and has entered upon a new and more generous policy. Nothing could
demonstrate this better than the botanical gardens at Buitenzorg. These
are unique in the world, the most complete and the most practical. The
gardens at Kandy in Ceylon are more artistically arranged and are more
beautiful to the ordinary visitor. But these in Java are more scientific
and more helpful to the general development of the country. They include
the chemical investigation of agricultural products, as well as the
testing of their nutritive value and their tensile strength. Rubber
planters are shown proper methods of culture, and also improved methods
of preparing the product for market. Seventy different varieties of rice
have been discovered and classified; and the tillers of the soil have
been shown how they can greatly increase the yield of their acreage. All
the great botanical collections of the world communicate their novelties
and discoveries to the Java gardens. Here at Buitenzorg there is a
school of forestry and another of veterinary science, each of these with
practical demonstrations. Trees and plants in the gardens are grouped in
scientific classes, the palms by themselves, the pines by themselves.
Here the _Victoria regia_, the royal pond-lily, flourishes in its proper
habitat. The avenues of kanari trees, with their lofty overarching
vaulting, are grander than any nave of French cathedral. It will be seen
at once that the Botanical and Experimental Gardens of Java are of
immense service to agriculture and to science throughout the world. We
had the great privilege of being personally conducted through them by
Dr. K. J. Lovink, Director of the Dutch Department of Agriculture,
Industry, and Commerce.
I wish I could say as much for the religious prospects of Java as I can
say for its economical and political prospects. There is even greater
need of change in this regard, for the island has been a very stronghold
of Buddhism, as it is now of Mohammedanism. When driven out from India,
the Buddhist missionaries came to Java and here found a welcome.
Javanese kings erected temples so enormous and so rich in sculpture
that, defaced and decayed as they now are, they have no superiors on
earth. It was, indeed, the fame of Boro Budor, that most attracted us
to Java, and we made a journey of thirteen hours to inspect this
renowned ruin.
Imagine a structure upon an eminence from which it is visible for miles,
yet walled in on one side by a lofty range of mountains, and on the
other side commanding a magnificent view of cultivated plains. Imagine a
temple of brick, like the great pyramid of Egypt, more than five hundred
feet square, with five broad terraces, the uppermost of which encloses
an immense sitting statue of Buddha. The topmost crown of this solid
structure rises more than two hundred feet above the ground.
The wonder of Boro Budor is, however, not the vastness of the structure,
containing though it does an amount of material five times as great as
that of any English cathedral, so much as it is the enormous amount of
artistic work that has been expended upon it. Each of these five
terraces has sculptured upon its side walls some representation in
bas-relief of the legendary incidents of Buddha's existence, not only in
the present state, but in his previous states of being. You walk, as it
were, through a picture-gallery of the life of Buddha. The bas-reliefs
are wrought out with such delicacy as to suggest the influence of Greek
art upon the multitude of artists who toiled for years to produce them.
The effect, at least, is Grecian; and the number of the plaques is so
great that, if they were placed in a continuous row, the line would be
three miles long.
Besides these sculptures, the terrace-walls are interrupted at regular
intervals by four hundred and thirty-six niches or alcove-chapels, each
with its image of Buddha facing the outside world, so that the visitor
approaching the temple cannot fail to see one hundred and nine Buddhas,
or one-fourth of the total number, looking down upon him. Above these
alcove-chapels there are seventy-two small latticed domes, or dagobas,
each with its statue of Buddha imprisoned within, as if he were
preparing himself, by seclusion and meditation, for the final state in
which the great chamber which crowns the structure represents him, I
mean the state of passivity and bliss, which has escaped the evils of
transmigration and has attained to absorption of personal existence of
the impersonal world-force which the Hindu called Brahma.
It is difficult to express the emotions which are roused by such an
exhibition of man's religious instinct, enlightened simply by God's
revelation of himself in the natural world and in the nature of man.
