like the religion of the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, Slaves, and
Celts, with a simple and intelligible mythological phraseology. In the
Veda--for there is but one real Veda--the names of all the so-called
gods or Devas betray their original physical character and meaning
without disguise. The fire was praised and invoked by the name of
"Agni" (_ignis_); the earth by the name of "P_r_ithvi" (the broad);
the sky by the name of "Dyu" (Jupiter), and afterwards of "Indra;" the
firmament and the waters by the name of "Varu_n_a," or [Greek:
Ovravos]. The sun was invoked by many names, such as "Surya,"
"Savit_r_i," "Vish_n_u," or "Mitra;" and the dawn rejoiced in such
titles as "Ushas," "Urva_s_i," "Ahana," and "Surya." Nor was the moon
forgotten. For though it is mentioned but rarely under its usual name
of "_K_andra," it is alluded to under the more sacred appellation of
"Soma;" and each of its four phases had received its own denomination.
There is hardly any part of nature, if it could impress the human mind
in any way with the ideas of a higher power, of order, eternity, or
beneficence,--whether the winds, or the rivers, or the trees, or the
mountains,--without a name and representative in the early Hindu
Pantheon. No doubt there existed in the human mind, from the very
beginning, something, whether we call it a suspicion, an innate idea,
an intuition, or a sense of the Divine. What distinguishes man from
the rest of the animal creation is chiefly that ineradicable feeling
of dependence and reliance upon some higher power, a consciousness of
bondage, from which the very name of "religion" was derived. "It is He
that hath made us, and not we ourselves." The presence of that power
was felt everywhere, and nowhere more clearly and strongly than in the
rising and setting of the sun, in the change of day and night, of
spring and winter, of birth and death. But, although the Divine
presence was felt everywhere, it was impossible in that early period
of thought, and with a language incapable as yet of expressing
anything but material objects, to conceive the idea of God in its
purity and fullness, or to assign to it an adequate and worthy
expression. Children cannot think the thoughts of men, and the poets
of the Veda could not speak the language of Aristotle. It was by a
slow process that the human mind elaborated the idea of one absolute
and supreme Godhead; and by a still slower process that the human
language matured a word to express that idea. A period of growth was
inevitable, and those who, from a mere guess of their own, do not
hesitate to speak authoritatively of a primeval revelation, which
imparted to the Pagan world the idea of the Godhead in all its purity,
forget that, however pure and sublime and spiritual that revelation
might have been, there was no language capable as yet of expressing
the high and immaterial conceptions of that Heaven-sent message. The
real history of religion, during the earliest mythological period,
represents to us a slow process of fermentation in thought and
language, with its various interruptions, its overflowings, its
coolings, its deposits, and its gradual clearing from all extraneous
and foreign admixture. This is not only the case among the
Indo-European or Aryan races in India, in Greece, and in Germany. In
Peru, and wherever the primitive formations of the intellectual world
crop out, the process is exactly the same. "The religion of the sun,"
as it has been boldly said by the author of the "Spanish Conquest in
America," "was inevitable." It was like a deep furrow which that
heavenly luminary drew, in its silent procession from east to west,
over the virgin mind of the gazing multitude; and in the impression
left there by the first rising and setting of the sun, there lay the
dark seed of a faith in a more than human being, the first intimation
of a life without beginning, of a world without end. Manifold seed
fell afterwards into the soil once broken. Something divine was
discovered in everything that moved and lived. Names were stammered
forth in anxious haste, and no single name could fully express what
lay hidden in the human mind and wanted expression--the idea of an
absolute, and perfect, and supreme, and immortal Essence. Thus a
countless host of nominal gods was called into being, and for a time
seemed to satisfy the wants of a thoughtless multitude. But there were
thoughtful men at all times, and their reason protested against the
contradictions of a mythological phraseology, though it had been
hallowed by sacred customs and traditions. That rebellious reason had
been at work from the very first, always ready to break the yoke of
names and formulas which no longer expressed what they were intended
to express. The idea which had yearned for utterance was the idea of a
supreme and absolute Power, and that yearning was not satisfied by
such names as "Kronos," "Zeus," and "Apollon." The very sound of such
a word as "God," used in the plural, jarred on the ear, as if we were
to speak of two universes, or of a single twin. There are many words,
as Greek and Latin grammarians tell us, which, if used in the plural,
have a different meaning from what they have in the singular. The
Latin "aeedes" means a temple; if used in the plural it means a house.
"Deus" and [Greek: Theos] ought to be added to the same class of
words. The idea of supreme perfection excluded limitation, and the
idea of God excluded the possibility of many gods. This may seem
language too abstract and metaphysical for the early times of which we
are speaking. But the ancient poets of the Vedic hymns have expressed
the same thought with perfect clearness and simplicity. In the
Rig-veda (I. 164, 46) we read:--
"That which is one the sages speak of in many ways--they call it
'Agni,' 'Yama,' 'Matari_s_van.'"
[Footnote 67: See W. Spottiswoode's 'Tarantasse Journey,' p. 220,
Visit to the Buddhist Temple.]
