THE ARIAN NATIONS.
1. THE EAST ARIANS. THE INDIANS.
In the development of religion among the Indians, the following periods
may be distinguished:--
_a._ The original Veda-religion.
_b._ The priestly religion of the Brahmins.
_c._ The philosophical speculation.
_d._ Buddhism.
_e._ The modified Brahminism after Buddha, in connection with the
worship of Vishnu and Siva.
_a. The original Veda-religion._
The original religion of Arya originated in Bactria. From thence, before
the time of Zoroaster, it was brought over, with the great migration of
the people, to the land of the seven rivers, which they conquered, and
which stretched from the Indus to the Hesidrus. It consisted, according
to the oldest literature of the Veda, in a polytheistical worship of the
divine, either as the beneficent or the baneful power of nature. The
clear, blue sky, the light of the sun, the rosy dawn, the storm that
spends itself in fruitful rain, the winds and gales which drive away the
clouds, the rivers whose fruitful slime overspreads the fields,--these
moved the inhabitants of India to the worship of the divine as the
beneficent power of nature which blesses man. On the other hand, he
changed under the impression of the harmful phenomena of nature, the
dark and close-packed clouds which hold back the rain and intercept the
sunshine, the parching heat of summer, which dries up the rivers and
hinders growth and fruitfulness, and these also he erected into objects
of awe and religious adoration. From this view of nature sprang the
Indian mythology. The oldest divinity (Deva) of the Indians is Varuna,
the all-embracing heaven, who marks out their courses for the heavenly
luminaries, who rules the day and the night, who is lord of life and
death, whose protection is invoked, whose anger deprecated. After him,
the great ruler of nature, there appear, in the Veda hymns, Indra, the
blue sky, god of light and thunder, the warrior who in battle stands
beside the combatants; Vayu, the god of the wind, the chief of the
Maruts, or the winds; Rudra, the god of the hurricane; Vritra, the
hostile god of the clouds; Ahi, the parching heat of summer. In the
mythology of the people, Indra, god of light, aided by Vayu and Rudra,
wages war with Vritra,--who, as god of the clouds, holds back the rain
and the light,--and appears as opponent of the destructive Ahi. The
other divinities also which appear in the Vedas are personified powers
of nature,--the twin brothers Aswins (equites), or the first rays of the
sun, Ushas the maiden, or the rosy dawn, Surya, Savitri, the god of the
sun. Great significance is given in the Indian mythology to Agni, the
god of fire, who burns the sacrifice in honor of the gods, who conveys
the offerings and prayers of men to gods and their gifts to men, who
gladdens the domestic hearth, lights up the darkness of night, drives
away the evil spirits, the Ashuras and Rakshas, and purges of evil the
souls of men. Religion, still wholly patriarchal in form, and free from
hierarchical constraint and from the later dogmatic narrowness, bore in
this earlier stage of its development the character of the still free
and warlike life of a nomadic people living in the midst of a sublime
nature, where everything, the clear sky, sunshine, and boisterous storm,
mountains and rivers, disposed to worship. As yet the Indian knew no
close priestly caste. Worship consisted in prayers and offerings,
especially in the Soma-offering, which was offered as food to the gods.
No fear of future torment after death as yet embittered the enjoyment of
life and made dying fearful. Yama was the friendly guide of the souls of
heroes to the heaven of Indra or Varuna, and not yet the inexorable
prince of hell who tormented the souls of the ungodly in the kingdom of
the dead. Of later barbarous usages also, such as the widow's
sacrificing herself on the funeral pile of her departed husband, there
was as yet no trace; and in the heroic poetry, as yet not disfigured by
later Brahminical alterations and additions, the heroes Krishna and Rama
appear as types of courage and self-sacrifice, and not, as later, as
avatars, or human incarnations, of the deity.
