The History of Antiquity, Vol. 4 (of 6)

The desire to offer sacrifices to the gods at the correct and acceptable time did not permit the Brahmans entirely to neglect the observation of the heavens. Their attention was directed principally to the moon, to the courses of the planets they paid no particular regard. According to the advance of the moon in the heavens they distinguished twenty-seven, and at a later period twenty-eight stations in the sky (nakshatra). "The moon," we are told, "follows the course of the Nakshatras." The year of the Indians was divided into twelve months of thirty days; the month was divided into two halves of fifteen days each, and the day into 30 hours (muhurta). In order to bring this year of 360 days into harmony with the natural time, the Brahmans established a quinquennial cycle of 1860 lunar days. Three years had 12 months of 30 lunar days; the third and fifth year of the cycle had thirteen months of the same number of days. The Brahmans do not seem to have perceived that by this arrangement the cycle contained almost four days in excess of the astronomical time; and indeed they were not very skilful astronomers. Twelve quinquennial cycles were united into a greater period (yuga) of sixty years.361 It was an old belief of the Indians that sacrifices and important affairs in domestic and family life should only be engaged in when the position of the sky was favourable – when the moon was waxing, or the sun moving to the north. At a later time it was also believed that the constellation, under which a child saw the light, was of good or evil influence on his fortunes. Charms are preserved, which are supposed to avert evil influences of this kind.362 Some time after the seventh century the Brahmans began to foretell the fortunes of children from the position of the stars of their parents, to look for the marks of good and bad fortune on the human body as well as in the sky, and to question the stars about the favourable hours for the transactions or festivals of the house, and the labours of the field, voyages and travels. Though the book of the law declares astrology to be a wicked occupation,363 it was carried on to a considerable extent in the fifth and fourth centuries. But this astrological superstition has nevertheless remained without effect in advancing the astronomy of the Brahmans; further advance was due to the foreign help gained by closer contact with the kingdom of the Seleucids, and the influence of the Græco-Bactrian kingdom, which extended its power to the east beyond the Indus, and the Græco-Indian kingdom which succeeded it in the second century.364 The result of their grammatical and astronomical studies were collected by the Brahmans as auxiliary sciences to the explanation and interpretation of the Veda; and they termed them the members of the Veda (Vedanga). They enumerated six of such members; the doctrine of pronunciation and intonation, the doctrine of metres, grammar, etymology, the ritual, and astronomy. The two first were declared to be indispensable for the reading of the Veda, the third and fourth for understanding the Veda, the fifth and sixth for the performance of sacrifice.365

From all antiquity, as has been already observed, the Indians were greatly given to magic. It was the mysterious secret of the worship, the power of the rightly-offered prayer, which exercised compulsion on the gods. Out of this power grew their Brahmanaspati, and then Brahman. Consequently, the Brahmans ascribed the greatest efficacy to the severities of asceticism, the annihilation of the body. The sacrifice of sensual enjoyment was more meritorious and powerful than all other sacrifices. Was it not this devotion, this mortification, this concentration, which annihilated the unholy part in men? Did not a man by these means approach the holy nature of Brahman – did he not thus draw into himself Brahman and its power? The Brahmans were convinced that great penances and absorption into Brahman conferred a supernatural power and a command over nature; and imparted to the penitent a superhuman and even superdivine power, like that of Brahman. The Indians invariably transferred the new point of view to the past. The past was with them a mirror of the present, and therefore the ancient priests who were supposed to have sung the hymns of the Veda, the mythical ancestors of the leading priestly families, were not only patterns of Brahmanic wisdom, but also great ascetics, examples of energetic penances. By such penances these ancient saints, the Maharshis, i. e. the great sages as they were now called, had obtained power over men and gods, and even creative force. Hence in the order of beings the seven or ten great saints received the place nearest to Brahman, above the gods – a change which was rendered easier to the Brahmans because passages in the Rigveda spoke of the "ancient-born sages" as illuminated, as seers and friends of the gods.366 With the Brahmans the force of asceticism was so preponderant, and absorbed the divine nature to such a degree, that it was soon regarded by them as the highest divine potency; in their view the gods and Brahman itself exercised creative power only by virtue of ascetic concentration on self, and severe penances. The theory of creation was modified from this point of view. Creation was not any longer the act of the ancient gods, though they are praised as creators in the Veda; it no longer took place by the emanation of being out of Brahman. According to the analogy of the asceticism of the Brahmans, the gods and the personal Brahman who proceeded out of the impersonal Brahman must have rendered themselves capable of creation by penance, and gained their peculiar power in this way. In the black Yajurveda we are told: "This world was at first water; in this moved the lord of creation, who had become air. Then he formed the earth and created the gods. The gods said: How can we form creatures? He replied: As I formed you by the glow of my meditation (tapas), so do ye seek in deep meditation the means of bringing forth creatures."367 The introduction to the book of the law goes further still in the theory of creation given above. When Brahman had proceeded from the egg (p. 197), he subjects himself to severe penance and so creates Manu. Then Manu begins the most severe exercises, and by them creates the ten great sages, and seven new Manus. The ten great saints, the lords of creatures, on their part bring all created things into being. By the force of their penances they create the gods and their different heavens, then the other saints who possess unbounded power, the spirits of the earth (Yakshas), the giants (Rakshasas), and the evil spirits (Asuras), the blood-suckers (Piçachas), the serpent spirits (Nagas), the heavenly genii (the Gandharvas and Apsarasas), and the spirits of the ancestors; after them the thunder, the lightning, and the clouds, the wild animals, and last of all the whole mass of creatures living and lifeless.368 According to this theory, Brahman has only given the impulse to creation; it is completed by the penances of Manu and the other saints. The gods are deposed, and the Brahmans, through their forefathers, the great saints, become the authors of the gods and the world, the sovereign lords of creation. The Brahman, learned or not, such is the teaching of the book of the law, is always a mighty deity, just as fire, whether consecrated or not, is always a mighty deity. Creation belongs to the Brahman, and consequently all property is his; it is by his magnanimity that the rest of the orders enjoy the goods of this world. Who would venture to injure a Brahman, by whose sacrifice the gods live and the world exists? Any one who harms a Brahman will be at once annihilated by the power of his curse; even a king who ventures on such a thing will perish with his army and their armour by the word of a Brahman.369

