THE'TEMPLE 
 SER1E5-OF' BIBLE 
 (K ? CHARACTERS 
 m.A & SCRIPTURE 
 HANDBOOKS 
 
 • THE •_ 
 
 RELIGIiiNS 
 OFINDIA 
 
 BRAHA\ANISM. 
 &,BUDDHI5A\ 
 
 BY REV ALLAN 
 
 BLSOOr MENziEs vn 
 .M55 
 
 Jf 
 
 onDonKJ«m'DEnTKanDscco.» 
 
MAY 23 1904 *j 
 
 Division BLLOOl 
 Section J >^3 
 
I'HE TEMPLE SERIES 
 OF BIBLE HANDBOOKS 
 
 Edited by 
 
 Oliphant Smeaton, m.a. 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 
 
 BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM 
 
All riphts renewed 
 
The Trial of the Bow. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The study of religions outside of Christianity has now 
 overcome many of the prejudices which hindered its 
 earlier growth. It has no longer to contend with the 
 suspicion that the effort to understand other religions 
 will make us attach less value to our own. On the 
 contrary, the tendency of the study of religions is 
 seen more and more to strengthen the hold of 
 Christianity upon us. The student of this science is 
 led to see very clearly how all men need religion and 
 have provided themselves in one way or another with 
 access to the powers above them. But it happens 
 very rarely that even the most sympathetic study of a 
 foreign religion leads anyone to prefer it to his own. 
 In contemplating other faiths, we do, it is true, become 
 aware that some features of Christianity are stronger 
 than others and do more to qualify it to spread over 
 the world. We have to distinguish between the 
 essence of Christianity, in which lies the secret of its 
 power, and its accidental features. That surely must 
 confirm and not weaken the tie that binds us to 
 Christ. 
 
 In this little book we are to give a brief account of 
 the religions of India. Anyone, it is true, who has 
 
 A 
 
2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 been in India and has seen the numerous temples and 
 the infinite idolatry and sacrifice of that land will tell 
 us that it is impossible to set forth the subject at all 
 in such a book as this. No doubt it is impossible to 
 treat the whole of it in our limits^ or even to catalogue 
 its leading figures and its noted shrines. But the same 
 is true of any religion. Of Christianity it is most true 
 that no brief statement can represent the whole of it. 
 Yet it is possible to give a Hindoo or a Chinaman 
 a short statement of the Christian religion. To do 
 this one does not dwell on the different beliefs of 
 Christian sects^ nor on the varieties of Christian 
 worship^ nor on the different stages of civilisation 
 and standards of morality to be found in Christian 
 lands. One dwells on what Christians have in common^, 
 on that in which they all believe and to which all 
 look back as the beginning of their faith. We de- 
 scribe Christianity in fact^ by setting forth its origin, 
 by giving an account of the life and the teaching of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ. A full account of Christianity 
 must no doubt take account of its sects, its heresies, 
 its marvellous development in history, and all the 
 strange forms it has assumed. These all belong to the 
 subject, but in giving a brief statement of what 
 Christianity itself is, we cannot attend to them. 
 
 With the religion of India it is the same. Here, 
 too, no one can know the detail of the subject. The 
 religious rites of India, the gods who are worshipped 
 there, the beliefs held about them, the philosophies in 
 which they have been rationalised, made into symbols. 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 disregarded^ all this can only be set forth in books of 
 great size and by armies of specialists. When asked 
 to give an account of the religion of India in a small 
 volume^ we must turn to the origins and try to furnish 
 some short statement of that which lies at the begin- 
 ning of Indian faith^ of that to which believers in 
 India naturally turn as Christians do to the facts and 
 doctrines recorded in the Gospels. 
 
 In the case of India, however, the origins are not so 
 clear and simple as in that of Christianity. Indian 
 religion flows not from one clear source only, but from 
 several. Three different types of historical religion 
 have existed in India, .sprung from three different 
 beginnings, each of which is amply attested by the 
 sacred literature to which it gave rise. First there 
 is the worship of the heavenly beings brought before us 
 in the Vedic hymns, a worship elaborated in a stupen- 
 dous sacrificial system, in the formation and administra- 
 tion of which the writers of these hymns were them- 
 selves engaged. Secondly, there is the ascetic and con- 
 templative piety which arose when the worship of the 
 Vedic deities decayed and the record of which is 
 deposited in the more philosophical and later sacred 
 books of the Brahmans, especially the Upanishads. 
 Thirdly, there is Buddhism with its new principle of 
 attachment to the person of the founder, the record 
 of which is deposited in the Buddhist scriptures. 
 True, Buddhism is not now a living religion in India ; 
 it was driven from the land of its birth in the early 
 centuries of our era. It has a set of books of its 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 own, and can to a certain extent be studied separately. 
 But its origin and early growth is part of India's 
 religious experience, and even the briefest account of 
 Indian religion must deal with it. This preliminary 
 statement of the great steps in the history of Indian 
 piety shows at once how long and how interesting is 
 the story here brought before us. In no other land 
 can the successive ages of religion as it grows from 
 infancy to manly strength and then to weakness and 
 decay, be so well seen ; and it is this . that makes 
 Indian religion so important to the student of the 
 world's faiths, and so full of lessons of the greatest 
 moment for all who care in a broad and generous way 
 for human faith and piety. 
 
 The subject divides itself into three parts : — 
 
 1. Vedism, the early Aryan religion of India. 
 
 2. Brahmanism, the religion of speculation and 
 asceticism. 
 
 3. Buddhism, the simple religion of personal attach- 
 ment, taking the place of these. 
 
The Religion of the Vedas 
 
 We have, in the first place, to speak of the Vedas 
 and the religious system of which they tell us ; and 
 we must begin by explaining what the books them- 
 selves are. 
 
 The religious literature of India opens with four 
 collections of hymns meant to be used at sacrifices. 
 These are the Vedas proper, and the oldest of them is 
 the Rigveda, which contains the poems from which our 
 earliest historical information as to the Aryans in India 
 is derived. The other collections (Samhitas) of sacri- 
 ficial hymns {jnantras) are the Samaveda, consisting of 
 liturgical songs ; the Jajurveda, consisting of sacrificial 
 formulae ; and the Atharvaveda ; the last consists for 
 the most part of charms and incantations, and is the 
 great source of our knowledge of the popular beliefs 
 and superstitions of ancient India. 
 
 The period when the hymns were composed is 
 placed by Mr Max Miiller, who by his publication of 
 " The Sacred Books of the East," did more than any 
 
6 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 one else to bring them to the knowledge of English- 
 speaking peoples^ at 1000-800 b.c. ; but other scholars 
 place it several centuries earlier. The writers of the 
 hymns describe how they were naturally incited and 
 led to compose them ; by later generations, however, 
 the hymns were regarded, as has happened in other 
 religions also, as having been directly inspired. 
 Around these hymns other religious literature after- 
 wards grew up. 
 
 The "Brahmanas," one or more of which is devoted 
 to each of the Samhitas, are explanatory works, 
 entering into the significance of the various parts of 
 the sacrifices in connection with w^hich the hymns 
 were used and giving directions for their proper 
 celebration. These also came in time to be regarded 
 as inspired {sruti, heard). The same view was held of 
 a later and very different class of books : the specu- 
 lative treatises spoken of above in connection with the 
 second great movement of Indian religion, namely, the 
 '' Upanishads." These also belong to the period after 
 that of the hymns. The " Sutras ' ' or short directions for 
 sacrifices and various rites were not held to be " sruti " 
 inspired, but " smriti,'' recollections or traditions, and 
 to the latter class belong also the divine and heroic 
 legends and epics of which India possesses no small 
 store, such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. 
 
 The hymns of the Rigveda stand first in order and 
 are by far the most important of all the sacred books 
 of India. We learn more from them than from 
 any other source as to the beginning and the early 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS 7 
 
 character of Indian religion. When these hymns 
 were composed, the wars and struggles were still 
 remembered, which accompanied the entrance into 
 India of the conquering Aryan tribes. These tribes 
 came into India from the north-west, from the high- 
 lands of Iran. The similarity in many points of the 
 Persian and Indian religions, bears witness of a period 
 when these two branches of the Aryan race had dwelt 
 together, after the others had taken their departure 
 to enter Europe and settle on the Danube, in the 
 lands north of the Alps, in Greece and Italy and the 
 far distant west. The settlers in India with whom we 
 have to do, had to fight their way to the new seats 
 they occupied there. It is high up in the Punjaub 
 or five-river country, between the Jumna and the 
 Ganges that we first see them. Their struggles with 
 the former population of the country were not for- 
 gotten. They did not extirpate these earlier settlers ; 
 did not even make an end of their civil institutions, 
 far less of their religion, but lived among them as 
 a superior and governing race. Many superstitions 
 which are not known to the Vedas, but which over- 
 spread India in later times may have belonged to the 
 pre-Aryan inhabitants, and after being submerged 
 for a time by the wave of conquest, emerged again in 
 later times from obscurity. 
 
 The conquerors never became quite settled, but 
 kept moving on in stately order as new tribes pressed 
 forward behind them. That they were fair-haired, 
 while the inhabitants of the land were swarthy, is a 
 
8 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 trait often dwelt on in the hymns. Cattle and horses 
 were the main part of their wealth. They travelled 
 with all their possessions^ the women and children 
 and goods being conveyed in wheeled carriages. They 
 were arranged socially in tribes^ and the tribes in 
 families ; the Aryan families^ however, being patri- 
 archal, i.e. containing not only one married pair as with 
 us but also the wives and children of the sons. The 
 warriors ( Usjmiriyas) were the ruling class of a tribe ; 
 whether the later caste distinctions of Vaisyas (farmers) 
 and Sudras (servants) were formed at this early time is 
 doubtful. We have to think accordingly of a set of 
 tribes of superior civilisation, finding their way slowly 
 from the higher valleys of the Punjaub to the lower 
 ground ; the inhabitants of the country combining 
 only on rare occasions and ineffectively to oppose 
 their progress, and soon retreating before them, or 
 remaining beside them as their vassals. 
 
 These tribes brought with them into India their 
 gods, their sacrifices, their priests, their mode of 
 sacred song. In these particulars they have much in 
 common, as was indicated above, with their brethren 
 of Iran, among whom the religion of the Zendavesta 
 grew up as that of the Vedas in India. Much came 
 to them no doubt in the new land they entered. 
 They found in it new gods ; their sacrifices grew more 
 stately, their hymns longer and full of new allusions, 
 yet their sacrifices and hymns at their highest develop- 
 ment do not deny their kindred with those of Persia. 
 What we have to recognise therefore in the religion 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS 9 
 
 of the Vedas, is fresh growth under new conditions 
 from the old root, a fresh formation of behef, sacrifice 
 and poem from the old Indo-Iranian stock. 
 
 The hymns, however, were composed by a set of 
 men whose very existence tells of more settled times 
 than those of the invasions. They tell us of families 
 of singers, whose business it is to produce poems for 
 use at a sacrifice, and to see to the proper recital of 
 these poems at the solemn occasion. One such family 
 professes one kind of poem, another another kind ; 
 one devotes itself to the service of one god, another of 
 another. Some of these poets are to a certain extent 
 court functionaries ; they are attached to the leading 
 family of a tribe, and the sacrifices to which they con- 
 tribute poems are acts done by the chief as represent- 
 ing his tribe, and therefore to some extent public 
 solemnities. These men, moreover, are priests as well 
 as poets. They are experts in the method of sacrifice, 
 and while it is not yet the case that sacrifice cannot 
 be offered without them, for the old tradition still 
 ruled that the head of a house could sacrifice, or the 
 head of a clan, and in humbler life sacrifice was regu- 
 larly offered by the father, they are making themselves 
 more and more indispensable. The hymns they put in 
 circulation, and which tend to become the sacred 
 literature of the country, praise the prince or the 
 householder who employs a sacrificing poet to act for 
 him, and who rewards him handsomely. It came to 
 be believed more and more that the hymn was an 
 essential part of the sacrifice, which could not prove 
 
10 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 effectual without it, and from this it followed that on 
 any considerable occasion a new poem must be pro- 
 vided. Some of the sacrifices were very elaborate. 
 A sacrifice of three days was not uncommon ; we hear 
 of one which took a year to transact. And as sacrifice 
 became more grand and complicated, the ideas con- 
 nected with it grew till it came to be regarded as a 
 mystery, of which only the expert, perhaps only a 
 whole band of experts, could ensure the correct per- 
 formance. 
 
 What are the beings who are worshipped in these 
 splendid rites } They are many and various. A few 
 of them can be traced back to the common Aryan 
 inheritance before the migrations, but most of them 
 are peculiar to Indian religion, and whether Aryan or 
 not in origin, first rose to prominence in the new 
 country. Some again may be gods of the land, who 
 were worshipped by the older inhabitants, and rose 
 into prominence again after being put out of sight. 
 Of the Vedic gods in general, it may be said that they 
 are Nature gods ; parts of the outward world or pro- 
 cesses of Nature personified, endowed with feelings, 
 desires and powers like those of man, equipped with 
 full measure of attributes and so made into vast and 
 active figures which partly conceal what they were at 
 first. The gods India possesses in common with the 
 other Aryan nations are but few ; Professor Max 
 Miiller has told what there is to tell of them in his 
 Hibbert lectures, which everyone should read who is 
 interested in this subject. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS ii 
 
 Dyaus-pitar is the Sanscrit for the Jupiter of Italy, 
 the Zeus pater of Greece. In India he is not a 
 prominent figure ; when we first get sight of the 
 gods of India^ his period of activity is over ; he is a 
 being who has been worshipped in the past^ and is 
 thought of as the great power behind and above all 
 gods. None of the hymns is addressed to him, and 
 but little active worship is directed to him ; he is 
 superseded by gods of a younger generation and 
 stronger local colour. Thus the hymns supply only 
 indirect evidence of the time when the Aryans ad- 
 dressed their prayers to Heaven Father, and solicited 
 him directly for benefits. 
 
 The myth also of Dyaus and Prithivi, heaven and 
 earthy the pair from whose union men and all living 
 beings come forth, is found in the beliefs of the 
 Indians as of many other races, both Aryan and Non- 
 Aryan. But this, too, is in the background and has no 
 practical effect on worship. 
 
 The Vedic gods proper are personifications of the 
 sun, of the moon, of the dawn, of fire in its heavenly 
 or in its earthly appearance, of the storm, of the winds. 
 It is possible for the scholar to collect from the hymns 
 the attributes and characteristics connected with each 
 of them, but he will not attain in this way to a clear and 
 distinct character for each figure. They have very little 
 legend connected with them, and remain indefinite and 
 vague. What is said of one of them, moreover, is often 
 found to be said of another, or of several others. This 
 shows that they cannot all have grown up at the same 
 
12 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 time^ or in the same neighbourhood. Their rise and fall 
 may have been in part political ; as a tribe grew strong 
 its god would become prominent and be exalted as other 
 gods had been before. Or an alliance of two tribes 
 might lead to a conjunction of their gods — a very 
 common phenomenon in the history of Indian deities, 
 and each of the pair would then assume some of the 
 character of the other till they came to be very much 
 alike. 
 
 There is no organisation in the Indian Pantheon ; 
 sometimes one god is the chief and the greatest, some- 
 times another; they do not form a family or sit in 
 council together like the gods of Homer and the 
 Eddas ; it is a worship of one god at a time, first one 
 god comes forward into the first place, then another. 
 This is what is described by Professor Max Miiller by 
 the phrase Kathenotheism, the worship of one god at 
 a time. The Indians of the hymns are not monotheists 
 in any strict sense. They are worshippers in general of 
 one god, but they believe in the existence of others, 
 and worship may come to direct itself to one of these 
 in his turn. 
 
 But it is time to introduce to the reader some of 
 these gods in person, and to give some specimens of 
 the hymns which were written in their honour. We 
 shall give examples of Indian gods at three stages of 
 their growth ; firstly, of gods of the most primitive 
 character, who show their natural basis most unmis- 
 takably, and in whom moral attributes are least de- 
 veloped ; secondly, of the distinctively national gods 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS 13 
 
 of India, who are to some extent moral beings ; and 
 thirdly, of the later gods who are the offspring of 
 reflection. 
 
 (1) Nature Gods Proper. — First among these stand 
 the sun-gods, and of the sun-gods Surya is the most 
 natural and primitive. What is said of him is obviously 
 spoken under the powerful impressions made on the 
 minds of men of the early world by the great orb of 
 day ; his glorious shining, his splendid course, his 
 daily recurring drama. The sun was regarded as a 
 living being with human feelings, and imagination 
 was allowed to play about his majestic person. Accord- 
 ingly, he is described as golden ; we hear of his wheel, 
 of his chariot, of his white horse, of his eagle, of his 
 eye. The ever-repeated wonder of his rising and 
 setting, and his alternate appearance with the moon 
 in the sky, were fitted of themselves to suggest 
 devotion. And there is no need to prove how readily 
 a story would be woven about such a theme ; how, 
 for example, as in the hymn quoted below, the sun 
 would be regarded as a hero, the blushing dawn, 
 Ushas, as a maiden, and the sun be spoken of as 
 chasing the dawn. 
 
 The following translation, as well as some others 
 in this chapter, is taken from " Metrical Translations 
 from Sanscrit Writers," by Dr J. Muir (Triibner). 
 
 By lustrous heralds led on high 
 The omniscient Sun ascends the sky. 
 His glory drawing every eye. 
 
14 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 All-seeing sun^ the stars so bright. 
 
 Which gleamed throughout the sombre night, 
 
 Now scared, like thieves slink fast away 
 
 Quenched by the splendour of thy ray. 
 
