THE EPICS, AND LATER
I. VISHNU-KRISHNA
We now enter upon an age in which the old gods, Indra and Brahma,
retire to the background, while Vishnu and Siva stand in the forefront
of the stage.
The Hindus are of the same opinion as the Latin poet: _ferrea nunc
aetas agitur_. We are now living in an Iron Age, according to them;
and it began in the year 3102 B.C., shortly after the great war
described in the Mahabharata. The date 3102, I need hardly remark, is
of no historical value, being based merely upon the theories of
comparatively late astronomers; but the statement as a whole is
important. The Great War marks an epoch. It came at the end of what
may be called the pre-historic period, and was followed by a new age.
To be strictly correct, we must say that the age which followed the
Great War was not new in the sense that it introduced any startling
novelties that had been unknown previously; but it was new in the
sense that after the Great War India speedily became the India that we
know from historical records. A certain fusion of different races,
cultures, and ideals had to take place in order that the peculiar
civilisation of India might unfold itself; and this fusion was
accomplished about the time of the Great War, and partly no doubt by
means of the Great War, some ten centuries before the Christian era.
The story of the Great War is told with a wild profusion of mythical
and legendary colouring in the Mahabharata, an epic the name of which
means literally "The Great Tale of the Bharata Clan." It relates how
the blind old King Dhritarashtra of Hastinapura had a hundred sons,
known as the Kuru or Kaurava princes, the eldest of whom was
Duryodhana, and Dhritarashtra's brother Pandu had five sons, the
Pandava brethren; how the Pandavas were ousted by the Kauravas from
the kingdom, the eldest Pandava prince Yudhishthira having been
induced to stake the fortunes of himself and his brethren on a game of
dice, in which he was defeated; how the five Pandavas, with their
common wife Draupadi (observe this curious and ugly feature of
polyandry, which is quite opposed to standard Hindu morals, but is by
no means unparalleled in early Indian literature[20]) retired into
exile for thirteen years, and then came back with a great army of
allies, and after fierce and bloody battles with the Kauravas and
their supporters in the plain of Kurukshetra at last gained the
victory, slew the Kauravas, and established Yudhishthira as king in
Hastinapura. Among the Pandavas the leading part is played by the
eldest, Yudhishthira, and the third, Arjuna; of the others, Bhima, the
second, is a Hercules notable only for his strength, courage, and
fidelity, while the twins Nakula and Sahadeva are colourless figures.
Krishna plays an important part in the story; for on the return of
the Pandavas to fight the Kauravas he accompanies Arjuna as his
charioteer, and on the eve of the first battle delivers to him a
discourse on his religion, the Bhagavad-gita, or Lord's Song, which
has become one of the most famous and powerful of all the sacred books
of India.
[Footnote 20: See H. Raychaudhuri, _Materials for the Study of the
Early History of the Vaishnava Sect, p. 27_.]
Now if the Mahabharata were as homogeneous even as the Iliad and
Odyssey, which give us a fairly consistent and truthful picture of a
single age, we should be in a very happy position. Unfortunately this
is not the case. Our epic began as a Bharata, or Tale of the Bharata
Clan, probably of very moderate bulk, not later than 600 B.C., and
perhaps considerably earlier; and from that time onward it went on
growing bigger and bigger for over a thousand years, as editors
stuffed in new episodes and still longer discourses on nearly all the
religious and philosophic doctrines admitted within the four walls of
Hinduism, until it grew to its present immense bulk, which it claims
to amount to 100,000 verses. Thus it pictures the thought not of one
century but of more than ten, and we cannot feel sure of the date of
any particular statement in it. Nevertheless we can distinguish in a
general way between the old skeleton of the story, in which the theme
is treated in simple epic fashion, society is far freer than in later
days and no one objects to eating beef, from the additional matter, in
which the tale is recast in a far more grandiose vein and is padded
out with enormous quantities of moral, religious, and philosophic
sermons. The religion too is different in the different parts. In the
older portions the gods who are most popular are Indra, Agni, and
Brahma--not the neuter abstract Brahma, but the masculine Brahma, the
Demiurge, who corresponds more or less to Prajapati of the Brahmanas
and is represented in classical art as a four-headed old man reciting
the Vedas--and Krishna seems to figure only as a hero or at best as a
demigod; but the later parts with fine impartiality claim the
supremacy of heaven variously for Siva, Brahma, and Vishnu; and
Vishnu, as we have seen, is sometimes identified with Krishna, notably
in the chapters known as the Bhagavad-gita.
The gods have changed somewhat since earlier days. Indra has settled
down in the constitutional monarchy of Paradise assigned to him by
the Brahmanas; he now figures as the prototype of earthly kings,
leading the armies of the gods to war against the demons when occasion
requires, and passing the leisure of peace in the enjoyment of
celestial dissipation. His morals have not improved: he is a debonair
debauchee. Brahma the Creator, a more popular version of Prajapati, is
still too impersonal to have much hold on the popular imagination; the
same is the case with Agni the Fire-god. Plainly there was a vacancy
for a supreme deity whose character was powerful enough to move men's
souls, either through awe or love; and for this vacancy there were two
strong candidates, Vishnu and Siva, who in course of time succeeded to
the post and divided the supremacy between them.
Vishnu has altered immensely since last we met him. First, after an
extraordinary change in his own character, he has been identified with
Narayana, and then both of them have been equated with Krishna. The
development is so portentous that it calls for a little study.
We have seen that in the Vedas Vishnu appears to be, and in the
Brahmanas certainly is, the embodied Spirit of the Sacrifice, and that
ritual mysticism has invented for him a supreme home in the highest
heaven. But in the Epics he has developed into a radiant and gracious
figure of ideal divinity, an almighty saviour with a long record of
holy works for the salvation of mankind, a god who delights in moral
goodness as well as in ritual propriety, and who from time to time
incarnates himself in human or animal form so as to maintain the order
of righteousness. Symbolism has further endowed him with a consort,
the goddess Sri or Lakshmi, typifying fortune; sometimes also he is
represented with another wife, the Earth-goddess. The divine hawk or
kite Garuda, who seems to have been originally the same as the eagle
who in the Rigvedic legend carried off the soma for Indra, has been
pressed into his service; he now rides on Garuda, and bears his figure
upon his banner. I have already suggested a possible explanation of
this evolution (above, p. 41): owing to his close association with
Indra, the most truly popular of Rigvedic deities, the laic
imagination transfused some of the live blood of Indra into the veins
of the priestly abstraction Vishnu. To the plain man Indra was very
real; and as he frequently heard tales of Indra being aided in his
exploits by Vishnu, he came to regard Vishnu as a very present helper
in trouble. The friend of Indra became the friend of mankind. The post
of Indra had already been fixed for him by the theologians; but the
functions of Vishnu, outside the rituals, were still somewhat vaguely
defined, and were capable of considerable expansion. Here was a great
opportunity for those souls who were seeking for a supreme god of
grace, and were not satisfied to find him in Siva; and they made full
use of it, and wholly transformed the personality of Vishnu.
One of the stages in this transformation was the absorption of
Narayana in Vishnu. Narayana was originally a god of a different kind.
The earliest reference to him is in a Brahmana which calls him Purusha
Narayana, which means that it regards him as being the same as the
Universal Spirit which creates from itself the cosmos; it relates that
Purusha Narayana pervaded the whole of nature (SB. XII. iii. 4, 1),
and that he made himself omnipresent and supreme over all beings by
performing a _pancha-ratra sattra_, or series of sacrifices lasting
over five days (ib. XIII. vi. 1, 1). Somewhat later we find prayers
addressed to Narayana, Vasudeva, and Vishnu as three phases of the
same god (Taitt. Aran. X. i. 6). But was Narayana in origin merely a
variety of the Vedic Purusha or our old acquaintance Prajapati? His
name must give us pause. The most simple explanation of it is that it
is a family name: as Karshnayana means a member of the Krishna-family
and Ranayana a man belonging to the family of Rana, so Narayana would
naturally denote a person of the family of Nara. But Nara itself
signifies a _man_: is the etymology therefore reduced to absurdity?