_b. Brahminism._
When the nomadic and warlike life of the nations of India in the land of
the seven rivers, in connection with their removal to the conquered land
of the Ganges (1300 B.C.), gave place to a more ordered social
constitution, a priestly class formed itself, which began to represent
the people before the deity, and from its chief function, _Brahma_, or
prayer, took the name of _Brahmins_, i.e., the praying. This Brahma,
before whose power even the gods must yield, was gradually exalted by
the Brahmins to the highest deity, to whom, under the name of Brahma,
the old Veda divinities were subordinated. Brahma is no god of the
people, but a god of the priests; not the lord of nature, but the
abstract and impersonal _Being_, out of whom nature and her phenomena
emanate. From Brahma the priest derives his authority; and the system of
caste, by which the priesthood is raised to the first rank, its origin.
The worship of Brahma consists in doing penance and in abstinence. Yama,
once a celestial divinity, now becomes the god of the lower world, where
he who disobeys Brahma is tormented after death. Immortality consists in
returning to Brahma; but is the portion only of the perfectly godly
Brahmin, while the rest of mankind can rise to this perfect state only
after many painful new births. The Brahmin, in the exclusive possession
of religious knowledge, reads and expounds the Vedas (knowledge),
exalted to infallible scripture, and on them constructs his doctrine.
Thus the once vigorous, natural life of the Indians gave place to a
conception of the world which repressed the soul, and annihilated man's
personality. The many-sidedness of the earlier theology resolved itself
into the abstract unity of an impersonal All, and thus the glory of
nature passed by unmarked, as nought or non-existent, and lost its
charm. At the same time, the old heroic sagas were displaced by legends
of saints, and the heroic spirit of the olden epic by an asceticism
which repressed the human, and before whose power even the gods stood in
awe. With Brahminism the religion lost its original and natural
character, and became characterized by a slavish submission to a
priesthood, which abrogated the truly human.
_c. The Speculative Systems._
The doctrine of the Brahmins occasioned the rise of various theological
and philosophical systems. To these belong, first, the "Vedanta," (end
of the Veda) or the dogmatic-apologetic exposition of the Veda. This
contains (1) the establishment of the authority of the Veda as holy
scripture revealed by Brahma, and also of the relation in which it
stands to tradition; (2) the proof that everything in the Veda has
reference to Brahma; (3) the ascetic system, or the discipline. To
explain contradictory statements in the older and later parts of the
Veda, Brahminical learning makes use of the subtleties of an
harmonistical method of interpretation. Second, the "Mimansa" (inquiry),
devoted to the solution of the problem, How can the material world
spring from Brahma, or the immaterial? According to this system, there
is only one Supreme Being, Paramatma, a name by which Brahma himself had
been already distinguished in Manu's book of law. Outside of this
highest _Being_, there is nothing real. The world of sense, or nature,
(Maya, the female side of Brahma), is mere seeming and illusion of the
senses. The human spirit is a part of Brahma, but perverted, misled by
this same illusion to the conceit that he is individual. This illusion
is done away with by a deeper insight, by means of which the dualism
vanishes from the wise man's view, and the conceit gives place to the
true knowledge that Brahma alone really exists, that nature, on the
contrary, is nought, and the human spirit nothing else than Brahma
himself. Third, the "Sankya" (criticism) originating with Kapila, in
which, in opposition to the "Mimansa," the individual being and the real
existence of nature, in opposition to spirit, is laid down as the
starting-point, and the result reached is the doctrine of two original
forces, spirit and nature, from whose reciprocal action and reaction
upon each other the union of soul and body is to be explained. Is this
union unnatural, then the effort of the wise man should be to free
himself, through the perception that the soul is not bound to the body,
from the dominion of matter. In this system, there is no room for an
infinite being, for, if a material world exist, then must God be limited
by its existence, and therefore cease to be infinite, that is God. The
Sankya philosophy here came in conflict with the orthodox doctrine of
the Brahmins, and prepared the way for Buddhism.