 Thy beams to men thy presence show. 
 
 Like blazing fires they seem to glow. 
 
 Conspicuous, rapid, source of light. 
 
 Thou makest all the welkin bright. 
 
 In sight of gods and mortal eyes 
 
 In sight of heaven, thou scal'st the skies. 
 
 Bright god, thou scann'st with searching ken 
 
 The doings all of busy men. 
 
 Thou stridest o'er the sky ; thy rays 
 
 Locate and measure out, our days ; 
 
 Thine eye all living things surveys. 
 
 Seven mild mares thy chariot bear 
 
 Self-yoked, athwart the fields of air. 
 
 Bright Surya, god with flaming hair. 
 
 Of other sun-gods we may mention Savitri, Pushan, 
 and Vishnu. Pushan has more detail attached to his 
 figure. He is described as bearded and toothless, 
 and as driving in a carriage drawn by goats. He is 
 specially the patron of cattle and the guardian of 
 paths, a guide to the traveller and one who finds 
 again what has been lost. The three steps of Vishnu, 
 which carry him through the whole of heaven, are 
 thought to connect him with the sun in his daily 
 course. 
 
 Many of the Vedic deities are held to have been 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS 15 
 
 originally moon gods, and to have parted in time with 
 their native character. Yama, for example, who 
 receives departed souls, is to be regarded in the light 
 of the primitive belief, attested in many of the hymns, 
 that the souls of the dead went to the moon. Many 
 passages about Agni can be referred to the moon, 
 though Agni is certainly in general the God of Fire, 
 and the sacrificer among the gods. Soma often 
 appears to have been a moon god ; but Soma is also 
 the juice of the plant of that name, a rare and 
 intoxicating liquor which formed the liquid part of 
 many of the sacrifices ; of him we shall have to speak 
 again. 
 
 Of Ushas, the dawn, the following hymn tells us all 
 that is wanted : — 
 
 To UsHAs, THE Indian Aurora 
 
 Hail Ushas, daughter of the sky. 
 Who borne upon thy shining car. 
 By ruddy steeds from realms afar. 
 
 And ever lightening, drawest nigh. 
 
 Thou sweetly smilest, goddess fair. 
 Disclosing all thy youthful grace. 
 Thy bosom bright, thy radiant face. 
 
 The lustre of thy golden hair. 
 
 But closely by the amorous sun 
 
 Pursued and vanquished in the race. 
 Thou soon art locked in his embrace. 
 
 And with him blendest into one. 
 
i6 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 Fair Ushas, though through years untold 
 Thou hast Uved on^ yet thou art born 
 Anew on each succeedmg morn^ 
 
 And so thou art both young and old. 
 
 When thou dost pierce the murky gloom, 
 Birds flutter forth from every brake. 
 All sleepers as from death awake, 
 
 And men their myriad tasks resume. 
 
 Some, prosperous, w^ake in listless mood, 
 And others, every nerve to strain 
 The goal of wealth or power to gain 
 
 Or what they deem the highest good. 
 
 But some to holier thoughts aspire. 
 In hymns the gods immortal praise. 
 And light, on earthly hearths to blaze. 
 
 The heaven-born sacrificial fire. 
 
 Bright goddess, let thy genial rays 
 To us bring stores of envied wealth 
 In kine and steeds, and sons with health. 
 
 And joy of heart, and length of days. 
 
 A being of a somewhat different order now comes 
 before us. The gods of India, like those of Greece, 
 felt the breath of advancing thought. The Hindoo 
 early felt the need of a being to worship who had a 
 more universal sway than that of the sun and moon, a 
 being who presided not only over a department of the 
 world, but over the whole world. And in the rule of 
 such an omnipotent and all-pervading being as the 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS 17 
 
 mind of the nation was groping for, the early gods, 
 divine, yet limited in scope and character, could with 
 difficulty seem natural and at home. Along with this 
 intellectual need there was the srrowinsj ethical desire 
 for divine communion such as the individual could 
 enjoy, not only at a sacrifice, but at any time and 
 throughout his life. These deeper needs are not 
 without their witness even in very early hymns, where 
 we find not only the effort to magnify a particular 
 god as highly as possible and to see combined in him 
 every possible power and excellence, but also the 
 search after a being truly almighty and universal, com- 
 prising in himself all the gods, and coequal with the 
 universe. These tendencies grew stronger rather than 
 weaker as time went on, and ended at last in accom- 
 plishing the break up, for the more thoughtful part of 
 the nation, of the old Pantheon, and the introduction 
 by the side of the old worship of a new style of religion. 
 This early impulse towards a pure moral monotheism, 
 is represented by the figure of Varuna. This deity 
 used to be thought to be the same as the Uranus, 
 heaven, of the Greeks, but the identification is doubt- 
 ful. Varuna is a heavenly being who looks down and 
 witnesses all that goes on upon the earth. If he was 
 originally the sun, as many of the hymns suggest, in 
 others he is a being not seen himself who sends forth 
 the sun on his daily course and who has eyes every- 
 where. He is said to have created all things and to 
 have a universal rule. The hymns addressed to him 
 resemble more than any others the Psalms of the Bible, 
 
 B 
 
i8 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 both from the exalted character of the god, who is 
 free from eveiy doubtful association, and because of 
 the feelings of penitence and of moral aspiration ex- 
 pressed on the part of the worshipper. The following 
 verses will help the reader to understand how near 
 Indian thought here came to the behef in a being 
 like the god of the Old Testament, both full of 
 energy and free from every stain of passion. 
 
 Varuna 
 
 Each morn when Ushas starts from sleep, 
 He mounts his car, which gleams with gold. 
 All worlds before him lie unrolled 
 
 As o'er the sky his coursers sweep. 
 
 The righteous lord the sceptre wields, 
 
 Supreme, of universal sway ; 
 
 His law both men and gods obey ; 
 To his decree the haughtiest yields. 
 
 He spread the earth and watery waste ; 
 
 He reared the sky ; he bade the sun 
 
 His shining circuit daily run ; 
 In him the worlds are all embraced. 
 
 The path of ships across the sea. 
 
 The soaring eagle's flight he knows ; 
 The course of every wind that blows 
 
 And all that was or is to be. 
 
 I 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS 19 
 
 This mighty Lord who rules on high 
 Though closely veiled from mortal gaze 
 All men's most secret acts surveys ; 
 
 He_, ever far, is ever nigh. 
 
 Two think they are not overheard 
 
 Who sit and plot as if alone ; 
 
 Their fancied secrets all are known 
 Unseen the god is there, a third. 
 
 Whoe'er should think his w^ay to wing, 
 And lurk unknown beyond the sky ; 
 Yet could not there elude the eye 
 
 And grasp, of Varuna the King. 
 
 He marks the good and ill within 
 
 The breath of men ; the false and true 
 Discerns with never-erring view ; 
 
 He hates deceit, chastises sin. 
 
 Absolve us from the guilt we pray 
 Of all the sins our fathers wrought 
 And sins which we commit in thought 
 
 And speech and act, from day to day. 
 
 From dire disease preserve us free. 
 Nor doom us to the house of clay 
 Before our shrivelling frames decay ; 
 
 A good old age yet let us see. 
 
 The distinctively national gods of the Aryan settlers 
 
20 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 in India were Indra, Soma and Agni^ and before the 
 lively character and proceedings of these beings, 
 Varuna lost vigour and came to be less thought of. 
 Soma, while originally a moon-god, is at a later period 
 the personification of the intoxicating juice of the 
 Soma plant, spoken of above ; and his worship may 
 have originated in a district where this plant was 
 found, and was early used for sacrificial purposes. 
 As Soma was pressed and offered at a sacrifice of 
 frequent occurrence, called the Soma sacrifice, religious 
 thought was much occupied with the mode of the 
 production of the liquor and its properties. And as 
 Soma was regarded as a god (this feature is common 
 to Vedic and Iranian religion, where Homa is the 
 same) all the details of its preparation were inter- 
 preted mystically, what was done on earth had its 
 sacred and eternal counterpart in heaven. Thus it 
 comes that the ninth book of the Rigveda is filled 
 with hymns addressed to Soma, who in this particular 
 has a unique position among the gods. The senti- 
 ment of these hymns is not one to appeal to the world 
 we live in. Intoxication is their theme ; the elevation 
 of those priests and poets and worshippers who assisted 
 at the sacrifice, and the intoxication of the gods to 
 whom it was offered. The juice was somewhat of a 
 rarity, and only in connection Math sacrifices was it 
 prepared. And it was believed to impart vigour to 
 gods as to men ; they needed it in fact to evoke their 
 energy and enable them to exert themselves on behalf 
 of the worshippers who had thus made them happy. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS 21 
 
 Agni^ the god of fire^ though also originally con- 
 nected with the moon, is also an element of sacrifice ; 
 it is this that distinguishes him from other solar or 
 lunar beings, and brings him into prominence. He is 
 the altar flame which lays hold on the butter and the 
 savoury flesh and carries them up to the sky to present 
 them to the gods. He is therefore the great divine 
 priest of the Vedic sacrifice ; a being who exists in 
 heavenly regions, from which he looks down, pure and 
 unmoved himself, on human strivings, and also in and 
 under the earth where he is the inspirer of all energy 
 and growth. But it is his appearance at the altar, 
 where he is produced by the rubbing together of two 
 pieces of wood, that is most dwelt on. 
 
 To Agni, the God of Fire 
 
 Great Agni, though thine essence be but one. 
 Thy forms are three ; as fire thou blazest here. 
 As lightning flashest in the atmosphere. 
 
 In heaven thou flamest as the golden sun. 
 
 It was in heaven thou hadst thy primal birth ; 
 But thence of yore a holy sage benign 
 Conveyed thee down on human hearths to shine. 
 
 And thou abid'st a denizen of earth. 
 
 Sprung from the mystic pair by priestly hands 
 In wedlock joined, forth flashes Agni bright ; 
 But — O ye heaven and earth, I tell you right, — 
 
 The unnatural child devours the parent brands. 
 
22 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 Thou, Agni, art our priest, divinely wise, 
 In holy science versed ; thy skill detects 
 The faults that mar our rites, mistakes corrects. 
 
 And all our acts completes and sanctifies. 
 
 Thou art the cord that stretchest to the skies, 
 
 The bridge that spans the chasm, profound and vast 
 Dividing earth from heaven, o'er which at last 
 
 The good shall safely pass to paradise. 
 
 Preserve us, lord, thy faithful servants save 
 From all the ills by which our bliss is marred ; 
 Tower like an iron wall our homes to guard, 
 
 And all the boons bestow our heart can crave. 
 
 And when away our brief existence wanes. 
 
 When we at length our earthly homes must quit. 
 And our freed souls to worlds unknown shall flit. 
 
 Do thou deal gently with our cold remains ; 
 
 And then thy gracious form assuming, guide 
 Our unborn part across the dark abyss. 
 Aloft to realms serene of light and bliss. 
 
 Where righteous men among the gods abide. 
 
 Indra, more than any other the national god of the 
 Aryans of India, is a being who descends from the sky 
 and like so many others was first connected with the 
 sun. There is more legend attached to him than 
 to most of these deities ; tales are told of his extra- 
 ordinary energy even when an infant, of his killing 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS 23 
 
 his father, and of the constant conflict he wages, at- 
 tended by the Mariits, the wind gods, against Vrittru, 
 the demon of drought, who has driven off the heavenly 
 cows, the clouds, and confined them in his cave. Indra 
 is a swashbuckler, ever ready for the fray, and also it 
 must be said with a strong taste for Soma, of which 
 he drinks enormous quantities. Some of the hymns 
 in which this feature is dwelt on with great gusto are 
 thought by some scholars to be satirical and to belong 
 to the period when the gods were being taken less 
 seriously. But one sees that in his period of vigour 
 this trait in his character did not tend to make Indra 
 less popular. There are hymns addressed to Indra and 
 Varuna jointly, and in these the sympathies of the 
 poets evidently incline not to the god of lofty and 
 undimmed purity and holiness, but rather to the 
 vigorous champion who has done so many great 
 acts and whose tastes bring him somewhat nearer 
 to men. 
 
 The first of the following extracts from the Rigveda 
 brings Indra before us in a lively way, and part of a 
 hymn to Yama the god of the departed may also find a 
 place here. 
 
 Invitation of Indra to the Sacrifice 
 
 Hear, Indra, mighty thunderer, hear. 
 Great regent of the middle sphere ; 
 List, while we sweetly sing thy praise 
 In new and well-constructed lays, 
 
24 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 Hymns deftly framed by poet skilled 
 As artisans a chariot build. 
 Come^ Indra, come^ thou much invoked ; 
 Our potent hymn thy steed has yoked. 
 Come straight and let no rival priest 
 Prevail to draw thee from our feast. 
 All is prepared : the soma draught 
 Is sweet as thou hast ever quaffed. 
 
 To Yama 
 
 To great King Yama homage pay 
 Who was the first of men that died. 
 That crossed the mighty gulf, and spied 
 For mortals out the heavenly way. 
 
 No power can ever close the road 
 Which he to us laid open then, 
 By which in long procession men 
 Ascend to his sublime abode. 
 
 By it our fathers all have passed ; 
 And that same path we too shall trace, 
 And every new succeeding race. 
 Of mortal men while time shall last. 
 
 The god assembles round his throne, 
 A growing throng, the good and wise, — 
 All those whom, scanned with searching eyes. 
 He recognises as his own. 
 
 Thou there once more each well-known face 
 Shalt see of those thou lovedst here ; 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS 25 
 
 Thy parents, wife and children dear. 
 With rapture shalt thou then embrace. 
 
 The fathers, too, shalt thou behold, 
 The heroes who in battle died, 
 The saints and sages glorified, 
 The pious bounteous kings of old. 
 
 The gods whom here in humble wise 
 Thou worshippedst with doubt and awe. 
 Shall there the impervious veil withdraw 
 Which hid their glory from thine eyes. 
 
 It is clear that such gods as these could have no 
 lasting reign over the human mind, and that though 
 their service was kept up and infinite pains bestowed 
 on it by priest, thinker and poet, their figures were 
 doomed to fade as the civilisation of the people in- 
 creased. And so we find on the one hand that 
 scepticism assailed these gods even while hymns 
 were being composed in their honour, and on the 
 other that a new race of gods appeared, gods who 
 had no history or legend, but were formed out of 
 some notion or quality, and were capable, since they 
 were created for that very object, of receiving the 
 more refined devotion which Soma and Indra were 
 scarcely fitted to delight in. In a hymn to Indra 
 we find these statements : — 
 
 " Thy friend is never slain ; his might 
 Is never worsted in the fight. . , . 
 
26 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 But thou chastisest all the proud 
 The nifffi-ard and the faithless crowd 
 Who thine existence doubt^ and cry 
 In scorn^ ' No Indra rules on high.' . . . 
 When clouds collect and thunders roar, 
 The scoffers tremble and adore/' 
 
 who had formerly indulged in their scoffing unchecked. 
 We see that, as has happened in other lands, the 
 god of the national worship did not have everything 
 his own way. There were some who doubted his 
 existence, some who turned his supposed habits and 
 tastes into ridicule. Religious doubt was to have a 
 great career in India, all its phenomena were to 
 appear which are familiar to us also, of sharp criti- 
 cism of the priesthood, the assertion of morality and 
 inner piety as being superior to ritual, and then of 
 estrangement from the public service of religion and 
 denial both of the gods and of the future. This was 
 no doubt inevitable in any case ; and we can the less 
 wonder at it when we consider what manner of beings 
 India possessed in the national gods. 
 
 A new set of gods has here to be spoken of, who 
 possess the characteristic that they are the offspring 
 not of history but of reflection. India is prolific of 
 new gods, and when the old national gods were 
 paling it was not surprising that a new kind of deity 
 appeared, more satisfying to the demands of thought 
 than the old kind, but on the other hand, as might be 
 expected from their extraction^ somewhat wanting in 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS 27 
 
 vigour and character. Of these^ we may speak first 
 of the Being called by Professor M. Miiller 
 
 "The Unknown God." 
 
 " In the beginning there arose the Golden Child ; 
 as soon as born, he alone was lord of all that is. He 
 established the earth and the heaven ; who is the 
 God to whom we shall oiFer sacrifice .^ 
 
 He who gives breath, he who gives strength, whose 
 command all the bright gods revere, whose shadow 
 is immortality, whose shadow is death ; who is the 
 God to whom we shall offer sacrifice ? 
 
 He to whom heaven and earth standing firm by his 
 will, look up, trembling in their mind ; he over whom 
 the risen sun shines forth ; who is the God to whom 
 we shall offer sacrifice ? 
 
 May he not hurt us, he who is the begetter of the 
 earth, or he, the righteous who begat the heaven, he 
 who also begat the bright and mighty waters ; who is 
 the God to whom we shall offer sacrifice ? 
 
 Pragapati, no other than thou embraces all these 
 created things. May that be ours which we desire 
 when sacrificing to thee, may we be lords of wealth ! " 
 (S.B.E. xxxii. 1). 
 
