PROGRESS UNDER ANCIENT RELIGIONS
§ 1. EARLY ASSOCIATION AND COMPETITION OF CULTS
When religion has entered on the stage of quasi-civilized organization,
with fixed legends or documents, temples, and the rudiments of
hierarchies, the increased forces of terrorism and conservatism
are in nearly all cases seen to be in part countervailed by the
simple interaction of the systems of different communities. There
is no more ubiquitous force in the whole history of the subject,
operating as it does in ancient Assyria, in the life of Vedic India
and Confucian China, and in the diverse histories of progressive
Greece and relatively stationary Egypt, down through the Christian
Middle Ages to our own period of comparative studies.
In ages when any dispassionate comparative study was impossible,
religious systems appear to have been considerably modified by the
influence of those of conquered peoples on those of their conquerors,
and vice versâ. Peoples who while at arm's length would insult and
affect to despise each other's Gods, and would deride each other's
myths, [121] appear frequently to have altered their attitude when
one had conquered the other; and this not because of any special
growth of sympathy, but by force of the old motive of fear. In the
stage of natural polytheism no nation really doubted the existence
of the Gods of another; at most, like the Hebrews of the early
historic period, it would set its own God above the others, calling
him "Lord of Lords." But, every community having its own God, he
remained a local power even when his own worshippers were conquered,
and his cult and lore were respected accordingly. This procedure,
which has been sometimes attributed to the Romans in particular as
a stroke of political sagacity, was the normal and natural course
of polytheism. Thus in the Hebrew books the Assyrian conqueror is
represented as admitting that it is necessary to leave a priest who
knows "the manner of the God of the land" among the new inhabitants
he has planted there.
See 2 Kings xvii, 26. Cp. Ruth i, 16, and Judges xvii, 13. The
account by Herodotos (ii, 171) of the preservation of the
Pelasgic rites of Dêmêtêr by the women of Arcadia points to the
same principle. See also hereinafter, ch. vi, § 1; K. O. Müller,
Introd. to a Sci. Study of Mythol., Eng. trans., p. 193; Adolf
Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, 1860, i, 189; Rhys,
Celtic Britain, 2nd ed., p. 69; Max Müller, Anthropological
Religion, p. 164; Gibbon, ch. xxxiv--Bohn ed., iii, 554, note;
Tylor, Primitive Culture, i, 113-15; and Dr. F. B. Jevons's
Introd. to the Hist. of Relig., 1896, pp. 36-40, where the fear
felt by conquering races for the occult powers of the conquered is
limited to the sphere of "magic." But when Dr. Jevons so defines
magic as to admit of his proposition (p. 38) that "the hostility
from the beginning between religion and magic is universally
admitted," he throws into confusion the whole phenomena of the
early official-religious practice of magic, of which sacrifice
and prayer are the type-forms that have best survived. And in
the end he upsets his definition by noting (p. 40) how magic,
"even where its relation to religion is one of avowed hostility,"
will imitate religion. Obviously magic is a function or aspect or
element of primitive religion (cp. Roskoff, Das Religionswesen der
rohesten Naturvölker, 1880, p. 144; Sayce, pp. 315, 319, 327, and
passim; and Tiele, Egyptian Rel., pp. 22, 32); and any "hostility,"
far from being universal, is either a social or a philosophical
differentiation. On the whole question compare the author's Pagan
Christs, 2nd ed., pp. 11-38. In the opinion of Weber (Hist. of
Ind. Lit., p. 264) the magic arts "found a more and more fruitful
soil as the religious development of the Hindus progressed";
"so that they now, in fact, reign almost supreme." See again
Dr. Jevons's own later admission, p. 395, where the exception of
Christianity is somewhat arbitrary. On this compare Kant, Religion
innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, B. iv, Th. ii, § 3.
Similar cases have been noted in primitive cults still surviving. Fear
of the magic powers of "lower" or conquered races is in fact normal
wherever belief in wizardry survives; and to the general tendency may
be conjecturally ascribed such phenomena as that of the Saturnalia,
in which masters and slaves changed places, and the institution of the
Levites among the Hebrews, otherwise only mythically explained. But if
conquerors and conquered thus tended to amalgamate or associate their
cults, equally would allied tribes tend to do so; and, when particular
Gods of different groups were seen to correspond in respect of special
attributes, a further analysis would be encouraged. Hence, with every
extension of every State, every advance in intercourse made in peace
or through war, there would be a further comparison of credences,
a further challenge to the reasoning powers of thoughtful men.
