"Here is the daily life of one of the twenty-five thousand Brahmans
of Benares. He rises before the dawn, and his first care is to look
at an object of good omen. If he sees a crow at his left, a kite,
a snake, a cat, a hare, a jackal, an empty jar, a smoking fire,
a wood-pile, a widow, a man blind of one eye, he is threatened with
great dangers during the day. If he intended to make a journey, he
puts it off. But if he sees a cow, a horse, an elephant, a parrot, a
lizard, a clear-burning fire, a virgin, all will go well. If he should
sneeze once, he may count upon some special good fortune; but if twice
some disaster will happen to him. If he yawns some demon may enter his
body. Having avoided all objects of evil omen, the Brahman drops into
the endless routine of his religious rites. Under penalty of rendering
all the day's acts worthless, he must wash his teeth at the bank of
a sacred stream or lake, reciting a special _mantra_, which ends in
this ascription: 'O Ganges, daughter of Vishnu, thou springest from
Vishnu's foot, thou art beloved by him! Remove from us the stains of
sin and birth, and until death protect us thy servants!' He then rubs
his body with ashes, saying: 'Homage to Siva, homage to the source of
all birth! May he protect me during all births!' He traces the sacred
signs upon his forehead--the three vertical lines representing the
foot of Vishnu, or the three horizontal lines which symbolise the
trident of Siva--and twists into a knot the hair left by the razor
on the top of his head, that no impurity may fall from it to pollute
the sacred river.
"He is now ready to begin the ceremonies of the morning (_sandhya_),
those which I have just observed on the banks of the river. Minutely
and mechanically each Brahman performs by himself these rites of
prescribed acts and gestures. First the internal ablution: the
worshipper takes water in the hollow of his hand, and, letting it
fall from above into his mouth, cleanses his body and soul. Meanwhile
he mentally invokes the names of Vishnu, saying, 'Glory to Keshava,
to Narayana, to Madhava, to Govinda,' and so on.
"The second rite is the exercise or 'discipline' of the respiration
(_prajayama_). Here there are three acts: first, the worshipper
compresses the right nostril with the thumb, and drives the breath
through the left; second, he inhales through the left nostril,
then compresses it, and inhales through the other; third, he stops
the nose completely with thumb and forefinger, and holds his breath
as long as possible. All these acts must be done before sunrise, and
prepare for what is to follow. Standing on the water's edge, he utters
solemnly the famous syllable OM, pronouncing it _aum_, with a length
equalling that of three letters. It recalls to him the three persons
of the Hindu trinity: Brahma, who creates; Vishnu, who preserves;
Siva, who destroys. More noble than any other word, imperishable,
says Manu, it is eternal as Brahma himself. It is not a sign, but a
being, a force; a force which constrains the gods, superior to them,
the very essence of all things. Mysterious operations of the mind,
strange associations of ideas, from which spring conceptions like
these! Having uttered this ancient and formidable syllable, the man
calls by their names the three worlds: earth, air, sky; and the four
superior heavens. He then turns towards the east, and repeats the verse
[415] from the Rig-Veda: 'Let us meditate upon the resplendent glory of
the divine vivifier, that it may enlighten our minds.' As he says the
last words he takes water in the palm of his hand and pours it upon the
top of his head. 'Waters,' he says, 'give me strength and vigour that
I may rejoice. Like loving mothers, bless us, penetrate us with your
sacred essence. We come to wash ourselves from the pollution of sins:
make us fruitful and prosperous.' Then follow other ablutions, other
_mantras_, verses from the Rig-Veda, and this hymn, which relates the
origin of all things: 'From the burning heat came out all things. Yes,
the complete order of the world; Night, the throbbing Ocean, and after
the throbbing Ocean, Time, which separates Light from Darkness. All
mortals are its subjects. It is this which disposes of all things,
and has made, one after another, the sun, the sky, the earth, the
intermediate air.' This hymn, says Manu, thrice repeated, effaces
the gravest sins.