 In this hymn, which is to be dated about 1000 b.c, 
 the poet, seeking a Supreme being in whom all the 
 creation and all the gods are embraced, finds Praga- 
 pati, or the Lord of Created things, who accordingly is 
 not a divinity known of old and revered for his mighty 
 works and for his character, but one framed to supply 
 
28 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 a need of the human mind. His name is a descrip- 
 tion rather than a real name. The same appUes, 
 though with a difference, to another of the new gods 
 of this period, Brahmanaspati, Lord of Prayer. In 
 the exaltation of the ritual, prayer was coming to be 
 regarded as a cosmic force, on which, as on the sun- 
 shine and the rain, the order of nature and the 
 recurrence of the seasons depended. It was fitting, 
 therefore, that prayer should have its divine embodi- 
 ment, as fire had Agni, and the sun Pushan. This 
 deity became more and more important ; everything 
 was thought to come from him, one prayed to the 
 great Prayer, by whom so many things, indeed all 
 things were wrought. This is evidently not early 
 and natural, but late and reflected religion. Brahma- 
 naspati, like Pragapati, who, however, occurs much 
 less frequently, is an artificial deity, one made by 
 human thought. The same is to be said of Visva- 
 karman. Maker of all, w^ho produces all things by 
 sacrificing himself, and thus represents both creation 
 and sacrifice, both power and devotion. As an attempt 
 to combine all the gods in one notion, we may men- 
 tion the figure Visvadevas, all the gods, which occurs 
 in many of the hymns, and may also remember how, 
 when a particular god is receiving praise, he is said 
 to be another god or other gods. Agni is said to 
 be nearly every god, and the same is done with 
 others. These phenomena may lie far apart from 
 each other in space and in time, but they all belong 
 to the period before the collections of the hymns were 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS 29 
 
 closed, that is probably before 1000 b.c. They all 
 alike bear eloquent testimony that the polytheism of 
 the Vedic gods was felt to be confusing and unbear- 
 able, and that while some took to scepticism, many 
 an earnest attempt was made to escape from the 
 confusion without giving up faith in the gods. 
 These intellectual movements did not however inter- 
 fere with the great ordinance of sacrifice. The priests 
 went on building up and elaborating and exalting the 
 rite at which they presided, and their hymns remained 
 in use, though many a change took place in the views 
 that were held about the nature of the gods. 
 
 Ancient India presents on a scale unparalleled 
 elsewhere the spectacle of a sacrificial ritual which 
 continues by its own momentum when the ideas which 
 at first inspired it are forgotten or altogether changed. 
 We stand here at the point where the old religion of 
 the hymns passes into the later system of Brahmanism, 
 or rather is found to have undergone this transforma- 
 tion ; for of the process by which the change took 
 place there is no record. When we find ourselves 
 transported to the Brahmanic system we observe that 
 a number of things have been altered in Indian 
 rehgion, in fact that everything is changed. 
 
II 
 
 Brahmanism 
 
 With the later books of Indian religion, even those 
 whose age and authority caused them to be thought 
 inspired, we enter as it were on a quite different 
 country. The Vedic hymns, taking them generally, 
 give us the impressions of the mountains and the 
 clouds, of the dawn and of the sunshine ; they belong 
 to an age not yet feeling any weariness. It is true that 
 the gift of producing such hymns is attached in the 
 old period to certain families, yet the hymn is there 
 not a matter of form but a real force, it does really 
 influence and support the gods and secure for man 
 solid blessings at their hands. The priestly system 
 is not yet fixed beyond possibility of change ; the 
 arrangements of w^orship are to a large extent primi- 
 tive and elastic. The men who offer these sacrifices 
 believe in the gods and believe also in themselves. 
 They are an active and spirited race ; it is their part 
 to fight against enemies, to increase their herds, to 
 till the ground, and to offer sacrifice, and the gods 
 assist them to gain the objects of their lives. 
 
BRAHMANISM 31 
 
 The later age of the Brahmanas and the Upanishads 
 is one of a fully formed priestly class^ the representa- 
 tives of which stand at the head of society and enjoy 
 the odour of hereditary sanctity. The sacrifices are 
 formed into an immense and most elaborate system, 
 surrounded with mystery which only experts can 
 explain. The hymns are now regarded as not of 
 human but divine origin, but only the priests can say 
 what they mean, or use them with effect. On the 
 other side, however, this age has seen the rise of 
 religious speculation and discussion, which, like the 
 philosophy of Spinoza, while very religious in tone, 
 arrives at conclusions subversive of the traditional 
 beliefs. The hymns and sacrifices, the gods, the 
 world and all its parts, and man himself are subjected 
 to a searching scrutiny, in order to discover what is real 
 and substantial in each of them, and what is the 
 ultimate reality. Along with this there is a new view 
 of human life and destiny. Life is regarded not as 
 formerly, as full of solid satisfactions, but as a sad 
 captivity from which it is desirable to be set free. 
 And in respect of conduct the standard set up is 
 the ascetic one. Renunciation and escape from all 
 desire are looked upon as good, not because of any 
 benefit secured by them for others or the world, but 
 for their own sake, or because they hasten the escape, 
 to which one must look forward, from the burden of 
 existence. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the difference 
 in every important respect between the Vedic and 
 
32 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 what is usually styled the Brahmanic period. Can we 
 trace the historical connection between them and 
 show how the free high-spirited warriors of the Aryan 
 immigration turned into the venerators of the priest- 
 hood and the brooding ascetics of the later books ? It 
 is difficult to do so. There is no continuous stream 
 of literature from the one period to the other. As 
 with early Christian literature, so here, we pass from 
 the books concerned with the origins to the books 
 showing the later system, across a ^Ndde gap which 
 there are no books to help us to bridge. India, it is 
 well known, has no historical annals, nor has it any 
 clear succession of great men to represent its various 
 periods and advances. The historian seeking to 
 explain how one period passed into another has to be 
 content with saying " It must have been" so-and-so, 
 he cannot say positively " thus it was." At the same 
 time the question before us admits of an answer which 
 has a high degree of probability. There is the un- 
 doubted fact to proceed upon that the Hindus of the 
 Brahmanic period live in a different part of India from 
 the Aryans of the Vedas. The conquering tribes 
 when they first entered India dwelt in the high-lying ' 
 valleys of the Punjaub, where the climate is temperate 
 and bracing. But before the Brahmanic period the 
 tribes had moved eastward to the plains of the Ganges, 
 where the climate is tropical. This change may itself 
 account for much. It is true that religion, like other 
 living things has its inevitable changes, and that the 
 gods of the Vedas like those of Greece were necessarily 
 
BRAHMANISM 33 
 
 doomed to pale when philosophical reflection arose in 
 
 the minds of their worshippers. But this does not 
 
 explain why Indian thought was so subjective and so 
 
 sad. Again^ it is said that when the Aryans moved 
 
 forward to the Ganges they were more brought 
 
 together than before, and realised more clearly their 
 
 own nationality. Among a subject population against 
 
 whom they had to be on their guard they learned to 
 
 value more highly their own institutions. And this, no 
 
 doubt, afforded an opportunity to the priestly class 
 
 to organise their system more thoroughly and to 
 
 assume authority to impose it on their people and 
 
 i keep the superstitions of the savage races at arm's 
 
 : length. The subjection of the people to Brahman 
 
 ] rule would account for much but not for all of the 
 
 change which here took place. The whole people 
 
 I underwent a change, and this is noticeable even 
 
 I among those who were least under the influence of 
 
 j the priesthood and criticised it most freely. Judged 
 
 by the works, which no doubt represent the thoughts of 
 
 the best minds among them when the new settlements 
 
 had been in existence for some centuries, the people of 
 
 India did not feel at home in the world they lived in ; 
 
 they had grown weary of the earth and all its successes 
 
 and pleasures and had learned to turn their thoughts 
 
 to a world of the mind, above the seen and temporal. 
 
 The priestly organisation of the Brahmanic period 
 first claims attention. The class of Brahmans or 
 priests rose to pre-eminence after a struggle with the 
 class of warriors (Kshatriyas) of which little beyond its 
 
34 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 result is known. The caste system^ not found in the 
 hymnSj appears fully formed in the later books. The 
 Brahmans are sacred by birth ; the Kshatriyas and 
 Vaisyas (farmers) come after them, but are allowed to 
 be present at the sacrifice. The Sudras, whether or 
 not the previous owners of the land, now reduced to 
 serfdom, are excluded from it. The power of the 
 Brahmans is derived from the rite of sacrifice, which 
 only they can carry on effectively. The sacrifice was 
 an ancient rite, and had in time become a very 
 elaborate and complicated one, and many of its 
 features, as has happened in other cases also, were not 
 readily explained, their origin being now lost in dark- 
 ness. The Brahmans however were at hand to clear 
 up everything ; they became therefore the stewards of 
 mysteries to which none but they had the key. Now 
 the result of such an arrangement has always been 
 that, in the hands of those who were the professional 
 interpreters of its mysteries, religion grew more mys- 
 terious still. So it proved in this case. The hymns, 
 composed originally by poets who knew quite well what 
 they were doing, and who would set to work deliber- 
 ately to compose a new hymn for a special sacrifice, came 
 to be considered inspired. Every word of them had 
 been dictated from above; they were "sruti" heard; 
 the poet had not conceived but received them. And as 
 much of the hymns had with the lapse of time grown 
 obscure, there w\is room for an interpreter of them, 
 and this office the Brahmans sought to fill. That 
 meanings of which the writer could never have dreamed 
 
BRAHMANISM 35 
 
 were put upon the words is no unexampled circum- 
 stance. But the whole rite of sacrifice was similarly 
 full of difficulties ; at every point there was a right 
 way to proceed, rigidly fixed by custom and on no 
 account to be departed from. This required explana- 
 tion and minute description ; and the books called 
 Brahmanas are just the collections of the instructions 
 of the Brahmans on points of ritual, and explanations of 
 the ritual and of the hymns. As has also happened in 
 other cases the explanations came in time to share the 
 sacred character of the text ; the Brahmanas also 
 counted as " sruti." As they now exist these books 
 are the outcome of centuries of what we should 
 call theological discussion. " They contain/' Prof. 
 Eggeling says (Satap. Brahm. S.B.E., vol. xii., p. xx.) 
 " the accumulated wisdom and speculations of genera- 
 tions of Indian divines. They are digests of a floating 
 mass of single discourses or dicta on various points of 
 the ceremonial of worship, ascribed to individual 
 teachers and handed down orally in the theological 
 schools. Single discourses of this kind were called 
 "brahmana" — probably either because they were in- 
 tended for the instruction and guidance of priests 
 (brahman) generally, or because they were for the 
 most part the authoritative utterances of such as were 
 thoroughly versed in Vedic and sacrificial lore, and com- 
 petent to act as Brahmans or superintending priests. 
 In later times a collection or digest of such detached 
 pieces came to be likewise called a Brahmana." 
 
 These works can scarcely be regarded as literature ; 
 
36 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 no one would choose to read them for their own 
 quaUties. The translators use strong terms in 
 speaking of their puerilities^ their forced and un- 
 natural interpretations of the simplest matters^ the 
 general dreariness they spread over such an amazing 
 extent of matter. They travel over and over the 
 immense detail of ceremonial, dwelling on each word, 
 each act, each gesture, as a matter of infinite import- 
 ance and surrounding everything with an air of the 
 most recondite mystery. They thus furnish a com- 
 mentary on the hymns and sacrificial formulae, in 
 which however there is a complete absence of histori- 
 cal feeling. We look in vain for information as to 
 the original intention of the words used in the 
 service ; we are supplied instead with an abundance 
 of legendary tradition about the acts and relations of 
 the gods, and with etymologies of the terms which 
 the scientific linguist sees at once to be impossible and 
 absurd. On which side of the altar the priest is to 
 stand when a certain act is done, with what gesture he 
 is to use the sacrificial spoons and wooden swords, in 
 which of the sacrificial fires he is to barn each part of 
 the victim, with what intonation he is to pronounce a 
 certain word, all this is told, and a reason given for 
 each instruction, drawn from the story of the gods or 
 from the hidden meaning of the elements of nature. 
 What is the reason why a hymn contains so many 
 verses and a verse so many syllables, neither more nor 
 less, this also we are told, until we are stupefied with 
 wonder how these men ever came to think they knew 
 
 i 
 
BRAHMANISM 37 
 
 so much about every jot and tittle of a transaction, 
 the original meaning of which was evidently quite un- 
 known to them. The Brahmanas are interesting for 
 their legends, of which they are the principal reposi- 
 tory, and they bring actually before us what the 
 sacrificial system came in their hands to be, on which 
 the priests expended such enormous labour, and with 
 which their whole power and influence was bound up. 
 For a comprehension of sacrifice in ancient times 
 among men of Aryan race these books are an invalu- 
 
 ] able treasure-house, though one to be used with 
 caution. To the student of religion generally they 
 furnish evidence of the greatest example the world 
 has ever seen of what is rightly teniied ritualism, i.e. 
 dwelling on rites for their own sake, and not for the 
 sake of any moral and religious life conveyed by 
 them. When religious ceremonies are kept up, and 
 punctiliously repeated, elaborated, defined, commented 
 
 ■ on, and made always more important and mysterious, 
 although they have ceased to lift up the worshipper 
 to living sympathy with God and brotherhood to men, 
 then their value becomes doubtful. Rites there must 
 
 j always be in the religion of society ; the power of 
 religion on the generality of men is bound up with 
 them, the self-respect of the worshipping community 
 requires them, the dignity of states calls for them, no 
 less than does the sacredness of religion itself. But to 
 keep up rites which the people do not understand, to 
 which no thinking person any longer looks for spiritual 
 and moral furtherance, simply because they are 
 
38 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 statutory^ and to find in the details of them an ever- 
 growing wealth of mystery^ this is a weakness to which 
 religion has often showed itself prone^, and from which 
 its true friends ought by all means to defend it. 
 
 When we turn from the Brahmanas to the Upani- 
 shads (sessions or lectures) we find ourselves in a very 
 different mental climate. In fact when we begin to 
 realise what kind of thoughts are here before us^ we 
 are filled with wonder that these books should be 
 reckoned among; the sacred writings of Brahmanism 
 at all. What we find here is not dogmatics as in the 
 Brahmanas^ but speculation. What God is and how 
 the gods are related to the one God^ what the world 
 is^ what man is in his essence^ what is his destiny and 
 how he may fulfil it;, these are the questions here 
 taken up and followed through many a metaphor 
 and image, and with many a repetition, often weari- 
 some enough. And the answers found to such pro- 
 blems in these books are not at all orthodox. The 
 rites of the official system are not spoken of as means 
 of grace by which the faithful may work out his salva- 
 tion. The enquirer is not directed to any of the many 
 gods, as if such a being could save him, he is not 
 directed to the Vedas or to the sacrifice or to the 
 priest. There is a method set forth in the Upanishads 
 by which the highest end of life can be attained, but 
 it is not the method of conformity to traditional beliefs 
 and usages. It may be said to be subversive of these 
 and to call man away from them to a position in 
 which he is entirely independent of them. The 
 
BRAHMANISM 39 
 
 pursuit of truth for its own sake is what we here find, 
 the incessant determined questioning of all beings and 
 all things till they yield up to the enquirer their in- 
 most secret. And what follows practically on this 
 determined search for truth is the attempt^ deliberate 
 and sustained^ to unite oneself once and for all, what- 
 ever sacrifice it may imply, with the supreme reality 
 thus found. The peculiar blending in these works 
 of religion with speculation makes them intensely 
 interesting to more classes of mind than one. From 
 them has come an impulse to the modern philosophy 
 of Europe, the result of which will not quickly be 
 exhausted ; Schopenhauer took great delight in them 
 and the germs of the doctrine he taught may be seen 
 in them by the discerning reader. The ideas they 
 contain and the system of life to which they point 
 were fully developed in Buddhism, to which they 
 are on one side the best introduction. But even apart 
 from this the pattern of saintliness which they set 
 forth deserves to be taken into account by all who seek 
 to know the higher workings of human devotion. 
 
 But how is it, we have to ask, that these books 
 which are occupied with so different a type of religion 
 from that of the Brahmans, yet form a part of the 
 sacred writings of India for which the Brahmans were 
 responsible ? How have they come to be handed down 
 along with the hymns and the treatises on sacrifice as 
 writings which partake of the higher degree of sanctity ? 
 This phenomenon engages Mr Max Miiller's attention 
 in chap. vii. of his Hibbert Lectures, and he accounts 
 
40 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 for it by crediting the priestly class with the deliberate 
 policy of claiming for the religion they administered 
 work done not at all under their inspiration and even 
 as they must have known of quite a different spirit 
 from their own^ because they saw that it had life in 
 it and was destined to continue. Mr Hardy in his 
 " Religion des Alten Indiens''(Munster, 1893) accounts 
 for the phenomenon in the same way. He points 
 out that the speaker in many of the discussions in the 
 Upanishads are not Brahmans but members of the 
 secular ruling class, while in some cases women also 
 are said to have taken part in them. From this it 
 would appear that the speculations embodied in these 
 books did not originate with the priestly class, as 
 indeed they are not likely to have done, but among 
 the laity. The Brahmans, however, were the literary 
 men of India ; and it was necessarily by their inter- 
 vention that these discussions, after being repeated 
 from mouth to mouth perhaps for centuries and thus 
 brought into a smooth and popular form, were at last 
 collected in books and invested with authority as 
 sacred. That many of the Brahmans themselves may 
 have sympathised with such ways of thinking is not at 
 all improbable. We sometimes find the priest officiat- 
 ing at the sacrifice directed to regard w^hat he is doing 
 in the light of such speculation, as if the priest saying 
 mass were instructed to be thinking at the same time 
 of the Hegelian doctrine of the trinity. And we shall 
 see in the sequel that the tone of sentiment in the 
 Upanishads was connected with ascetic views and 
 
BRAHMANISM 41 
 
 institutions which the Brahmans must have regarded 
 with favour as a means of upholding their own power. 
 
