ssssssssssf jiitaMtt >iiVvm'i'mnmv\ikm«'iiS!!S^»iSSi^-. ~ .- \SIA AV ■ AV* . •0\ -ix . . . -.iit i tiiwiitn n iii wm i n mii an -xy-' THE GIFT OF Q te,.,iUfc, - i ■ •• h%.^.±k.^A isl^rnlm.i 6896-2 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023004512 Cornell University Library BL 2001.B28 The religions of India / 3 1924 023 004 512 »^ THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. VOLUME XXIV. THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. A7 S^ARTH, MEMBER OE THE SOOI^li; ASIATIQDE OF PARIS. AUTHORISED TRANSLATION EEV. J. WOOD, BOSTON: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN, & CO. G. 1882. TO DR. yOHN MUIR, THIS SKETCH OF - . THE EELIGIONS OF INDIA IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED BT THE AUTHOR IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS UNWEARIED SERVICES AS A STUDENT AND INTERPRETER OF THE FAITHS AND WISDOM OP INDIA, AND OF HIS GENEROUS PATRONAGE OF INDIAN RESEARCH. CONTENTS. PAGE Preface .... .... ix Intkoduction . xxi I. The Vedio Religions 1-38 The Rig- Veda : Us Deities, CiUtus, and Essential Character 1-38 II. Bkahmanism 39-100 1. Ritual — Spread 39-6$ 2. Philosophic Speculations of the Upanishads — The S^nkhya and the VedS,nta Reaction . . . 64-86 3. Decline in Dogmatic and Ritual .... 87-100 III. Buddhism . . 101-139 Buddha and his Teachings — Spirit and Organisation — Decline 101-139 IV. Jainism . 140-152 Affinity with Buddhism— Creed and Cultus . 140-152 V. Hinduism 1 53-293 1. The Hindu Sects : their Great Deities— Qiva, Vishnu, Krishna, RSma— The AvatSras— The Trinity . 1 59- 1 §5 2. Their History and Doctrines — ^Vishnuism, Qivaism — Influences, Philosophical and Religious . . 186-237 3. The Reforming Sects — Mussulman Influence — The Sikhs 238-251 4. Worship — Idolatries — Sacred Symbols and Objects — Festivals — Pilgrimages — Retrospective and Pro- spective 252-293 PREFACE. The following sketch of the Eeligions of India appeared originally in 1 879 as an article in the UncydopMie des Sciences Beligieuses, which is published in Paris under the editorship of Professor Lichtenberger. My aim in com- posing it was to present, to that class of readers who take interest in q-uestions of historical theology, but who happen to have no special acquaintance with Indianist studies, a rdsum^, which should be as faithful and realistic as possible, of the latest results of inquiry in all provinces of this vast domain. At first I thought I might comprise all I had to say in some fifty pages ; but I soon saw that within a space so limited, the work I had undertaken, and which I intended should assume the form of a statement of facts rather than of a series of speculative deductions, would prove absolutely superficial and be sure to give rise to manifold misapprehensions. This first difficulty was easily got over through the friendly liberality of the Editor of the Encyclopidie, for, as soon as aware of it, he handsomely offered to concede to me whatever space I might need. Other difficulties remained, however, besides those connected with the'subject in itself — which is one of boundless extent and intricacy, and which no special work, so far as I knew, had as yet treated at once as a whole and in detailed particularity — those, viz., which arose out of the general plan of the work in which my sketch was to appear as an article. The UncyclopMie admitted only of a small number of divisions into chapters, and no notes. X PREFACE. I had not, therefore, the resource of being able to relegate my impedimenta, to the foot of the pages, a resource which in such a case was almost indispensable, since I had to address a reader who was not a specialist, and I was my- self averse to be obliged to limit myself to a colourless and inexact statement. All I had to say and explain must either be said and explained in 'the text, or suppressed altogether. The result was that I loaded my text to the utmost possible extent, often, I must say, at the expense of fluency of diction, and I also suppressed a good deal. I left out, with no small reluctance, more than one remark, which, though of secondary, was yet of serviceable impor- tance, because it would have interrupted the continuity of what I sought mainly to develop. I sacrificed especially a considerable number of those particularities, such as not unfrequently defy- all attempts at circumlocution, yet im- part to matters the exact shade of meaning that belongs to them, but which would have required observations in explanation such as I could have introduced only at the expense of interlarding my pages with an array of in- congruous parentheses. In these circumstances I did all I could to retain at least as much as possible of the sub- stance ; and those Indianists who may be pleased to look into my work will see, I think, that under the enforced generalities of my exposition there lies concealed a certain amount of minuteness of investigation. These shortcomings I was able to remedy in a measure in the impressions which I was solicited to issue in a separate form shortly after, and to which I was free to add annotations. By this means it was possible to append the bibliography, as well as a goodly number of detached re- marks and technical details. As to the text itself, even if I had had the necessary time, it would have been difficult to have modified it in any important particular. The re- daction of a scientific treatise written without divisions into chapters and intended to remain without notes, must assume a form more or less of an abnormal character. If PREFACE. xi the book is to be of value, this defect of external resources would have to be compensated for by its internal struc- ture. In all its sections it -would require to present a more explicitly reasoned sequence of ideas, and to possess to some extent more compactness of structure, into which the introduction of new matter would be attended with difficulty. The article was therefore reproduced in the I'rench edition without alterations. For this very reason also the present edition is in these respects pretty much the same as the French original. Certain inaccuracies in detail have been corrected ; in some passages the text has been relieved to the expansion of the notes ; in others, though more rarely, material intended at first to appear in the footnotes has been admitted into the body of the work ; the transcription of Hindu terms in particular has been rendered throughout more rigorous and complete ; but in other respects, the text is unaltered, and the additions, as at first, have been committed to the notes. These last have not merely been brought up to date, so as to give the latest results,^ but rendered in general more complete than they were in the French edition, in which they had been thrown together in a somewhat hurried fashion. In my regard, they are not calculated to change the character of the work, which has no pretence in its present form, any more than its original, to teach anything to adepts in Indianist studies. They must needs impart an authoritative weight to my statements, which, except where the original authorities were inaccessible to '^ The redaction of these notes Sacred Books of the East, Oxford, belongs to the spring of 1 880 ; some 1881: vol. x. The Dhammapada, few were added in December of the transl. by F. Max Miiller ; the same year. I avail myself of this Sutta-NipS-ta transl. from PSli by V. opportunity to mention the following ITausboll ; vol. xi. Buddhist Suttas, works which I first became aware transl. from PSli by T. W. Rhys of only after the correction of the Davids. H. Kern, Geschiedenis van proofs : — A. Ludwig, Commentar zur het Buddhisme in Indie, Haarlem, Rigveda - tJbersetzimg, Ister Theil, 1881 (in course of publication). E. Prag, 1881. A. Kaegi, Der Rig- Trumpp, Die Religion der Sikhs, veda, die iilteste Literatur der naoh den Quellen dargestellt, Leip- Inder, 2te Aufiage, Leipzig, 1881. zig, 1881. xii PREFACE. me, have not been made on the basis of documents at second hand. They are fitted anyhow to give to those "who have only a slight acquaintance vfith the details of our studies, some idea at least of the immense amount of labour which has within the century been expended on the subject of India. With the view of making this evident I have been careful to supply a rather extensive bibliography, in which the reader wiU perhaps remark a greater array of references than was necessary to justify my statements. I have, however, prescribed here certain limits to myself. I have not, for instance, except when absolutely necessary, mentioned any books which I did not happen to have by me (in which category I include a host of native- publications, with the titles of which I could have easily amplified my references) ; neither have I re- ferred to works, which, though doubtless not without their value at the time when they appeared, are now out of date, and in which the true and the false are to such an extent intermingled that the citation of them, without considerable correction in an elementary treatise such as this, would have only served to confuse and mislead the uninitiated reader. But except in these cases, and such as I may have omitted from want of recollection, I have endeavoured as much as possible to point out the place of each, especially that of those who led the van in this interesting series of investigations. In fine, as I have already explained, a good many of the notes are simple, additions, and ought to be accepted as a sort of appendix in continuation of the text. Having said this much of the general conditions under" which this work Was undertaken and drawn up, I have still, with the reader's indulgence, some explanations to make in regard to a matter or two belonging to the con- tents, in regard to questions which I have thought I ought to waive as being in my opinion not yet ripe for solution, and also as regards the restriction I have imposed on PREFACE. xiii myself in not introducing into my exposition any pro- nounced peculiarities of private opinion. The reader who peruses with intelligence what I have written, and is au courant with Indianist studies, will not fail to remark that my views on the Veda are not precisely the same as those which are most generally accepted. Por in it I recognise a literature that is pre-eminently sacerdotal, and in no sense a popular one ; and from this conclusion I do not, as is ordinarily done, except even the Hymns, the most ancient of the documents. Neither in the language nor in the thought of the Rig- Veda have I been able to discover that quality of primitive natural simplicity which so many are fain to see in it. The poetry it contains appears to me, on the contrary, to be of a singularly refined character and artificially elaborated, full of allusions and reticences, of pretensions to mysticism and theosophic insight ; and the manner of its expression is such as reminds one more frequently of the phraseology in use among certain small groups of initiated than the poetic language of a large community. And these features I am constrained to remark as characteristic of the whole collection; not that they assert themselves with equal emphasis in all the Hymns — the most abstruse imaginings being not without their moments of simplicity of concep- tion ; but there are very few of these Hymns which do not show some trace of them, and it is always difficult to find in the book and to extract a clearly defined portion of per- fectly natural and simple conception. In all these respects the spirit of the Rig- Veda appears to me to be more alUed than is usually supposed to that which prevails in the other Vedic collections, and in the Br^hmanas. This conviction, which I had already expressed emphatically enough more than once in the Bevite Critique, I have not felt called upon to urge here, in a work such as this from which all discussion should be excluded as much as possible. I have, nevertheless, given it such expression even here that a careful reader, if he looks, will not fail to recognise it ; xiv PREFACE. anyhow it has not escaped the notice of such an expert in the affairs of India as Professor Thiele of Leyden, with whom I am happy to find myself in harmony of view on the subject of the Veda. That critic has, in consequence, not without reason, challenged ^ me to say why I have not insisted on it more, and if, after this first avowal, I was warranted to draw such a sharp distinction as I have done between the epoch of the Hymns and that of the Brah- manas. Whether I was right or wrong in doing so, it is not for me to decide. I have pointed out the differences which, as it appears to me, we must admit to exist between the two epochs referred to, differences which I do not think can be accounted for simply by the diverse nature of the docu- ments. In the Br4hmanas we have a sacred literature and a new liturgy ; the priesthood that inspired the Hymns has become a caste ; and there is a theory which is given forth as a law for this caste, as well as the others — one which, whether true or imaginary, is nevertheless in itself a fact. "Were it only for these reasons, I should consider myself bound to maintain the generally accepted distinction ; but, not to adduce more, I confess that I had another reason -^the fear, viz., of being drawn into the subject further than was desirable in a work such as this. The Hymns, as I have already remarked, do not appear to me to show the least trace of popular derivation. I rather imagine that they emanate from a narrow circle of priests, and that they reflect a somewhat singular view of things. N"ot only can I not accept the generally received opinion that Vedic and Aryan are synonymous terms, I am even not at all sure to what extent we are right in speaking of a Vedic people. Not that communities did not then worship the gods of the Veda, but I doubt very much if they regarded them as they are represented in the Hymns, any more than that they afterwards sacrificed to them in community after the rites prescribed in the Br§,h- ^ In the Theologiscke Tijdschrift of July 1880. PREFACE. XV manas. If there is any justice in these views, it is evident that a literature such as this will only embrace what is within the scope of a limited horizon, and will have autho- ritative weight only in regard to things in a more or less special reference, and that the negative conclusions espe- cially which may be deduced from such documents must be received with not a little reservation. A single instance, to which 1 limit myself, will suffice for illustration. Suppose that certain hymns of the tenth book of the Rig- Veda — a book which the majority of critics look upon with distrust — had not come down to us, what would we learn from the rest of the collection respecting the worship of the manes of the departed ? We might know that India paid homage to certain powers called Pitris, or Fathers, but we could not infer from that, any more than from the later worship of the M^tris, or Mothers, this worship of ancestors, or spirits of the dead, which, as the comparative study of the beliefs, customs, and institutions of Greece and Eome shows us, was nevertheless from the remotest antiquity one of the principal sources of public and private right, one of the bases of the family and the civic community. I am therefore far from believing that the Veda has taught us everything on the ancient social and religious condition of even Aryan India, or that everything there can be accounted for by reference to it. Outside of it I see room not only for superstitious beliefs, but for real popular religions, more or less distinct from that which we find in it ; and on this pdint, we shall arrive at more than one conclusion from the more profound study of the subsequent period. We shall perhaps find that, in this respect also, the past did not differ so much from the present as might at first appear, that India has always had, alongside of its Veda, something equivalent to its great Qivaite and Vishnuite religions, which we see in the ascendant at a later date, and that these anyhow existed contemporaneously with it for a very much longer period than has till now been generally supposed. xvi PREFACE. I have in a summary way mdicated these views in