Not at all: Nara is also used as a proper name, as we shall see.[21]
Probably the name really means what naturally it would seem to mean,
"a man of the Nara family"; that Narayana was originally a divine or
deified saint, a _rishi_, as the Hindus would call him; and that
somehow he became identified with Vishnu and the Universal Spirit.
[Footnote 21: It must be admitted that ancient writers give different
etymologies of the name: thus, a poet in the Mahabharata (III.
clxxxix. 3) derives it from _narah_, "waters," and _ayanam_, "going,"
understanding it to mean "one who has the waters for his
resting-place"; Manu (I. 10, with Medhatithi's commentary), accepting
the same etymology, interprets it as "the dwelling-place of all the
Naras"; and in the Mahabharata XII. cccxli. 39, it is also explained
as "the dwelling-place of mankind." But these interpretations are
plainly artificial concoctions.]
This theory really is not by any means as wild as at first sight it
may seem to be. Divine saints are sometimes mentioned in the Rig-veda
and Brahmanas as being the creators of the universe[22]; and they
appear again and again in legend as equals of the gods, attaining
divine powers by their mystic insight into the sacrificial lore. But
there is more direct evidence than this.
[Footnote 22: RV. X. cxxix. 5, SB. VI. i. 1, 1-5. Cf. Charpentier,
_Suparnasage_, p. 387.]
In the Mahabharata there are incorporated two documents of first-rate
importance for the doctrines of the churches that worshipped Vishnu.
One of these is the Bhagavad-gita, or Lord's Song (VI. xxv.-xlii.);
the other is the Narayaniya, or Account of Narayana (XII.
cccxxxvi.-cccliii.). Their teachings are not the same in details,
though on most main points they agree; for they belong to different
sections of the one religious body. Leaving aside the Bhagavad-gita
for the moment, we note that the Narayaniya relates a story that there
were born four sons of Dharma, or Righteousness, viz. Nara, Narayana,
Hari or Vishnu, and Krishna. In other places (I. ccxxx. 18, III. xii.
45, xlvii. 10, V. xlviii. 15, etc.) we are plainly told that Nara is a
previous incarnation of Arjuna the Pandava prince, and Narayana is, of
course, the supreme Deity, who in the time of Arjuna was born on earth
as Krishna Vasudeva, and that in his earlier birth Nara and Narayana
were both ascetic saints. This tradition is very important, for it
enables us to see something of the early character of Narayana. He was
an ancient saint of legend, who was connected with a hero Nara, just
as Krishna was associated with Arjuna; and the atmosphere of
saintliness clings to him obstinately. Tradition alleges that he was
the _rishi_, or inspired seer, who composed the Purusha-sukta of the
Rig-veda (X. 90), and represents him by choice as lying in a
_yoga-nidra_, or mystic sleep, upon the body of the giant serpent
Sesha in the midst of the Ocean of Milk. Thus the worship of Vishnu,
like the worship of Siva, has owed much to the influence of live yogis
idealised as divine saints; though it must be admitted that the yogis
of the Vaishnava orders have usually been more agreeable and less
ambiguous than those of the Saiva community.
We must briefly consider now the religious teachings of the
Bhagavad-gita and the Narayaniya, and then turn to the inscriptions
and contemporary literature to see whether we can find any sidelights
in them. We begin with the Bhagavad-gita, or The Lord's Song.
The Bhagavad-gita purports to be a dialogue between the Pandava prince
Arjuna and Krishna, who was serving him as his charioteer, on the eve
of the great battle. In order to invent a leading motive for his
teaching, the poet represents Arjuna as suddenly stricken with
overwhelming remorse at the prospect of the fratricidal strife which
he is about to begin. "I will not fight," he cries in anguish. Then
Krishna begins a long series of arguments to stimulate him for the
coming battle. He points out, with quotations from the Upanishads,
that killing men in battle does not destroy their souls; for the soul
is indestructible, migrating from body to body according to its own
deserts. The duty of the man born in the Warrior-caste is to fight;
fighting is his caste-duty, his _dharma_, and as such it can entail
upon him no guilt if it be performed in the right spirit. But how is
this to be done? The answer is the leading motive of Krishna's
teaching. For the maintenance of the world it is necessary that men
should do the works of their respective castes, and these works do not
operate as _karma_ to the detriment of the future life of their souls
if they perform them not from selfish motives but as offerings made in
perfect unselfishness to the Lord. This is the doctrine of
_Karma-yoga_, discipline of works, which is declared to lead the soul
of the worshipper to salvation in the Lord as effectually as the
ancient intellectualism preached in the Upanishads and the Samkhya
philosophy. But there is also a third way to salvation, the way
through loving devotion, or _bhakti_, which is as efficacious as
either of the other two; the worshippers of Siva had already preached
this for their own church in the Svetasvatara Upanishad. Besides
treating without much consistency or method of many incidental
questions of religious theory and practice, Krishna reveals himself
for a few instants to Arjuna in his form as Viraj, the universal being
in which all beings are comprehended and consumed. Finally Arjuna is
comforted, and laying the burden of all his works upon Krishna, he
prepares in quiet faith for the coming day of battle.
There are four main points to notice in this teaching. (1) The Supreme
God, superior to Brahma, he who rules by grace and comprehends in his
universal person the whole of existence, is Vishnu, or Hari,
represented on earth for the time being by Krishna Vasudeva. The
author makes no attempt to reconcile the fatalism implied in the old
theory of _karma-samsara_ with his new doctrine of special and general
grace: he allows the two principles to stand side by side, and leaves
for future generations of theologians the delicate task of harmonising
them. (2) Three roads to salvation are recognised in principle, the
intellectual gnosis of the old Upanishads and the Samkhya, the "way of
works" or performance of necessary social duties in a spirit of
perfect surrender to God, and the "way of devotion," continuous loving
worship and contemplation of God. In practice the first method is
ignored as being too severe for average men; the second and third are
recommended, as being suitable for all classes. (3) The way of
salvation is thus thrown open directly to men and women of all castes
and conditions. The Bhagavad-gita fully approves of the orthodox
division of society into castes; but by its doctrine that the
performance of caste-duties in a spirit of sacrifice leads to
salvation it makes caste an avenue to salvation, not a barrier. (4)
The Bhagavad-gita has nothing to say for the animal-sacrifices of the
Brahmans. It recognises only offerings of flowers, fruits, and the
like. The doctrine of _ahimsa_, "thou shalt do no hurt," was making
much headway at the time, and the wholesale animal-sacrifices of the
Brahmans roused general disgust, of which the Buddhists and Jains
took advantage for the propagation of their teachings.
I have previously spoken of the solitary passage in the Chhandogya
Upanishad in which Krishna's name is mentioned, as receiving the
teachings of Ghora Angirasa, and it will now be fitting to see how far
these teachings are reflected in the Bhagavad-gita. Ghora compares the
functions of life to the ceremonies of the _diksha_ (see above, p.68):
and this is at bottom the same idea as the doctrine of _karma-yoga_
preached again and again in the Bhagavad-gita. "Whatever be thy work,
thine eating, thy sacrifice, thy gift, thy mortification, make of it
an offering to me," says Krishna (IX. 27); all life should be regarded
as a sacrifice freely offered. Then Ghora continues: "In the hour of
death one should take refuge in these three thoughts: 'Thou art the
Indestructible, Thou art the Unfailing, Thou art instinct with
Spirit.' On this there are these two verses of the Rig-veda:
Thus upward from the primal seed
From out the darkness all around
We, looking on the higher light,
Yea, looking on the higher heaven,
Have come to Surya, god midst gods,
To him that is the highest light, the highest light."