 The Upanishads, of which the number is estimated 
 variously by different scholars, Professor Max Miiller 
 counting 148 of them, and others considerably more, 
 belong to different dates and differ from each other in 
 character. Any attempt to state the general purport 
 of this class of books will be more true of some of 
 them than of others. In some the discussions turn 
 mainly round some particular sacrifice. The books 
 have the name of aranyakas or forest books ; they 
 represent the meditations of ascetics who had retired 
 from the world to the forest and devoted the re- 
 mainder of their days to religious absorption. Even 
 such persons we see did not withdraw their interest 
 from sacrifice. The true view to be taken of the acts 
 done by the priest, the hidden meaning to be re- 
 cognised in each element of the rite, the relation of 
 the sacrifice to the great cosmic processes of nature 
 and to the corresponding processes of the human 
 mind, all this forms the subject of the meditations of 
 many of those forest dwellers, as preserved in the 
 Upanishads. The view put forward about the sacrifice 
 and its various elements is generally forced and un- 
 natural enough ; it would be difficult, Professor Max 
 Miiller says, to surpass the absurdity of the explana- 
 tions here given. But while outward rites are thus 
 treated with respect, the interest of the discussions 
 lies elsewhere. Sometimes a deeper, mystical view of 
 
42 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 the sacrifice is stated, and sometimes again there is a 
 pronounced critical attitude towards the sacrifice, and 
 indeed every part of external religion ; we hear the 
 voice of the rationalist or of the meditative devotee 
 to whom all external religious forms are indifferent, 
 and a higher truth has been revealed, which has been 
 hidden till now from the ordinary faithful, and in 
 some cases is regarded as being properly esoteric and 
 not to be communicated to the common people. Here 
 we touch on the view of religious truth as knowledge 
 which is so marked a feature of these speculations 
 and of which we must presently say something more. 
 As truly as the Greeks, do those Indians regard the 
 possession of true knowledge as the all-important 
 thing, which makes all the difference for a man and 
 decides whether he is in the right or not. A man 
 must put everything aside to gain this knowledge. 
 
 The doctrine of the Upanishads apart from the 
 solemn mystifications about sacrifice and all its fea- 
 tures, that doctrine out of which Buddhism proceeded 
 and which has powerfully influenced modern philo- 
 sophy, is on the whole not difficult to understand. 
 Its articles are not numerous nor diverse ; everywhere 
 we find the same great thoughts dwelt upon and en- 
 forced in connection with carefully chosen figures and 
 with manifold deliberate iteration. The problem dealt 
 with is that of the ultimate essence and the all-pervad- 
 ing principle of the universe, and the teaching had 
 perhaps primarily been rationalistic, as it implies a 
 denial of the independent existence or real personal 
 
BRAHMANISM 43 
 
 power of the different gods^ and reduces them all to 
 expressions or sides of the one ultimate being. The 
 denial of the gods with which every one is struck in 
 Buddhism is prepared for in the Upanishads, where 
 each of the gods in turn is spoken of in the same 
 way as a manifestation of the one supreme, and 
 expressions also occur which warn against putting 
 any trust in the separate gods and so being led away 
 from the one and only source of eternal satisfaction. 
 
 If we ask as to the nature and person of the being 
 who thus to the seeker of the highest things takes 
 the place of all the gods, we touch on the question 
 of early Indian metaphysics, and only a mere indica- 
 tion of the answer can here be given. The Being 
 who is one, and is the source and upholder of all 
 things is not to be compared to any other being ; he 
 is not one of a class and cannot be identified with 
 any particular thing or any single deity. Sometimes 
 it is Brahma who is spoken of under the language 
 applied to the first principle ; sometimes it is Indra 
 or another god, but this is exceptional. The language 
 is generally kept for a being who has no proper name 
 at all, who is not a god with a history and local 
 associations but can only be described by comparing 
 him to this or that activity in nature, can only be 
 named by ambiguous quasi-philosophical phrases. Not 
 by any rites or prayers or penances can this being be 
 approached ; yet he is most approachable, when once 
 the way to him is known. He is that which is, that 
 which has being, the substance (Sat), and is present 
 
44 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 everywhere^ in everything^ not seen nor touched as 
 if apart from other things by itself^ yet real, the most 
 real of all, that which is real in everything while all the 
 other parts and qualities of which the thing is made up 
 are fleeting and illusory. As the whole sea is salt 
 wherever one may taste it, so the whole of things 
 is pervaded by this unseen yet most real being. 
 The term by which it is most frequently spoken 
 of is Atman. This is a word of many meanings, and 
 the proper translation of it in the Upanishads has 
 been much debated. Some scholars have rendered 
 it soul or spirit, or mind, but the rendering self, 
 adopted by Prof. Max Miiller seems to answer best 
 the requirements of the case. There is an atman in 
 man and an atman in the universe, and the atman in 
 the universe bears the same relation to the universe as 
 does the atman in man to the human person. It is 
 diffused over all, there is nothing that is not related to it, 
 it is in all beings and is active and conscious in them all. 
 Each part and aspect of the world exhibits some side 
 of it ; in the sun it is present in one aspect, in the 
 storm in another. But while present in all the manifold 
 movement of the world and aware of all its varieties 
 and its incessant changes, it is itself undistracted and 
 unchanging, and dwells in an even and eternal calm 
 and rest. It moves and lives and shines, and is at 
 peace in the sunshine and the dark ; in growth and in 
 the cessation of growth. One favourite figure in 
 which its action is spoken of, a figure indeed which 
 is more than a figure and gives rise to important 
 
BRAHMANISM 45 
 
 practical consequences in the relations between the 
 great atman and man^ is that of respiration. The 
 life of the atman in the universe goes on after the 
 manner of breathing. There is exhalation^ out- 
 breathings which is expression^ and holding of the 
 breath which is enforced quietude^ and inhalation, 
 down-breathing, in which out-breathing is suspended 
 but another out-breathing or period of expression is 
 prepared for. Such is the great atman in which all 
 things live and move and have their being. The 
 atman in man is like it. 
 
 To take a step further. This atman, at first perhaps 
 a philosophical speculation in which the Indian mind 
 sought to rise above the contradictory claims of 
 rival gods, and to understand the world not as the 
 play-ground of conflicting worships but as a whole 
 majestic unity in which the mind could rest, this 
 atman is not only an object of knowledge but an 
 object of devotion. He is to be adored as the gods 
 are but with a worthier and deeper adoration, not in 
 stately acts of homage but in the efforts of personal piety 
 seeking to appropriate him and to grow one with him. 
 In the first place certainly the atman has to be sought 
 in the w^ay of knowledge. How is this secret to be 
 known, the question presents itself in one story after 
 another in the Upanishads, how is this knowledge to 
 be gained, which is the most precious of all ? And 
 the answer is generally that such and such a person 
 is in possession of it, and is able to teach it ; the 
 earnest seeker goes to him and sits at his feet and 
 
46 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 serves him for many years, to gain what he desires. 
 The knowledge is often spoken of as esoteric, not to 
 be communicated to every one, but only to those of 
 a certain caste who seek it, or to those who show 
 aptitude for it. The ordinary studies pursued in the 
 country, the study of the Vedas and of the various 
 sciences cultivated in India were of no avail with a 
 view to this more special treasure ; it was a thing 
 apart. Not that the seeker for this higher knowledge 
 was dispensed from the study of the Vedas and of 
 Indian science generally ; he was under the same 
 obligation as others to discharge every ordinary duty 
 imposed on him by the usage of his caste. But he 
 had found something to add to these, and as his studies 
 were suffused with this higher aim it often appeared 
 to him that the other subjects of study were of no 
 value at all compared with this one. It is thus that 
 we must understand the passages in the Upanishads 
 where the study of the Vedas is disparaged as well as 
 every other part of the working religion of India. 
 
 A few texts of the Upanishads may now be fitly pre- 
 sented to the reader. He will do well not to hurry past 
 them but to turn them over in his mind, trying to realise 
 the attitude of spirit of which they are the outcome. 
 
 "The lower knowledge is the Rig-veda, Yagur- 
 veda, Sama-veda, Atharva-veda, Liksha (phonetics), 
 Kalpa (ceremonial), Vyakarana (grammar), Nirukta 
 (etymology), Khandas (metre), Gyotisha (astronomy) ; 
 l3ut the higher knowledge is that by which the In- 
 destructible (Brahman) is apprehended." 
 
BRAHMANISM 
 
 47 
 
 " That which cannot be seen, nor seized, which has 
 no family and no caste, no eyes nor ears, no hands 
 nor feet, the eternal, the omnipresent, infinitesimal, 
 that which is imperishable, that it is which the wise 
 regard as the source of all beings " (Mund. Up.). 
 
 " Considering sacrifice and good works as the best, 
 these fools know no higher good, and having enjoyed 
 (their reward) on the height of heaven, gained by 
 good works, they enter again this world or a lower 
 one." 
 
 " But those who practise penance and faith in the 
 forest, tranquil, wise and living on alms, depart free 
 from passion through the sun to where that immortal 
 Person dwells whose nature is imperishable " (Mund. 
 Up. i. 2). 
 
 '' As here on earth whatever has been acquired by 
 exertion perishes, so perishes whatever is acquired for 
 the next world by sacrifices and other good actions 
 performed on earth. Those who depart from hence 
 without having discovered the Self and those true 
 desires, for them there is no freedom in all the 
 worlds. But those who depart from hence after 
 having discovered the Self and those true desires, 
 for them there is freedom in all the worlds " (Khand. 
 Up. viii. 2). 
 
 "Those who belong to us, whether living or de- 
 parted, and whatever else there is which we wish 
 for and do not obtain, all that we find there (if we 
 descend into our heart, where Brahman dwells, in the 
 ether of the heart). There are all our true desires. 
 
48 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 but hidden by what is false. As people who do not 
 know the country, walk again and again over a gold 
 treasure that has been hidden somewhere in the 
 earth, and do not discover it, thus do all those 
 creatures day after day go into the Brahma-world 
 (they are merged in Brahma while asleep) and yet 
 do not discover it because they are carried away by 
 untruth (do not come to themselves, i.e. do not dis- 
 cover the true self in Brahman, dwelling in the 
 heart ") (Khand. Up. viii. 3). 
 
 " When all desires that dwell in his heart cease, 
 then the mortal becomes immortal, and obtains 
 Brahman." 
 
 " When all the ties of the heart are severed here 
 on earth, then the mortal becomes immortal — here 
 ends the teaching " (Katha. Up. ii. 6, 17). 
 
 '^ The Self, smaller than small, greater than great, 
 is hidden in the heart of that creature. A man who 
 is free from desires and free from grief, sees the 
 majesty of the Self by the grace of the Creator." 
 
 " Though sitting still he walks far ; though lying 
 down he goes everywhere." 
 
 " The wise who knows the Self as bodiless within 
 the bodies, as unchanging among changing things, as 
 great and omnipresent, does never grieve." 
 
 " That Self cannot be gained by the Veda nor by 
 understanding nor by much learning. He whom the 
 Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained. The 
 Self chooses him (his body) as his own." 
 
 "But he who has not first turned away from his 
 
BRAHMANISM 49 
 
 wickedness^ who is not tranquil and subdued^ or 
 whose mind is not at rest, he can never obtain the 
 Self even by knowledge " (Katha. Up. i. 2, 25). 
 
 " All this is Brahman. Let a man meditate on 
 that visible world as beginning ending and breathing 
 in it (the Brahman)." 
 
 "Now man is a creature of will. According to 
 what his will is in this world, so will he be when he 
 has departed this life. Let him therefore have this 
 will and belief; 
 
 " The intelligent whose body is spirit, whose form is 
 light, whose thoughts are true, whose nature is like 
 ether (omnipresent and invisible) from whom all works, 
 all desires, all sweet odours and tastes proceed ; he 
 who embraces all this, who never speaks and is never 
 surprised, 
 
 " He is my Self within the heart, smaller than a 
 ] corn of rice, smaller than a corn of barley, smaller 
 \ than a mustard seed, smaller than a canary seed, or 
 the kernel of a canary seed. He also is my Self 
 jj within the heart, greater than the earth, greater 
 I than the sky, greater than heaven, greater than all 
 these worlds. 
 
 "He from whom all works, all desires, all sweet 
 odours and tastes proceed, who never speaks and 
 who is never surprised, he, my Self within the heart, 
 is that Brahman (neuter). When I shall have departed 
 from hence I shall obtain him (that Self)" (Khand. 
 Up. iii. 14). 
 
 " He (the knower of the Self) knows that highest 
 
so INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 home of Brahman^ in which all is contained, and 
 shines brightly. The wise who, without desiring 
 happiness, worship that Person, transcend this seed 
 (are not born again)." 
 
 " He who forms desires in his mind is born again 
 through his desires, here and there. But to him 
 whose desires are fulfilled, and who is conscious of the 
 true Self (within himself) all desires vanish, even here 
 on earth." 
 
 " That Self cannot be gained by the Veda nor by 
 understanding, nor by much learning. He whom the 
 Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained " (Mund. 
 Up. 2). 
 
 But the knowledge of the Atman, it will be seen 
 from these passages, had not only to be attained by 
 attending a teacher, it had to be practised, and the 
 entire appropriation and possession of it depended 
 ultimately on practice, sustained, resolute, continued, 
 and lasting while life itself endured. And this 
 practice of the knowledge of the Atman was a \e.Ty 
 peculiar thing. What was required was to realise 
 one's identity with the Self in the universe not only 
 intellectually, but practically. It was to be done by 
 an effort of will, drawing away one's thoughts and 
 desires and imaginations from all things outward, 
 resisting all solicitations of worldly advantage or 
 pleasure, and concentrating one's whole mind and 
 thought on nothing but the great Self. Certain 
 methods were prescribed in addition to the renun- 
 ciation of all outward possessions and ties, and the 
 
1 & 
 
 BRAHMANISM 51 
 
 general direction to direct one's mind steadily to- 
 wards the Self, by which the desired absorption 
 and identification with the great Self could be 
 brought about. A certain method of breathing is 
 spoken of^ in practising which slowly and deliber- 
 ately one repeats and carries on in one's own 
 person the cosmic breathing in which the great Self 
 is always engaged. 
 
 One more point is suggested in these extracts. In 
 the Upanishads we meet with a view of man's future 
 destiny which is quite different from that of the Vedas. 
 In the hymns the believer when he dies goes to Yama, 
 or to the moon^ and there meets with his fathers and 
 is happy in the society of the gods who minister to his 
 wants and free him from all care. In the Upanishads 
 no such prospect as this is thought of; nay more, 
 instead of desiring to continue at all after his body is 
 dissolved, the believer desires not to live or to be 
 i conscious any more. The sad and mournful view of 
 jl life which has come in place of the old joy of living 
 I finds its chief expression in this that life itself is 
 regarded as an evil, and final and entire escape from 
 living as the highest good. Add to this that the 
 belief in metempsychosis has entered India since the 
 Vedic period and has been accepted by the people as 
 undoubtedly true. No one apparently thought of deny- 
 ing that the soul passes at the death of the body it 
 inhabited into another body and then into another and 
 another. It was in this way it was thought that a 
 man reaped the reward or the penalty of his good 
 
52 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 or evil deeds in this life. If he had lived ill he 
 lived again in a lower form than that in which he 
 had sinned^ he would pass into an animal^ or a person 
 of lower rank^ and it would take him more such lives 
 to get to the end of the existences ordained for him. 
 If he lived well^ he rose in the scale at his next birth 
 and came nearer to the end. The best of all would 
 be when he had passed through all the lives ap- 
 pointed for him, and could die his last death from 
 which he would not need to be born into the world 
 any more. This doctrine of re-birth or transmigra- 
 tion is often thought to be characteristic of Buddhism 
 in which it is certainly prominent, but no one can 
 read the Upanishads without seeing that it had taken 
 possession of the mind of India before the new religion 
 appeared. 
 
 A part of Brahmanism, however, which Buddhism 
 did not adopt was the system of asramas or exercises 
 by which the great ends of identification with the Self 
 of the universe, and of final cessation from existence 
 were sought after. To every well-born Indian, Brah- 
 manism offered a career which embraced the whole 
 of life and led at last, if resolutely followed, to the 
 desired end. It did not, like Christian monasticism, 
 withdraw the votary entirely from the world, but pro- 
 vided that, at one period of his Hfe, the duties which 
 every man owed to society and to the various gods, 
 should be discharged. This period of life, however, 
 during which a man lived in his home with his family, 
 was placed between two periods of withdrawal in such 
 
BRAHMANISM 53 
 
 a way as to appear a mere temporary and exceptional 
 change of his career. 
 
 This is set forth in detail in the laws of Manii and 
 other codes which belong to a later period^ but the 
 principles of it are all present in the Upanishads^ 
 and even the gods are there represented as acquir- 
 ing the true knowledge in this way. The first 
 stage lasted twelve years and began in the case of 
 a Brahman at the age of seven^ in the case of a 
 Kshatriya at ten, and in that of a Vaisya at eleven. 
 During these twelve years the youth is a student, lives 
 with his teacher and obeys and serves him, and studies 
 I one of the Samhitas (collections) of the Vedas. The 
 j studentship is over when the master says to the 
 ij student, "From henceforth attend to other duties." 
 This means that he is to return to the world, in the 
 character of a snataka, one who has bathed (in the 
 Veda, also by a symbolic washing), to light the fire of 
 a household with a bride, rear a family, and offer the 
 five daily sacrifices, viz., an offering to Brahman, con- 
 sisting of the recitation or teaching of the Veda, the 
 sacrifice (vegetarian) to the departed, the burnt sacri- 
 fice to the gods, the sacrifice to living beings in need 
 of help, and the sacrifice of hospitality. After a time 
 he might leave his family and go to live in the forest, 
 where he spent his time in meditation and austerities, 
 as the following story shows : — 
 
 A king, named Br , having established his son 
 
 in his sovereignty, went into the forest, because he 
 considered this body as transient, and had obtained 
 
54 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 freedom from all desire. Having performed the 
 highest penance, he stands there with uplifted arms, 
 looking up to the sun. At the end of a thousand days, 
 the Saint Sakayanya, who knew the Self, came near, 
 burning with splendour, like a fire without smoke. 
 He said to the king, " Rise, rise ! choose a boon ! " 
 
 The king bowing before him said, " O Saint, I know 
 not the Self, thou knowest the essence. We have 
 heard so. Teach it us." 
 
