of the Rig-veda, we meet with priests who claimed the power of making
sacrifices to the gods in a manner especially acceptable to them, and
who thus rose to great power, influence, and wealth. To this ancient
period of Hindu history we can trace the origin of the Hindu castes,
essentially a result of priestly egotism, and which up to this day has
weighed down the Indian people like a nightmare. The organisation of
the priestly class into an exclusive, privileged body, as well as the
final development of the castes, did not, however, take place until the
time represented by the second period of the ancient Hindu literature;
by the literature, that is to say, of the Yajur-vedas or the Vedas of
the sacrificial formulæ, and the Brâhmanas and Sûtras, both of which
describe the sacrificial ceremonies, the former with, the latter without
theological comments. The contents of these works illustrate the origin
of the Hindu hierarchy and castes; but it is often necessary to read
between the lines. The greatest authority on this rich literature, Prof.
A. Weber, of Berlin, in the tenth volume of the series “Hindu Studies”
which he edits, has published his inquiries concerning this subject in a
very learned treatise, entitled “Collectanea über die Kastenverhältnisse
in der Brâhmana und Sûtra,” of which I have made considerable use in the
following pages.
In these books the Brahmans assert their claims with startling candor. In
several passages—to begin with the most striking feature—they announce
themselves as real gods wandering on earth. “There are two kinds of
gods,” it is said, “the true gods and the learned Brahmans, who recite
the Veda.” “The Brahman represents all gods.” “He is the god of gods.”
This is perhaps the most remarkable instance of priestly arrogance in all
history. Thus it cannot at all surprise us that the Brahmans, as earthly
gods, placed themselves above king and nobility; but it appears rather
strange that the kings and warriors should have allowed to them the first
place in the government. But as a matter of fact, they did do so and were
compelled to do so. From mysterious legends in the great Hindu epic poem
we infer, that bloody wars have been waged for supremacy, in which the
nobility was defeated.
The legends of this epos are thus important additions to the sources
with which we are concerned. This struggle, which the Brahmans in all
likelihood caused to be fought out for them by the great masses of the
people, has been ascribed to the warriors having robbed the priests
of the treasures which the latter had acquired by the performance of
the sacrifices; and this part of the legend is so highly probable
that we cannot treat it as a pure myth, especially if we take into
consideration the circumstances of those times. It was the first attempt
at secularisation in the history of the world, and the results were very
disastrous to those who were then in secular power.
The Brahmans did not establish a social hierarchy or ecclesiastical
ranks, nor did they participate in the government, except that the king
was bound to employ a Brahman as Purohita or house-priest, who occupied
as such the position of prime minister. If, however, they succeeded in
dominating the nobility and the whole people, it was principally on
account of their greater knowledge, of which they boasted, and especially
on account of the sacrificial arts, by the proper exercise of which in
those times, all favors could be obtained from the gods. For a duly
performed sacrifice, which would last weeks, months, nay, years, the
Brahmans charged of course a high fee. A fee of ten thousand oxen was
prescribed for a certain ceremony, a hundred thousand for another one,
and a later teacher of ritualism charged 240,000 for the same service.
And this was not yet the climax of priestly avarice, which—to use an
expression of Professor Weber—indulges in veritable orgies in these
books. After one has gone through the endless description of a ceremony,
one finds at the end the remark that the whole sacrifice has no effect,
unless the proper fee be paid to the priest. And—to use a term of modern
life—lest competition should reduce the prices or spoil the business, a
rule was established, that no one should take a fee which another one had
refused. (Weber, p. 54.)
The sacrificial rituals, so trying and tedious for us, are the only
literary production of these dull centuries before the rising of
philosophical speculation, and the great historical importance they
possess is simply due to the light they throw on the moral depravity of
the Brahmans as a class.
The following fact will fully show to what extent sexual debaucheries
were indulged in. The priest was enjoined, by a special rule, not to
commit adultery with the wife of another during a particularly holy
ceremony. But he who could not practice continence, was allowed to
expiate his sin by an offering of milk to Varuna and Mitra.