my work, and that ia more passages than one ; but it is easy to see how, if I had laid greater stress on them, they might have modified certain parts of my exposition. I did not think that I ought to go against the received opinions on this matter, or that in addressing a public imperfectly qualified to judge, I should attach more weight to my private doubts than the almost unanimous consent of scholars more learned than myself. If it is a wrong that I have done, I confess it, and that as one which I committed wilfuUy. And, after aU, there is so much that is uncertain in this obscure past, and what Whitney says in regard to dates, " in Indian literary his- tory," that they are so many " pins set up to be bowled down again," is so applicable to all hypotheses in this field, that a new opinion would do weU to allow itself some considerable time to ripen. I am accordingly of opinion that the N"eo-Brahmanic religions are of very ancient date in India. On the other hand, their positive history is comparatively modern ; it- commences not much earlier than the time when it becomes dispersed and distracted among that confusion of sects which has prolonged itself to our own time. In order to render an account of these sects, it was my duty to classify them, and I have done so according to the philosophic systems which seem to have at each period prevailed among them. This arrangement I have adopted only in defect of another ; for the merely chronological succession, besides being for the earlier epochs highly uncertain, and calculated to involve me in endless repetitions, would have been of slender sig- nificance in itself, and would have resolved itself into a bare enumeration, since it is impossible to show, in most cases here, that a succession of the sort involves filiation. I confess, however, that the arrangement adopted is not very satisfactory. The formulae of metaphysics have penetrated so deeply into the modes PREFACE. xvii ol thinking and feeling prevalent in India, that they naay in most cases Ipe treated as we do those common quan- tities which we eliminate in calculation ; and it is always hazardous to judge by them of movements of such religious intensity'. My sole excuse in this case is the necessity I was under of having some principle of classi- fication, and the difficulty, amounting to impossibility, of discovering another. I have, before I conclude, to say a few words on two questions which I have purposely evaded, as being hitherto unsusceptible of a satisfactory solution. The first is the question of Caste, its origin and successive developments. I did not entangle myself in this ques- tion, in the first place, because of its exceeding obscurity. In fact, we have already a Brahmanical theory of caste, in regard to which we should require to know how far it is true to facts before we venture on explanations, which might very readily prove of no greater validity than a work of romance. I gave this question the go- by, in the second place, because, as respects antiquity, the problem, taken as a whole, is a social rather than a religious one. In sectarian India at present, and since the appearance of foreign proselytising religions, caste is the express badge of Hinduism. The man who is a member of a caste is a Hindu; he who is not, is not a Hindu. And caste is not merely the symbol of Hindu- ^ ism ; but, according to the testimony of all who have studied it on the spot, it is its stronghold. It is this, much more than their creeds, which attaches the masses to these vague religions, and gives them such astonishing vitality. It is, therefore, a religious factor of the first order, and, on this score, I felt bound to indicate the part it now plays and its present condition. But there is no reason to presume that it was the same in the antiquity to which its institution is usually referred, and in which the theory at any rate took its rise that is reputed to regulate it. Still less is it probable that the b xviii PREFACE. existing castes, -with one exception, that of the Br§,hmans, are the heirs in a direct line of the ancient cdtur- varnya. I have, therefore, felt free to discharge myself from the obligation of inquiring into the origin and more or less probable transformations of the latter, and it was enough to indicate the period onward from which the texts represent the sacerdotal caste as definitely estab- lished ; that is to say, when we first meet with a precise formula, giving a religious sanction to a state of things which in all probability existed in fact from time im- memorial. The second question of which I have steadily kept clear, is that of the relations which happen to have arisen between the Aryan religions of India and the systems of belief professed either by foreign peoples, or by races ethnographically distinct that had settled in the country. This inquiry thrust itself upon me in relation to Chris- tianity and Islamism ; and there is nothing I should have wished more than to do as much in reference to other historical relations of the same kind, if I had thought I could do so with any profit. There is, as regards India, some weak and uncertain indications of a possible ex- change of ideas with Babylon, and the legend of the Deluge might not improbably have come from that quarter. But all that can be done in regard to this, is to put the question. For a much stronger reason I have shrunk from following Baron d'Eckstein into the inves- tigation of the far more hypothetical relations with Egypt and Asia Minor. ' In a Very friendly and far too eulogistic criticism of the present work, E. Eenan has been pleased to express some regret on this score ; ^ and I am very far from maintaining, for my part, that the time will not come when it will be necessary to resume researches in this direction ; , but to do so now would, in my opinion, be to advance forward in total darkness. The question is different as regards the re- ^ In the Journal Asiatique oi June 1880. PREFACE. xix ligiqns of the aboriginal races of India. Here the influences and borrowings from one' side, that of the aborigines, are evident, and from the other, the side of the Hindus, are a priori extremely probable, an inter- change of this kind being always more or less reciprocal. Only it is very difficult to say exactly what the con- quering race must have borrowed in this way from the aboriginal races. The religions of these peoples survive in fact under two forms ; either in the condition of popular superstitions, which resemble what they are elsewhere ; or, as among the tribes which have remained more or less savage, in the condition of national religions to some extent inoculated with Hindu ideas and modes of expression. These religions, in their turn, if we analyse them, are resolvable, on the one hand, into those beliefs and practices of an inferior type, having relation to idol or animal worship, such as we iind in all commun,ities that are uncivilised, and, on the other hand, into the worship of the divinities of nature and the elements, such as personifications of the sun, heaven, the earth, the mountains — that is to say, of systems of worship which are not essentially different from those which we meet with at first among the Hindus. In these circumstances, it is obvious that in special studies we might be able to note features of detail which have been borrowed by the more civilised race from that which is less so, but that we could not do much towards determining the effect of these influences and borrowings in their general import, the only question to which it would be possible to give prominency here. I have only to explain the notation I have adopted in the transcription of the Hindu terms. The circumflex accent, as in a, i, 'Ob, indicates that the vowel is long; the vowels r and I are transcribed by ri and li. It will be observed that u and 4 should be pronounced like the French sound ou, and that ai and au are always diph- thongs. An aspirated consonant is followed by A, and xx PREFACE. this aspiration ought to be distinctly expressed after the principal articulation, as in inhhorn. Of the gutterals, g and gh are always hard, and the nasal of this order is marked by ii, to be pronounced as in song. The palates c and y (and consequently their corresponding aspirates) are pronounced as in challenge, journey, and the nasal of the same order, n, like this letter in Spanish. The lingual consonants, which, to our ear, do not differ perceptibly from the dentals, are rendered by t, th, d, dh, n. The sibilants g and sh are both pronounced almost as sh in English. The anusvara (the neuter or final nasal) is marked by m, and the visarga (the soft and final aspiration) by h. The orthography has been rendered throughout rigorous and scientifically exact; only in a small number of modern names have I kept to the orthography in general use. A. BAETH. Paris, September 1881. INTRODUCTIOK India has not only preserved for us in her Vedas the most ancient and complete documents for the study of the old religious beliefs founded on nature-worship, which, in an extremely remote past, were common to all the branches of the Indo-European family ; she is also the only country where these beliefs, in spite of many changes both in form and fortune, continue to subsist up to the present time. Whilst everywhere else they have been either as good as extinguished by monotheistic religions of foreign origin, in some instances without leaving behind them a single direct and authentic trace of their presence, or abruptly cut short in their evolution and forced to survive within the barriers, henceforth immovable, of a petty Church, as in the case of Parseeism, — in India alone they present up to this time, as a rich and varied literature attests, a conti- nuous, self-determined development, in the course of which, instead of contracting, they have continued to enlarge their borders. It is owing in a great measure to this extraordinary longevity that such an interest attaches to the separate and independent study of the Hindu religions, irrespective alto- gether of the estimate we may form of their dogmatic or practical worth. Nowhere else do we meet with circum- stances, on the whole, so favourable for the study of the successive transformations and destiny, so to speak, of a xxii INTRODUCTION. polytheistic idea of the universe. Among all the kindred conceptions that we meet with, there is not another which has shown itself so vigorous, so flexible, so apt as this to assume the most diverse formS, and so dexterous in recon- ciling all extremes, from the most refined idealism to the grossest idolatry ; none has succeeded so well in repairing its losses ; no one has possessed in such a high degree the power of producing and reproducing new sects, even great religions, and of resisting, by perpetual regenesis in this way from itself, all the causes which, might destroy it, at once those due to internal waste and those due to external ■ opposition. But for this very reason, too, it becomes difficult to conceive in its totality, and in the succes- sive additions made to it, this vast religious structure, the work, according to the most probable computations, of more than thirty centuries of a history that is without chronology, a perfect labyrinth of buildings, involved one in another, within whose windings the first explorers, almost without exception, went astray, so misleading is the official account of them, so many ruins do we meet with of a venerable aspect, and which yet are only of yesterday. Thanks to the discovery of the yedas,^ how- ' Our first positive acquaintance Sansorite et Latine," 1838 ; and the with the Veda dates from the publi- three memoirs by the founder of the cation of the celebrated essay of H. scientific interpretation of the Veda, T. Colebrooke, "On the Vedas or Prof. K. Koth, "Zur Litteratur und Sacred Writings of the Hindus,'' GesohiohtedesWeda,"l846. Among inserted in vol. viii. of the Asiatic the more recent publications we take Researches, 1805, and reproduced in leave to mention, A. Weber, " Aka- the " Miscellaneous Essays " of that demisohe Vorlesungen iiber Indische great Indianist. Next to this funda- Literaturgeschichte," 1852, 2d ed. mental work we must mention the 1876, translated into French by A. first attempts at an edition of the Sadons, 1859 ; into English by J. Rig- Veda by the lamented Er. Rosen, Mann and Th. Zaohariae, 1878; entitled " Rigvedse Specimen," 1 830 ; Max Miiller, " A History of Ancient " Rig- Veda Sanhita, liber primus, Sanscrit Literature as far as it illus- INTRODUCTION. xxiii ever, which has laid bare for us the first foundations of the edifice, it is now easier for us to ascertain where we are in its mazes, although we are very far from saying that the light of day has at length penetrated into all its compartments, and that we are now able to sketch a plan of it that will be free from lacunm. Anyhow, in undertaking to describe within a limited number of pages this complex whole, it is clear we must resolve at the outset to content ourselves with a summary, and, it may be, disappointingly incomplete sketch. Many significant and characteristic points, the most of the realia, and an immense body of myths and legends, and every- thing which cannot be summarised, we shall have to omit. Of the history of these systems, which have not, however, been the result of mere abstract thinking, but which have grown up in vital relation with the complex and agitated life of every human institution alongside of them, we shall have time to examine only the internal, and, in some de- gree, ideal side — the development of the doctrines and their affiliation. We shall not be able to study them at once as religions and mythologies. We propose, however, to be more minute in what relates to the Vedas, out of regard to their exceptional importance, since the whole religious thought of India already exists in germ in these old books. Only we shall make no attempt to go farther back, or by trates the Primitive Religion of the Vedio portion being due to Roth), Brahmans," 1859, 2ded. i860. The has, more than any other work, "Indische Studien," which A. Weber contributed to the rapid advance- edits, and the first volume of. which ment of these studies. Por the in- appeared in 1 849, are mainly devoted formation, in part apocryphal, current to the investigation of Vedic litera- in Europe at an earlier date on the ture ; and the great Sanscrit Die- Veda, see Max Miiller, " Lectures on tionary of St. Petersburg, edited the Science of Language," vol. i. p. between the years 1 85 5 and 1878 17386}.; and a very curious note by by A. Bohtlingk and R. Roth (the A, C. Burnell, in Ind. Antiq., viii. 98. xxiv INTROD UCTI ON. the help of the comparative methods to trace up to their origin even the Vedic divinities and forms of thinking. Within these limitations the task we propose to ourselves wUl, we think, prove vast enough, and we feel onlv too keenly how imperfect our work will in the end be found to be. "We by no means flatter ourselves that we have always succeeded in distinguishing the essential points, in disentangling the principal threads, and preserving to ) J every element in our exposition its just proportion and place. All that we can pledge ourselves to do is, that we shall guard ourselves against introducing into it either a too pronounced peculiarity of view or a factitious lucidity and arrangement. THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. THE EIG-TEDA. General view of Vedio literature. — Its age and successive formation ; priority of the Hymns of the Rig- Veda. — Principal divinities of the Hymns : the World and its objects, Heaven and Earth, the Sun, Moon, and Stars. — Agni and Soma. — Indra, the Maruts, Rudra, Vayu Parjanya. — Brihaspati and Vac. — Varuna. — Aditi and the Adityas. — The Solar divinities : Sdrya, Savitri, Vishnu, Plishan. — tJshas, the Ajvins, Tvashtri, the Ribhus.