In the Bhagavad-gita (IV. 1 ff.) Krishna announces that he preached
his doctrine to Vivasvan the Sun-god, who passed it on to his son the
patriarch Manu; elsewhere in the Mahabharata (XII. cccv. 19) the
Satvata teaching is said to have been announced by the Sun. Ghora in
his list of moral virtues enumerates "mortification, charity,
uprightness, harmlessness, truthfulness"; exactly the same attributes,
with a few more, are said in the Bhagavad-gita to characterise the man
who is born to the gods' estate (XVI. 1-3). Ghora's exhortation to
think of the nature of the Supreme in the hour of death is balanced by
Krishna's words: "He who at his last hour, when he casts off the body,
goes hence remembering me, goes assuredly into my being" (VIII. 5; cf.
10). These parallels are indeed not very close; but collectively they
are significant, and when we bear in mind that the author of the
Bhagavad-gita is eager to associate his doctrine with those of the
Upanishads, and thus to make it a new and catholic Upanishad for all
classes, we are led to conclude that its fundamental ideas,
sanctification of works (_karma-yoga_), worship of a Supreme God of
Grace (_bhakti_) by all classes, and rejection of animal sacrifices
(_ahimsa_) arose among the orthodox Kshatriyas, who found means to
persuade their Brahmanic preceptors to bring it into connection with
their Upanishads and embellish it with appropriate texts from those
sources. Very likely Krishna Vasudeva, if not the first inventor of
these doctrines, was their most vigorous propagator.
Now what are the teachings of the Narayaniya? It appears to contain
two accounts. In the first we have the story of king Vasu Uparichara,
who is said to have worshipped the Supreme God Hari (Vishnu) in
devotion without any animal-sacrifices, in accordance with doctrines
ascribed to the Aranyakas, i.e. the later sections of the Brahmanas,
including the older Upanishads. This fully agrees with the standpoint
of the Bhagavad-gita. The second account gives the story of a visit
paid by the divine saint Narada to a mysterious "White Island,"
Sveta-dvipa, inhabited by holy worshippers of God who are, strangely
enough, described as having heads shaped like umbrellas and feet like
lotus-leaves and as making a sound like that of thunder-clouds[23];
they are radiant like the moon, have no physical senses, eat nothing,
and concentrate their whole soul on rapturous adoration of the spirit
of God, which shines there in dazzling brightness to the eye of
perfect faith. Narayana there reveals himself to Narada, and sets
forth to him the doctrine of Vasudeva. According to this, Narayana has
four forms, called _murtis_ or _vyuhas_. The first of these is
Vasudeva, who is the highest soul and creator and inwardly controls
all individual souls. From him arose Samkarshana, who corresponds to
the individual soul; from Samkarshana issued Pradyumna, to whom
corresponds the organ of mind, and from Pradyumna came forth
Aniruddha, representing the element of self-consciousness. Observe in
passing that these are all names of heroes of legend: Samkarshana is
Vasudeva's brother Bala-rama, Pradyumna was the son and Aniruddha the
grandson of Vasudeva. Narayana then goes on to speak of the creation
of all things from himself and their dissolution into himself, and of
his incarnations in the form of the Boar who lifted up on his tusk the
earth when submerged under the ocean, Narasimha the Man-lion who
destroyed the tyrant Hiranya-kasipu, the Dwarf who overthrew Bali,
Rama Bhargava who destroyed the Kshatriyas, Rama Dasarathi, of whom we
shall have something to say later. Krishna Vasudeva the slayer of
Kamsa of Mathura, the Tortoise, the Fish, and Kalki. Then follow some
further details, among them a statement that this doctrine was
revealed to Arjuna at the beginning of the Great War--a clear
reference to the Bhagavad-gita--that at the beginning of every age it
was promulgated by Narayana, that it requires activity in pious works,
that at the commencement of the present age it passed from him to
Brahma, from him to Vivasvan the Sun-god, from him to the patriarch
Manu, etc., that it does not allow the sacrifice of animals, and that
for salvation the co-operative grace of Narayana is necessary. Most of
this doctrine is already in the Bhagavad-gita; what is not found in
the latter is the account of the mysterious White Island, the theory
of _vyuhas_ or emanations, which represents Vasudeva as issuing from
Narayana and so forth, and the details of Narayana's incarnations. It
is therefore a distinct textbook of the Satvata or Pancharatra church,
not much later than the Bhagavad-gita. According to it, the Supreme
Being is Narayana, the Almighty God who reveals himself as highest
teacher and saintly sage, whose legendary performance of a five-days'
sacrifice (above, p. 76) has gained for his doctrine the title of
Pancharatra. Next in order of divinity is Krishna Vasudeva, whose
tribal name of Satvata has furnished the other name of this church;
then follow in due order Samkarshana, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha, all of
his family; and with Vasudeva is closely associated the epic hero
Arjuna, a prototype for this mortal pair being discovered in the
legendary Nara and Narayana.
[Footnote 23: It is obvious that this island lies in a latitude
somewhere between that of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, and that the
professors who have endeavoured to locate it on the map of Asia have
wasted their time.]
Comparing then the Bhagavad-gita with the Narayaniya, we see that in
all essentials they agree, but in two points they differ. Both preach
a doctrine of activity in pious works, _pravritti_, in conscious
opposition to the inactivity of the Aupanishadas and Samkhyas; but
the Narayaniya does not dwell much on this topic, and limits activity
to strictly religious duties, while the Bhagavad-gita develops the
idea so as to include everything, thus sketching out a bold system for
the sanctification of all sides of life, which enables it to open the
door of salvation directly to all classes of mankind. Secondly, the
Bhagavad-gita says nothing about the theory of emanations or _vyuhas_
in connection with Vasudeva; probably its author knew the legends of
Samkarshana, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha, but he apparently did not know
or at least did not accept the view that these persons were related as
successive emanations from Vasudeva. We must therefore look round for
sidelights which may clear up the obscurities in the history of this
church.
Our first sidelight glimmers in the famous grammar of Panini, who
probably lived in the fifth century B.C., or perhaps early in the
fourth century. Panini informs us (IV. iii. 98) that from the names of
Vasudeva and Arjuna the derivative nouns _Vasudevaka_ and _Arjunaka_
are formed to denote persons who worship respectively Vasudeva and
Arjuna. Plainly then in the fifth century Krishna Vasudeva and Arjuna
were worshipped by some, probably in the same connection as is shown
in the Mahabharata. Perhaps Vasudeva had not yet been raised to the
rank of the Almighty; it is more likely that he was still a deified
hero and teacher, and Arjuna his noblest disciple. But both of them
were receiving divine honours; they had been men, and were now gods,
with bands of adorers.
Our next evidence is an inscription found not long ago on the base of
a stone column at Besnagar near Bhilsa, in the south of Gwalior
State,[24] and must have been engraved soon after 200 B.C. It reads as
follows: "This Garuda-column of Vasudeva the god of gods was erected
here by Heliodorus, a worshipper of the Lord [_bhagavata_], the son of
Diya [Greek _Dion_] and an inhabitant of Taxila, who came as
ambassador of the Greeks from the Great King Amtalikita [Greek
_Antialcidas_] to King Kasiputra Bhagabhadra the Saviour, who was
flourishing in the fourteenth year of his reign"; and below this are
two lines in some kind of verse, which announce that "three immortal
steps ... when practised lead to heaven--self-control, charity, and
diligence." Here, then, in the centre of a thriving kingdom probably
forming part of the Sunga empire, Vasudeva is worshipped not as a
minor hero or teacher, but as the god of gods, _deva-deva_; and he is
worshipped by the Greek Heliodorus, visiting the place as an
ambassador from Antialcidas, a Hellenic king of the lineage of
Eucratides, who was reigning in the North-West of India. Doubtless the
act of Heliodorus was a diplomatic courtesy, in order to please King
Kasiputra Bhagabhadra. But observe the nature of his act. He caused to
be erected a Garuda-column, that is, a pillar engraved with the figure
of Garuda, the sacred bird of Vishnu; and he added a verse about
"three immortal steps" (_trini amutapadani_), as leading to heaven,
which sounds suspiciously like an attempt to moralise the old mythical
feature of the three Steps of Vishnu. Plainly Vasudeva had now risen
in this part of the country from being the teacher of a church of
Vishnu-Narayana to the rank of its chief god, with which he had become
fully identified.