Numerous passages in the books on ritualism furnish us interesting
illustrations of the great indulgence which the Brahmans had for each
other’s weaknesses. The officiating priest is taught how to proceed
during the sacrifice, if he wants to wrong the man who employs and pays
him, or how to deviate from the prescribed rules, if he wants to rob
his employer of his seeing, hearing, children, property, or position.
The lack of confidence that resulted is best illustrated by a ceremony,
the introduction of which, at the beginning of the sacrifice, became
gradually necessary. By a solemn oath the officiating minister and the
client bound themselves not to injure each other during the performance
of the holy act. Consequently, the strange notions of right, which the
Brahmans had in those times, will not surprise us. “Murder of any one
but a Brahman is no murder.” “An arbitrator must decide in favor of
the Brahman and not in favor of his opponent, if the latter is not a
Brahman.” Such maxims are laid down in the texts with shameless insolence.
It is plain that the caste system greatly contributed to increase the
power and influence of the priests, because in a country where the people
are divided into classes, the priest always succeeds in inciting at his
wish the one against the other.
After the Brahmans came as second caste the Kshattriyas (literally: the
ruling class, i. e., king, nobility, soldiers); and as third caste the
Vaisyas (the bulk of the people: farmers, merchants, etc.). The conquered
non-Aryan aborigines were foreordained by the gods to serve the Aryan
castes and especially the Brahmans. They were called Súdras (serfs) and
had neither civil nor religious rights. “The Súdra is the servant of
others; he can be cast out or killed.” By this humane maxim were the
Brahmans guided in their conduct towards the aborigines.
With such a state of things, as it appears in the old books, the
priesthood ought to have been well pleased. But the Brahmans were not;
they desired still greater advantages and carried out the caste system
to a most absurd extent. The result is embodied in the famous law-book
of Manu, the exact date of which we do not yet know, but which must be
placed at the beginning of our era. The condition of things of which I
shall now speak, was accordingly developed during the last centuries
before Christ. Though we may suppose that some rules of this code have
remained a mere theory and have never been carried out, there remains
enough to show the social life of those times in a poor light. Köppen,
in the first chapters of his book on Buddhism, has severely but justly
judged the social organisation, as it appears in Manu’s law-book; but
as the age of this code was overrated at his time, he was led to one
erroneous conclusion: he attributes the historical process, of which we
speak, to the period before Buddha, while it really took place after
Buddha: L. von Schröder, in his work “Indian Literature and History,” in
the twenty-ninth lecture, gives us a good view of those times.
Different passages in Manu’s code show us that the claim of the Brahmans
to divinity had not decreased in the course of the centuries. “The
Brahmans are to be venerated at all times, as they are the highest
divinity.” “By his very origin the Brahman is a god, even to the gods.”
The many practical privileges they enjoyed were of still greater value.
They were exempt from taxation under all circumstances, “even if the king
should starve.” For the greatest crimes they could not be executed or
chastised, nor was their property liable to confiscation, while at the
same time the criminal law was very harsh towards the other castes and
especially towards the Súdras. The penalties increased proportionately:
the lower the caste to which the criminal belonged, the higher the
punishment; and the fines also increased in proportion to the rank of the
caste to which the injured man belonged. The money-lender was allowed
to exact (monthly) two per cent. of a Brahman, three of a Kshattriya,
four of a Vaisya, five of a Súdra. All these laws show how the Brahmans
understood the art of advancing their interests. The Súdra was by the
code deprived of all rights. “The Brahman may consider him as a slave and
is therefore entitled to take his property, as the property of the slave
belongs to the master.” “The Súdra shall not acquire wealth, even if he
be in a position to do so, as such conduct gives offense to the Brahman.”
But all these things are harmless when compared with the principles by
which the Brahmans reduced to the most miserable of lives numberless
human creatures who had committed no wrong except that their origin did
not agree with the political scheme of the priests. Formerly it had been
lawful for the members of the three Aryan castes, after having married
a girl of the same caste, to take other wives of a lower caste besides,
and no disgrace attached to their children. The son of a Brahman and a
Vaisya—or even of a Súdra woman—was therefore a Brahman. But this was no
longer the case under the code of Manu.
