. But are we to accept the dogmatic
interpretation of the theologians of the _K_handogas, who tell us that
the metres were called _k_handas because the gods, when afraid of
death, covered themselves with the metres? Or of the Va_g_asaneyins,
who tell us that the _k_handas were so called because they pleased
Pra_g_apati? Such artificial interpretations only show that the
Brahmans had no traditional feeling as to the etymological meaning of
that word, and that we are at liberty to discover by the ordinary
means its original intention. I shall only mention from among much
that has been written on the etymology of _k_handas, a most happy
remark of Professor Kuhn, who traces the Northern skald, poet, back to
the same root as the Sanskrit _k_handas, metre. (Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,'
vol. iii. p. 428.)]
In mythology also, the 'nomina and numina' of the Avesta appear at
first sight more primitive than in Manu or the Mahabharata. But if
regarded from a Vaidik point of view, this relation shifts at once,
and many of the gods of the Zoroastrians come out once more as mere
reflections and deflections of the primitive and authentic gods of the
Veda. It can now be proved, even by geographical evidence, that the
Zoroastrians had been settled in India before they immigrated into
Persia. I say the Zoroastrians, for we have no evidence to bear us out
in making the same assertion of the nations of Persia and Media in
general. That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India
during the Vaidik period can be proved as distinctly as that the
inhabitants of Massilia started from Greece. The geographical
traditions in the first Fargard of the Vendidad do not interfere with
this opinion. If ancient and genuine, they would embody a remembrance
preserved by the Zoroastrians, but forgotten by the Vaidik poets--a
remembrance of times previous to their first common descent into the
country of the Seven Rivers. If of later origin, and this is more
likely, they may represent a geographical conception of the
Zoroastrians after they had become acquainted with a larger sphere of
countries and nations, subsequent to their emigration from the land of
the Seven Rivers.[36]
[Footnote 36: The purely mythological character of this geographical
chapter has been proved by M. Michel Breal, 'Journal Asiatique,'
1862.]
These and similar questions of the highest importance for the early
history of the Aryan language and mythology, however, must await their
final decision, until the whole of the Veda and the Avesta shall have
been published. Of this Burnouf was fully aware, and this was the
reason why he postponed the publication of his researches into the
antiquities of the Iranian nation. The same conviction is shared by
Westergaard and Spiegel, who are each engaged in an edition of the
Avesta, and who, though they differ on many points, agree in
considering the Veda as the safest key to an understanding of the
Avesta. Professor Roth, of Tuebingen, has well expressed the mutual
relation of the Veda and Zend-Avesta under the following simile: 'The
Veda,' he writes, 'and the Zend-Avesta are two rivers flowing from one
fountain-head: the stream of the Veda is the fuller and purer, and has
remained truer to its original character; that of the Zend-Avesta has
been in various ways polluted, has altered its course, and cannot,
with certainty, be traced back to its source.'
As to the language of the Achaemenians, presented to us in the Persian
text of the cuneiform inscriptions, there was no room for doubt, as
soon as it became legible at all, that it was the same tongue as that
of the Avesta, only in a second stage of its continuous growth. The
process of deciphering these bundles of arrows by means of Zend and
Sanskrit has been very much like deciphering an Italian inscription
without a knowledge of Italian, simply by means of classical and
mediaeval Latin. It would have been impossible, even with the quick
perception and patient combination of a Grotefend, to read more than
the proper names and a few titles on the walls of the Persian palaces,
without the aid of Zend and Sanskrit; and it seems almost
providential, as Lassen remarked, that these inscriptions, which at
any previous period would have been, in the eyes of either classical
or oriental scholars, nothing but a quaint conglomerate of nails,
wedges, or arrows, should have been rescued from the dust of centuries
at the very moment when the discovery and study of Sanskrit and Zend
had enabled the scholars of Europe to grapple successfully with their
difficulties.
Upon a closer inspection of the language and grammar of these mountain
records of the Achaemenian dynasty, a curious fact came to light which
seemed to disturb the historical relation between the language of
Zoroaster and the language of Darius. At first, historians were
satisfied with knowing that the edicts of Darius could be explained by
the language of the Avesta, and that the difference between the two,
which could be proved to imply a considerable interval of time, was
such as to exclude for ever the supposed historical identity of Darius
Hystaspes and Gushtasp, the mythical pupil of Zoroaster. The language
of the Avesta, though certainly not the language of Zarathustra,[37]
displayed a grammar so much more luxuriant, and forms so much more
primitive than the inscriptions, that centuries must have elapsed
between the two periods represented by these two strata of language.