^Yama, the Pitris and the Future Life. — Abstract personifications and mythical figures. — Ab- sence of a hierarchy and a classification of the Gods. — Way in which the Myths have been treated in the Hymns. — Monotheistic concep- tions : Praj&pati, Vigvakarman, SvayambhH, &c. — Pantheistic cosmo- gony : Purusha, the primordial substance,'*no eschatology. — Piety and morality ; co-existence of baser forms of belief and practice, as in part preserved in the Atharva-Veda. — Cultus : speculations regarding sacri- fice and prayer : the rita and the brahman, — Essentially sacerdotal character of this religion. The most ancient documents we possess connected with the religions of India are the collections of writings called the Vedas. These are sometimes reckoned three in number and sometimes four, according as the reference is to the collections themselves or to the nature of their contents; and of these two modes of reckoning, the second is the more ancient.^ One of the oldest divisions of the mantras, ^ Aitar. Br., v. 32, 1 ; Taittir. Br., iii. 10, 11, 5 ; Qatap. Br., v. S, 5, 10. A 2 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. or liturgical texts, is, in fact, that which distributes them into ric, yajus, and sdman} or, according to a later defini- tion,^ but one which may be accepted as valid for a period of much greater antiquity,^ into (a) hymns, more strictly verses of invocation and praise, which were chanted with a loud voice : into (b) formulae prescribed with reference to the various acts of sacrifice, which were muttered in a low voice : and into (c) chants of a more or less complex structure, and followed by a refrain which was sung in chorus. To possess an accurate knowledge of the rics, the yajus, and the simans, was to possess the " triple science," the triple Veda. When, on the other hand, there is men- tion of the four Vedas,* the reference is to the four collec- tions as they exist at present, viz., the Rig- Veda, which includes the body of the hymns ; the Tajur- Veda, in which all the prescribed formulee are collected; the Sdma-Veda, which contains the chants (the texts of which are, with a very few exceptions, verses of the Rig- Veda 5); and the Atharva- Veda, a collection of hymns like the Rig- Veda, but of which the texts, when they are not common to the two collections, are in part of later date, and must have been employed in the ritual of a different worship. Be- sides' those collections of mantras, i.e., of liturgical and ritualistic texts, called Samhitds, each Veda still con- tains, as a second part, one or more BrAhmanas, or trea- tises on the ceremonial system, in which, with reference to prescriptions in regard to ritual, there are preserved numerous legends, theological speculations, &c., as well as 1 Atharva-Veda, vii. 54, 2 ; see Br., v. 32, 3, 4 ; ^atap. Br., ii. 3, 3, Rig-Veda, x. go, g; Tait. Samh., i. 17. 2, 3, 3 ; (JJatap. Br., iv. 6, 7, i. * ChS,ndog. Up., vii. i, 2 ; Ath.- ^ The official definition is given Veda, a. 7, 20; Bribadar. tip., ii. in the Mimamsa-Slitras, ii. i, 35-37, 4, 10. pp. 128, I2g, of the edition of the ^ interesting information on the Bibliotheca ludica ; see also S4yana's mode of the formation and the eha- Commentary on tlie Rig-Veda,' t. i. I'acter of these chants will be found p. 23,and Commentary on the Tait- in the introduction to A. C. Burnell's tirlya Samhit^, t. i. p. 28, edition of edition of the Arsheyabr&hmana, the Bibliotheca Indioa ; Prasthana- pp. xi., xli. ' See also Th. Aufrecht, bheda ap. Ind. Stud., i. p. 14. Die Hymnen des Rigveda, 2d ed,, ' Atharva- Veda, xii. i, 38; Aitar. Preface, p. xxxviii. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. the first attempts at exegesis. In the most ancient redac- tion of the Yajur-Veda, which is pre-eminently the Veda that bears on ritual, in the Black Yajus, as it is called, these two parts are still mixed up together.^ Finally, of each Veda there existed several recensions called QcLkJids, or branches, between which there appeared very considerable discrepancies at times.^ Of these recensions, in so far as ^ There are for this Veda, aa for the others, two collections, the one termed the SarphitS. and the otherthe Br&hmana ; but they both contain at once liturgical texts and ritualistic. ^ I . Of this literature there have been published, with critical elabora- tions. First, the Rig- Veda — (a.) Sarnhita : Rig - Veda - San- hita, together with the commentary of Sayanacharya, edited by Max Mtiller, 6 vols, in 4to, 1849-74. ^ reprint without thecommentary, The Hymns of the Rig- Veda in Sanhita and Pada Texts, 1873, Die Hymnen des Rigveda, herausgegeben von Th. Aufrecht, 2 vols. 8vo, 1861-63, form- ing vols, vi., vii., of the Indisclie Stu- dien, and of which a second edition wasissaedini877. These were trans- lated into French by A. Langlois, 1848-51, reprinted in 1872 ; into English by H. H. Wilson and E. B. Cowell, 1850-63, reprinted in 1868, and by Max Miiller iu 1S69 {first vol- ume only) ; into German by A. Lud- wig, 1876-79, and by H. Grassmann, 1876-77. An edition of the text, with translations into English and Marhatti, The Ved^rthayatna by Shankar Pandit, has since 1876 been in the course of publication at Bom- bay. Of an edition of the text be- gun by E. Rber in the Bibliotheoa Indica (Calcutta, 1848), and accom- panied with a commentary and a translation into English, there have appeared only four parts. (ft.) Br^hmana : The Aitareya Brahmanam of the Rigveda, edited and translated by M. Haug, 2 vols. 8vo, Bombay, 1863. A more cor- rect edition has just been issued by Th. Aufrecht, Das Aitareya Br^h- maua mit Ausziigeu aua dem Com- mentare von S&yan4cllrya, Bonn, 1879. The Aitareya Aranyaka, with the commentary of Siyana Acharya, edited by RdjendraUIa Mitra, Cal- cutta, 1876 (Biblioth. Indica). The Aranyakas are supplements to the Brahmanas. 2. The Atharva- Veda. (a.) Sarphita: Atharva Veda San- hita, herausgegeben von R. Roth und W. D. Whitney, 1855-56. (ft.) Br^hmana : The Gopatha BrElhmana of the Atharva- Veda, edited by R§,jendral41a Mitra and Harachandra Vidyabhushana, Cal- cutta, 1872 (Biblioth. Indica). 3. The Sama-Veda. (o.) Samhitas : Die Hymnen des Sama-Veda, herausgegeben, iibersezt und mit Glossar versehen, von Th. Benfey, 1848. This work has thrown into the shade the prior edition and English translation by J. Stevenson, 1841-43. Sama Veda Sanhita, with the commentary of Sayana Acharya, edited by Satyavrata Sama5rami, Calcutta, 1S74 (Biblioth. ludica). This edition, which has reached the fifth volume, comprehends all the liturgical collections of the Sama- Veda, as well as the Gauas, that is to say, the texts in the form of anthems. (ft.) Brahmanas : The Tandya Mahabrahmana, with the commen- tary of Sayana Acharya, edited by Anandachandra Vedautavaglga, 2 vols., Calcutta, 1870-74 (Biblioth. Indica). The final section of the Shadvimgabrahmana has been pub- lished and commented on by A. Weber, Zwei Vedische Texte iiber Omina und Portenta, in the Me- moirs of the Academy of Berlin, 1858. Some short Brahmanas of this 4 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. they affect the Sanihit§,s,the fundamental collections,a small number only has come down to us ; of the Rig- Veda, only one;^ of the Atharva-Veda, two;^ of the S4ma-Veda, three ;^ while of the Yajur-Veda there are five, of which three are of the Black Yajus* and two of the White Yajus.^ All this united constitutes the Qruti, " the hear- ing," i.e., the sacred and revealed tradition. If we except a certain quantity of appended matter, which criticism has no difficulty in discriminating from the Veda we owe to A. C. Burnell ; The SimavidhS,na^Br., London, 1873. The Vain9a-Br., Mangalore, 1873. The Devatadhyiiya-Br., ibid., 1S73. The Arsheya^Br., ibid., 1876. The same with the text of the Jaiminlya Bchool, ibid., 1878. The Samhito- panishad-Br. , ibid., 1877. All these texts, with the exception of the last, are accompanied by the commentary of Sayana. The Vamjabrahmana had been previously published by A. Weber in his Indische Stu- dien, t. iv. We owe, moreover, to Burnell the discovery of the Jaimi- nlya-Br., of which he published a, fragment under the title of " A Le- gend from the Talavaka,ra or Jaimi- ntyabr^hmana of the Sama Veda," Mangalore, 1878. 4. The Yajur-Veda. {a.) The White Taj us : The White Yajur-Veda, edited by A. Weber, 3 vols. 4to, 1849-59, compre- hends : ( I. ) The SamhitI,, the Vajasa- neyi-SanhitS. in the M&dhyandina, and the KElijva-C8,kka, with the commentary of Mahldhara ; (2.) The ^atapatha Brahmana, with ISx- tracts from the Commentaries ; (3.) The ^rautasAtras of K^tyayana, with Extracts from the Commentaries. (5.) The Black Yajus ; Die Tait- tirlya-Samhita, herausgegeben von A.Weber, 1871-72, forming vols. xi. andxii.of thelndischeStudien. The SanhitS, of the Black Yajur-Veda, with the commentary of M&dhava Acharya, Calcutta, i860. (Biblioth. Indica). The publication, which has reached vol. iv., comprehends nearly half of the text ; the editors have been successively E. Eber, E. B. Cowell, Mahegacandra Ny4yara- tna. The Taittirtya Brahmana of the Black Yajur-Veda, with the commentary of S£lyari^chS.rya, ed- ited by B4jendral^la Mitra, 3 vols. 8vo, Calcutta, 1859-70 (Biblioth. Indica). The Taittirtya Aranyaka of the Black Yajur-Veda, with the commentary of S^yan9,ch4rya, ed- ited by Rajendral3,la Mitra, Calcutta, 1872 (Biblioth. Indica). For the Upanishads, which are arranged in this literature in some few cases rightly, in the majority incorrectly, see infra. 1 That of the (jakalakas. * Besides the vulgate, edited by Roth and Whitney, that of the Paip- paiadis, discovered recently at Kash- mir, see R. Roth, Der Atharvaveda in Kaschmir, 1875. ' Besides the Vulgate, which is that of the Kauthumas, those of the R^n9,yanlyas and of the Jaiminiyas. Of a fourth, that of the Naigeyas, we have only fragments. See Bur- nell, Riktantravyakarana, p. xxvi. ^ Those of the Taittiriyas (pub- ■lished), of the K&thas (see A. We- ber's Indische Studien, iii. 451 ; Indische Literaturgeschichte, p. 97, 2d edition), of the Maitriyautyas (see Haug, Brahma und die Braimanen, 1871, p. 31 ; A. "Weber, Indische Studien, xiii. p. 117; L. Schroeder, Zeitschr. der Deutsohen Morgenland. Gesellsch., xxxiii. p. 177)' ^ Those of the M&dhyandinaa and of the K^vas (published). THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 5 genuine stock, we have in these writings, as a whole, an authentic literature, which professes to be what it is, which neither asserts for itself a supernatural origin nor seeks to disguise its age by recourse to the devices of the pastiche. Interpolations and later additions are numerous enough, but these have all been made in good faith. It is nevertheless difficult to fix the age of these books, even in any approxi- mate degree. The most recent portions of the Brahmanas which have come down to us do not appear to go farther back than the fifth century before our era.^ The rest of the literature of the Veda must be referred to a remoter antic[uity, and assigned, in a sequence impossible to deter- mine with any precision, a duration, the first term of which it is absolutely impossible for us to recover. In a general way, it must be conceded that the mantras are, beyond a doubt, older than the regulations which prescribe the use of them ; but we must also admit that the entire body of these books is of more or less simultaneous growth, and conceive of each of them, in the form in which it actually exists, as the last term of a long series, the initial epoch of which must have been obviously the same for all of them. An exception, however, will require to be made as regards the great majority of the hymns of the Rig- Veda. This Samhit^ is, in fact, composed of several distinct collections, which proceeded, in some cases, from rival families, and belonged to tribes often at war with one another. Now, in the liturgy which we meet with in the most ancient portions of the other books, not only are 1 The two last books of the Aita- King AjUtagatru of Brihadaranyaka- reya Aranyaka, for example, are as- Up., ii. i.audof Kaushltaki-Up.,iv. cribed by tradition to ^aanaka and i, some think they recognise the his disciple A 5val4y ana. Colebrooke, prince of that name who was con- Miscellaneous Essays, t. i. pp. 42 temporary with Buddha. Burnouf, and 333, Cowell's edition. Max Lotus de la Bonne Loi, p. 485 ; see, Miiller's Ancient Sanskrit Litera- however, Kern, Over de Jaartelling ture, pp. 235-239. YS,jnavalkya, der zuidelijke Buddhisten, p. 119. who in the ^atapatha Br. belongs Severalof the short Brilhmanas of the already to the past, is not much S^ma-Veda, the Adbhutabrahmana more ancient. See Westergaard, of the Shadvim9a, and a great part of Ueber den altesten Zeitraum der the Taittirlya Aranyaka are probably Indischen Geschichte, p. 77. In the much more modern still. 6 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. these distinctions in regard to origin obliterated, not only is the general body of the Hymns indiscriminately selected from, but this is done without respect to the integrity of the ancient prayers,^ a couplet being picked out here, a triplet there, and thus a body of invocations formed of a character altogether new. The liturgy of these books, therefore, is no longer the same as that which we meet with in the Hymns, and the transition from the one to the other would seem to imply a very considerable lapse of time. Speaking generally, we may say these books pre- suppose not only the existence of the chants of the Rig- Veda, but that of a collection of these more or less akin to the collection that has come down to us. Attempts have been made to estimate the length of time that would be necessary for the gradual formation of this literature, and the eleventh century before the Chris- tian era has been suggested as the age in which the poetry that produced these hymns must have flourished.^ But taking into account all the circumstances, we are of opi- nion that this term is too recent, and that the great body of the chants of the Rig- Veda must be referred back to a much earlier period. Contrary to an opinion that is often advanced, we consider also a goodly number of the hymns of the Atharva-Veda to be of a date not much more recent;^ and some of the formulse prescribed in the Yajur-Veda are in all probability quite as ancient. As to the other litur- gical texts, these, when not borrowed from the Hyinns or 1 We do not intend by this to In a general way, the fact in ques- affirm that in the Rig- Veda, as we tion is indubitable, although in par- find it, we must consider all the parts ticular oases the problem is often which compose it as having preserved difficult of resolution, their original forms intact. So far ^ ji^x Miiller, Ancient Sanskrit from that, there are more or less Literature, p. 572 ; see A. Weber, unmistakable traces in many of them Indische Literaturgeschichte, p. 2, of their having been recast or 2d edition. readjusted. On this subject see ^ The existence of a collection of the translation by Grasamann, and the nature of our Atharva-Veda is "Siebenzig Lieder des Rigveda," involved in such formula as Taittir. translated by K. Geldner and A. Sarph., vii. 5, 11, 2, and probably Kaegi, 1875, a publication executed also in Rig- Veda, x. 90, 9. under the direction of R, Roth. , THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 7 other similar collections no longer extant,^ belong to an age more recent, and form with the Br§,hinanas the secon- dary deposit in the stratification of Vedic literature. The religion which is transmitted to us in these Hymns ^ is, in its principal features, this : Nature is throughout divine. Everything which is impressive by its sublimity, or is supposed capable of affecting us for good or evil, may become a direct object of adoration. Mountains, rivers, springs, trees, plants, are invoked as so many high powers.^ The animals which surround man, the horse by which he is borne into battle, the cow which supplies him with nourishment, the dog which keeps watch over his dweUing, the bird which, by its cry, reveals to him his future, toge- ther with that more numerous class of creatures which threaten his existence, receive from him the worship of either homage or deprecation.* There are parts even of the apparatus used in connection with sacrifice which are more than ,sacred to purposes of religion ; they are regarded as themselves deities.