[Footnote 24: See Rapson, _Ancient India_, p. 156 ff., _Cambridge
Hist. India_, i, pp. 521, 558, 625, H. Ray Chaudhuri, _Materials for
the Study of the Early History of the Vaishnava Sect_, p. 59, and
Ramaprasad Chanda, _Archaeology and Vaishnava Tradition_ in _Memoirs of
the Archaeological Survey of India_, No. 5, p. 151 ff., etc.]
Another inscription, a few years later in date, has been found in
Besnagar. It is a mere fragment, but it supplements the other; for it
states that a certain _bhagavata_, or "worshipper of the Lord," named
Gotama-puta (Gautama-putra in Sanskrit) erected a Garuda-column for
the Lord's temple in the twelfth year from the coronation of King
Bhagavata. This king is perhaps the same as the person of that name
who appears in some genealogical lists as the last but one of the
Sunga Kings.[25]
[Footnote 25: See R. Chanda, _ut supra_, p. 152 f.]
Next in date is an inscription on a stone slab found at Ghasundi,
about four miles north-east of Nagari, in Udaipur State. It was
engraved about 150 B.C., and records that a certain _bhagavata_, or
"worshipper of the Lord," named Gajayana, son of Parasari, caused to
be erected in the Narayana-vata, or park of Narayana, a stone chapel
for the worship of the Lords Samkarshana and Vasudeva.[26] Here their
worship is associated with that of Narayana.
[Footnote 26: It is noteworthy that Samkarshana is here mentioned
first, as is also the case in the Nanaghat inscription of about 100
B.C., which mentions them as descendants of the Moon in a list of
various deities. This order may possibly be due to the fact that in
ancient legend Samkarshana, or Bala-bhadra, is the elder brother of
Krishna Vasudeva, and it does not entitle us to draw the inference
that he ever received equal honour with Vasudeva. Special devotees of
Samkarshana are mentioned in the Kautiliya, the famous treatise on
polity ascribed to Chanakya, the minister of Chandra-gupta Maurya, who
came to the throne about 320 B.C. (Engl. transl. 1st edn., p. 485). I
suspect that in its present form the Kautiliya is considerably later
than 320 B.C.; but in any case the existence of special votaries of
Samkarshana is no proof that he ever ranked as equal to Vasudeva, just
as the presence of special worshippers of Arjuna is no proof that
Arjuna was ever considered a peer of Vasudeva. On the Ghasundi
inscription see R. Chanda, _ut supra_, p. 163 ff., etc.; for the
Nanaghat inscription, _ibidem_ and _Memoirs of the Arch. Survey of
India_, No. 1, with H. Raychaudhuri's _Materials, etc._, p. 68 ff.]
Passing over an inscription at Mathura which records the building of a
part of a sanctuary to the Lord Vasudeva about 15 B.C. by the great
Satrap Sodasa,[27] we note that the grammarian Patanjali, who wrote his
commentary the Mahabhashya upon Panini's grammar about 150 B.C., has
something to say about Krishna Vasudeva, whom he recognises as a divine
being (on IV. iii. 98). He quotes some verses referring to him. The
first (on II. ii. 23) is to the following effect: "May the might of
Krishna accompanied by Samkarshana increase!" Another (on VI. iii. 6)
speaks of "Janardana with himself as fourth," that is to say, Krishna
with three companions: the three may be Samkarshana, Pradyumna, and
Aniruddha, or they may not. Another verse (on II. ii. 34) speaks of
musical instruments being played at meetings in the temples of Rama and
Kesava. Rama is Bala-rama or Bala-bhadra, who is the same as
Samkarshana, and Kesava is a title of Krishna, which was applied also to
Vishnu or Narayana according to the Bodhayana-dharma-sutra, which may be
assigned to the second century B.C. The Ovavai, or Aupapatika-sutra, a
Jain scripture which may perhaps belong to the same period, mentions (Sec.
76) _Kanha-parivvaya_, wandering friars who worshipped Krishna. Thus
literature as well as inscriptions shows that Krishna Vasudeva and his
brother Samkarshana were in many places worshipped as saints of a church
of Vishnu-Narayana about 150 B.C., and that in some parts Vasudeva was
recognised as the Almighty himself about 200 B.C.
[Footnote 27: R. Chanda, _ut supra_, p. 169 f.]
In another passage (on III. i, 26) Patanjali describes dramatic and
mimetic performances representing the killing of Kamsa by Vasudeva.
Altogether his references show that the legend and worship of Vasudeva
bulked largely in the popular mind at this time in India north of the
Vindhya mountains. Vasudeva was adored as the great teacher and
hero-king, in whom the gods Vishnu and Narayana were incarnated; and
he was associated with two great cycles of legend, the one that
related his birth at Mathura, his victory over the tyrant Kamsa, his
establishment of the colony at Dvaraka, and his adventures until his
death and translation to heaven, and the other telling of his share in
the Great War as ally of the five Pandava brethren. Both cycles
represented him as supported by princely heroes. The Mathura-Dvaraka
legend gave him his brother Bala-bhadra or Samkarshana, his son
Pradyumna, and his grandson Aniruddha, whom theologians about the
beginning of the Christian era fitted into their philosophical schemes
by representing them as successive emanations from him; and the
Mahabharata furnished him with the Pandavas, whose heroic tale soon
created for them a worship everywhere. As we have seen, there were
adorers of Arjuna already in the fifth century B.C.; and in the first
century B.C. there seems to be evidence for a worship of all the five
together with Vasudeva, for an inscription has been found at Mora
which apparently mentions a son of the great Satrap Rajuvula,
probably the well-known Satrap Sodasa, and an image of the "Lord
Vrishni," probably Vasudeva, and of the "Five Warriors."[28] Already
the poets of the Mahabharata have taken the first step towards the
deification of the Pandavas by finding divine fathers for each of
them, making Yudhishthira the son of Dharma or Yama, the god of the
nether world, Arjuna son of Indra, Bhima son of Vayu the Wind-god, and
Nakula and Sahadeva offspring of the Asvins. Hundreds of caverns
throughout India are declared by popular legend to have been their
dwellings during their wanderings; and a noble monument to their
memory has been raised by one of the great Pallava kings of Conjevaram
who in the seventh century A.D. carved out of the solid rock on the
seashore at Mamallapuram the fine chapels that bear their names.
Doubtless all these heroes from both cycles were once worshipped in
the usual manner, with offerings of food, incense, lights, flowers,
etc., and singing of hymns on their exploits--chiefly in connection
with Vasudeva; but all this worship is now utterly forgotten, except
where echoes of it linger in popular legend.
[Footnote 28: R. Chandra, _ut supra_, p. 165 f.]
Our survey of the religion of Vasudeva has brought us down to a date
which cannot indeed be exactly fixed, but which may be placed
approximately in the second century of our era. This religion, as we
have seen, arose and grew great in the fertile soil of the spiritual
needs and experiences of India. It began by moulding a personal God
out of ancient figures of myth and legend, and it surrounded him with
a hierarchy of godly heroes. Though its doctrines were often
philosophically incongruous and incoherent, its foundation was a true
religious feeling; it gave scope to the mystic raptures of the ascetic
and the simple righteousness of the laic; and it claimed for its
heroes, Vasudeva and his kindred and his friends the Pandava brethren,
a grave and dignified hero-worship. In short, it is a serious Indian
religion with an epic setting.
And now suddenly and most unexpectedly an utterly new spirit begins to
breathe in it. To the old teachings and legends are added new ones of
a wholly different cast. The old epic spirit of grave and manly
chivalry and godly wisdom is overshadowed by a new passion--adoration
of tender babyhood and wanton childhood, amorous ecstasies, a hectic
fire of erotic romance.