Here is a seeking, but not a finding, a groping in the dark, with only
the faint rays of conscience to show man the way. Yet he who is the
Light of the World was lighting every man, before his advent in the
flesh, and even Buddha was a reformer and an advance upon the Brahmanism
of his time. He preached the doctrine of unselfish devotion, but he
turned it into error by ignoring man's duty to himself. He made
extinction of desire, rather than purification of desire, to be the way
to happiness. How different this from that thirst after God, even the
living God, which animated the Psalmist, or that hungering and thirsting
after righteousness which Christ says shall be filled! Buddha found in
self, rather than in God, the power to overcome evil. Buddhism has no
personal God to whom appeal may be made for strength, and Buddha himself
has no power to answer prayer, since he long ago passed into a realm of
inactivity which is practically indistinguishable from non-existence.
There is no atonement for past sin nor escape from its consequences, but
by the giving up of being. Buddhism is a pessimistic and joyless
religion. Hence it suffers deterioration in competition with the more
active systems. Close by Boro Budor, where Buddhism reached its
culmination, are the temples of Mendoet and Brambanam, which show a
reversion in the popular mind to Hindu Brahmanism. And when the Moslem
came, with his doctrine of a personal and living God, Buddhism had no
force to combat it. Boro Budor, once the center of worship for a mighty
kingdom, now stands alone and desolate in a great wilderness, without
priest or worshiper. Djokjokarta, the next city in size to Batavia, is
to-day more Mohammedan than Buddhist. Christian schools and missions are
doing much to turn this moral wilderness into beauty. To convert Java to
Christianity will add to Christ's subjects the very Queen of the East.
XIV
THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA
A recent book by Prof. C. F. Andrews, formerly of the Cambridge
Brotherhood in Delhi, has arrested my attention, as the best extant
synopsis of the religious history and prospects of that great country.
It is entitled "The Renaissance in India." It has not yet been
reprinted in America, and can be obtained only in the British Isles. I
have thought it worth while to make it known among us by writing a
review, and the following paper might perhaps serve such a purpose.
But, in the writing, so many thoughts and illustrations of my own have
suggested themselves, that I cannot credit Professor Andrews with the
result, except in part, and I submit my work as my own almost as much
as it is his.
Let me first, however, do Professor Andrews the justice of explaining
that the Cambridge Brotherhood is a semimonastic fraternity of the
Church of England, which aims to convert India to Christianity by
indoctrinating its higher classes. All its members are bachelors, and
their pure life as well as their learning and liberality are attractive
to educated heathen seekers after God. Our author is himself a devout
believer in a preexistent Christ, and he recognizes some rays of
Christ's light in Buddha and in Confucius. This faith has led him to
sever his connection with the Cambridge Brotherhood of late, and to
connect himself with the school of Rabindranath Tagore, whom the
British Government has recently knighted for his poetical gifts and for
his political loyalty. Members of the Brotherhood have thought this
leaving of their body a mistake of judgment, and too great a concession
to a rival religion, while they still admire the self-devotion which
leads their former brother to carry his advocacy of Christianity into
what he regards as the most promising school of Hinduism. With this
explanation I proceed to the treatment of my subject.
* * * * *
In the fifteenth century the European world was intellectually born
again. The barbarian Goths and Vandals had put an end to the Roman
Empire, and learning had taken refuge in the monasteries. Even that
learning had become ecclesiastical. Precious manuscripts of the Greek
classics had their original writing wiped off to make room for monkish
homilies. The people were in ignorance and were ruled by the priests.
But the Crusades had brought about a new intercourse between the West
and the East. The fall of Constantinople sent Greek books and Greek
scholars to Venice and to Rome. Greek art inspired Michelangelo and
Raphael. A great wave of enthusiasm for the new learning swept over
Europe. The printing-press multiplied copies of the old literature
and put them in the hands of the poor. It was the precursor of a new
civilization, and because it was a new birth of thought, we call
it the Renaissance.