_d. Buddhism._
Against Brahminism Buddhism arose as a reaction. Siddharta, son of
Suddhodana, the King of Kapilavastu, of the family of the Sakya, (about
450 B.C.) moved by the misery of his fellow-countrymen, determined to
examine into the causes of it, and, if possible, to find means of
remedying it. Initiated into the wisdom of the Brahmins, but not
satisfied with that, after years of solitary retirement and quiet
meditation, penetrated with the principles of the Sankya, he traversed
the land as pilgrim (Sakya-muni, Sramana, Gautama) and opened to the
people of India a new religious epoch. The tendency of the new doctrine
was to break up the system of caste, and free the people from the
galling yoke of the Brahminical hierarchy and dogmas. While in
Brahminism man was deprived of his individuality, and regarded only as
an effluence from Brahma, and tormented by the fear of hell, and by the
thought of a ceaseless process of countless new births awaiting him
after death, whence the necessity of the most painful penances and
chastisements, Sakya-muni began with man as an individual, and in morals
put purity, abstinence, patience, brotherly love, and repentance for
sins committed above sacrifice and bodily mortification, and opened to
his followers the prospect, after this weary life, no more to be exposed
to the ever-recurring pains of new birth, but released from all
suffering to return to Nirvana, or nothingness. While Brahminism drew a
distinction between man and man, and with hierarchical pride took no
thought of the Sudra or lower class of the people, and limited wisdom to
the priestly caste, Sakya-muni preached the equality of all men, came
forward as a preacher to the people, used the people's language, and
chose his followers out of all classes, even from among women. Both of
these opposed systems are one-sided. In Brahminism, God is all, and man,
as personal being, nothing; in Buddhism, man is recognized as an
individual, but apart from God, while in both systems, the highest
endeavor is to be delivered from, according to Brahminism a seeming,
according to Sakya-muni a really existing individuality, the source of
all human woe, and to lose one's self either in Brahma or in the
Nirvana.
Less on account of his doctrine, in which there is found neither a God
nor a personal immortality, than on account of the universal character
of his words and of his life, Sakya-muni continued in honor after his
death, as the benefactor of the people and as the Buddha, the wise,
pre-eminently; and afterwards was deified, and took his place in the
ranks of the recognized gods as their superior. Thus there arose in
Buddhism, by a departure from the doctrine of the master, a new
polytheism. This was afterwards, through the influence of the
Brahminical priestly caste, suppressed in India, but spread over other
parts of Asia, to the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and also to
China.
_e. Later modification of Brahminism in connection with the worship of
Siva and Vishnu._
While Brahminism saw itself menaced by the steadily increasing influence
of Buddhism, the former nature-religion, dispossessed by the Brahmins,
asserted its rights in the worship of Siva in the valleys of the
Himalaya Mountains, and in that of Vishnu on the banks of the Ganges.
Siva is the Rudra of the Veda, the boisterous god of storms, the giver
of rain and growth. Vishnu is the same divinity among other races,
conceived under the influence of a softer climate in a modified form as
the blue sky. Both divinities, originally belonging to different parts
of India, were afterwards taken, first Vishnu, and then also Siva, into
the theological system of the Brahmins, and formed with Brahma, but not
until the fourth century after Christ, the trimurti, according to which
the one supreme being Parabrama is worshiped in the threefold form of
Brahma the creating, Vishnu the sustaining, and Siva the destroying
power of nature. To this later period of Brahminism belongs also the
alteration of the old epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, by which the
heroes Rama and Krishna are represented as avatars, that is incarnations
or human impersonations, of Vishnu. In this also there is evidently an
effort to bring the deity, conceived as the abstract One, into closer
union with man, an effort which is likewise visible in the later Yoga
system of the Brahmins, in which, by the admission of Buddhistic
elements, the visible world is recognized as real, the old rigid
asceticism mitigated, Vishnu represented as the soul of the world, and
immortality taught as a return of the individual soul to Brahma.
2. THE WEST ARIANS, IRANIANS.
[THE BACTRIANS, MEDES, PERSIANS.]