Of this new spirit there is no trace in the epic, except in one or two
late interpolations. But the Hari-vamsa, which was added as an
appendix to the Mahabharata not very long before the fourth century
A.D., is already instinct with it. It adds to the epic story of
Krishna a fluent verse account of his miraculous preservation from
Kamsa at his birth, his childhood among the herdsmen and herdswomen
of Vraja (the Doab near Mathura) with its marvellous freaks and
wonderful exploits, his amorous sports with the herdswomen, in fact
all the sensuous emotionalism on which the later church of Krishna has
ever since battened. About the same time appeared the Vishnu-purana,
which includes most of the same matter as the Hari-vamsa; and some
centuries later, probably about the tenth century, there was written a
still more remarkable book, the Bhagavata-purana, of which a great
part is taken up with the romance of Krishna's babyhood and childhood,
and especially his amorous sports. In the Bhagavata the later worship
of Krishna found its classic expression. In the Hari-vamsa and
Vishnu-purana religious emotion is still held under a certain
restraint; but in the Bhagavata it has broken loose and runs riot. It
is a romance of ecstatic love for Krishna, who is no longer, as in the
Vishnu-purana, the incarnation of a portion of the Supreme Vishnu, but
very God become man, wholly and utterly divine in his humanity. It
dwells in a rapture of tenderness upon the God-babe, and upon the
wanton play of the lovely child who is delightful in his naughtiness
and marvellous in his occasional displays of superhuman power; it
figures him as an ideal of boyish beauty, decked with jewels and
crested with peacock's feathers, wandering through the flowering
forests of Vraja, dancing and playing on his flute melodies that fill
the souls of all that hear them with an irresistible passion of love
and delight; it revels in tales of how the precocious boy made wanton
sport with the herdswomen of Vraja, and how the magic of his fluting
drew them to the dance in which they were united to him in a rapture
of love. The book thrills with amorous, sensuous ecstasy; the thought
of Krishna stirs the worshipper to a passion of love in which tears
gush forth in the midst of laughter, the speech halts, and often the
senses fail and leave him in long trances. Erotic emotionalism can go
no further.
Where did this new spirit come from? Some have laboured to prove that
it had its source in Christianity; others have argued that it was
Christianity that was the debtor to India in this respect. Both
theories are in the main impossible. This cult of the child Krishna
arose in India, and, with the possible exception of a few obscure
tales, it never spread outside the circle of Indian religion. But how
and where did it arise? That is a question hard to answer; there is no
direct evidence, and we can only balance probabilities. Now what are
the probabilities?
The worship of Krishna as a babe, a boy, and a young man among the
herdsfolk of Vraja seems to have no relation with the older form of
the religion as set forth in the epic textbooks. It is a new element,
imported from without. The most natural conclusion then is that it
came from the people who are described in it, some tribe that pastured
their herds in the woodlands near Mathura. Perhaps these herdsfolk
were Abhiras, ancestors of the modern Ahir tribes. If so, it would be
natural that their cult should attract attention; for sometimes
Abhiras counted for something in society, and we even find a
short-lived dynasty of Abhira kings reigning in Nasik in the third
century A.D.[29] Be this as it may, it seems very likely that some
pastoral tribe had a cult of a divine child blue or black of hue, and
perhaps actually called by them Krishna or Kanha, "Black-man" (observe
that henceforth Krishna is regularly represented with a blue skin), a
cult in which gross rustic fantasy had free play; that it came in some
circles to be linked on to the epic cycle of Krishna Vasudeva; and
that some Bhagavatas, seeing in it latent possibilities, gave it
polished literary expression and thereby established it as a part of
the Vasudeva legend. It quickly seized upon the popular imagination
and spread like wild-fire over India. For it satisfied many needs. The
tenderness of the father and still more of the mother for the little
babe, their delight in the sports of childhood, the amorist's pleasure
in erotic adventure, and, not by any means least, the joy in the
romantic scenery of the haunted woodlands--all these instincts found
full play in it, and were sanctified by religion.
[Footnote 29: Rapson, _Catal. of the Coins of the Andhra Dynasty,
etc._, pp. xliv, lxii, lxix, cxxxiii-cxxxvi, clxii; _Indian Antiq._,
xlvii, p. 85, etc.]
II. RAMA
Rama is the hero of the Ramayana, the great epic ascribed to Valmiki,
a poet who in course of time has passed from the realm of history into
that of myth, like many other Hindus. The poem, as it has come down to
us, contains seven books, which relate the following tale. Dasa-ratha,
King of Ayodhya (now Ajodhya, near Faizabad), of the dynasty which
claimed descent from the Sun-god, had no son, and therefore held the
great _Asva-medha_, or horse-sacrifice, as a result of which he
obtained four sons, Rama by his queen Kausalya, Bharata by Kaikeyi,
and Lakshmana and Satrughna by Sumitra. Rama, the eldest, was also
pre-eminent for strength, bravery, and noble qualities of soul.
Visiting in his early youth the court of Janaka, king of Videha, Rama
was able to shoot an arrow from Janaka's bow, which no other man could
bend, and as a reward he received as wife the princess Sita, whom
Janaka had found in a furrow of his fields and brought up as his own
daughter. So far the first book, or Bala-kanda. The second book, or
Ayodhya-kanda, relates how Queen Kaikeyi induced Dasa-ratha, sorely
against his will, to banish Rama to the forests in order that her son
Bharata might succeed to the throne; and the Aranya-kanda then
describes how Rama, accompanied by his wife Sita and his faithful
brother Lakshmana, dwelt in the forest for a time, until the demon
King Ravana of Lanka, by means of a trick, carried off Sita to his
city. The Kishkindha-kanda tells of Rama's pursuit of Ravana and his
coming to Kishkindha, the city of Sugriva, the king of the apes, who
joined him as an ally in his expedition; and the Sundara-kanda
describes the march of their armies to Lanka, which is identified with
Ceylon, and their crossing over the straits. Then comes the
Yuddha-kanda, which narrates the war with Ravana, his death in battle,
the restoration of Sita, the return of Rama and Sita to Ayodhya, and
the crowning of Rama in place of Dasa-ratha, who had died of grief
during his exile. Finally comes the Uttara-kanda, which relates that
Rama, hearing some of the people of Ayodhya spitefully casting
aspersions on the virtue of Sita during her imprisonment in the palace
of Ravana, gave way to foolish jealousy and banished her to the
hermitage of Valmiki, where she gave birth to twin sons, Kusa and
Lava; when these boys had grown up, Valmiki taught them the Ramayana
and sent them to sing it at the court of Rama, who on hearing it sent
for Sita, who came to him accompanied by Valmiki, who assured him of
her purity; and then Sita swore to it on oath, calling upon her mother
the Earth-goddess to bear witness; and the Earth-goddess received her
back into her bosom, leaving Rama bereaved, until after many days he
was translated to heaven.
Such is the tale of Rama as told in the Valmiki-ramayana--a clean,
wholesome story of chivalry, love, and adventure. But clearly the
Valmiki-ramayana is not the work of a single hand. We can trace in it
at least two strata. Books II.-VI. contain the older stratum; the rest
is the addition of a later poet or series of poets, who have also
inserted some padding into the earlier books. This older stratum, the
nucleus of the epic, gives us a picture of heroic society in India at
a very early date, probably not very long after the age of the
Upanishads; perhaps we shall not be far wrong if we say it was
composed some time before the fourth century B.C. In it Rama is simply
a hero, miraculous in strength and goodness, but nevertheless wholly
human; but in the later stratum--Books I. and VII. and the occasional
insertions in the other books--conditions are changed, and Rama
appears as a god on earth, a partial incarnation of Vishnu, exactly as
in the Bhagavad-gita and other later parts of the Mahabharata the hero
Krishna has become an incarnation of Vishnu also. The parallel may
even be traced further. Krishna stands to Arjuna in very much the same
relation as Rama to his brother Lakshmana--a greater and a lesser
hero, growing into an incarnate god and his chief follower. This is
thoroughly in harmony with Hindu ideas, which regularly conceive the
teacher as accompanied by his disciple and abhor the notion of a voice
crying in the wilderness; indeed we may almost venture to suspect that
this symmetry in the epics is not altogether uninfluenced by this
ideal. This, however, is a detail: the main point to observe is that
Rama was originally a local hero of the Solar dynasty, a legendary
king of Ayodhya, and as the Puranas give him a full pedigree, there is
no good reason to doubt that he really existed "once upon a time." But
the story with which he is associated in the Ramayana is puzzling. Is
it a pure romance? Or is it a glorified version of some real
adventures? Or can it be an old tale, perhaps dating from the early
dawn of human history, readapted and fitted on to the person of an
historical Rama? The first of these hypotheses seems unlikely, though
by no means impossible. The second suggestion has found much favour.