^ The very war-chariot, offensive 1 In all the ritualistic texts, even subjects the mystic and religious the most recent, we meet now and ideas of the Rig- Veda to a searching again with fragments of liturgy of analysis in a work still in course of the same nature and character, some- publication, entitled, La Religion times quite as ancient as the Hymns, V^dique d'aprfes les Hymnes du Rig- and which do not occur in the Sam- Yeda, t. i. (Biblioth^que de I'Eoole hitEis of the Rig- and the Atharva- des Hautes Etudes, fascic. xsxvi.), Veda as known to us. 1878. ^ See J. Muir, Original Sanskrit ^ Rig- Veda, vii. 35, 8; viii. 54, 4; Texts, vol. iv., 2ded., 1873, and vol. x. 35, 2; 64, 8; ii. 41, 16-18; iii. v., 1870. We refer our readers, once 33 ; vii. 47, 95, 96 ; viii. 74, 15 ; x. for all, to this exposi as at once the 64, 9 ; 75 ; vii. 49 ; i. 90, 8 ; vii. 34, most complete and the most reliable 23-25; vi. 49, 14; x. 17, 14; 97; we possess of the Vedic religions. 145. Atharva- Veda, viii. 7. Max Miiller, Ancient Sanskrit Lite- ^ Rig- Veda, i. 162, 163 ; iv. 38 ; rature, p. 525 sej. The same author's i. 164, 26-28; iii. 53, 14; iv. 57, 4; Lectures on the Origin and Growth vi. 28; viii. loi, 15; x. 19, 169; of Religion, as illustrated by the Re- Atharva- Veda, x. 10 ; sii. 4 ; 5 ; Rig- ligions of India, 1878, pp. 193 seq., Veda, vii. 55 ; ii. 42, 43; x. 165 ; i. 224se2., 259 sec[. A. Ludwig, Die 116, 16; 191, 6; vii. 104, 17-22; Philosophischen und Religibsen An- Atharva-Veda, viii. 8, 15; 10,29; Bchauungen des Veda in ihrer Eut- ix. 2, 22 ; X. 4. wicklung, 1875 ; and Die Mantralit- ^ Rig- Veda, iii. 8 ; x. 76, 175; and teratur und das Alte Indien (t. iii. of in general the Aprl- sftktas; see, his translation of the Rig- Veda), moreover, i. 187; i. 28, 5-8 ; iv. 58; 1878, pp. 257-415. A. Bergaigne Atharva-Veda, xviii. 4, 5 ; xix. 32, 8 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. and defensive weapons, the plough, the furrow which has just been traced in the soil, are the objects, not of blessing only, but of prayer.^ India is radically pantheistic, and that from its cradle onwards. Nevertheless it is neither the direct adoration of objects, even the greatest, nor that of the obvious personifications of natural phenomena, which figures most prominently in the Hymns. Thus, Aurora is certainly a great goddess ; the poets that praise her can find no colours bright enough or words passionate enough to greet this daughter of heaven, who reveals and dispenses all blessings, ushering in the days of the year and prolonging them to mortals. Her gifts are celebrated and her blessings implored, but her share in the cultus is small in comparison ; it is not, as a rule, to her that the offerings go. Almost as much must be said of the deities Heaven and Earth, although they are still revered as the primitive pair by whom the rest of the gods were begotten. In the cultus they disappear before the more personal divinities ; while in speculation they are gradually super- seded by more abstract conceptions or by more recondite symbols. Of the stars there is hardly any mention. The moon plays only a subordinate part.^ The sun itself, which figures so prominently in the myth, no longer does so to the same extent in the religious consciousness, or at most it is worshipped by preference in some of its dupli- cate forms, which possess a more complex personality and have a more abstruse meaning. The two single divinities of the first rank which have preserved their physical char- acter ^ure and simple are Agni and Soma. In their case, the visible and tangible objects were too near, and, above all, too sacred, to be in any greater or less degree obscured or outshone by mere personifications. Nevertheless, means 9. The Rig- Veda, consecrated to are peculiar to the Atharva-Veda the worship of the great gods, ia are devoted to these lower forms of comparatively meagre in supplying religion. information on these imperfect and, 1 Rig- Veda, iii. 53, 17-20; vi. 47, at times, merely metaphorical deifi- 26-31 ; vi. 75 ; iv. 57, 4-8. cations. On the other hand, more " Rig-Veda, i. 24, 10 ; 105, I, 10 ; than the half of those portions which x. 64, 3; 85, 1-5, 9, 13, 18, 19, 40. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS, 9 ■were at length devised by which what was gross in the merely physical idea of a god Agni and a god Soma might be refined into more spiritual conceptions. They were invested with a subtle and complicated symbolism ; they were impregnated, so to speak, with all the mystic virtue of sacrifice; their empii'e was extended far beyond the world of sense, and they were conceived as cosmic agents and universal principles. Agni, in fact, is not only terrestrial fire, and the fire of the lightning and the sun ; ^ his proper native home is the mystic, invisible heaven, the abode of the eternal light and the first principles of all things.^ His births are infinite in number, whether as a germ, which is indestructible and ever begotten from itself, he starts into life every day on the altar from a piece of wood, whence he is extracted by friction (the arani), and in which he sleeps like the embryo in the womb ; * or whether, as son of the floods, he darts with the noise of the thunder from the bosom of the celestial rivers, where the Bhrigus (personifications of the lightning) discovered him, and the Aqvins begat him with aranis of gold.* In point of fact, he is always and every- where the same, since those ancient days when, as the eldest of the gods, he was born in his highest dwelling, on the bosom of the primordial waters, and when the first religious rites and the first sacrifice were brought forth along with him.^ For he is priest by birth in heaven as well as on earth,^ and he oflSciated in that capacity in the abode of Vivasvat ^ (heaven or the sun), long before Matari9van (another symbol of the lightning) had brought him down to mortals,^ and before Atharvan and the Ahgiras, the primitive sacrificers, had installed 1 Rig- Veda, x. 88, 6, 11. x. 46, 2 ; i. 58, 6; iii. 2, 3 ; s. 88, 2 Rig- Veda, x. 45, I ; 121, 7 ; vi. 10 ; 184, 3. 8, 2 ; ix. 113, 7, 8. * Rig- Veda, i. 24, 2 ; iii. i. 20 ; '^ Rig- Veda, x. S, I ; iii. 29 ; i. 68, x. 88, 8 ; 121, 7, 8 ; iv. i. 11-18. 2; x! 79, 4, &c. Being bora thua ' Rig- Veda, i. 94, 6; x. no, 11; every day, he is called the youngest 1 50. of the gods. ' Rig- Veda, i. 58, i ; 31, 3. * Rig- Veda, ii. 3 5 ; iii. I ; ii. 4, 2 ; ^ Rig-Veda, i. 93, 6 ; iii. 9, 5 ; vi. 8, 4. lo THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. him here below as the protector, the guest, and the friend of men.^ The later legends, in which the birth of the lightning, or the first generation of the sacred fire, is directly represented as a sacrifice, are in this respect only the legitimate development of these old conceptions. As lord and generator of sacrifice, Agni becomes the bearer of all those mystic speculations of which sacrifice is the subject. He begets the gods, organises the world, produces and preserves universal life, and is, in a word, a power in the Vedic cosmogony.^ At the same time, as observation, doubtless, contributed to suggest, he is a sort of anirna mundi, a subtle principle pervading all nature; it is he who renders the womb of women capable of conception, and makes the plants and all the seeds of the earth spring up and grow.^ But at the core of all these high powers ascribed to him, he never ceases for an instant to be the fire, the material flame which consumes the wood on the altar ; and of the many hymns which celebrate his praises, there is not one in which this side of his nature is for once forgotten. Soma is in this respect the exact counterpart of Agni. Soma is properly the fermented drinkable juice of a plant so named, which has been extracted from its stalk under pressure after due maceration. The beverage produced is intoxicating,* and it is offered in libation to the gods, especially to Indra, whose strength it intensifies in the battle which that god maintains against the demons. But it is not only on earth that the soma flows ; it is pre- sent in the rain which the cloud distUs, and it is shed iRig-Veda,;. 83,4, S;7I, 2, 3;v!. x. 21,8; 80, i; 183, 3. In the 15, 17 ; 16, 13 ; X. 92, 10 ; vii. S, 6 ; Atharva-Veda he is identified with ii. I, 9 ; 2, 3, 8 ; 4, 3-4; x. 7, 3 ; 91, Kama, Desire, Love ; Ath.-Veda, iii. 1,2. He is called himself Angiraa, 21,4. In the ritual he bears the sur- the first of the Angiras. names of Patulvat, of K^ma, of Put- 2 Rig-Veda, v. 3, i ; x.8, 4; i. 69, 1, ravat : Taitt. Samh., i. 4, 27 ; ii. 2, See Taitt. Saiph., i. 5, 10, 2 ; Rig- 3, i ; ii. 2, 4, 4 ; see vi. $, 8, 4. Veda, vi. 7, 7 ; 8, 3 ; x. 156, 4. * Rig- Veda, viii. 48, 5, 6 ; x. 1 19 ; ^ Rig-Veda, iiL 3, 10 ; x. 51, 3 ; i. viii. 2, 12. 66, 8 ; iii. 26, 9 ; 27, 9 ; viii. 44, 16; THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. ii beyond the visible world whereTer sacrifice is performed.^ This is as much as to say that, like Agni, Soma, besides the existence he assumes on the earth and in the atmos- phere, has a mystic existence.^ Like Agni, he has many dwelling-places ;^ but his supreme residence is in the depths of the third heaven, where Surya, the daughter of the Sun, passed him through her filter, where the women of Trita, a duplicate, or at any rate a very near relation, of Agni, pounded him under the stone, where Pushan, the god of nourishment, found him.* From this spot it was that the falcon, a symbol of the lightning, or Agni him- self, once ravished him out of the hands of the heavenly archer, the G-andharva, his guardian, and brought him to men.* The gods drank of him and became in consequence immortal ; men will become so when they in turn shall drink of him with Yama in the abode of the blessed.® Meanwhile, he gives to them here below vigour and ful- ness of days ; he is the ambrosia and the water of youth ; it is he who renders the waters fertile, who nourishes the plants, of which he is the king, infusing into them their healing virtues, who quickens the semen of men and animals, and gives inspiration to the poet and fervour to prayer.^ He generated the heaven and the earth, Indra and Vishnu. With Agni, with whom he forms a pair in closest union, he kindled the sun and the stars.® None the less is he the plant which the acolyte pounds under the stone, and the yellow liquid which trickles into the vat.® 1 In the view of the Vedas, saori- i. 23, 19, 20 ; ix. 60, 4, 85, 39 ; 95, fice is offered by the gods as well as 2 ; 96, 6 ; 88, 3. by men ; it is universal and eternal. " Rig-Veda, ix. 96, S ; 86, 10; 87, ■■^ Rig- Veda, i. 91, 4 ; ix. 36, 15. 2 ; i. 93, 5. ^ Rig- Veda, i. 91, 5. ° A. Kuhn has gone minutely * Rig- Veda, ix. 32, 2 ; 38, 2 ; I, into the ramifications of the leading 6 ; l'i3i 3 ) i- 23, 13, 14- myths that refer to Agni and Soma ° Rig- Veda, iv. 26, 6, 7 ; 27 ; 18, in his Memoir, Die Herabkunft des 13 ; viii. 82, 9 ; i. 71, 5 ; ix. 83, 4. Feuers und des Gottercranks, 1859. " Rig-Veda, viii. 48, 3 ; ix. 113, 7- For the symbolism of which these 1 1 ; viii. 48, 7 ; 79, 2, 3, 6 ; i. 91, 6, 7. two gods are the subject, and for all ' Rig- Veda, ix. 8, 8; viii. 79, 2, that religion of saorifice of which 6 ; i. 91, 22 ; x. 97, 22 ; vi. 47, 3 ; they are in some degree the centre. 12 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. In the other divinities the physical character is more effaced. Occasionally it is preserved only in the myth or in a limited number of attributes ; and even in that case it is not always easy to determine it with precision. For the religious consciousness they are personal deities ; and in general the greater the deity is the more pronounced and complex is the personality. Indra, he who of all these is invoked most frequently, is the king of heaven and the national god of the Aryans ;i he gives victory to his people, and is always ready to take in hand the cause of his ser- vants. But it is in heaven, in the atmosphere, that he fights his great battles for the deliverance of the waters, the cows, the spouses of the gods, kept captive by the demons. It is here that, intoxicated with the soma, he strikes down with his thunderbolt Vritra, the coverer, Ahi, the dragon, ^ushna, the witherer, and a crowd of other monsters ; that he breaks open the brazen strongholds of ^ambara, the demon with the club, and the cave of Vala, the concealer of stolen goods ; and that^ guided by Saram^, his faithful dog, and roused to fury by the song of the Angiras, he comes to snatch from the cunning Panis what they have pilfered.^ In these combats, which are now represented as exploits of a remote past, and again as a perennial struggle which is renewed every day, he is some- times assisted by other gods, such as Soma, Agni, his companion Vishnu, or his bodyguards the Maruts.^ But he more frequently fights alone ; * and, indeed, he has no need of assistance from others, so vast is his strength and so certain his victory.^ Once only is he said to have been see especially the work of A. Ber- lo8. For the basis of these myths gaigne already cited, La Keligioa and the expression given to them in V^dique d'aprfes les Hymnes, and the other mythologies, see the me- the paper of the same author, Les moir of M. Breal, Hercule et Cacus, Figures de Rhdfcorique dans le Rig- Etude deMythobgieCompar^e, 1863. Veda, in M^moires de la Soci^t^ de ' Rig- Veda, iv. 28, i ; ix. 61, 22 ; Linguistique de Paris, t. iv. 96. iii. 12, 6 ; i. 22, 19 ; iv. 18, 11 ; viii. 1 Rig- Veda, i. 51; 8; 130, 8 ; ii. 100, 12; iii. 47, &o. II, 18 ; iv. 26, 2 ; viii. 92, 32, &c. * Rig- Veda, i. 165, 8 ; vii. 21, 6 ; 2 Of the countless passages which x. 138, 6, &c. refer to these struggles we shall ^ Rig- Veda, i. 165, 9, 10. mention only Rig- Veda, i. 32 and x. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 13 seized with terror, and that was after the death of Vritra, " when, like a scared falcon, he fled to the depths of space across and beyond the ninety and nine rivers ; " ^ while even in this flight the later literature, which has preserved the memory of it, sees only an effect of remorse.^ The fact is, that in India the struggle between the god and the demon is, and will always remain, an unequal one ; it will give rise to an infinite number of myths ; but this will not, as in Persia, issue in dualism. Indra, then, is pre- eminently a warlike god. Standing erect in his war-chariot, drawn by, two fawn-coloured horses, he is in some sort the ideal type of an Aryan chieftain. But that is only one of the sides of his nature. As a god of heaven he is also the dispenser of all good gifts, the author and preserver of all life ; ^ with the same hand he fills the udder of the cow with ready-made milk, and holds back the wheels of the sun on the downward slope of the firmament ; he traces for the rivers their courses, and establishes securely without rafters the vault of the sky.* He is of inordinate dimen- sions; there is room for the earth in the hollow of his hand ; ^ he is sovereign lord and demiurges.^ Around him those divinities are grouped which seem to share in his empire, from the first, his faithful companions the Mariits, probably the bright ones, gods of storm and the lightnings.'' When their host begins to move, the earth trembles under their deer-yoked chariots and the forests bow their heads on the mountains.^ As they pass, men see 1 Rig- Veda, i. 32, 14. * Rig- Veda, i. 61, 9 ; iii. 30, 14 ; * Theremorseofthebrahmanioide, iv. 28, 2; ii. 15, 2, 3. for the antagonist of Indra has be- ^ Rig- Veda, i. 100, 15 ; 173, 6 ; comeaBrahman: MahS,bhar., v. 228- vi. 30, I ; iii. 30, 5. 569. The basis of this story is, how- ^ Rig- Veda, ii. 12; i. loi, 5; iv. ever, of ancient date, Taitt. Samh., 19, 2 ; iii. 46, 2; ii. 15, 2; 17, 5 ; ii. 5, I ; ii. S, 3 ; see vi. 5, 5, 2. vi. 30, 5 ; viii. 96, 6. Taitt. Samh., ii. 4, 12, Indra does ' Twelve hymns of the first book Bot kill Vritra, but concludes a com- addressed to the Maruts form the pact with him. first volume (all that has appeared) of ' Rig- Veda, iv. 17, 17 ; vii. 37, 3 : the translation by Max Miiller. He is the Maghavau, the munificent » Rig-Veda, v. 60, 2, 3 ; viii. 20, par excellence. 5j ^ j '• 37j 6, 8. 14 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. the flashing of their arms and hear the sound of their 'flute-music and songs, with their challenge calls and the cracking of their whips.