If the parents belonged to different castes, the children did not follow
either father or mother, but they formed a mixed caste and the law
distinctly regulates their occupations and trades. This theory gave birth
to a great number of mixed castes, who were more or less despised. And
the social standing of many of them grew still worse on account of an
absurd maxim which degraded the Indian people to the level of grass and
plants. Good seed in a bad soil gives of course a poorer return than in
good soil; still the crop is endurable. But weed introduced into good
soil produces weed abundantly. According to this theory of the Brahmans
the children were below the father, if he had married a wife of a higher
caste. The lowest and most execrable creature therefore is the son of
a Súdra and a Brahman woman. The destiny of a Súdra was of course hard
and unhappy, but the misery of the offspring of such a marriage, of the
Chandâla, defies all description. “He shall live far from the abodes of
other men and bear signs by which everybody can recognise and avoid him,
as his contact pollutes. Only in daytime shall he be admitted into the
villages, as then people can avoid him. He shall possess but common
animals like dogs and donkeys, eat out of broken plates, put on the
dresses of the dead, etc. They were compelled to serve as executioners.
To the utmost degree of contempt and misery has the proud Brahman reduced
these poor creatures.” (Schröder, pp. 423-424.)
But the Chandâla was not the last in the Brahmanic scale, which
suppressed all dignity in human nature; his offspring, though he had
only a wife of the Súdra caste, was necessarily still below him. Thus
originated a great number of mixed castes, one more despised than the
other, and despising one another. Most of these outcasts take their names
from the Indian aborigines and are thus placed on the same level with
the most contemptible tribes. Some of the things I have cited about the
mixed castes, may have been merely a theory of the Brahmans; however, the
actual existence of classes of people reduced by the clergy to a sort of
animal life, has been sufficiently verified by foreign travellers.
In modern times the separation of the people has been going on very
rapidly; so much so, that nearly every trade or profession now forms
a caste of its own, having no social intercourse with, nor patriotic
feelings for the other castes. This condition of things is due to the
influence of the Brahmans, for it has grown out of the social order they
have founded.
It is not my task to arraign the Brahmans for the sins they have
committed; but simply to illustrate to my readers, how little they cared
for and had at heart the interests of their people. One will, upon the
whole, feel inclined to denounce the selfishness and immorality of the
Brahmans, but on the other hand will acknowledge with admiration the
intellectual work they have done, and forgive them much for the profound
thoughts with which they have enriched their country and the whole world.
Is it not the wisdom of the Brahmans that has given to the word India a
sound that stirs the hearts of all to whom the struggle for the highest
truth appears as the highest phenomenon in the history of civilisation?
But suppose it can be shown that the greatest of all the wisdom of the
Brahman, the monistic doctrine of the All-in-One, which has had the
greatest influence on the intellectual life of modern times, was not
discovered by them?
Before I enter on this question, of the greatest importance from an
historical point of view, I will give a short sketch of the period of
Indian history in which this doctrine was established.
For centuries the Brahmans had heaped sacrifice on sacrifice and
multiplied symbolical explanations without end. All this distinctly
bore the stamp of priestly sophistry. Suddenly higher thoughts arise.
The learning handed down by tradition and the sacrificial system are,
it is true, not altogether abandoned; the mind, however, is no longer
satisfied with the mysteries of the sacrifices, but aims at higher and
more sublime truth. The age of intellectual darkness is followed by a new
era, the characteristic of which is the ambition to solve the problems of
life and to understand the relation of the individual to the absolute.
All the efforts of the human mind are now bent on solving the question
of the eternal Unity, from which all phenomena have emanated and which
every one perceives within his own self. It is the age of the Upanishads,
those famous books, which, as soon as they were known in Europe, filled
all scholars with wild enthusiasm and admiration. I refer only to the
old Upanishads, that date from the eighth to the sixth century B. C.,
not to the great number of books of the same name, but not of the same
value—there are over 200 of them—which appeared after the Christian era.