Many have believed that the story of the expedition of Rama and his
army of apes to Lanka represents a movement of the Aryan invaders from
the North towards the South; and this is supported to some extent by
Indian tradition, which has located most of the places mentioned in
the Ramayana, and in particular has identified Lanka with Ceylon. In
support of this one may point to the Iliad of Homer, which has a
somewhat similar theme, the rape and recovery of Helen by the armies
of the Achaeans, the basis of which is the historical fact of an
expedition against Troy and the destruction of that city. But there
are serious difficulties in the way of accepting this analogy, the
most serious of all being the indubitable fact that there is not a
tittle of evidence to show that such an expedition was ever made by
the Aryans. True, there were waves of emigration from Aryan centres
southward in early times; but those that travelled as far as Ceylon
went by sea, either from the coasts of Bengal or Orissa or Bombay.
Besides, the expedition of Rama is obviously fabulous, for his army
was composed not of Aryans but of apes. All things considered, there
seems to be most plausibility in the third hypothesis[30]. Certainly
Rama was a local hero of Ayodhya, and probably he was once a real
king; so it is likely enough that an old saga (or sagas) attached
itself early to his memory. And as his fame spread abroad, principally
on the wings of Valmiki's poem, the honours of semi-divinity began to
be paid to him in many places beyond his native land, and about the
beginning of our era he was recognised as an incarnation of Vishnu
sent to establish a reign of righteousness in the world. In Southern
India this cult of Rama, like that of Krishna, has for the most part
remained subordinate to the worship of Vishnu, though the Vaishnava
church there has from early times recognised the divinity of both of
them as embodiments of the Almighty. But its great home is the North,
where millions worship Rama with passionate and all-absorbing love.
[Footnote 30: I regret that I cannot accept the ingenious hypothesis
lately put forward by Rai Saheb Dineshchandra Sen in his _Bengali
Ramayanas_. The story of the Dasaratha-jataka seems to me to be a
garbled and bowdlerised snippet cut off from a possibly pre-Valmikian
version of the old Rama-saga; the rest of the theory appears to be
quite mistaken.]
III. SOME LATER PREACHERS
With all its attractions and success, the new Krishnaism did not
everywhere overgrow the older stock upon which it had been engrafted.
There were many places in which the early worship of Vishnu and
Vasudeva remained almost unchanged. The new legends of Krishna's
childhood might indeed be accepted in these centres of conservatism,
but they made little difference in the spirit and form of the worship,
which continued to follow the ancient order. In some of them the
Bhagavad-gita, Narayaniya, and other epic doctrinals still remained
the standard texts, which theologians connected with the ancient
Upanishads and the Brahma-sutra summarising the latter; in other
centres there arose, beginning perhaps about the seventh century A.D.,
a series of Samhitas, or manuals of doctrine and practice for the
Pancharatra[31] sect, which, though in essentials agreeing with the
Narayaniya, taught a different theory of cosmogony and introduced the
worship of the goddess Sri or Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu, as the
agency or energy through which the Supreme Being becomes active in
finite existence; and in yet other places other texts were followed,
such as those of the Vaikhanasa school. This worship of
Vishnu-Vasudeva on the ancient lines was peculiarly vigorous among the
representatives of Aryan culture in the South, who had introduced the
cults of Vishnu and Siva with the rest of the Aryan pantheon into the
midst of Dravidian animism. Hinduism, transplanted into the Dravidian
area, has there remained more conservative than anywhere else, and has
clung firmly to its ancient traditions. There is nothing of Dravidian
origin in the South Indian worship of Vishnu and Siva; they are
entirely Aryan importations. But they have become thoroughly
assimilated in their southern home, and each of them has produced a
huge mass of fine devotional literature in the vernaculars. In the
Tamil country the church of Vishnu boasts of the Nal-ayira-prabandham,
a collection of Tamil psalms numbering about 4,000 stanzas composed by
twelve poets called Alvars, which were collected about 1000 A.D.;
and the worship of 'Siva is equally well expressed in the Tiru-murai,
compiled about the twelfth century, of which one section, the Devaram,
was put together about the same time as the Nal-ayira-prabandham. Both
the Tiru-murai and the Nal-ayira-prabandham breathe the same spirit of
ecstatic devotion as the Bhagavata-purana; they are the utterances of
wandering votaries who travelled from temple to temple and poured
forth the passionate raptures of their souls in lyrical praise of
their deities. Through these three main channels the stream of
devotion spread far and wide through the land. Like most currents of
what we call "revivalism," it usually had an erotic side; and the
larger temples frequently have attached to them female staffs of
attendant votaries and _corps de ballet_ of very easy virtue. But this
aspect was far more marked in neo-Krishnaism, which often tends to
intense pruriency, than in the other two cults. The Alvars pay
little regard to the legends of Krishna, and concentrate their
energies upon the worship of Vishnu as he is represented in the great
temples of Srirangam, Conjevaram, Tirupati, and similar sanctuaries.
[Footnote 31: On this name see above, p. 86.]
About the beginning of the ninth century the peaceful course of
Vaishnava religion was rudely disturbed by the preaching of Samkara
Acharya. Samkara, one of the greatest intellects that India has ever
produced, was a Brahman of Malabar, and was born about the year 788.
Taking his stand upon the Upanishads, Brahma-sutra, and Bhagavad-gita,
upon which he wrote commentaries, he interpreted them as teaching the
doctrine of Advaita, thorough monistic idealism, teaching that the
universal Soul, Brahma, is absolutely identical with the individual
Soul, the _atma_ or Self, that all being is only one, that salvation
consists in the identification of these two, and is attained by
knowledge, the intuition of their identity, and that the phenomenal
universe or manifold of experience is simply an illusion (_maya_)
conjured up in Brahma by his congenital nature, but really alien to
him--in fact, a kind of disease in Brahma. This was not new: it had
been taught by some ancient schools of Aupanishadas, and was very like
the doctrine of some of the Buddhist idealists; but the vigour and
skill with which Samkara propagated his doctrines threatened ruin to
orthodox Vaishnava theologians, and roused them to counter-campaigns.
Among the Vaishnava Brahmans of the South who won laurels in this
field was Yamunacharya, who lived about 1050, and was the grandson of
Natha Muni, who collected the hymns of the Alvars in the
Nal-ayira-prabandham and founded the great school of Vaishnava
theology at Srirangam. In opposition to Samkara's monism, Yamunacharya
propounded the doctrine of his school, the so-called Visishtadvaita,
which was preached with still greater skill and success by his famous
successor Ramanuja, who died in 1137. Ramanuja's greatest works are
his commentaries on the Brahma-sutra and Bhagavad-gita. In them he
expounds with great ability the principles of his school, namely, that
God, sentient beings or souls, and insentient matter form three
essentially distinct classes of being; that God, who is the same as
Brahma, Vishnu, Narayana, or Krishna, is omnipotent, omnipresent, and
possessed of all good qualities; that matter forms the body of souls,
and souls form the body of God; that the soul attains salvation as a
result of devout and loving meditation upon God, worship of him, and
study of the scriptures; and that salvation consists in eternal union
of the soul with God, but not in identity with him, as Samkara taught.