The schools of the Brahmans sought to establish their ritual beyond the power of doubt, to understand the Veda in its interpretation, as well as in its etymology and grammar; they raised the centre of their ethics, their asceticism, high above the gods of the Veda, and they also attempted to embody their views and their whole system in the poems of their Epos. The pre-eminence of their order must have been established even in the ancient times; even then the Brahmans must have stood far above the Kshatriyas; and the princes and heroes, of whom the Epos told us, must have been patterns of reverence towards the Brahmans; they must have walked in the paths which the theory of the Brahmans subsequently prescribed. In this feeling the Brahmans proceeded to revise the Epos. In contradiction to the ancient poem the princes of the Pandus were placed in the best light, and, so far as was possible, were made eager worshippers or obedient pupils of the Brahmans.

We have already pointed out what an opposition the Brahmans had invented between Vasishtha and Viçvamitra from a few hints given by the Rigveda; how from this point of view, Viçvamitra is made into a Kshatriya, in order to be able to point out from the example of his ruin as a Kshatriya in opposition to Vasishtha the superiority of the Brahmans over the Kshatriyas. But the Veda contains hymns by Viçvamitra; he belonged, like Vasishtha, to the great saints; the one no less than the other was the progenitor of an ancient and eminent branch of the Brahmans. Hence the Kshatriya Viçvamitra must be changed again into a Brahman, and this could only be done by penances of the most severe kind. As the most powerful effects were attributed to these penances, the Kuçikas and the other races derived from Viçvamitra were indemnified for the previous defeat of Viçvamitra when he was still a Kshatriya. The description of the feeble conflict of the Kshatriya against the Brahman, of the prince against the Rishi, the marvellous exaltation of the Kshatriya and the prince by submission to the Brahman law and severe penances, are here set forth in the utmost detail and inserted in the Epos. King Viçvamitra had ruled over the earth for several thousand years. On one occasion he came with his warriors to the abode of Vasishtha in the forest, who hospitably received and entertained him and his army. Vasishtha possessed a marvellous cow – a wishing cow – which brought forth whatever Vasishtha desired; she produced food and drink for Viçvamitra and his army. This cow Viçvamitra wished to possess, and offered 100,000 ordinary cows in exchange. It was a jewel, he said, and the king has a right to all jewels found in his country; hence the cow belonged of right to him, a deduction which is not contrary to certain rules in the book of the law. Vasishtha refuses to part with the cow; and Viçvamitra resolves to take her by force from the saint. The cow urges her master to resist; wide and powerful as Viçvamitra's rule may be, he is not more mighty than Vasishtha is; the wise praise not the might of the warriors, the power of the Brahmans is greater. Instead of the means of subsistence, with the production of which she has hitherto been contented, she now brings forth different armies from the different parts of her body; and when these are conquered by the warriors of Viçvamitra, she goes on producing new armies till the host of the king is destroyed. Then the hundred sons of Viçvamitra filled with rage rush on Vasishtha; but the saint consumes them by the flame of meditation which proceeds from his mouth. Viçvamitra acknowledges with shame the superiority of the Brahman over the Kshatriya; he resolves to overcome Vasishtha by penances. He goes into the forest, stands on his toes for one hundred years, lives on air only, and in this way acquires the possession of heavenly arms. With these he hastens to the settlement of Vasishtha; sets