The Renaissance, however, needed another factor to complement it. Not
merely intellect was sleeping, but also man's moral nature. Conscience
and will required new stimulus. Religious reformation was necessary as
much as intellectual revival. Greek books brought with them the vice, as
well as the art, of the East. Renaissance without Reformation produced
the Borgias and their unspeakable wickedness. Erasmus without Luther
would never have saved Europe from ruin. It was the new view of Christ
that showed men their sins, brought repentance and hope, purified
literature, gave power to social truth, and united with the new learning
to make possible our modern civilization. It was a triumph of
Christianity over the powers of darkness, for Christianity involves both
Renaissance and Reformation.
A similar intellectual change has been coming over the Eastern world,
and has been awakening the slumbering nations. Who would have foretold a
half-century ago that Turkey and Persia, Japan and China, would now have
constitutional governments and legislative assemblies? The world has
moved very fast during the past decade. Modern inventions have given new
wings to thought, the nations have been coming to self-consciousness,
freedom is in the air, even war is teaching the absurdity of committing
the destiny of a whole people to the arbitrary rule of any single
monarch. The success of Japan in her struggle with Russia aroused the
whole East. China has awaked from the sleep of ages. And India is the
scene of unrest, and will not be satisfied until her vast populations
are given a larger share in her government.
India has witnessed the beginnings of her renaissance. The universities
which her rulers have established have diffused the new learning. But
they have also raised up a host of educated men, some of whom can find
no employment except in sedition. False philosophies, imported from the
West, have made these same men agnostic, and have disposed them to put
evolution in place of God. Old religions have lost even their little
power to control the moral life, and a vague desire for independence of
all restraint has led to revolutionary and even anarchistic plots. We
have some of the same dangers in our Southern States. The negro is in
many cases receiving a higher education than he can utilize, and is
becoming a possible leader of revolt, while there is a vast inflammable
multitude of uneducated negroes whom he can incite to violence and
disorder. As with us, Christianity is needed side by side with
education, so in India to-day, intellectual renaissance needs to be
supplemented by religious reformation.
A glance at the history of India's religious systems will help our
understanding of the problem. The earliest record is that of the
Rig-Veda. It is a recognition of the powers of nature, and an exaltation
of them to divine honor and worship. The apostle Paul gives us the
further explanation that this deification of God's works was the result
of a previous unwillingness to retain the personal God in their
knowledge. To worship God's manifestations is to lose the sense of his
unity and his moral governance. Men preferred the sun in the heavens to
the Sun of Righteousness. They lost sight of the true God in self-chosen
admiration of his works. "While the Semitic mind gravitated toward the
ethical and the personal, the Aryan gravitated toward the philosophic
and the impersonal."
The Upanishads are the second series of Hindu scriptures. These
practically identify the human soul, as well as all natural objects,
with the supreme God. The self is only a manifestation of Brahma. The
trend is toward absolute pantheism. The individual is lost in the whole,
and the realization of this is salvation. But humanity cannot be content
without the semblance of personality in God, and since everything has
become divine, it was easy to regard not only natural powers, but also
personal beings as gods. Polytheism was the result. Vishnu and Siva,
gods of reproductive and destructive powers, came to be worshiped.
Incarnation and transmigration followed. The incarnation was not the
incarnation of the supreme Brahma, but of one of the subordinate
deities, Vishnu, and even this incarnation was but a temporary
assumption of human form--a vanishing manifestation, to be put off again
like a worn-out garment when the real god returned to his heaven. The
Hindu Trimurti was never the Christian Trinity; for Christ is not only
the supreme God manifest in the flesh, but also the eternal Revealer of
God, who takes our humanity to be a part of himself forever, the
partaker of his inmost being and the sharer of his throne.
While we credit Hinduism with the idea of incarnation, we regard it as
only showing this to be a necessity of human thought, and as far from
satisfying man's longings for union with God. Gautama Buddha,
passionless and lost in the contemplation of his own excellence, is not
the Christian Redeemer, who daily bears our burdens and takes upon
himself, in order that he may take away, the sin of the world. And what
shall we say of the other deities of the Hindu pantheon, but that they
are personifications of every human caprice and vice. The Krishna of the
Puranas has infected all India with his licentiousness, and has given
sanction to the worst forms of lust.