 Sakayanya replied, " What thou askest is difficult 
 to obtain. Choose other pleasures." 
 
 The king then enters on a recital of the weaknesses 
 and miseries of the body, and on the decaying and 
 dying state of all human things, and not only of these 
 but of spiritual beings too, of the tribes of animals and 
 of the elements of nature. He goes on : '' In such a 
 world as this what is the use of the enjoyment of 
 pleasures if he who has fed on them is seen to return 
 to this world again, and again ! Deign therefore to 
 take me out ! In this world I am like a frog in a dry 
 well ! O Saint, thou art my way, thou art my way ! " 
 
 The fourth stage, which it stood open to the forest- 
 dweller to enter, was that of entire surrender of every- 
 thing, even of the most moderate diet and of the com- 
 panionship of his wife, if she had gone with him to the 
 forest. He now took up the wandering mendicant life 
 of the sannyasin or hhikshii. Quite done with the 
 world, attached to no pleasure, no comfort, no person, 1 
 no place, no occupation, the old man wandered about | 
 
BUDDHISM 55 
 
 the world begging his bread and looking for nothing 
 but deaths though even on death he was not to set his 
 heart. All he could now wish for was that he might be 
 fully united with the Self ; and that when the lamp of 
 his life went out it might never be lighted again. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 Two great stages of the growth of religion have 
 passed before us in our short sketch of Indian faith ; 
 we now come to a third. In Vedism we saw a 
 great Nature worship. Men sought to enter into 
 fellowship with the beings, made in their own likeness, 
 whom they apprehended in the sun, the moon, the 
 heaven, the storm. In Brahmanism we saw beside the 
 official worship of these beings the rise of reflection on 
 things human and divine. The spirit sought in itself 
 what it was ceasing to find in the old objects of 
 worship, and began to comfort itself with speculation 
 and asceticism. These stages of religion have occurred 
 elsewhere than in India ; they appear, first one and 
 then the other, in the normal development of thought 
 which everywhere accompanies the growth of civilisa- 
 tion. Of the third stage which we now approach in 
 Indian religion this cannot be said. But few cases 
 have occurred of the appearance of a sacred person 
 whose religious experience and attainments are felt 
 to sum up in a perfect and typical way what the faith 
 
56 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 of their brethren is striving to attain^ and who thus 
 becomes to them a leader in the upward path, and a 
 Uving summary of their behef and aspiration. Only 
 three great religions have rendered to mankind this 
 service. Of these the Christian faith has done so 
 most completely. In Christ the Christian finds 
 the Way, the Truth, the Life he needs. But the 
 Prophet Mohammed also stands in this position for 
 his followers ; and so in India stood for centuries and 
 still stands, not now in India, but in Ceylon, Burmah, 
 and Siam, and northwards in Tibet and China, 
 Gautama, the Buddha. 
 
 Before proceeding to notice the life and teachings 
 of the founder, it may be convenient to say a few 
 words on the source of our information about him and 
 on the historical character of the story. There are 
 various sets of books about the life and teaching of 
 the Buddha, some belonging to Northern, some to 
 Southern Buddhism, and these differ greatly from each 
 other. The books of the Southern branch of the 
 religion are recognised by scholars as more historical 
 than the others ; they are written in Pali, the language 
 of Buddhism in Ceylon. ^ While no book can be shown 
 to date higher than the year 300 b.c, a century and 
 
 ^ The Pali Scriptures contain a literature about twice 
 as large as the Bible of Europe ; if its repetitions were 
 removed it would be somewhat smaller than our Bible. It 
 consists of three Pitakas, baskets or collections. The first 
 is the Vinaya Pitaka, dealing with discipline, but including 
 the Mahavagga, a history of the founding of the order. 
 The second is the Sutta Pitaka, or collection of teachings. 
 
BUDDHISM 57 
 
 a half or more after the death of the founder, the 
 tradition contained in some of them is older ; so that 
 we know what was current as to the Buddha's life and 
 teaching a century after his death, or even less. 
 
 Can the information thus supplied to us as to the 
 life of the founder be regarded as trustworthy and 
 historical ? There is no doubt that the history is 
 surrounded with a rich growth of legend. It is also 
 beyond doubt that the later the narratives are the 
 more fantastic are they ; the books of the Northern 
 Buddhists, e.g. are much more luxuriant in imagination 
 than those of Ceylon. Are the earliest books of all to 
 be relied on } Not altogether ; much in them is 
 evidently the outcome of the later circumstances of 
 the community ; much shows the process of enriching 
 the narrative to be already at work. Some scholars 
 have held that the whole story is legendary, and that 
 no solid basis of fact is to be recognised in it, but only 
 a sun myth with later accretions from the experience 
 of the Buddhist Church. This view has not of late 
 been put forward in Britain, and the certainty has 
 now been arrived at by several lines of study that the 
 features of a real human life are recognisable.^ 
 
 It contains the earliest account of the later life of the 
 founder, books of meditation and devotion, sayings by the 
 Master, poems, fairy tales and fables, stories about Buddhist 
 saints, and so on. The third collection, the Abidhamma, 
 contains speculations and discussions on various subjects. 
 
 1 Some remarkable archaeological discoveries in parti- 
 cular of which an account is given by Mr Rhys Davids 
 
58 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 Few pretend to say much more ; a clear separation 
 of the historical from the legendary elements of the 
 story is not yet attainable. It has to be mentioned 
 here that many incidents in the life of Gautama bear 
 a striking resemblance to similar incidents in the 
 Christian tradition. These Buddhism cannot have 
 borrowed from Christianity ; but the other alter- 
 native, that Christianity borrowed them by channels 
 scarcely now traceable from Buddhism, has been 
 defended with much learning by some German 
 scholars. It is not necessary to do more than 
 mention it. 
 
 The founder of Buddhism was born about the year 
 550 B.C. at Kapilavastu^ about 100 miles north-west of 
 
 in The Century Magazine, April 1902, place it beyond doubt 
 that the Buddha really existed, and that pious offices were 
 paid to his ashes after his cremation by the members of his 
 own clan as well as by others. Inscriptions brought to 
 light in the year 1898 show that the Sakya clan, of which 
 the Buddha was a member, dwelt at the time of his death in 
 what is now a frontier district of Nepal. Three years before 
 that event they were driven from their old capital 
 Kapilavastu ; but they formed a new one some fifteen miles 
 further south, just beyond the present frontier of Nepal, and 
 there they erected a stupa or massive stone cairn to guard 
 the portion of the ashes of the Buddha which was committed 
 to their keeping. The discovery of this stupa with its 
 inscription may be followed by others which will throw 
 further light on the historical circumstances of the life of 
 the great man. 
 
BUDDHISM 59 
 
 Benares. His father was the king or chief of the tribe 
 of Sakyas, and ruled over one of the small principali- 
 ties with which the valley of the Ganges was then 
 studded. The founder's personal name was Gautama ; 
 other designations which are applied to him are titles 
 rather than names. Thus^ Siddartha means " he who 
 has accomplished his aim " ; Sakya-muni is " the wise 
 man of the Sakyas/' and other such terms might be 
 mentioned. The title Buddha or " Enlightened One " 
 was acquired by Gautama, as we shall see, when he 
 attained the crisis of his career and his enlightenment 
 took place. 
 
 At this point we shall do well to try to realise the 
 state of thought and of religion in India when 
 Gautama grew up. What we saw in last chapter has 
 partly prepared us for what we shall find here ; but we 
 also meet with some new phenomena. We have to 
 think of the official religion still going on, as it had 
 always done ; the sacrifices were diligently offered, 
 speculation was carried on about them in various 
 quarters, but had no eifect on the pomp of celebra- 
 tion by the priests of various classes. The Vedas were 
 diligently repeated and formed the material of all 
 education. Outside these established observances 
 there was the effi)rt on the part of many concerned 
 about their religious advancement, to find peace in 
 the way of thought and moral eifort. The house- 
 less state was generally recognised as that which a 
 man must choose who was in earnest about his soul. 
 To treat the body and the affections with contempt, 
 
6o INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 to throw oneself upon the world for daily bread, to 
 spend one's days and nights in seeking to be free from 
 all desires and to get light by prolonged and intense 
 thought, this was the highest life in India at that 
 time. The problem however with which thought was 
 engaged had changed from that of the Upanishads. 
 What was now asked was not how one was to be- 
 come identified with the great Self, but how one might 
 escape from suffering. The temper of mind had 
 become even more sad and subjective than before ; 
 what earnest men discussed with each other was not 
 the nature of the gods or even of the great Self which 
 in the Upanishads was taking their place, for there 
 was no longer any belief in effective help from any 
 unseen being however he might be called. The con- 
 viction, on the other hand, that human life was 
 essentially suffering and nothing but suffering had 
 grown stronger and more oppressive. With the fading 
 away of the gods had come heavy despair of the lot of 
 man upon the earth. Suffering was regarded as the 
 universal and inevitable burden all men were born to 
 carry ; and the burden was not lightened by the 
 prospect implied by the accepted doctrine of metem- 
 psychosis, that after a man's present life was over he 
 would be born again and yet again, in a succession of 
 lives and rebirths which no one could calculate. The 
 only true good was to escape altogether from conscious 
 existence to forgetfulness. With this dark problem of 
 the human lot many were engaged. Great numbers 
 of persons had taken up the houseless state and thrown 
 
BUDDHISM 6i 
 
 themselves on public charity. The public recognised 
 an obligation to sustain these ascetics and thinkers, 
 and provided stores of food for them in accessible 
 spots. Teachers went about the country and preached 
 in public places on the outskirts of towns. Some 
 teachers had a following of pupils, and might be 
 regarded as leaders of definite sects : some ascetics 
 went about looking for a teacher to whom they should 
 attach themselves if he seemed likely to help them. 
 The greatest reverence of all was paid to the aged 
 beggar or sannyasin who had given up asking anything 
 from the world or from life, and wandered about like 
 the Lama in "Kim" waiting for his release. To the 
 stately official religion and the pathetic efforts of 
 devotees, the reader of that noble book will readily 
 add in his picture of Indian religion the great mass of 
 superstitious beliefs and practices which existed in the 
 time of Gautama, as it does still among the people, 
 and were recognised even by priests and ascetics as 
 part of the working religion of the country. Of such 
 matters the Atharva-Veda presents great store. 
 
 Proceeding now to speak of what may be recognised 
 as the historical circumstances of the life of Gautama, 
 we note that his earlier years were spent amidst 
 opulence and luxury at his father's court. He married 
 early and happily, and a bright career seemed open 
 before him. But though he had no sufferings of his 
 own, this did not prevent him as it has not prevented 
 others similarly placed from feeling the full weight 
 of the sufferings of others, and in fact of mankind. 
 
62 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 Stories are toldi of his walking near his house and 
 encountering spectacles of sorrow, mourning and 
 death. These stories may be true, but they are not 
 required to explain his taking the sufferings of others 
 upon his heart and mind. Others with similar rank 
 with his in his own age, are known to have done the 
 same. It was in his twenty-ninth year that he was 
 led to the decisive act, in whatever manner prepared, 
 of abandoning the joys and comforts of home and going 
 out, all ties snapped asunder, into the houseless state, the 
 yellow dress and the almsbowl thenceforward his livery 
 and source of livelihood. This step is often called his 
 "Great Renunciation," but with doubtful propriety 
 since to the Indian standard he rather rose to a higher 
 life by taking this step than descended to a lower. 
 The phrase applies more truly to the determination 
 afterwards attributed to the Buddha in his premun- 
 dane existence, to leave the state of blessedness in 
 which he existed before and to enter the human lot 
 of suffering. However this may be, Gautama appears 
 from the time of his leaving home in the character of 
 a nobleman seeking salvation, for himself and others. 
 What is the cause of human misery, and what is the 
 cure of it ? This now it is all his care to know : all 
 were suffering, he was convinced as others were, from 
 the same malady, a malady for which no cure had yet 
 been found. Yet the discovery might not be far off; 
 we hear of two ascetics parting from each other for 
 
 ^See for these and for a poetical treatment of the life 
 generally. Sir E. Arnold's ''Light of Asia." 
 
BUDDHISM 63 
 
 a while with the agreement that when either found 
 out the secret he should tell the other. What means 
 were to be adopted for finding it, there was up to a cer- 
 tain point no doubt. It was by asceticism, every one 
 believed, that one escaped from all the ills of life, and 
 made one's way to the supreme and saving knowledge, 
 by starving the body and avoiding human society. 
 Gautama made trial of this plan. He was an ascetic 
 for six years, and in this way of life he gained some 
 reputation and attracted to himself a small circle of 
 disciples. But he found the plan not to answer, and 
 he had enough strength of mind to give it up, a step 
 which caused his five disciples to leave him. He 
 afterwards gave reasons for holding that the life of 
 the ascetic was one of two extremes to be avoided, 
 and that one bent on attaining the highest things 
 ought not to follow it. From this time forward we 
 see him seeking a better way and engaging for about 
 a year in concentrated mental effort, waiting the hour 
 which he felt sure would come, when he would attain 
 to certainty. At this stage he appears as an in- 
 tellectual athlete striving after a more satisfactory 
 solution of the problem of the age than any known 
 before. This was the character in which according 
 to the standards of the country, a herald of salvation 
 had then to come forward. When we examine the 
 intellectual system of Buddhism, it is difficult to see 
 that it was so markedly superior to other systems of 
 thought then held in India as to explain at once 
 the attraction of the new doctrine. The success of 
 
64 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 Buddhism is doubtless to be attributed to the broad 
 sympathies of the founder and to the practical useful- 
 ness of the order he founded as much as to any signal 
 discovery he made in thought. But the view he 
 necessarily took at this stage of the work before him 
 was that the way of salvation was to be found by 
 intense thought. What his Brahman teachers had 
 failed to give him^ and what his years of asceticism 
 had not secured he must discover for himself, namely ;, 
 the truth about the nature and the destiny of suffering 
 man and the means by which one might escape from 
 the universal sorrow. 
 
 It was at this time that he underwent his great 
 temptation. The tempter Mara approached him with 
 the suggestion that he was tormenting himself in vain 
 in the efforts he was making, and that he ought not 
 to devote himself to the sorrowful and decaying side 
 of life so exclusively as to miss the enjoyment of the 
 pleasures the world afforded. The temptation was 
 soon over ; and not long after came the hour to which 
 he had looked forward, and the discovery to which he 
 had aspired Seated under a Bo-tree, ^/lais religiosa (we 
 afterwards find him as he advances from point to point 
 in the consideration of his new position, seated under 
 trees of other kinds, each no doubt with some signifi- 
 cance) he passed from one stage of contemplation to 
 another, till the essence of things was revealed to him. 
 The words in which he celebrates the discovery are 
 memorable. 
 
 "Seeking the craftsman of this tabernacle, I have 
 
BUDDHISM 65 
 
 to run through a course of many bh'ths so long as I 
 do not find him ; and painful is birth again and again. 
 But now^ Maker of the tabernacle, thou hast been 
 seen ; thou shalt not make up this tabernacle again. 
 All thy rafters are broken ; thy ridge-pole is sundered ; 
 the mind, approaching the eternal, has attained to the 
 extinction of all desires." 
 
 This is the enlightenment, Sambodhi, of Gautama ; 
 and from this time forward he is the enlightened one, 
 the Buddha. What is the light that has come to him ? 
 We shall see in the sequel some of the elements of 
 his thought ; in the meantime we may say that what 
 his eyes opened to see at this crisis of his life was the 
 principle which formed the cornerstone of all his teach- 
 ing, that all evil and suffering proceed from ignorance, 
 and that the first step towards deliverance from them 
 is clearly to discern their nature and to be freed from 
 ignorance regarding them. This is expressed in 
 terms of the belief in metempsychosis universal in 
 his day. Having come to know the inmost essence 
 of things he has attained redemption, the stream 
 which produced evil and sorrow is for him cut off at 
 its source, and as no more evil is produced neither are 
 there any more of the consequences of evil ; the 
 death which will close his present life will be his 
 last death, he will not be born any more. The 
 doctrine is worked out in detail afterwards ; at his 
 enlightenment, the Buddha is conscious of the whole 
 of it, and feels the whole of the deliverance and the 
 triumph it brings. 
 
66 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 The first book of the Mahavagga, one of the works 
 composing the Vinaya Pitaka, gives a chronicle of the 
 doings of the Buddha from his enhghtenment till he 
 had gained a considerable number of followers. In 
 the narrative of the enlightened one's mental experi- 
 ence from the dawning of the light till he began to 
 announce his discovery to others there is a strong 
 savour of the formal and conventional. He sits so 
 many days under a tree of one kind^ then so many 
 days under a tree of another kind^ each of these with- 
 drawals being occupied with a great question which 
 is solved in words thenceforward memorable and 
 authoritative. On one occasion he ate nothing 
 for twenty-eight days, so full was he of thought ; 
 the truth in him was beginning to take shape, 
 and to prepare its further way. It will be re- 
 garded as a historical trait that after this period he 
 was visited with doubts whether the knowledge he 
 had gained was to be kept to himself or communicated 
 to the world. The highest figure of the world of 
 spirits, Brahma Sahampati himself appears in order to 
 put an end to these doubts. He said to the blessed 
 one: 
 
 "Lord, may the blessed One preach the doctrine! 
 May the perfect One preach the doctrine ! There are 
 beings whose mental eyes are darkened by scarcely 
 any dust ; but if they do not hear the doctrine, they 
 cannot obtain salvation. These will understand the 
 doctrine. 
 