The ancient religion of the Bactrians in the period before Zoroaster was
patriarchal, and consisted in the worship of fire, as the beneficent
power of nature, and of Mithras, the god of the sun, combined with that
of the good spirits (Ahuras), among which were Geus-Urva (the spirit of
the earth), Cpento-mainyus (the white spirit), Armaiti (the earth, or
also the spirit of piety), and of the hero-spirits Sraosha, Traetona,
which as light and darkness are distinguished from Angro (the black
spirit).
Later, as it seems, the theology and worship of the neighboring nomadic
Arya penetrated to these nations, and caused a religious conflict which
ended with the migration of Arya to the south. At this period
Zarathustra[2] (Zoroaster) came forward under the Bactrian priest and
King Kava Vistaspa, as defender and reformer of the religion of the
fathers against the encroachments of a strange doctrine. The Devas
(Zend, Dews) or the gods of the Indian Veda appear with Zarathustra as
evil spirits. Not Indra, but the hero Traetona, wages war with Ahi
(Zend, Azhi), while the kavis, or priests, are attacked by him as
deceivers and liars. From the belief in good spirits (Ahuras, i.e.,
the living, and Mazdas, i.e., the wise), the ancient genii of the
country, Zarathustra developed the belief of one highest God,
Ahura-Mazda (Ormuzd, Greek, [Greek: Osompzês]), a doctrine which he
received by divine inspiration through the mediation of the spirit
Srasha. Ahura-Mazda, surrounded by the Amesha-Spenta (Amshaspands), or
the holy immortals, not until later reduced to seven, is the creator of
light and life. The hurtful and evil, on the contrary, is non-existence
(akem), and in the oldest parts of the Avesta, the Gathas, which go back
to Zarathustra and his first followers, is not yet conceived as a
personal being. First in the Vendidad, written after Zarathustra, does
Angro-mainyus (Ahriman), or the evil one, with his Dews, although
subordinated to Ahura-Mazda, gain a place in the Iranian conception of
the universe, as the adversary of Ahura-Mazda, and as the cause of evil
in the natural and spiritual world. From these conceptions there was
developed in the later Parsism the system of the four periods of the
world, each of three thousand years, in the book "Bundehesh." In the
first period, Ahura-Mazda appears as creator of the world and as the
source of good. The creation, completed by Ahura-Mazda in six days by
means of the word (Honover), is in the second period destroyed by
Angro-mainyus, who, appearing upon the earth in the form of a serpent,
seduces the first human pair, created by Ahura-Mazda. In the third
period, which begins with the revelation given to Zarathustra,
Ahura-mazda and Angro-mainyus strive together for man. After this
follows, in the fourth period, the victory gained by Ahura-Mazda.
Sosiosh (Saoshyas), the deliverer already foretold in the Vendidad,
appears. The resurrection of the dead, not taught by Zarathustra or in
the Vendidad, takes place. The judgment of the world begins; the good
are received into paradise and the sinners banished to hell. At last,
all is purified, and Angro-mainyus himself and his Dews submit
themselves to Ahura-Mazda, whose victory is celebrated in heaven with
songs of praise.
Thus among the Iranian races, out of the old patriarchal worship of fire
and light, on the occasion of the religious struggle with the Indian
Arya, and under the influence of Zarathustra, there was developed the
doctrine of one supreme God,[3] who, surrounded by the good spirits of
heaven, wages war against evil, whence arose later the moral opposition
between Ahura-Mazda and Angro-mainyus resulting in the victory of the
good principle over the bad. The old dualism of force and matter,
beneficent and destructive powers of nature, light and darkness, becomes
in Parsism moral. The deity, no longer identified with nature, becomes a
personal, spiritual being, the creator of mankind; and the end of the
world's development is conceived as the triumph of the good. Hence the
high rank which the doctrine of Zarathustra and its further development
holds in the history of religion.