"About this time, beyond the sands of the opposite shore of the Ganges,
the sun appears. As soon as its brilliant disc becomes visible the
multitude welcome it, and salute it with 'the offering of water.' This
is thrown into the air, either from a vase or from the hand. Thrice
the worshipper, standing in the river up to his waist, flings the
water towards the sun. The farther and wider he flings it, the greater
the virtue attributed to this act. Then the Brahman, seated upon his
heels, fulfils the most sacred of his religious duties: he meditates
upon his fingers. For the fingers are sacred, inhabited by different
manifestations of Vishnu; the thumb by Govinda, the index-finger by
Madhava, the middle finger by Hrikesa, the third by Trivikama and the
little finger by Vishnu himself. 'Homage to the two thumbs,' says
the Brahman, 'to the two index-fingers, to the two middle fingers,
to the two "unnamed fingers," to the two little fingers, to the two
palms, to the two backs of the hands.' Then he touches the various
parts of the body, and lastly, the right ear, the most sacred of all,
where reside fire, water, the sun and the moon. He then takes a red
bag (_gomukhi_), into which he plunges his hand, and by contortions
of the fingers rapidly represents the chief incarnations of Vishnu:
a fish, a tortoise, a wild boar, a lion, a slip-knot, a garland. [416]
"The second part of the service is no less rich than the first
in ablutions and _mantras_. The Brahman invokes the sun, 'Mitra,
who regards all creatures with unchanging gaze,' and the Dawns,
'brilliant children of the sky,' the earliest divinities of our Aryan
race. He extols the world of Brahma, that of Siva, that of Vishnu;
recites passages from the Mahabharata, the Puranas, all the first
hymn of the Rig-Veda, the first lines of the second, the first words
of the principal Vedas, of the Yajur, the Sama, and the Atharva, then
fragments of grammar, inspired prosodies, and, in conclusion, the first
words of the book of the Laws of Yajnavalkya, the philosophic Sutras:
and finally ends the ceremony with three kinds of ablutions, which are
called the refreshing of the gods, of the sages and of the ancestors.
"First, placing his sacred cord upon the left shoulder, the Brahman
takes up water in the right hand, and lets it run off his extended
fingers. To refresh the sages, the cord must hang about the neck,
and the water run over the side of the hand between the thumb and the
forefinger, which is bent back. For the ancestors, the cord passes
over the right shoulder, and the water falls from the hand in the
same way as for the sages. 'Let the fathers be refreshed,' says the
prayer, 'may this water serve all those who inhabit the seven worlds,
as far as to Brahma's dwelling, even though their number be greater
than thousands of millions of families. May this water, consecrated
by my cord, be accepted by the men of my race who have left no sons.'
"With this prayer the morning service ends. Now, remember that
this worship is daily, that these formulas must be pronounced,
these movements of the hands made with mechanical precision; that
if the worshipper forgets one of the incarnations of Vishnu which
he is to figure with his fingers, if he stop his left nostril when
it should be the right, the entire ceremony loses its efficacy;
that, not to go astray amid this multitude of words and gestures
required for each rite, he is obliged to use mnemotechnic methods;
that there are five of these for each series of formulas; that his
attention always strained and always directed toward the externals
of the cult, does not leave his mind a moment in which to reflect
upon the profound meaning of some of these prayers, and you will
comprehend the extraordinary scene that the banks of the Ganges at
Benares present every morning; this anxious and demented multitude,
these gestures, eager and yet methodical, this rapid movement of the
lips, the fixed gaze of these men and women who, standing in the water,
seem not even to see their neighbours, and count mentally like men in
the delirium of a fever. Remember that there are ceremonies like these
in the afternoon and also in the evening, and that in the intervals,
in the street, in the house at meals, when going to bed, similar rites
no less minute pursue the Brahman, all preceded by the exercises of
respiration, the enunciation of the syllable OM, and the invocation of
the principal gods. It is estimated that between daybreak and noon he
has scarcely an hour of rest from the performance of these rites. After
the great powers of nature, the Ganges, the Dawn, and the Sun, he
goes to worship in their temples the representations of divinity,
the sacred trees, finally the cows, to whom he offers flowers. In
his own dwelling other divinities await him, five black stones,
[417] representing Siva, Ganesa, Surya, Devi and Vishnu, arranged
according to the cardinal points: one towards the north, a second to
the south-east, a third to the south-west, a fourth to the north-west,
and one in the centre, this order changing according as the worshipper
regards one god or another as most important; then there is a shell,
a bell--to which, kneeling, he offers flowers--and, lastly, a vase,
whose mouth contains Vishnu, the neck Rudra, the paunch Brahma, while
at the bottom repose the three divine mothers, the Ganges, the Indus,
and the Jumna.
"This is the daily cult of the Brahman of Benares, and on holidays
it is still further complicated. Since the great epoch of Brahmanism
it has remained the same. Some details may alter, but as a whole it
has always been thus tyrannical and thus extravagant. As far back
as the Upanishads appears the same faith in the power of articulate
speech, the same imperative and innumerable prescriptions, the same
singular formulas, the same enumeration of grotesque gestures. Every
day, for more than twenty-five hundred years, since Buddhism was a
protest against the tyranny and absurdity of rites, has this race
mechanically passed through this machinery, resulting in what mental
malformations, what habitual attitudes of mind and will, the race is
now too different from ourselves for us to be able to conceive."
Secular Brahmans now, however, greatly abridge the length of their
prayers, and an hour or an hour and a half in the morning suffices
for the daily bath and purification, the worship of the household
deities and the morning meal.