The scriptures on which Ramanuja took his stand were mainly the
Upanishads, Brahma-sutra, and Bhagavad-gita; but he also acknowledged
as authoritative the Pancharatra Samhitas, in spite of their
divergences in details of doctrine, and it is from them that his
church has derived the worship of Sri or Lakshmi as consort of Vishnu,
which is a very marked feature of their community and has gained for
them the title of Sri-vaishnavas. But Ramanuja was much more than a
scholar and a writer of books; he was also a man of action, a
"practical mystic." Like Samkara, he organised a body of _sannyasis_
or ascetic votaries, into which, however, he admitted only Brahmans,
whereas Samkara opened some of the sections of his devotees to
non-Brahmans; but on the other hand he was far more liberal than
Samkara in the choice of his congregations, for he endeavoured to
bring men of the lowest castes, Sudras and even Pariahs, within the
influence of his church, though he kept up the social barrier between
them and the higher castes, and he firmly upheld the principle of the
Bhagavad-gita that it is by the performance of religious and social
duties of caste, and not by knowledge alone, that salvation is most
surely to be won. He established schools and monasteries, reorganised
the worship of the temples, usually in accordance with the Pancharatra
rules, and thus placed his church in a position of such strength in
Southern India that its only serious rival is the church of Siva.
Nimbarka, who probably flourished about the first half of the twelfth
century, preached for the cult of Krishna a doctrine combining monism
with dualism, which is followed by a small sect in Northern India.
Ananda-tirtha or Madhva, in the first three quarters of the thirteenth
century, propounded for the same church a theory of thorough dualism,
which has found many admirers, chiefly in the Dekkan. Vallabhacharya,
born in 1479, founded a school of Krishna-worshippers which claims a
"pure monism" without the aid of the theory of _maya_, or illusion,
which is a characteristic of Samkara's monism. This community has
become very influential, chiefly in Bombay Presidency; but in recent
times it has been under a cloud owing to the scandals arising from a
tendency to practise immoral orgies and from the claims of its
priesthood, as representing the god, to enjoy the persons and property
of their congregations.
Besides these and other schools which were founded on a basis of
Sanskrit scholastic philosophy, there have been many popular religious
movements, which from the first appealed directly to the heart of the
people in their own tongues.
The first place in which we see this current in movement is the
Maratha country. Here, about 1290, Jnanesvara or Jnanadeva, popularly
known as Jnanoba, composed his Jnanesvari, a paraphrase of the
Bhagavad-gita in about 10,000 Marathi verses, as well as a number of
hymns to Krishna and a poem on the worship of Siva. To the same period
belonged Namadeva, who was born at Pandharpur, according to some in
1270 and according to others about a century later. Then came
Ekanatha, who is said to have died in 1608, and composed some hymns
and Marathi verse-translations from the Bhagavata. The greatest of all
was Tukaram, who was born about 1608.[32] In the verses of these
poets the worship of Krishna is raised to a level of high
spirituality. Ramananda, who apparently lived between 1400 and 1470
and was somehow connected with the school of Ramanuja, preached
salvation through Rama to all castes and classes of Northern India,
with immense and enduring success. To his spiritual lineage belongs
Tulsi Das (1532-1623), whose Rama-charita-manasa, a poem in Eastern
Hindi on the story of Valmiki's Ramayana, has become the Bible of the
North. The same influences are visible in the poems of Kabir, a Moslem
by birth, who combined Hindu and Muhammadan doctrines into an eclectic
monotheism, and is worshipped as an incarnation of God by his sect. He
died in 1518. A kindred spirit was Nanak, the founder of the Sikh
church (1469-1538).[33]
[Footnote 32: The student may refer to Sir R. G. Bhandarkar's
_Vaisnavas and Saivas_ (in Buehler's _Grundriss_, p. 74 ff.,) J. N.
Farquhar's _Outline of the Relig. Liter. of India_, p. 234 f., 298
ff., and my _Heart of India_, p. 60 ff., for some details on these
poets.]
[Footnote 33: See Farquhar, _ut supra_, p. 323 ff.; _Heart of India_,
p. 49 f., etc.]
By the side of these upward movements there have been many which have
remained on the older level of the Bhagavata. The most important is
that of Visvambhara Misra, who is better known by his titles of
Chaitanya and Gauranga (1485-1533); he carried on a "revival" of
volcanic intensity in Bengal and Orissa, and the church founded by
him is still powerful, and worships him as an incarnation of Krishna.
IV. BRAHMA AND THE TRIMURTI
_Brahma_, the Creator, a masculine noun, must be carefully
distinguished from the neuter _Brahma_, the abstract First Being. The
latter comes first in the scale of existence, while the former appears
at some distance further on as the creator of the material world (see
above, p. 60 f.). In modern days Brahma has been completely eclipsed
by Vishnu and Siva and even by some minor deities, and has now only
four temples dedicated to his exclusive worship.[34] But there was a
time when he was a great god. In the older parts of the Mahabharata
and Ramayana he figures as one of the greater deities, perhaps the
greatest. But in the later portions of the epic he has shrunk into
comparative insignificance as compared to Vishnu and Siva, and
especially to Vishnu. This change faithfully reflects historical
facts. During the last four or five centuries of the millennium which
ended with the Christian era the orthodox Vedic religion of the
Brahmans had steadily lost ground, and the sects worshipping Vishnu
and Siva had correspondingly grown in power and finally had come to
be recognised as themselves orthodox. Brahma, as his name implies, is
the ideal Brahman sage, and typifies Vedic orthodoxy. He is
represented as everlastingly chanting the four Vedas from his four
mouths (for he has four heads), and he bears the water-pot and rosary
of eleocarpus berries, the symbols of the Brahman ascetic. But Vedic
orthodoxy had to make way for more fascinating cults, and the Vedic
Brahman typified in the god Brahma sank into comparative unimportance
beside the sectarian ascetics. Still the old god, though shorn of much
of his glory, was by no means driven from the field. The new churches
looked with reverence upon his Vedas, and often claimed them as divine
authority for their doctrines; and though each of them asserted that
its particular god, Siva or Vishnu, was the Supreme Being, and
ultimately the only being, both of them allowed Brahma to retain his
old office of creator, it being of course understood that he held it
as a subordinate of the Supreme, Siva or Vishnu as the case might be.
Meanwhile, at any rate between the third and the sixth centuries,
there existed a small fraternity who regarded Brahma as the Supreme,
and therefore as identical with the abstract Brahma; but although they
have left a record of their doctrines in the Markandeya-purana and the
Padma-purana, they have had little influence on Indian religion in
general.
[Footnote 34: Those are at Pushkar in Rajputana, Dudahi in
Bundelkhand, Khed Brahma in Idar State, and Kodakkal in Malabar.]
A love of system--unfortunately not always effectual--is a notable
feature of the Hindu mind in dealing with most subjects, from grammar
to _Ars Amoris_; and this instinct inspired some unknown theologian
with the idea of harmonising the three gods into a unity by
representing in one compound form or _Trimurti_ Brahma as creator,
Vishnu as the sustaining power in the universe, and Siva as the force
of dissolution which periodically brings the cosmos to an end and
necessitates in due course new cycles of being.[35] This ingenious
plan has the advantage that it is without prejudice to the religion of
any of the gods concerned, for all the three members of this trinity
are subordinate to the Supreme Being, or Param Brahma, whom the
Vaishnavas identify with Vishnu in his highest phase, Para-Vasudeva,
and distinguish from his lower phase, the Vishnu of this compound,
while the Saivas draw a corresponding distinction between Parama-Siva,
the god in his transcendent nature, and the Siva who figures in the
Trimurti. So the most orthodox Vaishnava and the most bigoted Saiva
can adore this three-headed image of the Trimurti side by side with
easy consciences.
[Footnote 35: This idea in germ is already suggested in Maitr. Upan.,
IV. 5 f., and V. 2.]
This idea of the three gods in one, though it is embodied in some
important works of sculpture such as the famous Trimurti in the Caves
of Elephanta, has not had much practical effect upon Hindu religion.