it on fire by the heavenly arrows, and then hurls a fiery weapon at the Brahman. Vasishtha cries aloud: "Vile Kshatriya, now will I show thee what the strength of a warrior is!" and with his staff easily wards off even the arms of the gods. With no better success Viçvamitra throws the toils of Varuna, and even Brahman's dreadful weapons against Vasishtha, who beats them away with his staff, "which burned like a second sceptre of Yama." With sighs Viçvamitra acknowledges that the might of kings and warriors is nothing, that only the Brahmans possess true power, and now attempts by severe penances to elevate himself to be a Brahman. He proceeds to the south, and undergoes the severest mortifications. After a thousand years of penance Brahman allows him the rank of a wise king. But he wishes to be a Brahman, and therefore begins his penances over again. Triçanku, the son of Prithu, the pious king of the Koçalas (p. 149), had bidden his priest Vasishtha exalt him with his living body to heaven by a great sacrifice. Vasishtha declares that this is impossible. Triçanku repairs to Viçvamitra, who offers the sacrifice. But the gods do not descend to the sacrificial meal. Then Viçvamitra in anger seizes the ladle, and says to Triçanku: "By my own power I will exalt you to heaven. Receive the power of sanctity which I have gained by my penances. I have certainly earned some reward for them." Triçanku at once rose to heaven; but Indra refused him admittance, and Triçanku began to sink again. In anger Viçvamitra begins to found another heaven in the south, new gods and new stars. Then the gods humbly entreat the saint to desist from conveying Triçanku into heaven, but Viçvamitra had given his promise to Triçanku; he must keep his word, and the gods must receive Triçanku. Then Viçvamitra repairs to the west in order to begin further penances. After a thousand years Brahman hails him as a sage. But Viçvamitra is resolved to be a Brahman. He begins his penances once more, but is disturbed by the sight of an Apsarasa, whom he sees bathing in the lake of Pushkara, and for ten years he lies in her toils. Disgusted at his weakness Viçvamitra repairs to the northern mountain, and there again undergoes yet severer penances for a thousand years. Brahman now greets him as a great sage; but Viçvamitra wishes to have the incomparable title of a wise Brahman. This Brahman refuses because he has not yet fully mastered his sensual desires. New penances begin; Viçvamitra raises his arms aloft, stands on one leg, remains immovable as a post, feeds on nothing but air, is surrounded in the hot season by four fires, and in the cold by water, etc. – all which goes on for a thousand years. The gods are alarmed at the power which Viçvamitra obtains by such penances, and Indra sends the Apsarasa Rambha to seduce the penitent. Viçvamitra resists, but allows himself to be transported with rage, and turns the nymph into a stone. But anger also belongs to the sensual man, and must be subdued. He leaves the Himalayas, repairs to the east, and there resolves to perform the most severe penance; he will not speak a word, and this penance he performs for a thousand years, standing on one leg like a statue. The gods now beseech Brahman to make Viçvamitra a Brahman, otherwise by the power of his penances he will bring the three worlds to destruction; soon would the sun be quenched before the majesty of the penitent. Brahman consents; all the gods go to Viçvamitra, pay him homage and salute him: "Hail, wise Brahman!" Vasishtha hears of this new dignity of Viçvamitra, and both now stand on the same footing. This narrative teaches us not only that the power of the gods was nothing as against the Brahmans, but also that it was easier to exercise compulsion upon the gods, to create new gods and new stars, than for any one to attain the rank of a Brahman who had been born as a Kshatriya.370