[Footnote 68: The only trace of the influence of Buddhism among the
_K_udic races, the Fins, Laps, &c., is found in the name of their
priests and sorcerers, the Shamans. Shaman is supposed to be a
corruption of _S_rama_n_a, a name applied to Buddha, and to Buddhist
priests in general. The ancient mythological religion of the _K_udic
races has nothing in common with Buddhism. See Castren's 'Lectures on
Finnish Mythology,' 1853. Finland was ceded by Sweden to Russia in
1809, See the Author's 'Survey of Languages,' second edition, p. 116.
Shamanism found its way from India to Siberia via Tibet, China, and
Mongolia. Rules on the formation of magic figures, on the treatment of
diseases by charms, on the worship of evil spirits, on the acquisition
of supernatural powers, on charms, incantations, and other branches of
Shaman witchcraft, are found in the Stan-gyour, or the second part of
the Tibetan canon, and in some of the late Tantras of the Nepalese
collection.]
Besides the plurality of gods, which was sure to lead to their
destruction, there was a taint of mortality which they could not throw
off. They all derived their being from the life of nature. The god who
represented the sun was liable, in the mythological language of
antiquity, to all the accidents which threatened the solar luminary.
Though he might rise in immortal youth in the morning, he was
conquered by the shadows of the night, and the powers of winter seemed
to overthrow his heavenly throne. There is nothing in nature free from
change, and the gods of nature fell under the thralldom of nature's
laws. The sun must set, and the solar gods and heroes must die. There
must be one God, there must be one unchanging Deity; this was the
silent conviction of the human mind. There are many gods, liable to
all the vicissitudes of life; this was everywhere the answer of
mythological religion.
It is curious to observe in how many various ways these two opposite
principles were kept for a time from open conflict, and how long the
heathen temples resisted the enemy which was slowly and imperceptibly
undermining their very foundations. In Greece this mortal element,
inherent in all gods, was eliminated to a great extent by the
conception of heroes. Whatever was too human in the ancient legends
told of Zeus and Apollon was transfered to so-called half-gods or
heroes, who were represented as the sons or favorites of the gods, and
who bore their fate under a slightly altered name. The twofold
character of Herakles as a god and as a hero is acknowledged even by
Herodotus, and some of his epithets would have been sufficient to
indicate his solar and originally divine character. But, in order to
make some of the legends told of the solar deity possible or
conceivable, it was necessary to represent Herakles as a more human
being, and to make him rise to the seat of the Immortals only after he
had endured toils and sufferings incompatible with the dignity of an
Olympian god. We find the same idea in Peru, only that there it led to
different results. A thinking, or, as he was called, a freethinking
Inca[69] remarked that this perpetual travelling of the sun was a sign
of servitude,[70] and he threw doubts upon the divine nature of such
an unquiet thing as that great luminary appeared to him to be. And
this misgiving led to a tradition which, even should it be unfounded
in history, had some truth in itself, that there was in Peru an
earlier worship, that of an invisible Deity, the Creator of the world,
Pachacamac. In Greece, also, there are signs of a similar craving
after the "Unknown God." A supreme God was wanted, and Zeus, the
stripling of Creta, was raised to that rank. He became God above all
gods--[Greek: hapanton kyrios] as Pindar calls him. Yet more was
wanted than a mere Zeus; and thus a supreme Fate or Spell was imagined
before which all the gods, and even Zeus, had to bow. And even this
Fate was not allowed to remain supreme, and there was something in the
destinies of man which was called [Greek: hypermoron], or "beyond
Fate." The most awful solution, however, of the problem belongs to
Teutonic mythology. Here, also, some heroes were introduced; but their
death was only the beginning of the final catastrophe. "All gods must
die." Such is the last word of that religion which had grown up in the
forests of Germany, and found a last refuge among the glaciers and
volcanoes of Iceland. The death of Sigurd, the descendant of Odin,
could not avert the death of Balder, the son of Odin; and the death of
Balder was soon to be followed by the death of Odin himself, and of
all the immortal gods.
All this was inevitable, and Prometheus, the man of forethought, could
safely predict the fall of Zeus. The struggles by which reason and
faith overthrow tradition and superstition vary in different countries
and at different times; but the final victory is always on their side.