^ Tumultuous though they are, they are none the less beneficent. They are dispensers of the rains, and from the udder of Prigni, the spotted cow, their mother, they cause her milk to flow in the showers.^ From their father, Budra, they inherit the knowledge of remedies.* This last, whose name probably meant " the reddish one," before it was interpreted to mean "The Howler," is, like his sons, a god of storm. In the Hymns, which certainly do not tell us everything here any more than elsewhere, he has nothing of that gloomy aspect under which we find him become so famous afterwards. Although he is armed with the thunderbolt, and is the author of sudden deaths,* he is represented as pre-emi- nently helpful and beneficent. He is the handsomest of the gods, with his fair locks. Like Soma, the most excel- lent remedies are at his disposal, and his special ofiice is that of protector of flocks.^ He is a near relation of Vdyu or Vdta, the wind, with whom he is sometimes confounded,^ a god of healing like him, and owner of a miraculous cow which yields him the best milk.'^ He is also similarly re- lated to Parjanya, the most direct impersonation of the rain-storm, the god with the resounding hymn, who lays the forests low and causes the earth to tremble, who terrifies even the innocent when he smites the guilty, but who also diffuses life, and at whose approach exhausted vege- tation begins to revive. The earth decks herself afresh when he empties his great shower -bottle; he is her husband, and it is through him that plants, animals, and men are capable of. reproduction; and, as may always be 1 Rig- Veda, i. 64, 4 ; viii. 20, II ; B Rig. Veda, ii. 33, 3, 4 ; i. 43, 4 ; i. 85, 2, 10; 37, 3, 13. 114, 5 ; ii. 33, 2 ; vi. 74; i. 43 ; 2 Rig- Veda, i. 37, 10, II ; 38, 7, 114, 8; x. 169. 9; 64, 6; V. 53, 6-10 ; ii. 34, 10. ^ Rig- Veda, x. 169. He is, like ^ Rig-Veda, i. 38,2; ii. 34, 2; him, father of the Maruts: i. 134, viii. 20, 23-26 ; ii. 33, 13. 4 ; 135, 9. ^ Rig- Veda, ii. 33, 3, 10-14; vii. ' Rig- Veda, x. 186; i. 134, 4. 46. ■ THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 15 predicated of a god of storm, who has at his command both Agni and Soma under the forms of lightning and rain, he has a higher rSle and plays a part in the generation of the cosmos.^ By one of those peculiarities characteristic of the Vedic religions, nearly all the features which have just been men- tioned as conspicuous in Agni, Soma, and Indra reappear in another divine personage of an origin apparently very dif- ferent, Brihaspati or Brahmanaspati, as he is called, the lord of prayer. Like Agni and Soma, he is born on the altar, and thence rises upwards to the gods ; like them, he was begotten in space by heaven and earth ; like Indra, he wages war with enemies on the earth and demons in the air ; ^ like all three, he resides in the highest heaven, he generates the gods, and ordains the order of the universe. Under his fiery breath the world was melted and assumed the form it has, like metal in the mould of the founder.* At first sight it would seem that all this is a late product of abstract reflection ; and it is probable, in fact, from the very form of the name, that in so far as it is a distinct person, the type is comparatively modern ; in any case, it is peculiarly Indian ; but by its elements it is connected with the most ancient conceptions. As there is a power in the flame and the libation, so there is in the formula; and this formula the priest is not the only person to pro- nounce, any more than he is the only one to kindle Agni or shed Soma. There is a prayer in the thunder, and the gods, who know all things, are not ignorant of the power in the sacramental expressions. They possess all-potent spells that have remained hidden from men and are as ancient as the first rites, and it was by these the world was formed at first, and by which it is preserved up to the present.* It is this omnipresent power of prayer which 1 Rig- Veda, v. 83 ; vii. 101 ; ix. ^ Rig- Veda, iv. 50, 4 ; ii. 26, 3 ; «2, 3'; 113, 3- 24, 5 ; It. 50, i ; x. 72, 2. 2 Rig- Veda, ii. 24, II ; vii. 97, 8 ; ^ Rig- Veda, i. 164, 45; viii. 100, 10, ii. 23, 3, 18; ii. 24,2-4; i. 68. ii;x.7i, i; 177, 2; 114, i; ii. 23, 17; 1 6 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. Brahmanaspati personifies, and it is not without reason that he is sometimes confounded with Agni, and especially with Indra. In reality each separate god and the priest him- self^ become Brahmanaspati at the moment when they pronounce the mantras which give them power over the things of heaven and of earth. The same idea, in a more abstract form, comes out in V§,c, the sacred speech, which is represented as an infinite power, as superior to the gods, and as generative of all that exists.^ If we combine into one all the attributes of sovereign power and majesty which we find in the other gods, we will have the god Varuna? As is implied in the name, which is the same as the Greek Ovpavo's, Varuna is the god of the vast luminous heavens, viewed as embracing all things, and as the primary source of all life and every blessing.* Indra, too, is a god of the heavens, and these two personalities do, in fact, coincide in many respects. There is, however, this difference between them, that Indra has, above all, appropriated the active, and, so to speak, militant life of heaveti, while Varuna represents rather its serene, immutable majesty. Nothing equals the magni- ficent terms in which the Hymns describe him. The sun is his eye, the sky is his garment, and the storm is his breath.5 It is he who keeps the heavens and the earth apart, and has established them on foundations that cannot be shaken; who has placed the stars in the firmament, who has given feet to the sun, and who has traced for the x•II^4;90>9• Prayer is tlie weapon in the work of J. Darmesteter, of Brihaspati, ii. 24, 3, &o. ; it is also Ormazd at Abriman, leurs Origines that of the Angiras. The brahman, et leur Histoire, 1877. See also the effective word, is devahrita, the the interesting monograph by A. work of the gods, vii. 97, 3 ; compare Hillebrandt, Varuna und Mitra, ein the bellowing of Agni, of Varuna, of Beitrag zur Exegese des Veda, 1877, the celestial bull, the song of' Par- and R. Roth, Die hochsten Gotter des janya and that of the Maruts. arischen Volkes, ap. Zeitschr. der 1 Rig- Veda, iv. 50, 7. Deutsch. Morgenlaud. Gesellsch., t. ^ Rig-Veda, x. 125. vi. 70. ' The myth of Varuna and the ■• Rig- Veda, vii. 87, 5 ; viii. 41, 3. whole of the conceptions which are ^ Rig-Veda, i. 1:5, i; 25, 13; Ath.- conneoted with it are the subject of Veda', xiii. 3, I ; Rig-Veda, vii. 87, 2. a study, as profound as brilliant, THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 17 auroras their paths, and for the rivers their courses.^ He has made everything and preserves everything; nothing can do harm to the works of Varuna. No one can fathom him ; but as for him, he knows all and sees all, both what is and what shall be.^ From the heights of heaven, where he resides in a palace with a thousand gates, he can dis- cern the track of the birds through the air and of the ships over the seas.^ It is from thence, from the height of his throne of gold on its foundations of brass, that he watches over the execution of his decrees, that he directs the onward movement of the world, and that, surrounded by his emissaries, he regards with an eye that never slumbers the doings of men, and passes judgment upon them.* For he is before all the upholder of order in the universe and in human society, and his sovereignty is the highest expression of law, both physical and moral.^ He inflicts terrible punishments and avenging maladies on the hardened criminal;^ but his justice discriminates between a fault and a sin, and he is merciful to the man that repents. It is also to him that the cry of anguish from remorse ascends, and it is before him that the sinner comes to discharge himself of the burden of his guilt by confession.' In other sections the religion of the Veda is ritualistic, and at times intensely ' speculative, but with Varuna it goes down into the depths of the conscience, and realises the idea of holiness. It has sometimes been maintained that the Varuna of the Hymns is a god in a state of decadence.* In this view 1 Rig- Veda, vii. 86, 1 ; viii. 41, 10; ^ These are his bonds: Rig-Veda, 42, I; i. 24, 8; V. 85, 5 ; i. 123, 8; i. 24, 15, &c. There is often men- ii. 28, 4; V. 85, 6 ; vii. 87, I. tion of his wrath: i. 24, 11, 14; 2 Rig- Veda, iv. 42,3; i. 24, 10; vii. 62, 4; iv. I, 4; vii. 84, 2. 2C 14. Dropsy, in particular, was an inflic- ^ Rig- Veda, i. 25, 10 ; viii. 88, 5 ; tion especially ascribed to Varuna : ;_ 25,' 7-1 1. ™- 89; Atharva-Veda, iv. 16, 7. ' * Rig- Veda, v. 62, 8 ; i. 25, 13 ; ix. ' Rig- Veda, i. 25, I, 2 ; ii. 28,5-9 ; 73, 4'; vii. 49, 3 ; Ath.-Veda, iv. 1 6, 1-5. v. 85, 7, 8 ; vii. 86 ; 87, 7 ; 88, 6 ; 89. 5 Hence his surnames of ritasya ^ See the arguments for this in gopS,, the guardian of order, dhri- J. Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, tavrata, satyai I barman, whose de- t. v. p. 116; see also Hillebrandt, crees are irreversible and effectual. Varuna und Mitra, p. 107. B 1 8 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. we can by no means concur. That lie filled small space in the public cultus at the time when these old chants were collected, is evident indeed from the small number of hymns to Varuna preserved in the collection. Still, though we might insist that the importance of a god is not always to be measured by the frequency with which his name is invoked in the ritual, an appeal to these few hymns is enough to prove that, in the consciousness of their authors, the divinity of Varuna stood stiR intact. In connection with no other god is the sense of the divine majesty and of the absolute dependence of the creature expressed with the same force, and we must go to the Psalms in order to find similar accents of adoration and supplication. More- over, there are two hymns ^ in which a formal parallel is drawn between Varuna and Indra, the god who ought to have dethroned him, and in both places it is with Varuna on the whole that the supreme majesty remains. There is a third hymn,^ it is true, where matters appear in a different light. In it we find Agni declaring that he quits the service of Varuna for that of Indra, the only true lord and master, and this is looked upon by some as authentic evidence that the worship of Varuna was superseded by that of Indra. This would be a very singular passage indeed, if it actually contained a chapter of religious history, all the more surprising that it bears the marks of such extreme antiquity. But it is not a page of his- tory we must look for here; it is a page of mythology. Heaven is not always in a clement mood, and there was a time when Varuna was not solely just and good, when, alongside of myths representing his divine nature, there were others that expressed his demonic character, and in which heaven or Varuna was vanquished. The religious sentiment, in many respects so elevated, which appears in the Hymns, discarded the most of the myths of this class, as well as many others which were offensive to it ; but it did not discard them all, and it could not prevent them ^ Rig- Veda, iv. 42 ; vii. 82. , ^ Kig-Veda, x. 124. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 19 surviving in a sort of latent state. In the passage in ques- tion, which is one of those that have passed in spite of the feeling against them, Varuna is not a god on the wane but a malign divinity ; and that is a side of his nature the memory of which is kept alive in the Br§,hmanas. Varuna is the first of a group of deities with abstract names, such as Mitra, the friend, Aryaman, the bosom friend, Bhaga, the liberal, Dahsha, the capable, Am^a, the apportioner, which are only a splitting up and in some sort the reflection of his own being. They have no very defined existence, and, with almost the single excep- tion of Mitra,^ they are never invoked alone. They all, as is noticeable, tend in some degree to maintain the part of solar divinities ; particularly is this the case with Mitra, the most conspicuous among them, and who, like his brother Mithra of the Zend books, becomes identified later on with the sun himself. Savitri also, a decidedly solar god, is often associated with them ; and in one myth of unmistakably ancient date the sun is their brother, being born of an immature egg, which their mother has thrown away and sent rolling into space.^ This mother is Aditi, immensity,^ from whom they derive their name of Aditya, or sons of Aditi, an epithet applied sometimes also to Indra and Agni.* When the Hymns try to describe Aditi, they exhaust themselves in laborious efforts, and lose themselves at length in vagueness. In her the con- fused and imposing notion of a sort of common womb, a substratum of all existences, seems to have found one of its earliest expressions. In one passage she is "what has been born, and what will be born." ^ In another circle of ideas, a character quite similar is at times ascribed to the Waters, which are not only the divers manifestations of the liquid element, such as springs, rivers, rains, clouds, ' Rig-Veda, iii. 59. Hill ebrandt, Ueber die Gottin Aditi, 2 Rig- Veda, x. 72, 8, 9. Hence 1876. his name o£ Mart^nda. * Rig-Veda, vii. 85, 4 ; viii. 52, 3 See Max Miiller, Translation of 7 ; x. 88, 1 1 (dditeya). the Rig- Veda, pp. 230-251, and A. ' Rig- Veda, i. 89, 10. 20 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. libations, but are also conceived of as the primitive medium in the womb of which is fashioned everything that exists.^ The transition from the Adityas deities to the solar deities is, as we have just seen, an imperceptible one. Of the latter, the most important are S4rya, the sun, con- ceived directly as a divine being; he keeps his eye on men and reports their failings before Mitra and Varuna ; ^ Savitri, the quickener, who, as he raises his long arms of gold, rouses all beings from their slumber in the morn- ing and buries them in sleep again in the evening ; * Vishnu, the active, who is destined at a later period to such honour, the comrade of Indra, who paces along with long strides, and in three steps traverses the celestial spaces ; * and P'Ashan, the nourisher, who with his golden goad traces the track of the furrow, the good shepherd who loses not a single head of his cattle. He knows all ' roads, and these he is incessantly traversing on a chariot yoked with goats ; he is the guide of men and of herds of cattle in their peregrinations, as he also is of the dead along the paths which lead to the abode of the blessed.* We need not insist on the qualities of clear-sightedness, sagacity, and ordaining power naturally common to all these deities in their character as beings related to the light and the sun. It will be observed, however, that they are conceived of, and especially treated, in a very personal manner, and in a way to suggest only very indirectly the luminary they represent, from which they are at times expressly distinguished ; * and that, in fine, they express only the beneficent aspects of it. The harmful sun, the destroyer and devourer, — he, for example, whose wheel 1 Compare such passages as Rig- ^ See Rig- Veda, where, x. 149, 3, Veda, vii. 47 ; 49 with. x. 82, 5, 6 ; the sun is called the bird of Savitri; 109, 1 ; 121,7, **; 129, 1-3; 190, I. i. 35, 9, Savitri guides the sun;'v. '^ Rig- Veda,!. 50; 115; vii. 62,2, &o. 47, 3, the sun is called a brilliant '^ Rig- Veda, ii. 38, &c. stone set in the sky ; vii. 87, 5, it * Rig- Veda, i. 22, 16-21 ; 154. is the golden swing fabricated by '^ Rig-Veda,i.42; vi.S3; iv.57,7; Varuna. X. 17, 3-6. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 21 Indra breaks in pieces/ — has given rise to myths, but he does not become a god as in the Semitic religions. Ushas naturally takes rank next the sun; she is the Aurora, and the most graceful creation of the Hymns, a bright and airy figure that hovers on the uncertain border- land of poetry and religion, so transparent is the personi- fication, and so uncertain are we whether it is to the object evoked that the poet addresses himself, or whether it is not rather God whom he adores in his works.