Like Viçvamitra the heroes of antiquity were thought to have obtained divine power by their penances. An episode, inserted by the Brahmans into the Mahabharata, tells us how Arjuna, when the Pandus had been banished into the forest after the second game of dice at Hastinapura, practises severe penances on the Himavat, in order to obtain the weapons of the gods for the conflict against the Kurus. Indra sends his chariot in order to convey him to heaven, and there, in the heaven of Indra, everything shines with a peculiar splendour. Here are the gods, the heroes fallen in battle, sages and penitents by hundreds, who have attained to the height of Indra, but not, as yet, to Brahman. Instead of the blowing winds, his old companions in the fight, Indra is now surrounded by troops of the Gandharvas, the heavenly musicians, and by the Apsarasas. The gods and saints greet Arjuna to the sound of shells and drums, and, as servants, wash his feet and mouth. Indra sits like the king of the Indians under the yellow umbrella, with a golden staff in his hands; he gives his bow to Arjuna; Yama, Varuna, and Kuvera (p. 160) also give him their weapons. Thus armed, Arjuna subdues in the first place the Danavas, the sons of Danu (the evil spirits of darkness and drought), whom Indra himself cannot overcome. For this object Indra gives him his chariot, which is now yoked with ten thousand yellow horses, and harness impenetrable as the air. Beyond the sea Arjuna comes upon the hosts of the Danavas. They cover him with missiles, and then contend with magic arts, with rain of stones and water and storms, and shroud everything in darkness. Arjuna is victorious, though the Danavas, at last changed into mountains, throw themselves upon him; and thus, as is expressly said, he surpasses the achievements of Indra. Indra's conflicts with the demons are transferred to Arjuna. We see to what an extent the soaring fancy of the Brahmans has crushed and distorted by these extravagances the simple and beautiful conception of Indra in conflict with Vritra and Atri, the poetry of the ancient myth of Indra's battle in the storm371 (p. 48).

It was a marvellous world which the imagination of the Brahmans had created. The gay pictures, excited and nourished in the mind of the Indians by the nature of the Ganges valley, became reflected in more and more distorted and peculiar forms in the legends and wonders of the great saints and heroes of the ancient time. The gods and spirits are perpetually interfering in the life and actions of men. The saints without intermission convulsed the sky, and played at will with the laws of nature. The more the desire for the marvellous was satisfied, the stronger it became. In order to go beyond what had been already achieved brighter colours must be laid on; the power of the imagination must be excited more vigorously, so as to enchain once more the over-excited and wearied spirit. Thus, for the Indians, the boundaries of heaven and earth gradually disappeared; the world of gods and that of men became confounded in a formless chaos. The arrangement of the orders was of divine origin; the gradations of being reached from the world-soul, through the saints, the gods and spirits, down to plants and animals. The earth was peopled with wandering souls; sacrifice, asceticism, and meditation set man free not only from the impurity of sin, but also from the laws of nature. They gave him powers transcending nature, which raised him above the earth and the gods, secured divine power for him, and carried him back to the origin and essence of all things.

However fantastic this structure, the positive basis of it was supposed to be revelation or the Veda. Extensive as the commentaries became owing to the rivalry of the schools, vast as were the accumulations of ritual and legends, of verbal explanations and sentences of the saints – the main questions became only the more obscure. What saint was qualified to decide? Which school taught the correct doctrine? By whom and in what way was the Veda revealed? Were the words or the sense of the poems decisive? How were the undeniable contradictions, the opposition between various passages, to be removed? In order to obtain a firm footing the Brahmans found themselves invariably driven back to the idea of the world-soul. If in the interpretation of the words and the meaning of the Veda, in the effort to smoothe down the contradictions between them, and the necessity of finding a consistent mode of explanation and proof, the Indian acuteness and delicate power of distinction grew into a hair-splitting division of words and ideas, into the most minute and complicated logic, the conception of the world-soul, the theories of the creation, impelled them, on the other hand, to explain the whole life of the world from one source, and to compass it with one measure.