The Upanishads reveal the struggle of the mind to reach the highest
truth. Though they indulge occasionally in strange speculations, still
the idea of Brahma, of the universal soul, of the absolute, of the
thing in itself, is the ever-recurring subject of their thoughts, which
culminate in the idea that the Atman, the inner self of man, is naught
but the eternal and endless Brahma. A wonderful pathos animates the
language of the Upanishads and testifies to the sublime feelings in which
the thinkers of those times sought the great mystery of existence. They
look for all kinds of expressions, metaphors and figures, in order to
couch in words what cannot be described by words. We read for instance
in the venerable Brihadâranyaka Upanishad: “That which lives on the
earth, but is different from the earth, that which is the moving power
of the earth, that is your Self, the inner immortal ruler.” The same
is predicated of water, fire, ether, wind, sun, moon, and stars; and
then the chapter ends as follows: “Unseen, he sees; unheard, he hears;
unminded, he minds; unknown, he knows. There is none that sees but he;
there is none that hears but he; there is none that minds but he; there
is none that knows but he. He is thy soul, the inner ruler. Whatever is
different from him, is perishable.”
In the same celebrated Upanishad appears a woman, named Gârgî, and moved
by thirst of knowledge she inquires of the wise Yâjnavalkya: “That which
is beyond the sky and beneath the earth, and between sky and earth, that
which is, was, and shall be, in what and with what is it interwoven (that
is: in what does it live and move)?” Yâjnavalkya, in order to try the
intellectual power of the woman, gives an evasive answer: “In the ether.”
But Gârgî, perceiving that this answer did not contain the final truth,
asks: “In what is the ether woven?” And Yâjnavalkya replied: “O Gârgî,
that is what the Brahman calls the Eternal; it is neither big, nor small,
nor large, nor short, without connection, without contact; by the Eternal
are ruled heaven and earth, sun and moon, days and nights; the power of
the Eternal directs the rivers south or west or to any other point of
the compass. Whoever parts from this world without having understood the
Eternal, is miserable.”
In the Chândogya Upanishad, a book of no less importance, the same wisdom
is taught by a man named Uddâlaka to his son Shvetaketu in the form of
several parables. We see them standing in front of a Nyagrodha tree, that
kind of fig-tree that everywhere sends roots from the branches down to
the ground, thus producing new trunks, until in the course of time _one_
tree resembles a green pillared hall. And in front of such a tree, the
most beautiful symbol of ever-youthful nature, the following conversation
takes place between father and son: “Get me a fruit of this tree.”—“Here
it is.”—“Break it.”—“It is broken.”—“What do you see in it?”—“I see quite
small kernels.”—“Break one of them.”—“It is broken.”—“What do you see in
it?”—“Nothing.”—Then the father said: “The fine matter that you cannot
see has produced this big tree, and believe me, my dear son, this same
matter, of which the earth is composed, is the Absolute, the Universal
Soul,—it is you.”
The eternal ground of all existence which every one carries in himself,
Being as it is in itself, and as it is immediately perceived in thinking,
was, accordingly recognised as the sole reality, and all the manifold
changes of the phenomenal world were called Maya, a sham, a delusion, a
mockery of the senses. We see, it is a consistent monism which is taught
in the Upanishads.
I do not intend here either to criticise the Brahman conception of
monism or to contrast it with modern forms of monism. All monisms have
at least one thing in common, viz. they all recognise the paramount
importance of consistency of thought as a basic principle in philosophy.
And to have propounded a monism for the first time is a feat which
cannot be overestimated. What remains of this essay will be devoted to
the investigation of the question, whether this feat is duly or unduly
credited to the Brahmans.
It may first be mentioned, that a few scholars like Weber, Max Müller,
Regnaud, Deussen, and Bhandarkar, pointed out, a long time ago, certain
facts which show that another class of the Hindu nation founded the
monistic doctrine of the old Upanishads. But the attention of the great
public has never been called to this subject, which deserves to be known
by all interested in Indian history.
In the second book of the Brihadâranyaka Upanishad, of which I have
already cited two passages, is found the following story, of which also
the fourth book of Kaushîtaki Upanishad gives a slightly different
version.