^ The case is quite different with regard to the two A^vins, the horse- men. It is not easy to explain either the reason of their name or their physical meaning. It is obvious that they are deities of the morning : they are the sons of the Sun and the betrothed of Aurora. On their three-wheeled chariot they make the circuit of the world every day ; their whip distils the honey of the dew; it was they who revealed to the gods the place where the soma was hidden ; and one part at least of the myths, in which they are always found succouring a person in distress, seems to be naturally explained by the deliverance, that is to say, the rising, of the sun out of darkness.^ But neither does all this, any more than the comparison which has been drawn between them and the Dioscuri, render their origin much clearer. Nevertheless they rank among the divinities that are often invoked ; they are dispensers of benefits, are possessed of invaluable remedies, and preside at gene- ration.* By this last function they are allied to their maternal grandfather, Tvashtri, the fashioner, who fabri- cated the thunderbolt of Indra and the cup of sacrifice, and whose special office it is to form the foetus in the womb,^ one of the most curious characters in the Vedic 1 Rig-Veda, iv. 28, 2, &o. 9. See A. Weber, Ind. Stud., t. 234; ' Nothing more ciiarming than L. Myriantheus, Die Agvins oder these hymns to Aurora is to be arisohen Dioskuren, 1876. found in the descriptive lyrical * Rig-Veda, i. 34, 3-6; 157, 5; x. poetry of any other people. Rig- 184, 2, 3; Ath.-Veda, ii. 30, 2. See Veda, i. 48, 113, 123, 124; iii. '61; Taitt. Samh., ii. 3, 11, 2. vi. 64 ; vii. 77, 78. ^ Rig- Veda, i. 32, 2; 20, 6 ; 188, " Rig- Veda, i. 34, 10; iii. 39, 3 ; 9 ; x- 10, S; 184, I; Taitt. Saiph., i. viii. 9, 17 ; i. 118, 5 ; iv. 43, 6 ; i. 5, 9, i, 2. 157, 3.4; v. 76, 3; i. 116, 12; 119, 22 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. Pantheon, in a mytliological point of view, but of slender account in a religious one. He has close affinities with Agni, of whom he is at times the father.^ He has other children besides : Saranyu, the hurrying cloud, who has connection with Vivasvat, the sun, and Vigvarlipa, the many -fashioned, a monster with three heads, who is likewise a personification of the storm, and who expires under the blows of Indra.^ He himself maintains a struggle with Indra, who ventures into his dwelling to ravish from him the soma. He is at once creator and evil-doer,^ and the only power really invoked who par- takes as much of the demon as of the god. As workman of the gods, he has the Ribhus as rivals, a set of genii, ordinarily three in number, who by their works attained to immortality. They are distinguished for having divided into four the one cup of sacrifice which Tvashtri had fashioned.* Here again what is nothing more than a myth has sometimes been taken for history ; for we hear of the religious reform wrought by the Ribhus, and of their admission among the gods.^ Notwithstanding their vague and hardly intelligible nature, they are fre- quently invoked, and they partake daily of the evening offering. The solar myths naturally lead us to those which are connected with the life beyond the grave ; for in India, as elsewhere, it is a solar hero who rules over the dead. Yama is, in fact, a son of Vivasvat, the sun.^ He might have lived as an immortal, but he chose to die, or rather he incurred the penalty of death, for under this choice a fall is disguised.' He was the first to traverse the road from which there is no return, tracing it for future gene- rations. It is there, at the remotest extremities of the heavens, the abode of light and the eternal waters, that he ^ Rig- Veda, i. 95; 2; x. 2, 7. ^ SeeFr. N&ve, Essai sur le mythe ^ Rig- Veda, X. 17, 12; 8, 8, 9. des Ribhavas, premier vestige de ^ Rig- Veda, iii. 48, 4; iv. 18, 3; I'apothdose dans le Veda, 1847. X. 110,9; ix. 5, 9; ii. 23, 17. " Rig- Veda, x. 14, 1 ; 17, i. * Rig- Veda, iv. 35, 8 ; i. 20, 6. ' Rig- Veda, x. 13, 4. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 23 reigns henceforward in peace and in union with Varuna. There by the sound of his flute, under the branches of the mythic tree, he assembles around him the dead who have lived nobly. They reach him in a crowd, conveyed by Agni, guided by Piishan, and grimly scanned as they pass by the two monstrous dogs who are the guardians of the road. Clothed in a glorious body, and made to drink of the celestial soma, which renders them immortal, they enjoy henceforward by his side an endless felicity, seated at the same tables with the gods, gods themselves, and adored here below under the name of Pitris, or fathers. At their head are, of course, the first sacrificers, the minstrels of other days, Atharvan, the Angiras, th6 Kavyas, the Pitris by pre-eminence, equal to the greatest of the gods, who by their sacrifice delivered the world from chaos, gave birth to the sun, and kindled the stars.^ It is not impro- bable there were some who thought it was they whom they saw sparkling at night in the constellations ; for India, too, was aware of the old myth which conceives of the stars as the souls of the dead.^ These, however, are very far from being the only representations that were given of the future life. As it was not always the custom to burn the dead, we find them conceived of as resting in the earth like a child on the lap of its mother, and dwelling for ever in the tomb, called in consequence " the narrow house of clay." ^ It was imagined, too, that when the body was on the eve of dissolution and returning to its elements, the soul went to tenant the waters or the plants.* This last conception, in which there is a sort of first rude idea of the theory of metempsychosis, occurs only in an exceptional 1 Kig-Veda, ix. 113, 7-1 1 ; x. Agastya (Canopus) are of ancient J35;'i54; 14; 15; 16, I, 2; i7- date: Rig- Veda, x. 82, 2; (^atap. Compare Atharva-Veda, iv. 34, 2 ; Br., ii. i, 2, 4 ; Taitt. Ar., i. 11, Rig- Veda, i. 125, 5 ; 154, 5 ; x. 56, i, 2 ; see besides MaMbMr., iii. 4-6 ; 68, II ; 107, i. 1 745-1 752. " Rig- Veda, i. 125, 6 ; x. 107, 2 ; ' Rig- Veda, x. 18, 10-13 ; vii see Taitt. Br., i. 5, 2, 5. The myths 89, i. that relate to the seven Eishis (the * Rig- Veda, x. 58 ; 16, 3. stars of the Great Bear) and to 24 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. way in the hymns of the Rig- Veda. This notion seems to belong to religious beliefs of a lower type, which this collection despises, and the existence of which we shall have occasion to refer to after. Anyhow, the simple fact that the practice of incineration had become general presupposes a highly spiritualistic idea of death. The Hymns are much less communicative in regard to the des- tiny in store for the wicked. They either perish or go under the earth into deep and dismal pits, into which are cast along with them the demons, the spirits of decep- tion and destruction.^ The Atharva-Veda is cognisant of an infernal world,^ but there is no description of hell, and we learn nothing of its torments.* This very imperfect glance at the myths connected with the principal divinities will perhaps be enough to show out of what elements India has collected the objects of its worship. We shall not perform the same task for the other figures of the Pantheon. Not only would the mere enumeration of these be too tedious, since every object in the visible creation, as well as every idea of the mind, is capable of elevation to the rank of gods ; they belong rather to the history of the myths than to that of religion. They are either abstract personifications, often very ancient indeed, such as Furandhi, abundance, Aramati, piety, Asuniii,'blessedn6ss,M'rit7/u, death, Manyu, wrath (these two last being masculine) ; or deified objects, such as Sarasvati and Sindhu, which are at once rivers and goddesses ; or mere symbols, such as the different forms of the solar bird or the courser of the sun; or, in fine, ancient represen- tations which have scarcely emerged from the penumbra of the myth, such as the Gandharva, AM Budhnya, the dragon of the abyss, Aja Ekapdd, the one-footed bounder 1 Rig-Veda, ir. 5, 5 ; vii. 104, 3 ; on the future life, all chap. xv. of ix- 73> 8- that excellent work. According to 2 Atharva-Veda, xii. 4, 36. Benfey, Hermes, Minos, Tartaros, '^ See, however, Atharva-Veda, v. in the Memoirs of the Eoy. Society 19, 3, 12-14, cited by M. H. Zim- of Gbttingen for 1877, the concep- mer, Altindisches Leben, p. 420 ; tions of Tartarus and the Inferi are and, in general, for the Vedic ideas Indo-European. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 25 or goat, Gung4, Sinivdli, BdJcd, goddesses who preside at procreation and birth, and who were early identified with the phases of the moon, — all indistinct figures, which are still invoked because their names occur in the old formulae, though they no longer mean anything of any account for the religious sentiment. Expressions indicative of the gods in general also became at length proper names of certain classes of divine beings, such as the Vigvedevas, properly " all the gods," ^ and the Vasus, the bright ones, of whom Indra. or Agni is the chief. We shall have a better opportunity hereafter of considering a few of the more essential conceptions. Among this crowd of deities, — of which there is often mention of thirty-three, or three times eleven,^ once of three thousand three hundred and thirty-nine;^ in the Atharva-Veda this last number is still further increased, the Gandharvas alone amounting to six thousand three hundred and thirty-three,* — there are some which cut a greater figure than the rest, but there is, properly speaking, no hierarchy. There is an interminable variety of ranks, and a confusing interchange of characters. This, to a certain extent, is a feature common to every religion depending directly on the myth. Myths are, in fact, formed independently of one another; they regard the same object in different aspects, and among different objects they seize the same relations. As they radiate from divers centres, they mutually interpenetrate each other and issue of course in a certain syncretism. If Greece, for example, had transmitted to us her ancient liturgies, we would, we may be sure, have found in them a very different state of things from the beautiful order which has been introduced by the light and profane hand of the muse on the classic Olympus. But in the Hymns 1 We know that the most general ''Rig-Veda, i. 45,2; 139, 11. name for the deity, deva, to which There are 35 : Rig-Veda, x. 55, 3. the Latin deus corresponds, signifies ^ Rig- Veda, iii. 9, 9. properly bright-shining or lumi- * Atharva-Veda, xi. 5, 2. 26 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. there is more than a simple want of classification. Not only " are there," as is somewhere remarked/ among these gods, who rule one another and are begotten from one another, " neither great nor small, neither old nor young, all being equally great," but the supreme sovereignty belongs to several, and we find at one time absolute supremacy, at another the most express subordination assigned to the same god. Indra and all the gods are subject to Varuna, and Varuna and all the gods are subject to Indra. There are kindred assertions made of Agni, Soma, Vishnu, Surya, Savitri, &c.^ It is somewhat difficult to arrive at an accurate conception of the mode of thought and feel- ing which these contradictions imply. They are no mere exaggerated expressions uttered in the fervour of prayer, for these would not have been collected and preserved in such numbers ; neither does it seem possible to refer them to differences of epoch or diversities of worship. They form, in truth, one of the fundamental traits of the Vedic theology. As soon as a new god is evoked, all the rest suffer eclipse before him ; he attracts every attribute to himself; he is the God; and the notion, at one time monotheistic, at another pantheistic, which is found in the latent state at the basis of every form of polytheism, comes in this way, like a sort of movable quantity, to be ascribed indiscriminately to the different personalities furnished by the myth. Another process by which this vague sense of the want of unity is relieved is by identifying one god with several others. There is, perhaps, not a single figure of note which has not given occasion to some such fusion. It is thus that Indra is in turn identified with Brihaspati, Agni, and Varuna ; that Agni is said to be Varuna, Mitra, Arya- man, Eudra, Vishnu, Savitri, Piishan.^ There is none, up to the formula so frequent in the Br^hmanas, " Agni is all the gods," which we do not meet with already in the ^ Rig- Veda, viii. 30, l. The con- iii. 9, g ; ix. 96, 5 ; 102, 5 ; i. 156, trary of this is said Rig- Veda, i. 27, 4 ; viii. loi, 12 ; ii. 38, 9. 13. " See u, selection of passages iu 2 Rig- Veda, v. 69, 4 ; i. loi, 3 ; Muir's Sanskrit Texts, t. v. p. 219. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 27 Hymns.^ Doubtless this superior insight into the divine nature is not to be met with to the same extent in all the Vedic poets ; with many of them, all that is said to their gods amounts to this, "Here is butter; give us cows;" but it exists in many of them, and not a few had the power of expressing it in language that we cannot but admire. Thus the myth here is no more than a subordinate element, the mere substratum for a higher reality. It tends to return to what it originally was — a mere symbol. Its most definite features lose their sharpness, or continue to survive only in isolated allusions and ready-made phrases. In a developed and concrete form it becomes embarrassing, whether when it offers a conception of the gods which looks mean, gross, or even loathsome, or when it simply represents them in an aspect too human, too epic, and in a sense too familiar for the religious consciousness, now grown more exacting. The authors of the Hymns have thus discarded, or at least left in the shade, a great number of legends which existed previously, those, for example, which re- ferred to the identification of Soma with the moon,^ what was fabled of the families of the gods, of the birth of Indra, of his parricide, &c.* In this way a long list could be drawn up of what might be called the reticences of the Veda. In this connection it is particularly interesting to see how they have treated the myths which relate the manifold intermarrying that forms the basis of all mytho- logies, the union of a male divinity with a female being, conceived almost always as irregular, and very often in- cestuous. This union lies no less at the basis of a great number of representations in the Veda. All the gods there are conceived as begetters of offspring, males or ' With a sliglit variation. Rig- 2-5. It is also as lunar god that he Veda, V. 3, I . is the husband of Sftrya, the daugh- 2 The myth which places the am- ter of Savitri, the sun conceived as a brosia in the moon appears to he feminine deity, ib. 9, and that he Indo-European. Soma is identified presides over menstruation, ib. 41. with the moon, Rig- Veda, x. 85, ^ Rig- Veda, iv. 18. 28 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. bulls ; they are lovers of the Waters, the Mothers, the Gnds (genetrices), of the Apsaras, the Undine class, of Apyd TosM, the wife of the waters, who is capricious and wanton, and they are at once their sons and husbands. It would, however, be difficult to extract from the Hymns a chapter on the amours of the gods. With very few exceptions, everything is resolved into brief rapid hints, isolated features, or mere symbols. With the exception of Aurora, the goddesses here have only a featureless physiognomy, and the most conspicuous gods are hardly alluded to in these stories. Once only is Indrani, the wife of Indra, the unchaste Venus ; ^ once only is there mention made of the relations of Varuna with the Apsaras,^ of whom, however, he is, agreeably to his origin, the true lover. In this capacity he gives place to the Gandharva, a being purely mythical.