But it has given birth to at any rate one interesting little sect, the
worshippers of Dattatreya, who are to be found mainly in the Maratha
country. The legend of the saint Dattatreya, which is already found in
the Mahabharata and Puranas and is repeated with some modifications
and amplifications in modern works of the sect,[36] relates that when
the holy Rishi Atri subjected himself to terrific austerities in order
to obtain worthy progeny, the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva visited
him and promised him the desired boon; accordingly his wife Anasuya
gave birth to three sons, of whom the first was the Moon, an
incarnation of Brahma, the second Dattatreya, an incarnation of
Vishnu, and the third the holy but irascible saint Durvasas,
representing Siva. Dattatreya dwelt in a hermitage in the Dekkan: he
indulged in marriage and wine-drinking, which however were not
detrimental to his miraculous sanctity and wisdom, and he became
famous as a benefactor to humanity. He is said to have lived in the
time of Kartavirya Arjuna, the Haihaya king, and to have counselled
the latter to remain on his throne when he wished to resign it. In
older works of plastic art he is sometimes represented by the simple
expedient of placing the three gods side by side, sometimes by
figuring him as Vishnu in the guise of a Yogi with some of the
attributes of the other two; but in modern times he usually appears as
a single figure with three heads, one for each of the great gods, and
four or six arms bearing their several attributes (usually the rosary
and water-pot of Brahma, the conch and discus of Vishnu, and the
trident and drum of Siva), while he is accompanied by four dogs of
different colours, supposed to represent the four Vedas, and a
bull.[37] Observe that in all these types Dattatreya is conceived as
an embodiment of the three gods, which is comparatively a later idea,
for in the oldest version of the legend he was simply an incarnation
of Vishnu; but as Vishnu was regarded not only as a member of the
Trinity but also the Supreme Being over and above it, Dattatreya as
his representative has come to include in his personality the nature
of all the trio. There is, moreover, something curious in his
character. His love of wine and woman is a singular trait, and is
quite incompatible with the nature of an ideal saint. It smells of
reality, and strongly suggests that he was not a figment of the
religious imagination but an actual man; and this is supported by the
tradition of his association with Kartavirya Arjuna, who, in spite of
all the mythical tales that are related of him, really seems to have
been a king of flesh and blood. Thus we may venture to see in him yet
another example of the metamorphosis so common in India from a saint
to an incarnation of the god worshipped by him.
[Footnote 36: See Vasudevananda Sarasvati's _Datta-purana_ and Ganesa
Narayana Karve's _Dattatreya-sarvasva_.]
[Footnote 37: On these figures see Gopinatha Rau, _Elements of Hindu
Iconography_, i. p. 252 ff. The dogs seem to be connected with the
Vedic Sarama, on whom see Charpentier, _Die Suparnasage_, p. 91.]
V. TWO MODERN INSTANCES
In Northern India, and especially in Bengal, you will often find
Hindus worshipping a god whom they call Satya-narayana and believe to
be an embodiment of Vishnu himself. The observance of this ritual is
believed to bring wealth and all kinds of good fortune; a Sanskrit
sacred legend in illustration of this belief has been created, and you
may buy badly lithographed copies of it in most of the bazaars if you
like, besides which you will find elegant accounts of the god's career
on earth written by quite a number of distinguished Bengali poets of
the last three centuries. But curiously enough this "god," though
quite real, was not a Hindu at all; he was a Bengali Moslem, a fakir,
and the Muhammadans of Bengal, among whom he is known as Satya Pir,
have their own versions of his career, which seem to be much nearer
the truth than those of the Hindus. In their stories he figures simply
as a saint, who busied himself in performing miracles for the benefit
of pious Moslems in distress; and as one legend says that he was the
son of a daughter of [H.]usain Shah, the Emperor of Gaur, and another
brings him into contact with Man Singh, it is evident that tradition
ascribed him to the sixteenth century, which is probably quite near
enough to the truth.[38]
[Footnote 38: See Dineshchandra Sen, _Folk-literature of Bengal_, p.
99 ff.]
The next instance belongs to the twentieth century. A few years ago
there died in the village of Eral, in Tinnevelly District, a local
gentleman of the Shanar caste named Arunachala Nadar. There was
nothing remarkable about his career: he had lived a highly respectable
life, scrupulously fulfilled his religious duties, and served with
credit as chairman of the municipal board in his native village. If he
had done something prodigiously wicked, one might have expected him to
become a local god at once, in accordance with Dravidian precedent;
but he being what he was, his post-mortem career is rather curious.
For a legend gradually arose that his kindly spirit haunted a certain
place, and little by little it has grown until now there is a regular
worship of him in Eral, and pilgrims travel thither to receive his
blessings, stimulated by a lively literary propaganda. He is
worshipped under the name of "The Chairman God," in affectionate
memory of his municipal career, and as Jagadisa, or "Lord of the
Universe," a phase of the god Siva.
CONCLUSION
Can we trace any uniform principle running through the bewildering
variety of changes that we have observed?
Consider the changes through which Vishnu has passed. At the beginning
a spirit of vaguely defined personality, he appears successively as a
saviour-god, as the mystic saint Narayana, as the epic warriors
Krishna and Rama, as a wanton blue-skinned herd-boy fluting and
dancing amidst a crowd of wildly amorous women, and as the noble ideal
of God preached by the great Maratha and Ramanandi votaries, not to
mention the many other incarnations that have delighted the Hindu
imagination. What does all this mean? It means that the history of a
god is mainly moulded by two great factors, the growth of the people's
spiritual experience and the character of its religious teachers. As
the stream of history rolls on, it fills men's souls with deeper and
wider understanding of life. Old conceptions are pondered upon,
explored, tested, sometimes rejected, sometimes accepted with a new
and profounder content, and thus enlarged they are applied to the old
ideals of godhead. When Indian society had organised itself out of
tribal chaos and settled down under an established monarchical
government, it made Indra the king of the gods, ruling with the same
forms and under the same conditions as a human sovereign. When men of
finer cast realised that the kingdom of the spirit is higher than
earthly royalty, they turned away from Indra and set their souls upon
greater conceptions, ideals of vaster spiritual forces, mystic
infinitudes. Attracted thus to worships such as those of Siva and
Vishnu, they filled them with their own visions and imparted to these
gods the ideals of their own strivings, making them into Yogisvaras,
Supreme Mystics. And so the sequence of change has gone on through the
generations. Most potently it has been effected by the characters of
the preachers and teachers of religion. Almost every teacher who has a
personality of his own, whose soul contains thoughts other than those
of the common sort, stamps something of his own type upon the ideal of
his god which he imparts to his followers, and which may thereby come
to be authoritatively recognised as a canonical character of the god.
India is peculiarly liable to this transference of personality from
the guru to the god whom the guru preaches, because from immemorial
times India has regarded the guru as representative of the god, and
often deifies him as a permanent phase of the deity. Saivas declare
that in the guru who teaches the way of salvation Siva himself is
manifested: Vaishnavas tell the same tale, and find a short road to
salvation by surrendering their souls to him. We have seen cases of
apotheosis of the guru in modern and medieval times; reasoning from
the known to the unknown, we may be sure that it took place no less
regularly in ancient ages, and brought about most of the surprising
changes in the character of gods which we have noticed. Sometimes the
gurus have only preached some new features in the characters of their
gods; sometimes, as is the Hindu fashion, they have also exhibited in
their own persons, their dress and equipment, their original ideas of
divinity, as, for example, Lakulisa with his club; and their sanctity
and apotheosis have ratified their innovations in theology and
iconology, which have spread abroad as their congregations have grown.
Thus the gurus and their congregations have made the history of their
deities, recasting the gods ever anew in the mould of man's hopes and
strivings and ideals. There is much truth in the saying of the
Brahmanas: "In the beginning the gods were mortal."
* * * * *
End of Project Gutenberg's Hindu Gods And Heroes, by Lionel D. Barnett