The proud and learned Brahman Bâlâki Gârgya comes on his journey to
Ajâtashatru, prince of Benares, and says to him: “I will announce you
the Brahma.” The king, highly pleased, promises him a great reward, a
thousand cows. The Brahman begins to expound his wisdom: “The Spirit
(that is the power) in the sun I venerate as the Brahma.” But the king
interrupted him, saying that he knew that already. Then the Brahman
speaks about the Spirit in the moon, in lightning, ether, wind, fire,
water, but the king knows all that. And whatsoever the Gârgya might say,
is not new to the king. The Brahman became silent. But Ajâtashatru asked
him: “Is that all?” and Gârgya answered: “Yes, that is all.” Then the
king said: “Your little knowledge is not the Brahma;” whereupon Gârgya
declared that he should like to be one of the king’s pupils. Ajâtashatru
replied: “It is against nature, that a Brahman should learn from a
warrior and depend on him for the understanding of the Brahma, but I will
show it you nevertheless.” The king took him to a sleeping man and spoke
to the latter; but he did not get up. When the king touched him with his
hand, he arose. The king then asked the Brahman: “While this man was
sleeping where was his mind, and whence did it return now?” Gârgya could
not give an answer. Then the king explained to him, that the mind or the
Self of the sleeping man was wandering around in dream, that all places
were open to him, that he could be a great king or a great Brahman; but
that there was still a higher condition of felicity, that is, absorption
in dreamless sleep, without consciousness. In this condition the Self of
man, not affected by the outside world, reposes in his true essence and
knows no difference between Atman and Brahma.
Another story, reported in the fifth book of Chândogya Upanishad and in
the sixth book of Brihadâranyaka Upanishad, is perhaps of still greater
importance.
The young Brahman Shvetaketu comes to a convention, where the King
Pravâhana Jaivâli asks him: “Has your father instructed you?”—“Yes,
sir.”—“Do you know to what place the dead go?” And three more questions
he put to the young Brahman, who was compelled to admit that he knew
nothing about them. Discouraged, he returned to his father and reproached
him: “Although you have not imparted any knowledge to me, you claim that
you have instructed me. A _simple king_ has asked me three questions and
I could not answer a single one.” The father replied: “You have known me
sufficiently to understand that I taught you all I knew. Come, let us
go to the king and learn from him.” The king received the Brahman with
great honors and requested him to select a present. But Gautama refuses
all earthly gifts, gold, cows, horses, female slaves, and asks the king
to answer the questions he had put to his son. At first the king was
unwilling, but after a while he agreed to it and said, that no one on
earth could give information on those subjects, except a warrior. And the
following words of the king’s are very significant: “Would that neither
you nor your ancestors had trespassed on us, that this truth might never
have set up her residence among Brahmans. But to you, since you are so
inquiring, I will communicate our wisdom.”
Substantially the same story is found at the beginning of the Kaushîtaki
Upanishad, except that the king appears under the name Chitra.
Omitting points of less importance, I shall only give in a brief form
the contents of the eleventh and the following chapters of the fifth
book of the Chândogya Upanishad, where again a man of the warrior caste,
Ashvapati, prince of the Kekaya, is shown in possession of the highest
wisdom. A number of highly learned Brahmans were speculating on the
following problems: “What is our Self? What is the Brahma?” and they
decided to go to Uddâlaka Aruni, who, as they knew, was investigating
the “Omnipresent Self.” But Aruni said to himself: “Now, they will ask
me and I am not able to answer all their questions”; consequently he
requested his visitors to go with him to Ashvapati. The latter receives
them with great honors, invites them to stay with him, promising them
presents as high as their fees for sacrifices. But they replied: “A man
must communicate what he knows. You are just now seeking the ‘Omnipresent
Self’; disclose to us what it is?” The king, said: “I will answer you
to-morrow.” The following day, without having received them among his
pupils, that is, without a ceremonial reception as was usual, he asked
them: “What do you venerate as the Self?” They replied: “Heaven, sun,
wind, ether, water, earth.” The king reminded them that they were all
mistaken in considering the Omnipresent Self as a finite and limited
being; it was the infinite, the infinitely small and the infinitely great.