Forced as they were in these two directions, they were unavoidably brought at last to attempt to establish the theory independently, to construct Brahman and the world out of their nature and ideas. In all advanced stages of rational thought, fancy, or its reverse-side, abstraction, has seldom omitted to reflect the whole world as an organised unity in the brain of man, and to bring the oppressive multitude of things under some general conceptions and points of view. In the schools of the Brahmans it was the formal side of these philosophical efforts, the method of inquiry and investigation, in connection with the sacred scriptures, religious traditions, and the attempts to fix the interpretation of them, which was specially developed. On the other hand, the anchorites in the forest opposed these efforts from the opposite direction with the combined body of religious conceptions, with their views of Brahman. The highest object of the eremite was meditation, absorption in Brahman. The more uniform their own lives, the stiller the life around them, the greater the ferment in their minds. When these penitents were weary of the world of gods and marvels which occupied their dreams, when the endless multitude of bright pictures confounded their senses, they turned to the central conception of the world-soul, and attempted to think of this more deeply, acutely, comprehensively, to see the connection of Brahman and the world more clearly, and explain it more distinctly. As the fancy, and consequently the abstracting power of the Indians, was always superior to the power of division, and remained the basis of their view of the world, their constructive speculation, which was occupied with the contents of their religious conceptions, surpasses their powers of formal thought. The latter had indeed no other office than to arrange and organise the pictures supplied by the former.

The attempt to construct a world on general principles was neither peculiarly bold nor peculiarly new. The way was prepared by the idea of the world-soul as the origin and essence of the gods and the world, and the path was opened for a constructive philosophy, developing the world out of ideas and thoughts by this abstract single deity existing beside and above the plurality of mythological forms, the exaltation of the saints above the gods, and the consequent degradation of the latter, the perpetual suspension of the natural order of things by the transcendental and mystical world of the gods and saints, the removal of the boundaries between heaven and earth, and the constant confusion of the two worlds. After this, there was nothing remarkable in putting abstract ideas in the place of the gods, and removing entirely the distinction between the transcendental world and the world of sense. In fact, the philosophy of the Indians is, in the first instance, nothing but the dogmatism of the Brahmans translated into abstractions – nothing but scholasticism, and their philosophical ethics no less than their religious require the liberation from the body.

Like all the productions of the Indian mind, with the exception of the Veda, the philosophical systems of the Indians, which arose in the seventh and sixth century B.C., are no longer before us in their original shape. We only possess them in a pointed compendious form which could not have been obtained without long labours, many revisions and reconstructions – and which is in reality of quite recent date. We are not in a position to ascertain the previous or intermediate stages through which the Brahmans passed before they brought their system to a close; here, as everywhere in India, the later forms have completely absorbed their predecessors, the fathers are lost in the children. Hence we can only guess at the original form of these philosophical systems. Still the order of succession, and the essential contents, are fixed not only on internal evidence – by the unalterable progress of development, which cannot be passed over – but also by the fragments of genuine old Indian philosophy contained in the system of Buddha, and in their turn presupposing the existence of certain ideas and points of view.372

The oldest system of the Indians contains much more theology than philosophy. In part proceeding from the sacred scriptures and the traditional side of religion, it is an explanation of the Veda; in part it is an attempt to found a dogma on a basis of its own, on philosophical construction. In this sense, regarded as exegetical theology brought to a close by philosophical proof of dogma, this system is denoted by the name Vedanta, i. e. end or object of the Veda. Combined with the portion explanatory of the Veda, it is also called Mimansa, i. e. inquiry; and the section which expounds the ceremonial side of religion bears the name of the first or work-investigation – Karma-mimansa; the speculative part is called Uttara-mimansa (metaphysics), or Brahma-mimansa, i. e. investigation of Brahman. The method of the first part, the investigation of works, is obviously taken from the requirements of the situation at the moment, and the process common in the schools of the Brahmans; the object was to establish a definite kind of interpretation for explanation and exegesis, and the development of dogma from the passages in the Veda. On the consideration of a subject follows the doubt or the contradiction, which has been or can be raised on the other side. The contradiction is met by refutation on counter-grounds. This negative proof is followed by positive proof, that the view of the opponents is in itself untenable and worthless, and last comes the final proof of the thesis maintained by demonstration that it agrees with the whole system. In this manner we find philosophy treating first the authority of revealed scriptures, the Veda, then the relation of tradition to it, the statements of the sages, the commentary on the revelation. Then the variations and coincidences of revelation and their inner connection are developed, and so the system passes on to the explanation of the Veda. It is shown that all passages in the Veda point directly or indirectly to the one Brahman. At certain passages it is shown how a part of these plainly and another part obscurely refer to Brahman, though even the latter refer to it as a being worthy of divine reverence; another part of the passages in the Veda point to Brahman as something beyond our knowledge. The contradictions between the passages in the Veda are proved to be only apparent. These explanations of the passages in the Veda are followed by the doctrine of good works, as the means of salvation, which are either external, like the observation of the ceremonial, the laws of purification, or internal like the quieting and taming of the senses, the hearing and understanding of revelation, and the acknowledgment of Brahman.373