On the normal tendency to defer to local deities, compare Tylor,
Primitive Culture, as last cited; B. Thomson, The Fijians,
1908, p. 112; A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-Speaking Peoples of the Gold
Coast, 1887, p. 147, and The Ewe-Speaking Peoples, 1890, p. 55;
P. Wurm, Handbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 2te Aufl., p. 43 (as to
Madagascar); Sir H. Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate, 1902, ii,
589; Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii, 186; P. Kropotkin,
Memoirs of a Revolutionist, ed. 1908, p. 191; W. W. Skeat, Malay
Magic, 1900, pp. 56, 84; Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern
India, 1909, i, 86-87, 94, 100; iii, 188; iv, 170; v, 467-68;
W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas, 1906, p. 263; Rae, The White Sea
Peninsula, 1881, p. 262; Élie Reclus, Primitive Folk, pp. 254-56;
Grant Allen, Evolution of the Idea of God, 1897, pp. 289, 301-302;
Castrén, Vorlesungen über die Finnische Mythologie, 1853, p. 281;
Gummere, Germanic Origins, 1892, p. 140, citing Weinhold, Deutsche
Frauen, i, 105; Gobineau, Les religions et les philosophies dans
l'Asie centrale, 2e éd. p. 67; E. Higgins, Hebrew Idolatry and
Superstition, 1893, pp. 20, 24; Robertson Smith, Religion of
the Semites, 1889, p. 77; Wellhausen, Heidenthum, pp. 129, 183,
cited by Smith, p. 79; Lang, Making of Religion, p. 65; Frazer,
Golden Bough, 2nd ed. ii, 72. Above all, see the record in Old New
Zealand, "by a Pakeha Maori" (2nd ed. Auckland, 1863, p. 154),
of the believing resort of some white men to native wizards in
New Zealand.
Stevenson, again, is evidently proceeding upon observation
when he makes his trader in The Beach of Falesà say: "We
laugh at the natives and their superstitions; but see how many
traders take them up, splendidly educated white men that have
been bookkeepers (some of them) and clerks in the old country"
(Island Nights' Entertainments, 1893, pp. 104-105). In Abyssinia,
"Galla sorceresses are frequently called in by the Christians of
Shoa to transfer sickness or to rid the house of evil spirits"
(Major W. Cornwallis Harris, The Highlands of Aethiopia, 1844,
iii, 50). On the other hand, some Sudanese tribes "believe in the
virtue both of Christian and Moslem amulets, but have hitherto lent
a deaf ear to the preachers of both these religions" (A. H. Keane,
Man, Past and Present, 1900, p. 50).
This tendency did not exclude, but would in certain cases
conflict with, the strong primitive tendency to associate every
God permanently with his supposed original locality. Tiele writes
(Hist. of the Egypt. Relig., Eng. trans. introd. p. xvii) that in
no case was a place given to the Gods of one nation in another's
pantheon "if they did not wholly alter their form, character,
appearance, and not seldom their very name." This seems an
over-statement, and is inconsistent with Tiele's own statement
(Hist. comparée des anc. relig. égyptiennes et sémitiques,
French trans., 1882, pp. 174-80) as to the adoption of Sumerian
and Akkadian Gods and creeds by the Semites. What is clear is
that local cults resisted the removal of their Gods' images;
and the attempt to deport such images to Babylon, thus affecting
the monopoly of the God of Babylon himself, was a main cause of
the fall of Nabonidos, who was driven out by Cyrus. (E. Meyer,
Geschichte des Alterthums, i (1884), 599.) But the Assyrians
invoked Bel Merodach of Babylon, after they had conquered Babylon,
in terms of his own ritual; even as Israelites often invoked
the Gods of Canaan (cp. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, Relig. of the
Anc. Babylonians, p. 123). And King Mardouk-nadinakhe of Babylon,
in the twelfth century B.C., carried off statues of the Assyrian
Gods from the town of Hekali to Babylon, where they were kept
captive for 418 years (Maspero, Hist. anc. des peuples de l'orient,
4e éd. p. 300). A God could migrate with his worshippers from city
to city (Meyer, iii, 169; Sayce, p. 124); and the Assyrian scribe
class maintained the worship of their special God Nebo wherever
they went, though he was a local God to start with (Sayce, pp. 117,
119, 121). And as to the recognition of the Gods of different
Egyptian cities by politic kings, see Tiele's own statement,
p. 36. Cp. his Outlines, pp. 73, 84, 207.
A concrete knowledge of the multiplicity of cults, then, was
obtruded on the leisured and travelled men of the early empires and
of such a civilization as that of Hellas; [122] and when to such
knowledge there was added a scientific astronomy (the earliest to be
constituted of the concrete sciences), a revision of beliefs by such
men was inevitable. [123] It might take the form either of a guarded
skepticism or of a monarchic theology, answering to the organization
of the actual earthly empire; and the latter view, in the nature of
the case, would much the more easily gain ground. The freethought of
early civilization, then, would be practically limited for a long time
to movements in the direction of co-ordinating polytheism, to the end
of setting up a supreme though not a sole deity; the chief God in any
given case being apt to be the God specially affected by the reigning
monarch. Allocation of spheres of influence to the principal deities
would be the working minimum of plausible adjustment, since only
in some such way could the established principle of the regularity
of the heavens be formally accommodated to the current worship; and
wherever there was monarchy, even if the monarch were polytheistic,
there was a lead to gradation among the Gods. [124] A pantheistic
conception would be the highest stretch of rationalism that could
have any vogue even among the educated class. All the while every
advance was liable to the ill-fortune of overthrow or arrest at the
hands of an invading barbarism, which even in adopting the system of an
established priesthood would be more likely to stiffen than to develop
it. Early rationalism, in short, would share in the fluctuations of
early civilization; and achievements of thought would repeatedly be
swept away, even as were the achievements of the constructive arts.