3. THE GREEKS.
As man rises in spiritual development, nature becomes to him a
revelation ever more and more manifold of the divine. To the Greek
(Pelasgi, Hellenes) the whole of nature was living, and his imagination
peopled her everywhere with divine beings, who in wood and field, in
rivers and on mountains (Oreads, Dryads, Naiads, Sileni, &c.), hovered
friendly round him. The Greek was indeed distinguished from other
nations by this richer and more elevated view of nature; but he excelled
them most of all in this, that the divine object which he worshiped was
conceived both in form and character after the human. Zeus, Phoebus
Apollo, Pallas Athene, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Hestia, Hermes,
Artemis, were originally powers of nature personified, as some epithets
in Homer[4] still indicate; but they became, sometimes under the same
names, types of power and lordship, science and art, courage and
sensuous beauty. While Dionysus, Demeter, Hades, and Persephone remained
earthly, and Helios, Eos, Iris, and Hecate, heavenly divinities, and
Oceanus, Poseidon, Amphitrite, Proteus, and Nereus ruled the waters,
Zeus was conceived as the god of the sky and of thunder, who hurled the
bolts, the great king and lawgiver, the father of men, and Hera,
originally the air, became the protecting goddess of married life;
Apollo, the god of light, who shot forth his arrows, not at first
identified with Helios, became the god of divination and poetry, who led
the choir of the muses; the goddess of light, Athene, became the
contentious goddess of wisdom; Aphrodite, born of the foam of the sea,
once the symbol of the fruitful power of nature, later, encircled by the
Graces, became the type of womanly beauty and charm, to which the
strength of man, personified in Ares, corresponds. In like manner in the
later mythology, Hephaestus, the god of fire, appeared as the god of the
forge, Hestia, the goddess of fire, as the protector of the household
hearth, and Hermes, the god of the storm and of rain, as the messenger
of the gods, the type of cunning and craftiness, while Artemis, the
goddess of the moon, the fruitful mother of nature, took the character
of the chaste maiden, the goddess of hunting, who with her nymphs and
hounds nightly roamed the fields and woods. The monsters, the Sphinx,
the Minotaur, the Cyclops, the Centaurs, symbols of a yet unhuman or
half human power of nature, were overcome by the Greek heroes, Perseus,
Hercules, Jason, Theseus, OEdipus, the types of human strength and
valor. The religious festivals were enlivened by trials of men's
strength and skill in games, and the historian and poet offered to the
gods the products of human genius. In the religion of the Greeks,
however, the moral element, although not passed over and in the Greek
epic and tragedy not seldom expressed in grand characters, stood
nevertheless too little in the foreground, so that the worship of the
divine, as in the older nature-worship, especially in the feasts in
honor of Dionysus and Aphrodite, was marked by immoral practices. The
conception of a future life, which taken in connection with a future
retribution has a moral tendency, had but little attraction for the
Greek, who rejoiced in the glory of the earth, and saw in nature and in
man the kingdom of the divine. The passage from the earlier poetical
nature-worship to the worship of the divine in human form seems to be
indicated in the war which Olympian Zeus waged with Cronos and the
Titans. The origin and development of the various elements and powers of
nature, Chaos, Eros, Uranus, Gæa, the Giants, Styx, Erebus, Hemera,
Æther, &c, became, with the poets and philosophers after Homer, matters
of speculation, of which the theogonies of Hesiod, Orpheus, Pherecydes,
and others furnish proof.
4. THE ROMANS.
In the religion of the Greeks, the æsthetic and moral character of the
Grecian people was deified, and in the Romans also we see how that which
men value most exerts an influence upon their worship of the divine. The
primitive religion of the Romans, borrowed from the Sabines and
Etruscans, bears everywhere, in distinction to that of the Greeks, the
marks of the practical and political character of the Roman people. The
oldest national divinities are, first, Jupiter or Jovis, the god of the
heavens, Mars or Mavors, the god of the field and of war, Quirinus
(Janus?) the protector of the Quirites, afterwards, together with Juno
(Dione) and Minerva, worshiped in the Capitol, (Dii Capitolini);
second, Vesta, and the gods of the house and family, the Lares and
Penates; third, the rural divinities, Saturnus, Ops, Liber, Faunus,
Silvanus, Terminus, Flora, Vertumnus, and Pomona; fourth and last,
personifications, in part of the powers of nature, Sol, Luna, Tellus,
Neptunus, Orcus, Proserpina, in part of moral and social qualities and
states, such as Febris, Salus, Mens, Spes, Pudicitia, Pietas, Fides,
Concordia, Virtus, Bellona, Victoria, Pax, Libertas, and others.