The growth of caste was another result of the loss of a personal and
moral God and the deification of his works. Since all things came to be
regarded as manifestations of deity, the order of society and its
distinctions became fixed. The origin of caste is to be found in the
superiority of the Aryan conqueror to the Dravidian aborigines. The
people of light complexion looked down on the dark-skinned race, and
drove them to the wall. Intermarriage between the two classes of the
population became abhorrent to the ruling class, and all manner of
restrictions were put upon their intercourse, till even the shadow of
the outcaste falling upon the Brahman brought contamination. Let us not
blame the Aryan too hastily, for in South Africa and in our own Southern
States we see the same denial that God has made of one blood all the
races of men, and the same exclusion of the darker race from all
privileges of human brotherhood. Slave-owners were shocked when Abraham
Lincoln lifted his hat to salute a negro, and Southern men protested
when President Roosevelt entertained Booker Washington at his table.
Christian proclamation of human brotherhood constitutes one of the chief
obstacles to the success of the gospel in India.
The low place of woman and her lack of education is another obstacle
which must be removed if India is to profit by the renaissance of
learning. This undervaluing of the physically weak is itself a fruit of
man's apostasy from God. And as Brahmanism set its stamp of approval
upon distinctions of caste and fixed them for centuries, so it was with
woman's position and influence. She was condemned to inferiority. She
became a mere instrument of man's pleasure, or a mere drudge in his
household. She never sat with him at his meals, but ate what was left
after he had been served; she never walked by his side, but always
followed behind, when she was not shut up in the zenana at home. One of
the best signs of a new civilization in India is the growing conviction
among the higher classes that woman must be educated, if her children
are to emerge from their superstitions and become of use in the modern
world. The suttee has been abolished by law, but child-widowhood yet
remains to curse the lives of millions. There is no better proof that
Christianity is permeating society with its influence than is found in
the increasing number of girls who are seeking education in our mission
schools and colleges. Pundita Ramabai has become a glory to her own
countrymen, as much as has Rabindranath Tagore by his utterance, "The
regeneration of the Indian people to my mind, directly and perhaps
solely, depends upon the removal of this condition of caste." We may add
that the dominion of caste and the degradation of woman will come to an
end together, and nothing but Christianity will abolish them.
The renaissance of learning is not enough. A new spirit of love is
needed to solve the problems of India. For there is no country of the
world where racial antagonisms are so felt. Entirely apart from the
distinctions of caste, which are racial in their origin, there is the
distinction of Hindu from Mohammedan, which has its origin in religion.
Remember that, of India's population, sixty-five millions are Moslems,
while one hundred and eighty millions are Hindus. The Hindu men of caste
cannot help paying some respect to the Mohammedans, for they are
compelled to acknowledge their financial and executive power, just as
they acknowledge, without admiring, the power of their British rulers.
They cannot treat Moslems as outcastes, but they will not associate
with them; and they cherish a settled antipathy to them. All this the
Mohammedans heartily reciprocate. English policy has in times past
cultivated this mutual dislike, lest union between the two religious
sects should lead to the formation of a party too strong for British
rule to keep in subjection. One religion has been used to defeat the
influence of the other. Of late years only has it been true that both
have been forced to recognize the impartial justice of British rule;
and this recognition has been gained by the gradual admission of able
men from both parties to many important judicial and administrative
positions in the Indian government. But the antagonism of religions
still remains, and it constitutes a most serious bar in the way of a
united India.