 " Arise, O hero, O victorious one ! Wander through 
 
BUDDHISM 67 
 
 the worlds O leader of the pilgrim band, who thyself 
 art free from debt ! " 
 
 After this the Buddha declares that he is ready to 
 teach those who will receive his doctrine. 
 
 " Be open to all who will hear 
 
 " The door of the Immortal ; let them send forth 
 faith to meet it ! " 
 
 The world-wide importance of the discovery he has 
 made becomes after this clear to his own mind, till he 
 can speak of it as " a truth glorious in its beginning, 
 glorious in the middle, glorious at the end, to be 
 preached for the welfare of gods and men." 
 
 The story now tells of the gathering of a band of 
 disciples to receive the new truth — a matter here as 
 at the inception of every great religious movement, 
 surrounded with deep interest. His two teachers he 
 learns are dead, but his former followers, five in 
 number, are holding together at Benares ; he therefore 
 betakes himself to that city. Meeting a member of a 
 religious sect who questions him as to his teacher and 
 his doctrine he replies in verse : 
 
 " I have overcome all foes ; I am all wise ; I am 
 free from stains in every way, I have left every- 
 thing ; and have obtained emancipation by the de- 
 struction of desire. I have gained coolness (by the 
 extinction of all passion) and have obtained Nirvana. 
 \ To found the kingdom of Truth, I go to the city 
 of the Kasis (Benares) ; I will beat the drum of the 
 Immortal in the darkness of this world." 
 
 It was at Benares that the wheel of the law was 
 
68 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 first set in motion, or as Mr Rhys Davids would have 
 the phrase understood, that the kingdom of righteous- 
 ness was founded. The five ascetics who had been 
 disciples of Gautama before, readily accepted his 
 doctrine and were received into the community, 
 which, to speak more correctly, was thus formed. It 
 will be convenient to state here what the doctrine 
 was, when thus set before others for their acceptance. 
 The sermon at Benares contains the authentic state- 
 ment of it, and its essence is set forth in the so-called 
 
 Four Noble Truths, 
 
 in which the Buddha's discovery of the reason of the 
 suffering in the world and of the way of salvation 
 from it, are set forth. The statement may be quoted : 
 
 '' This, O Bhikkus, is the Noble Truth of suffering : 
 Birth is suffering : decay is suffering : illness is suffer- 
 ing : death is suffering. Presence of objects we hate 
 is suffering. Separation from objects we love is suffer- 
 ing : not to obtain what we desire is suffering. Briefly 
 the five-fold clinging to existence is suffering." 
 
 " This, O Bhikkus, is the Noble Truth of the cause 
 of suffering : Thirst, that leads to re-birth, accom- 
 panied by pleasure and lust finding its delight here 
 and there. (This thirst is three-fold), namely, thirst 
 for pleasure, thirst for existence, thirst for prosperity." 
 
 "This, O Bhikkus, is the Noble Truth of the 
 cessation of suffering ; (it ceases with) the complete 
 cessation of this thirst — a cessation which consists in 
 
BUDDHISM 69 
 
 the absence of every passion — with the abandoning of 
 this thirst, with the doing away with it, with the 
 dehverance from it, with the destruction of desire." 
 
 "This, O Bhikkus, is the Noble Truth of the Path 
 which leads to the cessation of suffering: that holy 
 eightfold Path, that is to say. Right Belief, Right 
 Aspiration, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Means 
 of Livelihood, Right Endeavour, Right Memory, Right 
 Meditation." 
 
 The four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path are 
 given by the Mahavagga in the sermon at Benares 
 as forming the sum and substance of the original 
 announcement. What was preached at the opening 
 of the cause is also stated in a more general way, 
 as when we read that the Blessed one preached to an 
 enquirer " in due course ; that is to say, he talked 
 about the merits obtained by almsgiving, about the 
 duties of morality, about heaven, about the evils the 
 vanity and the sinfulness of desires, and about the 
 blessings of the abandonment of desire." Another 
 theme frequently dwelt on was what is called "the 
 pure and spotless Eye of the Truth ; whatsoever is sub- 
 ject to the condition of origination is subject also to the 
 condition of cessation." On the teaching as a whole 
 we shall comment after the conclusion of the narrative. 
 
 The early propaganda was not of the nature of a 
 social revolt. The doctrine, it is true, was the 
 outcome of a universal sympathy in which the differ- 
 ences of class were overlooked, but the consequences 
 of this were not dwelt upon, and both leader and 
 
70 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 followers wished to see the order reinforced from the 
 higher classes of society. In this they obtained their 
 desire ; for we read of the conversion of a number of 
 members of princely houses. Gautama's own father 
 became a convert^ also his son Rahula, who asked for 
 admission in the words^, " Give me my birthright, 
 ascetic." An order for women was founded early, 
 at the suggestion of Gautama's own female relatives. 
 The form of admission to the order was — 
 
 " I take my refuge in the Buddha, 
 I take my refuge in the Dhamma, 
 I take my refuge in the Samgha," 
 
 this being twice repeated. The adherents were beggars 
 from the very first. Instead of making the state of 
 beggar (bhikku), the ultimate one in the religious 
 hfe, to which one advanced as in the orders of 
 Brahmanism after passing through the stages of 
 pupil, householder and the houseless state, the con- 
 verts of the Buddha became bhikkus at once, even 
 though they were young men and had not formerly 
 entered the religious life at all. This more than 
 anything else brought on the founder the disapproval 
 of the Brahmans, with whom on the whole he lived 
 on not unfriendly terms ; and this was perhaps the 
 most serious departure he made from the ordinary 
 usages of his country. 
 
 When sixty disciples had been gained they were 
 sent out to spread the doctrine. The following is 
 the address made to them on this occasion : — 
 
BUDDHISM 71 
 
 " Go ye now, O Bhikkus, and wander, for the gain 
 of the many, for the welfare of the many, out of com- 
 passion for the world, for the good, for the gain and 
 for the welfare of gods and men, but not two of you 
 go the same way. Preach, O Bhikkus, the doctrine 
 which is glorious in the beginning, glorious in the 
 middle, glorious at the end, in the spirit and in the 
 letter ; proclaim a consummate, perfect and pure life 
 of holiness." 
 
 The injunction that the missionaries should go 
 singly was not always observed. Their outfit and 
 manner of proceeding with regard to lodgings was 
 fixed already by the custom of the country, and is 
 not set forth. They were not told to heal diseases 
 or to cast out demons ; the only benefit they were to 
 confer lay in their doctrine, but that benefit embraced 
 all others ; he who received it found the cure of all 
 his ills. The character of a worker of miracles is not 
 very essential to the Buddha himself Stories are 
 told of his expelling a snake-demon, and doing other 
 wonderful things ; but the end in view in such cases 
 is always that of convincing someone as to the truth 
 of the teaching. His activity consists in the main in 
 teaching and in nothing else. 
 
 One more extract from the early preaching may 
 here find a place. It was spoken on a mountain to 
 an assemblage of a thousand Bhikkus. 
 
 " Everything is burning. 
 
 " The eye is burning. With what fire is it burning } 
 With the fire of lust, with the fire of anger, with the 
 
72 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 fire of ignorance ; it is burning with (the anxieties 
 of) birth^ decay^ death, grief, lamentation, suffering, 
 dejection and despair." 
 
 The ear is burning, etc. . . . 
 The tongue is burning . . . 
 The body is burning . . . 
 The mind is burning . . . 
 
 " Considering this, O Bhikkus, a disciple walking in 
 the Noble Path becomes weary of the eye, etc., weary 
 of the ear, etc. Becoming weary of all that, he 
 divests himself of passion ; by absence of passion he is 
 made free ; he becomes aware that he is made free ; 
 and he realises that re-birth is exhausted, that holi- 
 ness is completed, that duty is fulfilled ; and that 
 there is no further return to this world." 
 
 About this point the narrative of the Mahavagga 
 ceases to carry us further. Regarding the central part 
 of the life of the Buddha we have no information ; but 
 another work, the Paranibbana Suta gives us details 
 of his life and journeys for some time before his death. 
 When we see him again after the long interval he is 
 still carrying on, at the age of eighty years, the same 
 work of propagation as before, though the stages of 
 travel were now shorter and the rests longer. He 
 still journeys from place to place, making some stay 
 in the neighbourhood of large towns and preaching to 
 those who come to hear him. Incidents are recorded 
 which took place in localities afterwards famous on 
 
BUDDHISM 73 
 
 that account, meetings with those who became 
 disciples or with opponents or with rich people, 
 both men and women, who were generous to the 
 order. 
 
 Of the adversaries is to be named Gotama's cousin 
 Devadatta, who raised a revolt within the order 
 against the Perfect One and tried to kill him, so 
 that he had to be silenced by sundry miracles. The 
 story of the last days of the Saint is told in a touch- 
 ing way ; he dies in harness in the forty-fourth year 
 of his Buddahood, and in extreme old age, with his 
 mental force unabated and surrounded by disciples. 
 One of these, Ananda, who was also his cousin, was 
 deeply attached to him and tended him with the 
 deepest affection. A very human trait recorded of 
 this period is that the Saint fell ill after a meal of 
 dried pork set before him by a smith in whose grove 
 he was staying. Very human also is the speech to 
 Ananda when the latter sheds tears at the directions 
 given by the Perfect One for his own obsequies. 
 " Have I not often told you that we have to part from 
 all that is precious and dear to us } When all that is 
 born and has organs bears in itself the cause of its 
 decay, how is it possible that such an one as I should 
 escape from dissolution ? That cannot be. For a 
 long time, Ananda, you have supported me by works, 
 words, and thoughts of love, in truth and honour, 
 without wavering. In this you have done well, 
 Ananda. Strive with diligence and soon you will be 
 free from the great evils, from sensuousness, from 
 
74 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 individuality, deceit and ignorance." The Perfected 
 Ones of former times had each had such an attendant 
 as Ananda, and so it would be in the future also. To 
 the monks gathered round his dying couch he says 
 that if any of them has any doubt or uncertainty on 
 any point, about the Buddha, or the order, or the 
 doctrine, now is the time to have it settled, while 
 the teacher is still with them. None of them has 
 any doubt, and Ananda exclaims how remarkable it is 
 that they are all free from doubt. To this the Buddha 
 agrees, and declares that of the five hundred present 
 there is not one, even the least advanced among them, 
 who is not sure that he will not be born again ; they 
 are all sure of eternal redemption. 
 
 " See now, mendicants, I exhort you, all that has 
 come into being is in dissolution. Work out your 
 salvation with diligence ! These were the last words 
 of the Perfected One ! " 
 
 At the moment when he passed into Nirvana , 
 there was a tremendous earthquake, accompanied | 
 with thunder. I 
 
 Brahma Sahampati, Indra, Ananda, and Anuruddha, j 
 another cousin, all expressed themselves in suitable i 
 verses. 
 
 The candidate for admission professes that he ; 
 takes refuge in the Buddha. Now the Buddha is not 
 a personal saviour in the Christian sense — not one 
 who can help the believer directly and personally. 
 Buddhism is a system of self-help, not of being 
 
BUDDHISM 75 
 
 helped by others^ either gods or men. The individual 
 must learn the doctrine for himself, and apply it by 
 his own efforts to his own case, as Gautama himself did. 
 The Buddha is, as his name implies, an Enlightener, a 
 Teacher, one who brings the true knowledge, by ap- 
 propriating which and walking in it a man is saved. 
 But while he leaves his followers without any promise 
 that he will be with them, and admonishes them with 
 his last words to work out each his own salvation by 
 his own strength, the feeling of personal attachment 
 to the founder is not wanting to the cause, and is 
 doubtless one of the principal reasons of its success. 
 The believer treads a path the Founder trod before 
 him ; the law he has to keep is the founder's achieve- 
 ment for him and legacy to him ; in the order he is in 
 the tabernacle of the Founder and surrounded by His 
 friends, who also are seeking to follow Him. 
 
 " I take refuge in the Dhamma," the doctrine, is the 
 second clause of the confession. Into this clause it is 
 more difficult for us to enter with sympathy. Our eye 
 has received light from a hundred other sources, and 
 we can scarcely bring ourselves back to the attitude of 
 those who received all the light they had from the 
 doctrine of the Buddha. To do so in any degree we 
 should need to abandon ourselves to that sadness which 
 in his days possessed the mind of India, and rests on that 
 mind still. If all life is suffering, and if even death does 
 not bring relief, but is only a signal to pass from one 
 existence into another equally full of suffering and 
 pain, what help is there ? Suppose our words of 
 
76 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 gratitude spoken to the hero who took upon his own 
 shoulders the burden of our suffering, and calls to us 
 that the way is open from suffering to peace, what is 
 the doctrine which we are to believe and practise as 
 he did, and in which, if he speaks truly, our soul will 
 find rest ? 
 
 Briefly put, the doctrine is that suffering proceeds 
 from desire, and that if desire be once cut off the fire 
 of suffering will lack fuel, and will die and not spring 
 up again. The principle that everything that comes 
 into being perishes, implies as its converse that if 
 nothing is brought into being there will be nothing to 
 perish. The problem for conduct then is so to live 
 that no impulse to struggle and enjoyment, with its 
 attendant restlessness and dissatisffiction, shall remain 
 and claim another existence in which to work itself 
 out. When a state of entire apathy and undisturbedness 
 has been attained, and a man is no longer annoyed by 
 what happens without or distracted by his own passions 
 within, when he has no wish or hope or fear remaining 
 either as to this world or as to a future existence, then 
 he has reached the term, he is enlightened, blessed, 
 saved. Most men do not see that this is so : they 
 think desire natural and inevitable, and consider that 
 the best thing to do with desire is to satisfy it. To 
 their eyes the evil is that they cannot get all they 
 want, but are left with many desires unsatisfied. But 
 when the true doctrine is accepted a man sees deeper. 
 He sees that not the failure to satisfy his desires but 
 the desires themselves are the evil thing and the 
 
BUDDHISM 77 
 
 source of all pain and misery. To bring desire itself 
 to an end — that is the problem for all who would 
 attain true happiness. 
 
 This may be compared with the warning address to 
 Christians by our Lord against letting the heart settle 
 on the things of this world, or being anxious as to 
 food and clothing. Christ, however, does not regard 
 all desires as wrong, but only those which prevent us 
 from having faith in God, or from doing our part for 
 His kingdom and righteousness. On the other hand 
 the measures recommended by Christ for getting rid 
 of wrong desires are of a trenchant heroic nature to 
 which Buddhism offers no parallel. The method pre- 
 scribed in the Eight-fold Path (the fourth of the Noble 
 Truths) for getting rid of desire and cutting off its 
 sorrowful consequences, appears when we look at it 
 rather commonplace and uninteresting. No great 
 sacrifices are asked ; the way of asceticism is expressly 
 rejected. What is wanted in order not to lay up any 
 evil which will have to be atoned in another existence, 
 is a course of steady and careful self-control which 
 avoids extremes, guards itself incessantly against sur- 
 prise and keeps every part of life in its proper place, 
 every faculty in its due activity. There is to be — 
 
 1. Right belief, without superstition or delusion. 
 
 2. Right aspiration, after such things as the earnest 
 man cares for. 
 
 3. Right speech, i.e. friendly and sincere. 
 
 4. Right conduct, i.e. peaceable, honourable and 
 pure. 
 
78 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 5. Right means of livelihood, i.e. a pursuit which 
 does not involve the taking or injuring of life. 
 
 6. Right endeavour, i.e. self-restraint and watch- 
 fulness. 
 
 7. Right memory, i.e. not forgetting at any time 
 what we ought to remember ; presence of mind. 
 
 8. Right meditation, i.e. earnest occupation with the 
 problems of life. 
 
 If this is the practical method to be followed in 
 seeking salvation — and the Eight-fold Path is not only 
 for those who have forsaken the world but for all 
 followers of the Buddha — then a formal and serious air 
 is spread over life. The religion is marked as one of 
 the law rather than of the spirit, its adherents accept 
 the yoke not indeed of a minute written code, but of a 
 traditional standard of conduct which is never to be 
 departed from. Further study of the system confirms 
 this impression ; the Buddhist is a self-conscious being 
 who is supplied with a great number of rules for his 
 behaviour, and feels it necessary to do even the most 
 trifling act with seriousness and deliberation, remem- 
 bering the end it is to serve, and the mental attitude 
 in which it ought to be done by an enlightened 
 person. 
 
 We cannot enter further into the doctrine of 
 Buddhism. It presents some difficult problems. As 
 we have stated the system it is deeply rooted in the 
 doctrine of transmigration, and if that belief were 
 discarded would lose its principal motive. But the 
 Buddha is made to teach that the human soul has 
 
BUDDHISM 79 
 
 no independent existence ; it is simply the congeries 
 of the various powers and faculties^ as a carriage is 
 made up of wheels^ pole, seatj etc. That this is 
 inconsistent with the transmigration of the soul from 
 one organism to another is evident^ and the efforts 
 to adjust this inconsistency give rise to much con- 
 fusion. The precise meaning of Nirvana in Buddhism 
 is also a matter of much debate. The reader of the 
 foregoing pages will be under the impression that 
 Nirvana belongs to the future, and is the state of 
 unconsciousness never to be broken any more, on 
 which the perfected believer enters at death. But 
 there is also a Nirvana which is attained in this life, 
 viz., the state of entire passionlessness which the 
 Buddha himself enjoyed and which occurs wherever 
 desire and restlessness have come to an end. In 
 this case death only seals what is already won, there 
 is no return after it into life's fever and annoyance. 
 Whether the Nirvana after death implies the total 
 cessation of all life and knowledge or only a state of 
 blessedness, removed from all agitation and desire. 
 Buddhism does not decide. 
 