In India the same antagonism manifested itself, but what there seemed
a victory of reason threatened to become the destruction of all
religious faith. At first there was hardly a struggle. On the
primitive mythological stratum of thought two new formations
arose,--the Brahmanical philosophy and the Brahmanical ceremonial; the
one opening the widest avenues of philosophical thought, the other
fencing all religious feeling within the narrowest barriers. Both
derived their authority from the same source. Both professed to carry
out the meaning and purpose of the Veda. Thus we see on the one side,
the growth of a numerous and powerful priesthood, and the
establishment of a ceremonial which embraced every moment of a man's
life from his birth to his death. There was no event which might have
moved the heart to a spontaneous outpouring of praise or thanksgiving,
which was not regulated by priestly formulas. Every prayer was
prescribed, every sacrifice determined. Every god had his share, and
the claims of each deity on the adoration of the faithful were set
down with such punctiliousness, the danger of offending their pride
was represented in such vivid colors, that no one would venture to
approach their presence without the assistance of a well-paid staff of
masters of divine ceremonies. It was impossible to avoid sin without
the help of the Brahmans. They alone knew the food that might properly
be eaten, the air which might properly be breathed, the dress which
might properly be worn. They alone could tell what god should be
invoked, what sacrifice be offered; and the slightest mistake of
pronunciation, the slightest neglect about clarified butter, or the
length of the ladle in which it was to be offered, might bring
destruction upon the head of the unassisted worshipper. No nation was
ever so completely priest-ridden as the Hindus under the sway of the
Brahmanic law. Yet, on the other side, the same people were allowed to
indulge in the most unrestrained freedom of thought, and in the
schools of their philosophy the very names of their gods were never
mentioned. Their existence was neither denied nor asserted; they were
of no greater importance in the system of the world of thought than
trees or mountains, men or animals; and to offer sacrifices to them
with a hope of rewards, so far from being meritorious, was considered
as dangerous to that emancipation to which a clear perception of
philosophical truth was to lead the patient student. There was one
system which taught that there existed but one Being, without a
second; that everything else which seemed to exist was but a dream and
illusion, and that this illusion might be removed by a true knowledge
of the one Being. There was another system which admitted two
principles,--one a subjective and self-existent mind, the other
matter, endowed with qualities. Here the world, with its joys and
sorrows, was explained as the result of the subjective Self,
reflecting itself in the mirror of matter; and final emancipation was
obtained by turning away the eyes from the play of nature, and being
absorbed in the knowledge of the time and absolute Self. A third
system started with the admission of atoms, and explained every
effect, including the elements and the mind, animals, men, and gods,
from the concurrence of these atoms. In fact, as M. Cousin remarked
many years ago, the history of the philosophy of India is "un abrege
de l'histoire de la philosophie." The germs of all these systems are
traced back to the Vedas, Brahma_n_as, and the Upanishads, and the man
who believed in any of them was considered as orthodox as the devout
worshipper of the gods; the one was saved by knowledge and faith, the
other by works and faith.
Such was the state of the Hindu mind when Buddhism arose; or, rather,
such was the state of the Hindu mind which gave rise to Buddhism.
Buddha himself went through the school of the Brahmans. He performed
their penances, he studied their philosophy, and he at last claimed
the name of "the Buddha," or "the Enlightened," when he threw away the
whole ceremonial, with its sacrifices, superstitions, penances, and
castes, as worthless, and changed the complicated systems of
philosophy into a short doctrine of salvation. This doctrine of
salvation has been called pure Atheism and Nihilism, and it no doubt
was liable to both charges in its metaphysical character, and in that
form in which we chiefly know it. It was Atheistic, not because it
denied the existence of such gods as Indra and Brahma. Buddha did not
even condescend to deny their existence. But it was called Atheistic,
like the Sankhya philosophy, which admitted but one subjective Self,
and considered creation as an illusion of that Self, imaging itself
for a while in the mirror of nature. As there was no reality in
creation, there could be no real Creator. All that seemed to exist was
the result of ignorance. To remove that ignorance was to remove the
cause of all that seemed to exist. How a religion which taught the
annihilation of all existence, of all thought, of all individuality
and personality, as the highest object of all endeavors, could have
laid hold of the minds of millions of human beings, and how at the
same time, by enforcing the duties of morality, justice, kindness, and
self-sacrifice, it could have exercised a decided beneficial
influence, not only on the natives of India, but on the lowest
barbarians of Central Asia, is a riddle which no one has been able to
solve. We must distinguish, it seems, between Buddhism as a religion,
and Buddhism as a a religion, and Buddhism as a philosophy.
The former addressed itself to millions, the latter to a few isolated
thinkers. It is from these isolated thinkers, however, and from their
literary compositions, that we are apt to form our notions of what
Buddhism was, while, as a matter of fact, not one in a thousand would
have been capable of following these metaphysical speculations. To the
people at large Buddhism was a moral and religious, not a
philosophical reform. Yet even its morality has a metaphysical tinge.
The morality which it teaches is not a morality of expediency and
rewards. Virtue is not enjoined because it necessarily leads to
happiness. No; virtue is to be practised, but happiness is to be
shunned, and the only reward for virtue is that it subdues the
passions, and thus prepares the human mind for that knowledge which is
to end in complete annihilation. There are ten commandments which
Buddha imposes on his disciples.[71] They are--
1. Not to kill.
2. Not to steal.
3. Not to commit adultery.
4. Not to lie.
5. Not to get intoxicated.
6. To abstain from unseasonable meals.
7. To abstain from public spectacles.
[Footnote 69: Helps, _The Spanish Conquest_, vol. iii. p. 503: "Que
cosa tam inquieta non le parescia ser Dios."]
[Footnote 70: On the servitude of the gods, see the "Essay on
Comparative Mythology," _Oxford Essays_, 1856, p. 69.]
[Footnote 71: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 444. Barthelemy
Saint-Hilaire, 'Du Bouddhisme,' p. 132. Ch.F.Neumann, 'Catechism of
the Shamans.']
8. To abstain from expensive dresses.
9. Not to have a large bed.
10. Not to receive silver or gold.