* In this there certainly appears a touch of moral delicacy, which it would be unjust not to acknowledge. In the dialogue between Yama and his sister Yamt,* for instance, the attempted incest is spurned, and yet it is almost certain that originally Yama yielded to the temptation. But when we consider how crude often the language of the Hymns is, we feel justified in affirming that this scruple was not the only one which induced the Vedic minstrels to pass hurriedly over these myths, and that in this matter we must also take into account their aversion to speak of the gods in too definite terms. Sometimes it seems, indeed, that this was the subject which chiefly occupied them ; and it is not without a certain annoyance that we see them often striving to render themselves unintel- ligible, and in a manner to bury their ideas under a confu- sion of incongruous identifications. In this respect India already appears in the Veda what she has ever since continued to be. In the very first words she utters, we find her aspiring after the vague and the mysterious. It ^ Rig- Veda, x. 86, 6. And tte " Rig- Veda, x. 10,4; 11, 2; 123, passage, besides, is interpolated. 5. ^ Rig- Veda, vii. 33, 11. * Rig- Veda, x. 10. THE VBDIC RELIGIONS. 29 would be unjust not to recognise often in this aspiration her very keen sense of the obscurity which hides from us the inner nature of things, and an anxious effort at times to penetrate that obscurity. There are many of those old songs in which, under confusion of thought and imagery, we think we stiU discern the trouble of a deeply affected soul both seeking truth and lost in adoration. But neither can we disguise from ourselves the fact that in this search for the obscure there is very frequently only affectation and indolence, and that already in the Veda, Hindu thought is profoundly tainted with the malady, of which it will never be able to get rid, of affecting a greater air of mystery the less there is to conceal, of making a parade of symbols which at bottom signify nothing, and of playing with enigmas which are not worth the trouble of trying to unriddle. If now we try to sum up the theology of these books, we shall find that it hovers . between two extremes ; on the one side, polytheism pure and simple ; on the other side, a species of monotheism, with several titularies, the central figure of which is, if I may say so, always changing places with another. Obviously the specula- tive spirit of the Vedic poets could not rest here ; it was necessary for them to fix this floating idea, and in order to this very little remained' for them to do. For a long while they had recognised it vaguely in the persons of Indra, of Agni, of Brihaspati, of Savitri, and they had had the splendid vision of it in Varuna. Instead of attaching it in turn to personalities intimately mixed up with the myth and the public cultus, and which in consequence were incapable of resolution, all they required to do was to trans- fer it to names more abstract, in order to realise as much of the personal monotheistic idea as India was ever to be able to receive. In this way arose Praj'dpati, the lord of creatures,^ Vigiakarman, the fabricator of the uni- 1 Rig- Veda, z. 121, 10. 30 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. verse,^ the Great Asura, the great spirit,^ Svayamlh'A, the self-existent being (Atharva-Veda),^ Farameshthin, he who occupies the summit (ibid.),* all so many names of the God of the gods. At the same time the panthe- istic solution was arrived at in another way, by specula- tion, namely, on the origin of things. Varuna and his peers had made the world, that is to say, had organised it. But whence did they obtain the materials to fashion it ? ^ To this question there was one reply, which must be very old, since it is Indo-European : The world was fashioned from the body of a primitive being, a giant, Furusha, dismembered by the gods.® Evidently this reply could not yield a satisfaction that would last ; for whence came this Purusha, these gods themselves ? and what was there before they were born? Here we ought to quote entire the celebrated hymn in which the self-existent substance, superior to every category and every antinomy, is affirmed as the first term of existence, with a depth of thought and an elevation of language which no school has ever sur- passed.' In it arose Kdma, desire, and that was the first starting-point in the subsequent evolution of being. In this conception, the personal God, or, as we find him after- wards called, Ka, Who ? is one of the terms, at times, in- deed, the first term, in the evolution of the absolute, or Tat, This. It was Hiranyagarhha, " the golden embryo," * who was the primary form. But already analysis shows a ten- dency to intercalate between him and the ultimate notion a certain number of principles or hypostatical beings, such as the Waters, Heat, Order, Truth, Desire, Time.^ These two last especially became, in the Atharva-Veda, the centre of a vast system of symbols.^* — When we consider these ^ Rig-Veda, x. 8i ; 82. ' Rig- Veda, x. 190 ; 8z, 5 ; 129, 2 Rig- Veda, 2. 177, i ; v. 63, 3, 7. 3, 4.' ' Atharva-Veda, x. 8, 43, 44. ^° Atharva-Veda, ix. 2 ; xix. 53, 54. * Atharva-Veda, X. 7, 17; xix. 53, 9. For these personifications and other ' Rig- Veda, x. 8 1, 2, 4. similar ones see the rich collection of ^ Rig- Veda, x. 90. passages in Muir's Sanskrit Texts, ' Rig- Veda, x. 129. t. v. p. 350562. 8 Rig- Veda, x. 121. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 31 speculations on the one hand, and the final doctrines of Persia and Scandinavia on the other, which are at once so definitively fixed and so much in harmony, the absence of everything like an eschatology is something surprising. These men, who meditated so much on the origin of things, appear never to have asked themselves whether they would come to an end, or how ; and the Veda says nothing of the last times. We should like to have some data in regard to the chron- ology of all these speculations, but on this point every- thing turns out to be extremely uncertain. From the fact that they are logically afterthoughts, and that, in the formu- lated state, they are almost all to be met with in one book of the Rig- Veda, which is unlike the rest, viz., the tenth, we conclude in a general way that they belong to the last epoch of Vedic poetry. This assumption may be cor- rect, although we are not so satisfied in regard to it as people usually seem to be. The only proofs we have of a positive nature, those deducible from the language, are few and far between ; and moreover it is precisely in the case in which the evidence of recency of composition is most complete, in that, viz., of the hymn to Purusha, that we find ourselves face to face with ideas of extreme antiquity. One point, however, may be reckoned certain : these more elevated conceptions have not directly done any injustice to the ancient divinities. Long after the epoch in which the most recent hymns were composed, Agni was still always the guest and brother of men, Indra the god whom they invoked in battle, and Varuna the executor of justice, whose fetters they dreaded ; and if ever these figures fade away by degrees from the consciousness, it will not be in the presence of Praj§,pati. The co-existence of things which seem to us to contradict and exclude each other is exactly the history of India, and that radical formula which occurs even in the Hymns, that " the gods are only a single being under different names," ^ is one of those which is oftenest ^ Rig- Veda, i. 164, 465 compare viii, 58, 2. 32 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. on her lips, and whicli yet, up to the present time, she has never succeeded in rightly believing. Before quitting the Hymns, the only matter that remains for examination is the doctrine they teach us in regard to human duty, how they conceive of morality and piety, what sort of cultus they presuppose, and what ideas they attach to the observances of this cultus. The connection between man and the gods is conceived in the Hymns as a very close one. Always and everywhere he feels that he is in their hands, and that all his movements are under their eye. They are masters close at hand, who exact tasks of him, and to whom he owes constant homage. He must be humble, for he is weak and they are strong ; he must be sincere towards them, for they cannot be deceived. Nay, he knows that they in turn do not deceive, and that they have a right to require his affection and confidence as a friend, a brother, a father. Without faith (graddhd), offerings and prayers are vain.^ These are so many strict obligations due to the gods, on which the Hymns insist in a great variety of passages. They are less explicit, on the other hand, in regard to the duties which man owes to his fellows. In one passage, they praise acts of kind- ness towards all who are in suffering or in want;^ in others, sorcery and witchcraft, seduction and adultery, are denounced as criminal;^ and the last book contains a prayer with an exhortation to concord.* But in general it is only indirectly that we are able to estimate this part of their moral system. We must judge of it by the conception which they form of the gods, and, viewed in this connection, it will appear to bear the impress of unmistakable eleva- tion of sentiment. We are not particularly told in what those dharmaTis, those vratas, or decrees of the gods, exactly consist, which they have established for the maintenance 1 Rig- Veda, i. 104, 6 ; 108, 6 ; ii. * Rig- Veda, vii. 104, 8 scj. ; iv. 5, 5. z6, 3 ; X. 151. Indra and Agni in * Rig- Veda, x. 191 ; see x. 71, 6, particular are often called father, for the curse upon the unfaithful brother, and friend. friend. ' Rig- Veda, x. 117. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 33 of satya and rita, truth and order. But how could it be permitted to men to be bad when the gods are good, to be unjust -while they are just, and to be deceitful when they never deceive ? It is certainly a remarkable feature of the Hymns that they acknowledge no wicked divinities, and no mean and harmful practices. An enemy, indeed, is con- signed in them to the divine wrath, btit it is with the simple- hearted conviction that this enemy is impious. The few fragments of a different nature which have slipped into the collection^ serve only to throw into greater relief this fea- ture of the grand Vedic religions. They testify, in fact, that alongside of these there existed others of iess purity, which the proud tradition of certain sacerdotal families managed for long to consign to oblivion. Banished by the Kanvas, the Bharadvajas, the Vasishthas, the Kugikas, and others, from their family cultus and that which they celebrated in honour of their kings and chieftains, these religious beliefs con- tinued to subsist in the form of superstitions, and were finally collected in the Atharva-Veda. Some, it is true, are fain to see in them so many corruptions due to a later age. We do not deny that the collection of the Atharva-Veda does in fact contain a great number of passages of recent date, hut there is much also of which the language does not differ from that of the Rig- Veda ; and it involves in our opinion a mistaken judgment of human nature to be unwilling to admit that dissimilar conceptions may sub- sist together. It is a clear mistake, especially in regard to the mental state of a people with naturalistic reli- gious beliefs, to conceive it possible there should have been an epoch in which it knew nothing of philtres, or incantations, or sorceries, or obscene practices, iu which the mind would not be haunted with the fear of malignant spirits, and would not seek, by direct acts of worship, either to appease them or to turn their anger agatast an enemy. Now, a religion which, like that of the Rig- Veda, sees alongside of it practices like these and 1 For example. Rig- Veda, x. 145, 159. C 34 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. refuses to adopt them, is a moral religion. We must acknow- ledge, then, that the Hymns give evidence of an exalted and comprehensive morality, and that in striving to be "without reproach before Aditi and the Adityas,"^ the Vedic minstrels feel the weight of other duties besides those of multiplying offerings to the gods and the punctili- ous observance of religious ritual, although we must admit also that the observation of these is with them a matter of capital importance, and that their religion is pre-eminently ritualistic. The pious man is by distinction he who makes the soma flow in abundance, and whose hands are always full of butter ; while the reprobate man is he who is penurious towards the gods, the worship of whom is man's first duty.^ This worship resolves itself into two sets of acts — obla- tion and prayer. There is as yet no mention either of the devout rehearsal of sacred texts ^ or of vows properly so called, neither of ascetic practices, although the word tapas, which is properly heat, is already employed in some passages in the special sense of mortification,* this sense having become a common one in the Atharva-Veda ; and we hear of the Muni, the ecstatic enthusiast, who lets his hair grow and goes quite naked or barely clad in rags of reddish colour (which, by the way, at a later date is the favourite colour with ascetics and also the Buddhist monks). He is considered to hold intimate communion with the gods, and there is a hymn in which the sun is celebrated under the form of a Muni.^ But the true service of the gods is sacrifice accompanied with invocations. These invocations we still possess in part ; the great majority of the Hymns are nothing else, and we have already stated in what respect the liturgy we find in them differs from that which was adopted at a later period, and which remains in use to this day. As for the sacrifice itself, we know few particulars ^ Rig- Veda, i. 24, 15. mulse and solemnia veria : Rig- * Rig- Veda, viii. 31. Veda, 1. 164, 39; x. 114, 8 ; vii. ° On the contrary, a great value is loi, i ; ix. 33, 3 ; 50, 2 ; &c. attached to the "novelty" of the * Rig- Veda, x. 154, 2 ; 169, 2. Hymns. There were, however, for- ^ Rig- Veda, viii. 17, 14; x. 136. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 35 of the manner in which it was celebrated. Probably the ceremonial was much akin to that of the succeeding age, for a certain number of the observances prescribed in the books of ritual, and these at times very precise, appear to be Indo-Iranian. Of these there were great varieties, from the simple offering up to the great' religious festivals. These last were very complicated observances; they re- quired immense preparations and a numerous array of priests, singers, and officers at their celebration. The offerings were thrown into the fire, which bore them to heaven, to the gods. They consisted of melted butter, curdled milk, rice, soups, and cakes, and soma mixed with water or milk. This last kind of offering the gods, Indra in particular, were reputed to come and drink from a vat placed on a litter of grass before the fire. In the case of libations at least, the act of oblation was repeated thrice a day, at the three savanas of the morning, mid-day, and evening. Victims were also sacrificed, notably the horse, the sacrifice of which, the Agvamedha, is described at length.^ The offering of the horse was preceded by that of a goat sacrificed to Piishan.^ A goat as a funeral victim was also consumed on the funeral-pile along with the car- case of the dead; it was the portion of Agni, who was thought to feast on it and then wrap the body of the dead in sacred flames that were painless.^ They sacrificed besides to Indra and Agni bulls, buffaloes, cows, and rams.* In one passage Pushan has a hundred buffaloes roasted for Indra, for whom Agni again roasts as many as three hundred.^ But if we possess only a very imperfect knowledge of the acts of sacrifice, we know better what ideas were attached to it. In the grossest sense, sacrifice is a mere bargain. Man needs things which the god possesses, such ^ Rig- Veda, i. 162; 163, 12, 13. nuptial ceremonies: Rig- Veda, z. 2 Rig- Veda, i. 162, 2, 3. 85, 13. 