 The third sentence of the confession is, "I take 
 refuge in the Samgha, the order." Of this not much 
 more need here be said. Monks formed a recog- 
 nised order in India before Buddhism, and their tasks 
 and privileges were well understood. It was only in 
 the order that the perfect life according to the doctrine 
 could be lived, and the system is addressed in the 
 first place to those who make the renunciation and 
 
8o INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 devote themselves as begging monks to the attainment 
 of salvation. In this view the religion is undoubtedly 
 a selfish one^ making it a man's chief care so to live 
 that he shall escape from existence as speedily as 
 possible. With this care, however, is coupled the 
 more generous task of preaching the doctrine to 
 others so that they also may escape from ignorance 
 and enter on the path. Where the missionary spirit 
 is absent from the order, there is undoubtedly a 
 lapse from its original truth, from the sublime and 
 all-embracing compassion which moved its founder. 
 At the same time, it is the individual in whom 
 Buddhism is interested, not society. In its eyes the 
 world is evil, and the idea of saving the world is 
 not entertained. All illusion and disappointment 
 as it is, one can but hope soon to have done with 
 it for ever, and thus the notion of improving the 
 world and by degrees transforming it into something 
 better, is quite absent, and Buddhism is devoid of 
 that union of religion with public zeal which works 
 so powerfully in Christianity. It is in its ideals a 
 religion for recluses and for pessimists ; it despairs of 
 society, and only seeks to rescue out of it as many 
 as possible select souls. 
 
 In practice, however. Buddhism is not even in its 
 earliest stage nearly so much a stranger to the world 
 as the theory might seem to require. The Buddha 
 mingled freely in his lifetime with people of all ranks 
 and characters, and sought in his calm wise way to 
 do them good and to show them the higher things 
 
BUDDHISM 8i 
 
 that were within their reach. His religion^ in the 
 same way, has not only monks but also adherents 
 who remain in the world and work at their calling. 
 These, it is true, cannot attain salvation directly ; it 
 is only through the life of the ascetic that one can draw 
 near to the higher and the final stages of the path. 
 But by following the Teacher so far as their position 
 admits and keeping the rules set by the religion for 
 them, they may advance to some extent and draw 
 somewhat nearer to the ultimate goal. Buddhist 
 morality is based on the notion of the equality of 
 all ; respect is to be paid to all living beings. The 
 five rules of righteousness which are binding on all 
 followers of the Buddha are — 
 
 1. Not to kill any living being. 
 
 2. Not to take that which is not given. 
 
 3. To refrain from adultery. 
 
 4. To speak no untruth. 
 
 I 5. To abstain from all intoxicating liquors. 
 
 To these are added five more for the members of 
 the order, who are also required to refrain from all 
 sexual intercourse, viz. : 
 
 1. Not to eat after midday. 
 
 2. Not to be present at dancing, singing, music or 
 plays. 
 
 3. Not to use wreaths, scents, ointments or personal 
 adornments. 
 
 4. Not to use a high or a broad bed. 
 
 5. To possess no silver or gold. 
 
 A religion which thus upholds the standard of self- 
 
 F 
 
82 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 control, truthfulness, purity, sensitive regard for all 
 living creatures ; w^hich teaches its adherents to hold 
 worldly pleasure and success in moderate esteem, 
 and to aim at goodness and wisdom as the chief 
 treasure of life, must be thought to be no small 
 blessing to mankind. The devotional literature of 
 Buddhism, contained in the Dhammapada, the 
 Sutta-Nipata, and other books, teaches the widest 
 toleration towards others, and a delicate conscientious- 
 ness towards oneself. Their grave simplicity and 
 their quiet enthusiasm for the best things in human 
 life, make them worthy to be known and studied even 
 by Christians. A few sentences only can be given. 
 
 From the Dhammapada : 
 
 Not to blame, not to strike, to live restrained under 
 the law, to be moderate in eating, to sleep and sit 
 alone, and to dwell on the highest thoughts, this is 
 the teaching of the awakened. 
 
 Let no man love anything; loss of the beloved is 
 evil. Those who love nothing and hate nothing have 
 no fetters. 
 
 Let a man overcome anger by love, let him over- 
 come evil by good ; let him overcome the greedy by 
 liberality, the liar by truth ! 
 
 Speak the truth, do not yield to anger ; give, if thou 
 art asked ; by these three steps thou wilt go near the 
 gods. 
 
 The sages who injure no one, and who always con- 
 
BUDDHISM 83 
 
 trol their body^ they will go to the unchangeable 
 place (Nirvana) where, if they have gone, they will 
 suffer no more. 
 
 The following are from the Sutta-Nipata : 
 
 Wishing for the destruction of desire (i.e. Nirvana), 
 being careful, no fool, learned, strenuous, considerate, 
 restrained, energetic, let one wander alone like a 
 rhinoceros. 
 
 Cultivating in due time kindness, equanimity, com- 
 passion, deliverance, and rejoicing with others, un- 
 obstructed by the whole world, let one wander alone 
 like a rhinoceros. 
 
 Having abandoned both passion and hatred and 
 folly, having rent the ties, not trembling at the loss of 
 life, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros. 
 
 The Buddha, meeting with a farmer at his work is 
 reproached that he does not plough nor sow for his 
 living. He replies that he does plough and sow. 
 Asked to explain, he says : 
 
 Faith is the seed, penance the rain, understanding 
 my yoke and plough, modesty the pole of the plough, 
 mind the tie, thoughtfulness my ploughshare and 
 
 I am guarded in respect of the body, I am guarded 
 in respect of speech, temperate in food ; I make truth 
 to cut away weeds, tenderness is my deliverance. 
 
 Buddhism has generally been spoken about as 
 
84 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 a revolt against the hard priestly system of the 
 Brahmans, as a protest against the intolerance of 
 caste and against the extravagances of ritual. We 
 have not so spoken of it in this sketchy as scholars 
 now see Buddhism to have been the direct and natural 
 outcome of the system which preceded it. The 
 ^'^ rhinoceros " of the extract above cannot disown 
 kindred with the forest-dweller of Brahmanism, the 
 begging monk was no new figure in India; the 
 doctrine of self-abnegation, and the doctrine of 
 Nirvana, were both prepared for in older Indian 
 thought. If a more direct proof were wanted that 
 Buddhism is a development not a revolt, it can be 
 pointed out in the fact that a sect extremely like it, 
 and sharing most of its doctrines and its practices, 
 flourished in India at the same time with it. So great 
 is the similarity between Jai?iism and Buddhism that 
 some scholars have declared Jainism to be Buddhism 
 under another name, and among those who consider 
 them to have been independent of each other some 
 have held that Jainism borrowed from Buddhism, but 
 others that Buddhism was the borrower, 
 
 Mahavira (great hero) the founder of the Jainist 
 sect, was like Gautama in his possession of several 
 names, in his princely birth, his early renunciation of 
 wealth and comfort, his wandering life, his collection 
 of disciples, his order of monks, his attainment to the 
 rank and title of a superior being ; for he was the 
 twenty-fourth of the Jinas. While his doctrine has a 
 family resemblance to that of Gautama it differs from 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 85 
 
 the latter in important respects^ which space forbids 
 us to enumerate. It was harsher and ruder ; but what 
 we are concerned to point out is that the emergence 
 at the same time of two movements so closely akin 
 proves that they were called for. 
 
 Buddhism, with all its merits, fails to supply all that 
 man wants in a religion. Both it and Jainism put 
 attachment to a founder and observance of his rule in 
 place of the worship of gods and the ordinances of 
 external piety. But man asks more from his religion, 
 and we find that both the Buddha and the Jina were 
 themselves made objects of worship by their followers, 
 so that the rites of sacrifice and prayer came in to the 
 very centre of the system which had at first dispensed 
 with them. Buddhism does not absorb a man's entire 
 devotion ; he can be a Buddhist and go on adhering to 
 the religion of the country he lives in ; in China, for 
 example, he can be a Confucianist or a Taoist and a 
 Buddhist also. In this the system shows the lack of 
 energy which belonged to it at first, and from which it 
 has never become free. 
 
 IV 
 
 Summary and Conclusion 
 
 We have attempted to set forth in such a way as 
 our limits allow, the beginnings and the principles of 
 the great religions which have made their appearance 
 in India. For those who find the subject interesting 
 
86 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 and wish to pursue it further, a hst of works is added 
 at the close of this volume which may enable them to 
 do so. If this little book fulfils for any of its readers 
 the office of a sign-post^ pointing out for him the way 
 to those greater stores of knowledge^ it will have ful- 
 filled its aim. Before concluding we would ask a 
 question^ which must already have suggested itself to 
 the reader, as to the relation these different religions 
 have borne towards one another in history and their 
 relative positions at the present day. To answer 
 these questions fully would involve a study of the 
 whole history of Indian religion, a history as vast and 
 complex as that of Christianity itself. Only a few 
 hints are offered here according to what we said when 
 we set out, as to the presence in Indian religion till now 
 of elements which have been in it from the beginning. 
 
 We have seen how the religion of Brahmanism arose 
 naturally out of the simple old Vedic worship and 
 partly incorporated partly supplanted it. The hymns 
 and sacrifices went on when an entirely new meaning 
 had been poured into them, and without any breach 
 of continuity the elaborate organisation of the sacred 
 caste, with its inspired books and its divine ritual, took 
 the place of the old customary worship administered 
 by the father, or the head of the tribe. The relations 
 of Vedism and Brahmanism to each other are thus 
 quite clear. 
 
 In the case of Brahmanism and Buddhism it is 
 diff^erent. Buddhism is a denial of all that Brahmanism 
 believes, a rejection of all its practices. Buddhism 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 87 
 
 recognises no gods^ at least it looks to no god to give 
 man what he wants. It utters no prayers, offers no 
 sacrifices, it recognises no sacred class of men as 
 necessary, it does not depend on any of the Vedas. All 
 these are cheerfully relinquished. We should expect 
 that a system like this, which amounted to religious 
 Nihilism, could never live at peace with the system it 
 discarded and denied. 
 
 Yet the two did dwell in peace together. Buddhism 
 was too well prepared for in the old religion to appear 
 as an entire enemy when the time of its actual birth 
 arrived. The speculation out of which it arose had 
 as we saw, long been at home in Brahmanism, and had 
 even been present in the temple and at the sacrifices. 
 The higher mind of India was quite prepared to make 
 a clean sweep of all religious doctrines, in which it 
 had ceased to find any substantial support. As at the 
 present day the enlightened ask for a religion without 
 miracles or metaphysics, in which no exorbitant de- 
 mands are made on the understanding, so it was in 
 India then. Many were ready to accept a religion 
 which took its stand, as did the teaching of Gautama, 
 on the facts of conscience and experience, and asked 
 for no exercise of faith in gods who were behind the 
 age. As Mr Rhys Davids has shown,i Buddhism is in 
 some respects an anticipation of the experimental 
 position of our own day in which nothing is accepted 
 that is not verifiable. Its creed consists simply in 
 
 ^ "Buddhism as a Living Force," Professor T, W. Rhys 
 Davids, in Hihhert Joiimal, April 1903, 
 
88 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 the statement of psychological facts. The facts in 
 question might not be universally admitted at the 
 present day ; but the mind of India in Gautama's 
 time was agreed about them, and Buddhism thus had 
 a positive basis which all recognised. That there was a 
 way out from the prison of suffering in which it was the 
 settled conviction of Indian thought that all men were 
 confined, this was Gautama's discovery, and the method 
 he announced had in it nothing that was strange 
 or startling for his age. That man had no one to 
 look to but himself in the efforts he was called to 
 make for self-emancipation, the higher minds of India 
 had agreed long before Gautama, and the implicit 
 declarations of Buddhism, not flaunted by the founder 
 before his hearers, but clearly implied in all his teach- 
 ing, that man has no saviour, either human or divine 
 outside himself, but must be saved, if at all, by the 
 efforts of his own will, this also shocked no one. On 
 the contrary, such a doctrine appealed powerfully to a 
 race which was determined to know the truth and to 
 walk in its light alone. 
 
 And more — the exhortation to believe that it was in 
 the power of man to deal with the cause of his misery 
 which lay nowhere but in himself, and by a life of 
 patient and unwearying effort to deal with his own 
 case and ultimately to effect his own cure, this exhor- 
 tation was strengthened indefinitely by the example 
 of the founder himself. The figure of the Buddha 
 is the strength and the secret of Buddhism as that of 
 Christ is of Christianity. Gautama had himself passed 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 89 
 
 through the sadness of human experience which was 
 the lot of all, he had spent his life in persuading as 
 many as possible to follow him in the path of deliver- 
 ance. Gautama was one whom no seriously disposed 
 person in India could fail to reverence. He had 
 \vrestled long and hard with the dark problem of 
 human destiny as it then presented itself, and by his 
 own strength of mind had made his way out of the 
 prison to light and freedom. He had, moreover, spent 
 a long life in entire unselfishness ; not content with 
 saving himself he had laboured day by day and year 
 by year to old age and death at the task of bringing 
 to others the light he had found himself and guiding 
 them to the right way. He had not been a worker of 
 miracles ; the few wonders related of him were done 
 to prove the truth of his doctrine, which to him 
 was by far the most important thing, he had acknow- 
 ledged the authority of the eternal laws under which 
 man spends his life on the earth, and had sought only 
 such a deliverance for himself and others as these laws 
 allow. He had been tender-hearted and compassionate, 
 he had been most catholic in his sympathies and 
 accessible to all. Himself of noble birth he had dis- 
 regarded the barriers of class ; he had been the equal 
 both of kings and beggars, and Brahmans had consulted 
 him, some had even been his followers. And his 
 doctrine was for all, it excluded none but appealed to 
 all who bore the general human nature. 
 
 In these ways Buddhism was singularly well adapted 
 to the country and the period in which it appeared. 
 
90 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 It rapidly overspread the Indian peninsula and be- 
 came within two centuries after the death of the 
 founder the prevailing religion of that great land. 
 The history of its early struggles and successes is to a 
 large extent unknown. As in the case of Christianity 
 the bright period of the origins is succeeded by a 
 period of historical obscurity. We hear of various 
 councils at which the canon of the sacred books was 
 fixed and the constitution of the order further settled 
 and defined. Asoka, King of Magadha^ or Behar^ in 
 the third century B.C., was the Constantine of the 
 new faith. The edicts which he issued declaring 
 Buddhism to be the religion of the State, and enjoin- 
 ing upon his subjects to live in accordance with its 
 precepts, were engraved on columns in public places 
 in many districts. Some of these have been deciphered 
 during the last century, and we see how the Emperor 
 used his authority to set forth Buddhist doctrines in 
 his own words, and how he decreed that missionaries 
 should go forth to other lands to convert unbelievers. 
 This was to be done only by the peaceful means of 
 persuasion, and in this the character of Buddhism, its 
 enthusiasm for human welfare, its universal scope, its 
 gentle temper, were truly expressed. The religion 
 spread rapidly to countries beyond India, on the one 
 side to Ceylon and thence to Burmah, on the other 
 to Afghanistan. In later centuries it was to pass also 
 to Tibet and to China. 
 
 But it is not to be supposed that when Buddhism 
 became the state religion of India the Brahraans gave 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 91 
 
 up their sacrifices or the learned the study of the 
 Vedas, or the religious after the old fashion the 
 practice of self-absorption. The new faith was too 
 tolerant to require this and the two systems were in 
 fact rather complementary of each other than antagon- 
 istic. Buddhism has never claimed that those who 
 join it should forsake the religion to which they are 
 already attached. The old and the new went on in 
 India side by side, and we find that even after the 
 rise of Buddhism Brahmanism met with developments 
 which showed that it was by no means dead or 
 wanting in power to assert itself. Much of the Vedic 
 literature is later than Buddhism ; this is the case 
 with most of the Upanishads and with the Sutras. The 
 institutions of the old religion were carefully studied 
 as before, the old books were supplied with new com- 
 ments and explanations. It has to be specially noted 
 that the system of caste became much more developed 
 and more stringent than it had been in the period 
 of Gautama, and that the systems of law, such as 
 that of Manu, in which everything turns on caste 
 are also of later growth, a growth which never 
 could have taken place if the new teaching to 
 which all men are alike as sufferers and as capable 
 of emancipation had been universally accepted. 
 Buddhism, though it rose to power, did not use 
 its power to persecute its opponents. It was and 
 is of the very nature of Buddhism to be tolerant of 
 other creeds ; and as the Brahmans were not only 
 the priests of India, but its lawyers, its literati, and 
 
92 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 its men of science they occupied a very strong 
 position. The two rehgions existed therefore side by 
 side for many centuries^ neither interfering with the 
 other, the Brahmans preponderating in one district, 
 while another was given over to the monks. Chinese 
 Buddhists went on pilgrimage to India in the fifth 
 century a.d. to study their religion in its native land 
 and to bring home relics; and they found the 
 priests and the monks enjoying the same honour in 
 the country, the temple and the monastery standing 
 together. Another Chinese pilgrimage to India took 
 place in the seventh century, at which period the two 
 faiths were in more active competition with each other, 
 Brahmanism being by this time more aggressive. 
 In some states Buddhism w^as actively favoured by 
 the ruler; but even in these Brahmanism asserted 
 itself and secured some portion of state recognition. 
 