* * * * *
There are signs of an approaching reformation in India which will
supplement its intellectual renaissance. Just as the growing power of
Christianity in the second and third centuries of our era was shown by
the competition of new and imitative religions like that of Mithra, and
by spasmodic attempts on the part of the old heathenism to interpret
its mythology symbolically and to reform its moral practice; just as the
growing power of the gospel in the fifteenth century led the Roman
Church to slough off some of its abuses and to tolerate among its
adherents reformers before the Reformation; so in India the new learning
from the West and the missionary proclamation of the gospel have brought
about a state of religious unrest which could only be allayed by efforts
on the part of Hindus and Moslems alike to interpret their faiths more
rationally and to prove that these faiths were equal if not superior to
Christianity itself. The Brahmo-Somaj, which Ram Mohun Roy founded at
the end of the eighteenth century, largely as a result of his horror at
the murder of his sister by suttee, has led to the abolition of that
cruelty. Ram Mohun Roy sought to purge Hinduism of its corruptions by
appealing to its earlier and purer scriptures. He was the first to
establish a vernacular press in India, and, with Alexander Duff, the
first English schools. Though he did not formally profess Christianity,
he studied our Christian Scriptures, acknowledged their value and
influence, and published a book entitled "The Precepts of Jesus."
Another Hindu who exerted great influence during the half-century just
passed was Keshub Chunder Sen. He passionately adored Christ as his true
Master. Yet he was practically Unitarian, and his later years belied the
promise of his brilliant beginnings. Though a member of the
Brahmo-Somaj, he split the body in two by his violation of its
prohibition of child-marriage, and wasted his strength in attempts to
combine Western rationalism with the ecstatic fervors of the East. As
the result, the Brahmo-Somaj has declined, until in numbers and
influence it has now hardly more than five thousand adherents in all
India. Mozumdar was one of its representatives who sought to give
Oriental interpretation of Jesus, but one without ethical or saving
power. The Arya-Samaj is a more consistent effort to reform Hindu
religion by bringing it back to the purer standards of the Vedas. Swami
Dayanand was the founder of the society. He was led to renounce idolatry
by seeing a mouse eat food offered to an idol and run without hindrance
over the idol's robes and hands. Of all the reforming bodies, the
Arya-Samaj most retains the confidence of the masses in the north of
India. But its tenets are not acceptable to the educated classes of the
south, and it needs a further infusion of both science and religion.
Thus far we have treated only of Hindu progress. A word must be said of
progress among the Moslem population of India. Here the Aligarh Movement
demands attention. Sir Seyd Ahmad Khan was its leader. He was of noble
family, entered the English service, and took part with the British in
crushing the mutiny of 1857. When the Mohammedan population afterward
fell under suspicion, he gathered round him a company of liberal young
men and sought by educational means to bridge the gulf between Moslem
and English. He claimed that British rule in India represented Christian
civilization, and that this is no enemy to Islam, but only its
complement and helper. He saw that only religion could heal the breach
and rescue Islam from decline. He founded the Aligarh College in Delhi,
and devoted himself to the cultivation of friendliness, not only
between Moslem and English, but also between Moslem and Hindu. This
college is one of the strongest educational forces in North India.
Returning to Hindu progress, we mark the work of such men as the Swami
Vivekananda. It will be remembered that he represented India at our
Chicago Parliament of Religions, where Joseph Cook challenged the
priests of the Orient to answer Lady Macbeth's question, "Who shall
cleanse this red right hand?" Vivekananda sought to blend Christian
philanthropy with the Vedantic philosophy. Identity with the Supreme is
to be attained, not only by passive contemplation, but also by active
unselfish service. But this truth was mixed with strange interpretations
of Scripture. Jesus' declaration, "I and my Father are one," was made to
mean, "Every man and woman is God." And Vivekananda was quite willing
himself to be worshiped. His fundamental error, indeed, was his lack of
the sense of sin. He said to his audience in Chicago: "The Hindus refuse
to call you sinners. Ye divinities on earth, sinners? It is a sin to
call a man so. It is a standing libel on human nature." Yet, in spite of
this deification of self and of all humanity, he did much to inspire
pity for the poor, to awaken India to self-consciousness, and to give
hope of national unity.