5 Rig- Veda, x. 16, 4. * Rig- Veda, vi. 17, 11 ; v. 29, 7; i. * Rig- Veda, v. 27, 5 ; x. 86, 14; 116, 16, it issaid tliatRijragvasacri- gi, 14. Cows were slaughtered at ficedioorams toVriki, theShe-wolf. 36 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. as rain, light, warmth, and health, while the god is hungry and seeks offerings from man : there is giving and receiv- ing on both sides.-^ Though nowhere expressly formulated, this idea nevertheless comes out in a great variety of confessions and certain unaffected materialistic touches.^ To the religious sense, sacrifice is an act of affection and gratitude towards the gods, through which man renders thanks to them for their benefits, and hopes to obtain others in the future, either in this life or after death. But it is in no respect a mere act of oblation. To sacri- fice is, over and above that, to stir up, actually to beget, two divinities of the first rank, the two principles of life par excellence, Agni and Soma. In the consciousness of the believer sacrifice then is a highly complex act ; but before everything else it is a mystery, a direct interference with the phenomena of nature and the condition even of the normal course of things. Should it cease for an instant to be offered, the gods would cease to send us rain, to bring back at the appointed hour Aurora and the sun, to raise and ripen our harvests, because they would no longer incline to do so, and also, as is surmised sometimes, be- cause they could not any longer do so.^ And as it is to-day, ^ The liturgical formulae are at 7 ; x. 86, 13-15. The idea of the times very clear in this respect ; for purely spiritual life of the gods, in example, Taitt. Samh., vi. 4, St ^ '■ particular that they neither eat nor " Does he wish to do harm (to an drink (see Chtodogya Up., iii. 6, i, enemy) ? Let him say (to SArya): seg,), is foreign to the Hymns. Strike such an one ; afterwards will ^ The idea that it is from the I pay thee the offering. And (Sftrya) offering the gods derive their strength desiring to obtain the offering, recurs at every step in the Hymns : strikes him." See, besides, this Rig-Veda, ii. 15, 2 ; x. 52, 5 ; 6, 7 ; formula addressed to the libation- 121, 7, &c. In the Atharva-Veda, divider : " When filled, divider ' xi. 7, the Ucchishta, the residue of fly yonder ; when well filled, fly the offering (nothing of the offering back to us ! As at a stipulated price, ought to be lost, and the priest let us exchange force and vigour, alone has the right to eat what re- Indra ! Give me, and I shall give mains), is declared the first principle thee ; bring me, and I shall bring of all things. See Bhagavad-GltS,, thee." — Taitt. Sarah., i. 8, 4, 1. iii. 11-16 : "Cause by sacrifice " See, for example, the many pas- the gods to prosper, and the gods sages where mention is made of the ■wiU make you prosper. . . . From appetite of Indra, of the pleasure he nourishment come beings, from rain has in filling his belly : Rig-Teda, nourishment, from sacrifice rain. . . . ii. II, II ; viii. 4, 10 ; 77, 4; 78, He who does not contribute some- THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 37 So it was yesterday, and so consequently was it as far back as the first of tlie days. Hence arose the myths which represent sacrifice • as the first act in the cosmogony. It was by sacrifice — it is not said to whom — that the gods de- livered the world from chaos, just as it is by sacrifice that man prevents it from lapsing back into it ; and the dis- memberment of the primeval giant, Purusha, whose skull was fabled to form the heavens and his limbs the earth, came to be regarded in India as the first act of sacrifice.^ What is more, the gods being inseparable from the world, their existence must have been preceded by sacrifice ; hence the singular myth which represents the Supreme Being as sacrificing himself in order to give birth to all other existences.^ Placed thus at the origin of all things, and considered all along as the vital point in all the functions of nature, sacrifice became the centre of a vast system of symbols. The lightning and the sun are the sacred flame of it, the thunder is the hymn, the rains and rivers are the libations, the gods and the celestial appari- tions are the priests, and so conversely. The ceremonial act itself, with its fine arrangement, is identified with the rita, the order of the world ; and the altar is regarded as the womb of the rita, the mystic heaven from which Varuna and the great gods keep watch over the universe. All these notions, and many more besides, are mingled so what to make this wheel turn is un- Chand. Up., iii. 16, 17; v. 4-8 ; worthy to live." It is said also in Brih. Ar. Up., vi. 2, 9-14 ; vi. 4, Manu, iii. 75, 76, "By saoriiice the 3. There is here a sort of second house-master sustains this movable religion, a religion of opiis operatum, and immovable world. Cast into a sort of ritualistic pantheism, in the fire, the offering goes into the which the divine personalities fill sun ; from the sun is produced the only a subordinate part, and which rain ; from the rain the nourish- from the era of the Hymns had ment ; from the latter the creatures deeply affected the consciousness, are produced." The same passage For information in regard to this occurs again in Maitri Up., vi. 37. side of the religions beliefs of the The allegorical imagery, so common Veda, we would particularly refer in the literature from the Upanishads to A. Bergaigne's work, already onwards, in which universal produc- quoted, " La Religion Vedique tion and life are likened to a series d'apr^s les Hymnes du Rig-Veda." of sacrifices or libations, is con- ^ Rig- Veda, x. 90, 130. neoted with the same order of ideas. ^ Rig- Veda, x. 81. 38 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. much in the Hymns, play so much one into another, that it is often impossible to tell in what sense we must accept the expressions which stand for them-. And as it is with the rite, so it is with the invocation, the prescribed formula, and prayer. It is the expression which gives precision to the act, determines the object of it, and assigns to it in some sort its direction. It is, or in it lies, the hidden energy which gives it efficacy. This energy is the brahman, properly power of growth, invigoration, a word famous before every other, and the history of which is in a sense that even of Hindu theology. In the Hymns brahman is very often the name for prayer, and in this case it may take the plural, but it never loses its original meaning of force, of subtle and, in a sense, magical energy. Being the soul of sacrifice, the notion which is formed of it has naturally grown with that of sacrifice itself. It is the work of the gods ; it is by it that they act ; it is by it also that they are born and that the world has been formed.^ What strikes us in these theories quite as much as the notions themselves is the prodigious elaboration which they have undergone, and that from the most remote an- tiquity ; for here we cannot doubt that the ideas presented belong to the same date as that of the oldest hymns, to such a degree do they pervade all parts of the collection. These alone are sufficient to prove, if necessary, how pro- foundly sacerdotal this poetry is, and they ought to have suggested reflections to those who have affected to see in it only the work of primitive shepherds celebrating the praises of their gods as they lead their flocks to the pas- ture. ^ Rig-Yeda, x. 130 ; Atharva- Bralimanaspati. Prayer was be- Veda, xi. 5, 5 ; see Rig- Veda, vi. gotten in heaven. Rig- Veda, iii. 51, 8, and the myths of VSc and 39, 2. ( 39 ) II. BRAHMANISM. I. EITUAL. Gradual extension and general character of the religion of the Atharva- Veda, the Yajur-Veda and the Brflhmanas. — Changes introduced into the pantheon. — Still greater changes in the spirit and institutions. — The Brahman a member of a caste. — Formation of a sacred language and literature. — The Brahmacarya and the Brahmanical schools. — Ritualism and formalism : the rites come to the foreground and the gods retire into the shade. — Sketch of the cultus according to the BrfLhmanas and the Sfttras. — The Grihya ritual : the ancient Smriti and the Dharma. — The Qrauta ritual : ishti and somayaga. — Aristo- cratic, expensive, and bloody character of this worship : animal sacri- fice ; human sacrifice ; the anumarana, or the suicide of the widow. — The authorised religion of the Brahmans recognised neither images nor sanctuaries. — Propagated, its exclusive spirit notwithstanding, among foreign races, in the Dekhan, and as far as the Suuda Islands : the Veda at Bali. The geographical region of the Hymns extends from the valley of Cabul to the banks of the Ganges, and perhaps beyond ; but the true country of their birth, that in regard to which they supply- the most data, is the Punj§,b.^ In the age that follows, which we have now reached, we see the religions of the Veda advancing eastward, and gradually taking possession of the vast and fertile plains of Hindu- stan. From the epoch of the BrS,hmanas their centre is no longer in the basin of the Indus, the tribes of which 1 Its limits are these : On the west 7), a tribe of the valley ; the EasS, the Kubha (Rig - Veda, v. 53, 9 ; which corresponds with the Zend X. 75, 6), the Kw^iji' of the Greeks, name of the Jaxartes, appears to be the river Cabul and its affluents, mythical in the Rig- Veda (Aufrecht, and the Gandharis (Rig- Veda, i. 126, Morgenl. Gesellseh., xiii. 498). On 40 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. are, on the contrary, regarded with mistrust ; ^ hut on the Sarasvati, in the Do§,b, between the Jumna and the Ganges, and even farther east, on the Gomati and the Gogra. On the east and south they came into contact with the tribes which inhabit the shores of the Eastern Sea and the other side of the Yindhya mountains.^ This change of place very considerably affected their organisation. The order of the priesthood asserted itself more rigorously. An event, besides, was not long in occurring which had a decisive eflfect on their destiny : the language of the old Hymns gradually ceased to be understood. From the epoch of the Br^hmanas it had become unintelligible to the multitude, and even obscure to the priests.^ There arose thus a sacred language, and, in a narrow sense, sacred texts, to which it became more and more difficult, and finally impossible, to make any addition. From this moment these religions became, up to a certain point, stereotyped. They will doubtless continue to be still susceptible of modification in many respects, and especially of complica- tion ; but in the main they will be forced henceforth to subsist on their original capital ; they will no longer be able to adapt themselves to great innovations; and the inevitable changes which time will bring will take place the east, the Sarayu (Rig- Veda, iv. ' From this date we meet with 30, 18 ; V. S3, 9), the modern Gogra, prescriptions for the maintenance of , and the tribe of the Kikatas (Rig- the purity of the language among Veda, iii. 53, 14) in Bihir. The au- the Brahmans: ^atap. Br., iii. 2, i, thors of the Hymns had a certain 24. The language of the BrS,hmanas acquaintance with the sea. For the is already pretty much, indeed, the geography of the Vedas, consult Vi- classical Sanscrit, and it differs from Tien de Saint Martin (Etude sur la that of the Hymns more than the Geographic du V^da, 1859), Lassen Latin of Lucretius does from that Indische Alterthumskunde, i. 643 of the Twelve Tables. That the seq., 2ded., 1867), A. Ludwig (Die authors of these treatises only im- Nachrichten des Kig- undAtharva- perfectlyunderstand these old hymns Veda iiber Geographie, Geschichte, is obvious at every step, from their Verfassung des alten Indien, 1878), exegesis even, and their attempts H. 2immer (Altindisches Leben ; die at etymology. We must not, how- Cultur der Vedischen Aryer nach ever, insist too much on this last den Samhit4 dargestellt, 1879, eh. i.). argument ; there is at bottom more 1 Qatap. Br., ix. 3, i, 18., fancifulness than real ignorance in ^ Athar. -Veda, v. 22, 14 ; Aitar, these interpretations. Br., vii. 18, 2; viii. 22, i. BRAHMANISM .- RITUAL. 41 more and more beyond their pale, and assume, in con- sequence, an attitude opposed to them. And, in fact, notwithstanding numerous modifications in detail, the theology of the Atharva-Veda, the Yajur- Veda, and the BrUhmanas is not at bottom very different from that of the Hymns. The pantheon is enlarged, it is true, by a certain number of subordinate figures. Soma- , Candramas, the moon, the Nakshatras, or constellations,^ the Chandas, or Vedic metres,^ appear for the first time, or else proceed to play a more active part in the drama. At the same time, the door has been opened wide for the admission of a host of allegorical personifications, spirits, demons, and goblins of every shape and genealogy,^ which, though unknown to the Hymns, are not, therefore, neces- sarily all of new creation ; while, on the other hand, certain old mythic representations, which we find making a great figure in the Rig- Veda, show signs of retiring. Still the circle of the great divinities remains much the same, although we observe among them a more systematic organi- sation, and that not a few of them are in process of trans- formation. Praj^pati is now their unchallenged head, and the conception of a triad in Agni, V§.yu, Surya, the fire, the air, and the sun, as summing up the divine energies — a conception which we shall come upon again as we pro- ceed — asserts itself more frequently. At the same time, the formalism which prevails in these writings tends to a multiplying of the number of the gods through the per- ^ See A. Weber, Die Vedischen ^ See a lengthened enumeration Nachrich-ten von den Naxatra, 2d of the spirits and gohlins in Ath.- part, in the Memoirs of the Academy Veda, viii. 6, and the great number of Berlin for 1861, p. 267 seq. of exorcisms in relation to diseases ^ See, among others, the beautiful considered as possessions ; as, for myth of Gftyatrl going in the form instance, Ath. -Veda, ix. 8 ; in par- of a falcon to ravish the Soma from ticular, in reference to Yakshma the third heaven : Taitt. Samh.,vi. I, and Takman (see V. Grohmann, 6, 1-5 ; Taitt. Br. , iii. 2, 1,1 ; Aitar. Medicinisches aus dem Atharva- Br., iii. 25-28. Compare Taitt. Samh., Veda, in Ind. Stud., ix. p. 381 ii. 4, 3, 1. A. Weber has collected the seq.). Compare also the prayer in most of the speculations of the Brah- deprecation of the demons which manas in reference to the Chandas in attack infancy in P^raskara Gr. S., his memoir, Vedische Angaben iiber i. i5, 23, 24. Metrik. in Ind. Stud., viii. 42 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. sonification of their attributes. Thus Agni Vratapati is not quite the same person as Agni Annapati, Agni Anna- vat, Agni Annada; and these, in their turn, differ from Agni K§,ma, Agni Ksh§,mavat, Agni Yavishtha, &c. Soma is decisively confounded with the moon ; he is the husband of the Nakshatras, the constellations of the lunar zodiac.^ Yama is still always the king of the Pitris, but he is no longer so closely identified with the blessed life : the pious man hopes to go to svarga, which is rather the heaven of Indra and of the gods in general.^ As for the wicked man, he will go into hell, where tortures, which are described at length, await him; or else he will be born again in some wretched state of being, — metempsychosis appearing in this way under the form of an expiation.^ Asura, the old name of the divine powers, is henceforth applied only in a bad sense. The Asuras are now the demons,* and their struggle with the gods in general, which is one of the commonplaces of the Brahmanas, only very remotely reminds us' of the celestial battles celebrated in the Hynans. Aditi is most frequently iden- tified with the Earth. Aditya is a name for the sun, and the Adityas, who begin now to be fixed at twelve, are once for all solar impersonations. Varuna passes into the status of a god of night, who is both hostile and cruel, and his empire is already confounded with that of the ^ Taitt. Samli., ii. 3, 5, 1-3 ; com- blessed : Brihad&r. Up., iv. 3, 31 ; pare ii. 5, 6, 4. In the Rig-Veda he Taitt. Up., ii. 8, and especially Kau- is the husband of S