 Two religions so intimately connected with each 
 other and working in this way side by side could not 
 fail to influence each other. Competition and con- 
 troversy between religious systems always make each of 
 them conscious, not only of the errors of the adversary, 
 but also of its own weak points, so that an interchange 
 of ideas and practices constantly goes on. The conflict 
 of Brahmanism with Buddhism accordingly led to 
 great changes on both sides, in fact the old Brahman- 
 ism and the old Buddhism disappeared. Hinduism, 
 the present religion of India, is not identical with 
 either but may be regarded as a mixture of both. 
 
 The most salient difference between the religion 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 93 
 
 of India before Buddhism and that after it is to 
 be found in the disappearance from most worships 
 of animal sacrifice, which in the earlier practice 
 filled a very large place. This is in accordance 
 with the Buddhist prohibition of the destruction 
 of life, and is part of that tenderness towards 
 all living things which is now characteristic of 
 all Indian thought. Along with this we have to 
 recognise to how large a degree both the beliefs 
 of Buddhism and its spirit passed into the general 
 religion of India. The convictions which Buddhism 
 if it did not originate then, yet first applied with 
 seriousness and made into a rule of human duty, that 
 the human person is infinitely responsible for its 
 conduct in life, has to accomplish its lot through a 
 series of transmigrations, and may through steadfast 
 efforts of the will turn back to some extent the 
 current formed by its past and effect at least the 
 beginnings of its own salvation, these convictions 
 became the working theory of the personal religion 
 of serious people in India. The genius of Gautama 
 prevailed even in regions where his name was not 
 confessed. His humane, gentle, brotherly spirit, his 
 love of truth, his disposition to help the thoughtful 
 by thinking, the man of the world by his practical 
 wisdom, the simple by his unaffected sympathy, all 
 this, inherent no doubt in the Indian mind before 
 but embodied in him to an unparalleled degree, 
 became typical for all his countrymen, and a deter- 
 mining force in all their piety. 
 
 On the other hand Buddhism could not supply all 
 
94 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 that is asked of a religion, and while infusing its 
 spirit into the mind of India, died out itself in the 
 country of its birth. A system which does not ac- 
 knowledge any divine beings, nor offer any prayers 
 or any sacrifices, is not fitted to be the religion of 
 entire communities of men. For the members of 
 the order, the original rule and the original doctrine 
 might long suffice, but where Buddhism had to fulfil 
 the office of a public religion it had to submit to 
 great modifications and to assume features which had 
 little connection with its original state. It developed 
 observances of its own, especially the veneration of 
 sacred places to which men went on pilgrimage to 
 adore the footsteps of the Buddha or of his com- 
 panions. In time the deification of the Buddha took 
 place and legends grew up of his birth from a virgin 
 mother, and of his resolution while living in heaven 
 to go down to the earth and be the Saviour of men. 
 These additions as well as the formation of a canon 
 of inspired books gave the system more of the nature 
 of an organised religion ; but on the other hand the 
 order failed to keep up its early enthusiasm and strict 
 discipline, and so grew weak within. The final ces- 
 sation of Buddhism in India is generally ascribed to 
 the persecution of the order by the Mohammedan 
 invaders in the seventh and succeeding centuries ; but 
 it was all but extinct before. Gautama himself had 
 predicted that his movement would not prove perma- 
 nent, and had looked for the appearance of another 
 Buddha in a future period who w^ould make the truth 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 
 
 95 
 
 known to men again. The continuance of Buddhism 
 in countries outside of India is scarcely such as to 
 make this hope superfluous. In Tibet Buddhism is 
 hierarchical in form, mechanical in its application ; 
 in China a Buddhist may also be a Confucianist or a 
 Taoist, and the system is without living influence. 
 
 As is the case in every country where civilisation 
 has gone on a long time, the religion of India contains 
 an infinite number of elements, some going back to 
 pre-historic times, others due to causes which are 
 known. When the missionary seeks to take stock of 
 the luxuriant and complex growth of Indian religion, or 
 when the student anxious to know something of the 
 aspirations of our Eastern fellow-subjects, asks what 
 Indian religion is now, the answer must be, so far as 
 one can tell who knows India only from books, that 
 every kind of devotion which ever flourished in India 
 flourishes there still. The lower forms, which pre- 
 vailed before the Aryans came into the peninsula are 
 still to be seen. The higher forms have not brought 
 the lower to an end, nor on the other hand have the 
 lower forms stifled the higher. The student of the 
 world's religions knows that nothing of this sort that 
 has once truly lived ever altogether dies, and India is 
 no exception to this rule. India has never attained 
 to any religious uniformity ; her various tribes never 
 became united politically and have never been brought 
 under any organised religious authority. Toleration 
 and respect for all human life and thought have there- 
 
96 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 fore prevailed ; and the most dissimilar beliefs and 
 rites have continued side by side for thousands of years. 
 The primitive jungle^ to use an appropriate metaphor, 
 of freely growing primitive superstition, still con- 
 tinues. In country districts it is not the great gods 
 of Hinduism that are worshipped, but gods of the 
 locality who are less ancient. New deities are con- 
 stantly arising and crowd each other out in endless 
 succession. There is an active belief in a multitude 
 of spirits, with whose agency everything that happens 
 is readily connected, and who may be influenced or 
 thwarted by curious and primitive methods. Incan- 
 tations and charms are used and ceremonies the 
 original meaning of which is matter of speculation, 
 and every place has its own legendary lore. 
 
 From this jungle the great religions raise their 
 heads. What may be called the official and historical 
 religion is seated in the great temples throughout 
 the land, and has for its ministers a priesthood of 
 great dignity and influence. Connected with this 
 religion as of old is the study of the sacred books, 
 the learned explanation of the cultus, the pursuit of 
 philosophy and learning, and the practice of mysticism. 
 The gods are changed ; it is Vishnu and Siva that 
 now divide the multitudes between them ; but there 
 has been no breach with the past. Hinduism is de- 
 void of any missionary impulse, it could not flourish 
 anywhere but in India ; but on its native soil it has 
 all the advantages of venerable antiquity of firmly- 
 established authority, and of connection with every 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 97 
 
 part of the social and the intellectual life of the land. 
 If the gods are losing their hold on the higher minds 
 of the people^ that is a phenomenon not unknown in 
 other lands and other faiths. The system with all its 
 splendid and elaborate institutions, goes on in spite 
 of this, and will go on, no one can tell how long. 
 With this system regarded as a set of rites and in- 
 stitutions it is difficult for the native of another 
 country to enter into any active sympathy, even 
 did it not present features which are immoral and 
 disgusting. Its history may interest him deeply and 
 the living manifestation of genuine piety whether 
 by people or by priest is always a touching thing 
 to one who can pierce through to discern it ; yet 
 the beholder of Indian religion must judge that 
 in its forms it is too heavy a burden to be borne 
 by any open-minded people, and that the time of 
 its reform must surely be at hand. The rise of 
 the Brahma-Samaj (Society of God) with its theistic 
 and humanitarian teaching, shows that the established 
 religion fails to meet the wants of the higher minds 
 in India ; and with the increase of education this must 
 be the case more and more. 
 
 But we must recognise that it is the machinery, the 
 institutions of Indian religion that are at fault, and 
 that the soul of the religion is in many respects 
 kindred to the soul of our own. What of it is due 
 to Buddhism and to the movements out of which 
 Buddhism arose must be regarded by every open mind 
 as admirable. In its love of truth, its toleration, its 
 
 Q 
 
98 INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 broad human sympathies ; in its expUcit preference 
 of conduct to ritual^ its high estimate of personal 
 responsibiUty^ its readiness to make the interests of 
 the soul supreme in human life^ and to undertake any 
 sacrifice by which these interests may be furthered, 
 in all these respects Indian religion needs no other 
 teaching. Every one who has a heart must wonder 
 at the age-long discipline and education by which 
 the higher mind of a race has been so trained to 
 prefer the things of the spirit to the things of the 
 world or of the flesh. Here the Christian must feel in 
 sympathy with Indian piety ; for the Master says, He 
 that is not against Me is for Me. 
 
 Yet we can sympathise with Indian thought without 
 shutting our eyes to its grave defects. These very 
 defects no doubt have contributed in past times to the 
 success of the Buddhist element of it, and may even 
 help it to a revival not only in India but in other 
 lands, so that the prediction of Mr Rhys Davids may 
 be fulfilled, that Buddhism will come to have its 
 representatives in every countiy. A religion which 
 calls for so little positive belief may share in this age the 
 victories of agnosticism. A piety which is built on the 
 basis of human experience only and requires no faith 
 in any objective spiritual reality behind the world of 
 sense, which dispenses with prayer and needs no 
 temple, such a piety has great qualifications for main- 
 taining itself and even extending its influence at the 
 present day. 
 
 But the defects which led to the decease of 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 99 
 
 Buddhism in its own land must also limit the success 
 of Indian thought, both in India and elsewhere. 
 Religion without belief in a living god can never 
 prove a source of vigour to any people. Religion in 
 its full sense is an active intercourse between God 
 and man ; he who comes to God must believe that 
 He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek 
 Him. Without this faith religion must feel itself 
 defective and must lack inspiring force. The belief 
 which Christianity affords in a god who cares for man 
 for man's own sake, who is favourable to human free- 
 dom and human progress, and has united Himself with 
 man and poured new life into mankind in Jesus Christ, 
 this belief has power to renew individuals and nations. 
 The bright day is surely coming when this belief will 
 enter into the mind of India also. 
 
loo INDIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Books showing the general history of religion^ and the 
 relation of Indian to other religions — 
 Max MiJLLER, Lectures on the Science of Language, 
 
 New Edition, 1882 ; Lectures on the Origin of 
 
 Religion (Hibbert Lectures, 1878). 
 De la Saussaye, Manual of the Science of Religion, 1890. 
 
 Translated by B. S. Collyer-Fergusson. 
 TiELE, Comparative History of the Religions of Antiquity. 
 
 3rd Ed., 1884. 
 Menzies, History of Religion (University Extension 
 
 Manual), 1895. 
 Clodd, Childhood of Religion, 1876. 
 Books on Indian religion — 
 Barth, The Religions of India, 1889. Translated by 
 
 Wood. 
 Hopkins, The Religions of India. 
 Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, 1894. 
 MoNiER WiLLiA3is, Indian Wisdom, 187-5. 
 MoNiER Williams, Hinduism (in Non-Christian Religious 
 
 Systems) (S.P.C.K.), 1877. 
 W. J. WiLKiNs, Modern Hinduism, being an account of 
 
 the Religion and Life of the Hindus in Northern India, 
 
 1887. 
 Muir's Sanscrit Texts, 5 volumes, 185.3-70. 
 
 „ Metrical Translations from Sanskrit Writers, 1879 
 
 (Triibner). 
 Edm. Hardy, "Die Vedisch-Brahmanische Periode der 
 
 Religion des alten Indiens" {Darstelhingen aus dem 
 
 Gebiete der nicht-christlichen Religionsgeschichte , 1898). 
 Kaegi, The Rigveda ; the oldest literature of the Indians. 
 
 Translated by Arrowsmith, 1886. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY loi 
 
 On Buddhism — 
 
 MoNiER AV^iLLiAMs^ BuddMsm, in its connection with Brah- 
 manism and Hinduism, and in its coiitrast with 
 Christianity, 1889. 
 Rhys Davids^ Buddhism, its History and Literature, 1896. 
 ,, Origin and Growth of Beligion, as illustrated 
 
 by Buddhism (Hibbert Lectures, 1881). 
 Rhys Davids, Buddhism, its History and Literature (Ameri- 
 can Lectures on the History of Religions), 189G. 
 Rhys Davids, Buddhism (S.P.C.K.). 
 R. Spence Hardy, Eastern Monachism, 1850. 
 
 „ Manual of Buddhism, 1860. 
 
 Oldenberg, Buddha, his Life, his Doctrine, his Works. 
 
 Translated by Hoey, 1882. 
 Edm. Hardy, Der Buddhismus nach i'dteren Pali- Werken 
 (Darstellungen aus dem Gebiete der nichtchristlicheii 
 Religionsgeschichte). 
 CoPLESTONE, Buddhism, Primitive and Present in Magadha 
 and Ceylon, 1892. 
 Of the sacred books of the East, the following may be 
 mentioned — 
 Vols, i., XV., Upanishads, edited by M. Muller. 
 „ xxxii., Vedic Hymns, edited by M. Muller. 
 „ xlvi., „ „ Oldenberg. 
 
 „ x., Dhammapada, ,, M. Muller. 
 
 „ xii. and other vols. Satapatha Brahmana, edited by 
 
 Eggeling. 
 „ XXV., Laws of Manu, edited by Bijhler. 
 „ xiii., xvii., xx., Vinaya Texts, Davids and Olden- 
 berg. 
 
fi^&orjc Vhil^ & Snn L^ 
 
PRINTED BY 
 
 TUENBULL AXD SPEARS, 
 
 EDJNBUKGH 
 
PROSPECTUS 
 
TEMPLE SERIES OF BIBLE CHARACTERS 
 AND SCRIPTURE HANDBOOKS. 
 
 MESSRS J. M. DENT & CO. have pleasure in an- 
 nouncing that they are about to commence the 
 issue, under the editorship of Mr Oliphant Smeaton, 
 M. A., of a new series of companion handbooks to their 
 '' Temple " Bible and Apocrypha. As may be seen 
 from the following scheme of volumes, the scope of the 
 series embraces not only the lives and work of the great 
 outstanding characters of Scriptural history (special 
 attention being paid to the latest results attained by 
 Biblical scholarship), but also the initiators of the 
 other great religious movements of the world. 
 
 The series has as its aim the promotion of the study 
 of the Bible and of the history and development 
 of religious thought. To this end each volume has 
 been assigned to a writer who has made his subject 
 a matter of special and prolonged study, and has also 
 had practical experience in the teaching of Biblical 
 and Church history. In style the volumes will be 
 lucid and concise, while in the treatment an endea- 
 vour will be made to blend popular with scientific 
 methods, in order that the handbooks may be of 
 service to students at all stages of Biblical study. 
 
 Each volume will be equipped with Maps and 
 Chronological Tables, together with tabulated Refer- 
 ences to the subject in English Literature ; and, where 
 possible, an illustrative frontispiece will be given. 
 
The following is the list of forthcoming volumes, 
 the order in which they are arranged not being 
 necessarily that in which they will appear : — 
 
 Primer of Biblical History, being a sketch of the 
 whole field. 
 
 By Rev. O. V. Barnicott, M.A. [Shortly. 
 
 Abraham and the Patriarchal Age. 
 
 By Prof. Archibald Duff, D.D. [Ready. 
 
 Joseph and the Land of Egypt. 
 
 By Prof. A. H. Sayce, D.D., LL.D. [Shortly. 
 
 MoSES AND THE EpOCH OF THE ExODUS. 
 
 By Prof W. B. Stevenson, M.A. 
 Joshua and the Palestinian Conquest. 
 
 By Prof W. H. Bennett, D.D. [Shortly. 
 
 Samuel and the School of the Prophets. 
 By James Sime, M.A., F.R.S.E. 
 
 Saul and the Hebrew Monarchy. 
 By R. Sinker, D.D. 
 
 David, the Hero-King of Israel. 
 
 By Rev. W. J. Knox Little, M.A., Canon of 
 Worcester. [Ready. 
 
 Solomon and the First Temple. 
 
 By Very Rev. C. W. Stubbs, D.D., Dean of Ely. 
 
 The Age of the Prophets — Pre-Exilic. 
 By W. Fairweather, M.A. 
 
 The Age of Daniel and the Exile. 
 By. W. Mitchell Hunter, M.A. 
 
 The Age of the Prophets — Post-Exilic. 
 By J. Wilson Harper, D.D 
 
The Historical Connection between the Old and 
 New Testaments. 
 
 By G. Milne-Rae, D.D. 
 The Life of Christ, the Founder of the New Dis- 
 pensation. 
 
 By the Very Rev. Principal Stewart, M.A., 
 
 D.D. 
 The Twelve Apostles and their Training. 
 
 By G. MiLLiGAN, M.A. 
 Peter. 
 
 By John Davidson, M.A. 
 John. 
 
 By William Benham, D.D., Hon. Canon of 
 
 Canterbury. 
 Paul. 
 
 By J. Gamble, M.A. 
 The Church of the First Century. 
 
 By Prof. Clark, D.D., D.C.L. 
 The Christian Persecutions and the Early Martyrs. 
 
 By Prof. J. Herkless, D.D. 
 The Early Christian Apologists and Fathers. 
 
 By W. H. Carslaw, D.D. 
 The Non-Christian Religions of the World ; Brah- 
 manism and Buddhism. 
 
 By Prof. Allan Menzies, B.D., D.D. [^Shortly. 
 The Non-Christian Religions of the World ; Mo- 
 hammedanism. 
 
 By P. DE Lacy Johnstone, M.A. 
 
 *^ Particulars of the ^' Temple Bible" may be had Post Free, 
 J. M. DENT & CO., BEDFORD ST., LONDON. 
 

 DATE DUE 
 
 
 ^mz^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 jg^i^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 ^illHiililliiiiiiiiiiiiii 
 
 & 
 
 
 
 HP' 
 
 
 
 _ - 
 
 
 
 
 'AUG 
 
 0^ 199i 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 PRINTED IN U..S.A. 
 
 1 
 
BL2001 .M55 
 
 The religions of India : Brahmanism and 
 
 Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00033 8519