Peculiarly Roman also is the conception of the _manes_, or shades of the
departed, who hover as protecting genii about the living. Afterwards,
along with the culture of the Greeks, their gods also were taken,
although rather outwardly than inwardly, into the spirit of the people,
and the original character of the gods of Latium was modified after the
new mythology. Notwithstanding this, however, the worship of the Romans
retained its political and practical character. The priests (sacerdotes)
Flamines, Salii, Feciales, the Pontifices with the Pontifex Maximus at
their head, the Augurs, were likewise officers of the state, and did not
form a hierarchy apart from the state and alongside of it.
5. THE CELTS.
Among the Celtic tribes in Brittany, Ireland, and Gaul, and on both
banks of the Rhine, out of an aboriginal life of nature characterized by
wildness and license, religion developed itself in the form of the
worship of two chief divinities, a male divinity, Hu, the begetting, and
a female, Ceridwen, the bearing, power of nature. The priesthood busied
itself with speculations about the divine, the origin of the world, and
the continued existence of man after death, conceived in the form of the
transmigration of souls. Nor did the people's faith lack the conception
of good and evil spirits, fairies, dwarfs, elves, which to the still
childish fancy are objects of fear or superstitious veneration. To the
service of these divinities the priesthood, the Druids, were
consecrated, and beside them the bards, or poets, held a more
independent place.
6. THE GERMANS AND SCANDINAVIANS.
More developed intellectually is the nature-religion of the ancient
Germans (Teutons) and Scandinavians, which betrays thereby the character
of the Aryan race to which these nations, like the Celts, originally
belonged. The highest god of the Germans is Wodan, called Odhin among
the Norsemen, the god of the heavens, and of the sun, who protects the
earth, and is the source of light and fruitfulness, the spirit of the
world, and the All-father (Alfadhir). From the union of heaven and
earth, there springs the god Thunar or Donar among the Germans, Thor
among the Norsemen, the bold god of thunder who wages war against the
enemies of gods and men. Besides these there are the sons of Wodan, Fro
(German), Freyx (Norse), the god of peace, Zio (German), Tyx (Norse),
the god of war, Aki (German), Oegir (Norse), god of the sea, Vol
(German), Ullr (Norse), god of hunting, and others, to whom are joined
female divinities, such as Nerthus (German), Jördh (Norse), the fruitful
goddess of the earth, Holda (German), Freiya (Norse), the goddess of
love, Nehalennia, goddess of plenty, Frikka (German), Frigg (Norse), the
wife of Wodan, mother of all the living, Hellia (German), Hel (Norse),
the inexorable goddess of the lower world. Opposed to these divinities
(Asen and Asinnen) stands Loko (German), Loki (Norse), enemy of the
divine. In addition to these there appear in the Norse and German Sagas,
besides the heroes, a multitude of spirits, good and hostile, giants,
elves, Elfen (German), Alfen (Norse), white spirits of light, and black
dwarfs, house, forest, and water spirits. The worship was most simple,
and, as was the case with the ancient Semites, the Indians of the Veda,
and the Greeks, as yet independent of temple service and priestly
constraint. The holy places of the Germans were woods, and hills, and
fountains, and in the mysterious rustling of the leaves and in the
murmuring of the waters the pious spirit caught the breathing of the
deity.[5] The father of the house is priest, and the recognition by
these races more than elsewhere of worth in woman is apparent also in
their religion. In the description of the kingdom of the dead in the
German-Norse mythology, Walhalla is the abode of the heroes, hell the
gathering place of the other dead. Notwithstanding these still childish
conceptions, there was revealed in the moral character and heroic spirit
of the German forefathers the germ of a higher development, which makes
the nations of Germany and Northern Europe capable beyond others of a
constantly higher conception and estimation of the Christian
religion.[6]