When, however, the forms of these languages were subjected to a more
searching analysis, it became evident that the phonetic system of the
cuneiform inscriptions was more primitive and regular than even that
of the earlier portions of the Avesta. This difficulty, however,
admits of a solution; and, like many difficulties of the kind, it
tends to confirm, if rightly explained, the very facts and views which
at first it seemed to overthrow. The confusion in the phonetic system
of the Zend grammar is no doubt owing to the influence of oral
tradition. Oral tradition, particularly if confided to the safeguard
of a learned priesthood, is able to preserve, during centuries of
growth and change, the sacred accents of a dead language; but it is
liable at least to the slow and imperceptible influences of a corrupt
pronunciation. Nowhere can we see this more clearly than in the Veda,
where grammatical forms that had ceased to be intelligible, were
carefully preserved, while the original pronunciation of vowels was
lost, and the simple structure of the ancient metres destroyed by the
adoption of a more modern pronunciation. The loss of the Digamma in
Homer is another case in point. There are no facts to prove that the
text of the Avesta, in the shape in which the Parsis of Bombay and
Yezd now possess it, was committed to writing previous to the
Sassanian dynasty (226 A.D.). After that time it can indeed be traced,
and to a great extent be controlled and checked by the Huzvaresh
translations made under that dynasty. Additions to it were made, as it
seems, even after these Huzvaresh translations; but their number is
small, and we have no reason to doubt that the text of the Avesta, in
the days of Arda Viraf, was on the whole exactly the same as at
present. At the time when these translations were made, it is clear
from their own evidence that the language of Zarathustra had already
suffered, and that the ideas of the Avesta were no longer fully
understood even by the learned. Before that time we may infer, indeed,
that the doctrine of Zoroaster had been committed to writing, for
Alexander is said to have destroyed the books of the Zoroastrians,
Hermippus of Alexandria is said to have read them.[38] But whether on
the revival of the Persian religion and literature, that is to say 500
years after Alexander, the works of Zoroaster were collected and
restored from extant MSS., or from oral tradition, must remain
uncertain, and the disturbed state of the phonetic system would rather
lead us to suppose a long-continued influence of oral tradition. What
the Zend language might become, if entrusted to the guardianship of
memory alone, unassisted by grammatical study and archaeological
research, may be seen at the present day, when some of the Parsis, who
are unable either to read or write, still mutter hymns and prayers in
their temples, which, though to them mere sound, disclose to the
experienced ear of an European scholar the time-hallowed accents of
Zarathustra's speech.
[Footnote 37: Spiegel states the results of his last researches into
the language of the different parts of the Avesta in the following
words:
'We are now prepared to attempt an arrangement of the different
portions of the Zend-Avesta in the order of their antiquity. First, we
place the second part of the Ya_s_na, as separated in respect to the
language of the Zend-Avesta, yet not composed by Zoroaster himself,
since he is named in the third person; and indeed everything intimates
that neither he nor his disciple Gushtasp was alive. The second place
must unquestionably be assigned to the Vendidad. I do not believe that
the book was originally composed as it now stands: it has suffered
both earlier and later interpolations; still, its present form may be
traced to a considerable antiquity. The antiquity of the work is
proved by its contents, which distinctly show that the sacred
literature was not yet completed.
'The case is different with the writings of the last period, among
which I reckon the first part of the Ya_s_na, and the whole of the
Yeshts. Among these a theological character is unmistakeable, the
separate divinities having their attributes and titles dogmatically
fixed.
'Altogether, it is interesting to trace the progress of religion in
Parsi writings. It is a significant fact, that in the oldest, that is
to say, the second part of the Ya_s_na, nothing is fixed in the
doctrine regarding God. In the writings of the second period, that is
in the Vendidad, we trace the advance to a theological, and, in its
way, mild and scientific system. Out of this, in the last place, there
springs the stern and intolerant religion of the Sassanian
epoch.'--From the Rev. J. Murray Mitchell's Translation.]
[Footnote 38: 'Lectures on the Science of Language,' First Series, p.
95.]
Thus far the history of the Persian language had been reconstructed by
the genius and perseverance of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and last,
not least, by the comprehensive labours of Rawlinson, from the
ante-historical epoch of Zoroaster down to the age of Darius and
Artaxerxes II. It might have been expected that, after that time, the
contemporaneous historians of Greece would have supplied the sequel.
Unfortunately the Greeks cared nothing for any language except their
own; and little for any other history except as bearing on themselves.
The history of the Persian language after the Macedonian conquest and
during the Parthian occupation is indeed but a blank page. The next
glimpse of an authentic contemporaneous document is the inscription of
Ardeshir, the founder of the new national dynasty of the Sassanians.
It is written, though, it may be, with dialectic difference, in what
was once called 'Pehlevi,' and is now more commonly known as
'Huzvaresh,' this being the proper title of the language of the
translations of the Avesta. The legends of Sassanian coins, the
bilingual inscriptions of Sassanian emperors, and the translation of
the Avesta by Sassanian reformers, represent the Persian language in
its third phase. To judge from the specimens given by Anquetil
Duperron, it was not to be wondered at that this dialect, then called
Pehlevi, should have been pronounced an artificial jargon. Even when
more genuine specimens of it became known, the language seemed so
overgrown with Semitic and barbarous words, that it was expelled from
the Iranian family. Sir W. Jones pronounced it to be a dialect of
Chaldaic. Spiegel, however, who is now publishing the text of these
translations, has established the fact that the language is truly
Aryan, neither Semitic nor barbarous, but Persian in roots and
grammar. He accounts for the large infusion of foreign terms by
pointing to the mixed elements in the intellectual and religious life
of Persia during and before that period. There was the Semitic
influence of Babylonia, clearly discernible even in the characters of
the Achaemenian inscriptions; there was the slow infiltration of Jewish
ideas, customs, and expressions, working sometimes in the palaces of
Persian kings, and always in the bazars of Persian cities, on high
roads and in villages; there was the irresistible power of the Greek
genius, which even under its rude Macedonian garb emboldened oriental
thinkers to a flight into regions undreamed of in their philosophy;
there were the academies, the libraries, the works of art of the
Seleucidae; there was Edessa on the Euphrates, a city where Plato and
Aristotle were studied, where Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist tenets
were discussed, where Ephraem Syrus taught, and Syriac translations
were circulated which have preserved to us the lost originals of Greek
and Christian writers. The title of the Avesta under its Semitic form
Apestako, was known in Syria as well as in Persia, and the true name
of its author, Zarathustra, is not yet changed in Syriac into the
modern Zerdusht. While this intellectual stream, principally flowing
through Semitic channels, was irrigating and inundating the west of
Asia, the Persian language had been left without literary cultivation.
Need we wonder, then, that the men, who at the rising of a n
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