§ 2. THE PROCESS IN INDIA
The process thus deducible from the main conditions is found actually
happening in more than one of the ancient cultures, as their history
is now sketched. In the Rig-Veda, which if not the oldest is the least
altered of the Eastern Sacred Books, the main line of change is obvious
enough. It remains so far matter of conjecture to what extent the early
Vedic cults contain matter adopted from non-Aryan Asiatic peoples; but
no other hypothesis seems to account for the special development of the
cult of Agni in India as compared with the content and development of
the other early Aryan systems, in which, though there are developments
of fire worship, the God Agni does not appear. [125] The specially
priestly character of the Agni worship, and the precedence it takes
in the Vedas over the solar cult of Mitra, which among the kindred
Aryans of Iran receives in turn a special development, suggest some
such grafting, though the relations between Aryans and the Hindu
aborigines, as indicated in the Veda, seem to exclude the possibility
of their adopting the fire-cult from the conquered inhabitants, [126]
who, besides, are often spoken of in the Vedas as "non-sacrificers,"
[127] and at times as "without Gods." [128] But this is sometimes
asserted even of hostile Aryans. [129] In any case the carrying
on of the two main cults of Agni and Indra side by side points to
an original and marked heterogeneity of racial elements; while the
varying combination with them of the worship of other deities, the
old Aryan Varuna, the three forms of the Sun-God Aditya, the Goddess
Aditi and the eight Adityas, the solar Mitra, Vishnu, Rudra, and
the Maruts, imply the adaptation of further varieties of hereditary
creed. The outcome is a sufficiently chaotic medley, in which the
attributes and status of the various Gods are reducible to no code,
[130] the same feats being assigned to several, and the attributes
of all claimed for almost any one. Here, then, were the conditions
provocative of doubt among the critical; and while it is only in the
later books of the Rig-Veda that such doubt finds priestly expression,
it must be inferred that it was current in some degree among laymen
before the hymn-makers avowed that they shared it. The God Soma,
the personification of wine, identified with the Moon-God Chandra,
[131] "hurls the irreligious into the abyss." [132] This may mean that
his cult, like that of his congener Dionysos in Greece, was at first
forcibly resisted, and forcibly triumphed. At an earlier period doubt
is directed against the most popular God, Indra, perhaps on behalf of a
rival cult. [133] Later it seems to take the shape of a half-skeptical,
half-mystical questioning as to which, if any, God is real.
From the Catholic standpoint, Dr. E. L. Fischer has argued that
"Varuna is in the ontological, physical, and ethical relation
the highest, indeed the unique, God of ancient India"; and that
the Nature-Gods of the Veda can belong only to a later period in
the religious consciousness (Heidenthum und Offenbarung, 1878,
pp. 36-37). Such a development, had it really occurred, might
be said to represent a movement of primitive freethought from
an unsatisfying monotheism to a polytheism that seemed better
to explain natural facts. A more plausible view of the process,
however, is that of von Bradke, to the effect that "the old
Indo-Germanic polytheism, with its pronounced monarchic apex, which
... constituted the religion of the pre-Vedic [Aryan] Hindus, lost
its monarchic apex shortly before and during the Rig-Veda period,
and set up for itself the so-called Henotheism [worship of deities
severally as if each were the only one], which thus represented
in India a time of religious decline; a decline that, at the end
of the period to which the Rig-Veda hymns belong, led to an almost
complete dissolution of the old beliefs. The earlier collection of
the hymns must have promoted the decline; and the final redaction
must have completed it. The collected hymns show only too plainly
how the very deity before whom in one song all the remaining
Gods bow themselves, in the next sinks almost in the dust before
another. Then there sounds from the Rig-Veda (x, 121) the wistful
question: Who is the God whom we should worship?" (Dyâus Asura,
Ahuramazda, und die Asuras, Halle, 1885, p. 115; cp. note, supra,
p. 30). On this view the growth of monotheism went on alongside
of a growth of critical unbelief, but, instead of expressing that,
provoked it by way of reaction. Dr. Muir more specifically argues
(Sanskrit Texts, v, 116) that in the Vedic hymns Varuna is a God
in a state of decadence; and, despite the dissent of M. Barth
(Religions of India, p. 18), this seems true. But the recession
of Varuna is only in the normal way of the eclipse of the old
Supreme God by a nearer deity, and does not suffice to prove a
growth of agnosticism. M. Fontane (Inde Védique, 1881, p. 305)
asserts on other grounds a popular movement of negation in the
Vedic period, but offers rather slender evidence. There is better
ground for his account of the system as one in which different
cults had the upper hand at different times, the devotees of
Indra rejecting Agni, and so on (pp. 310-11).
To meet such a doubt, a pantheistic view of things would naturally
arise, and in the Vedas it often emerges. [134] Thus "Agni is all
the Gods"; and "the Gods are only a single being under different
names." [135] For ancient as for more civilized peoples such a doctrine
had the attraction of nominally reconciling the popular cult with the
skepticism it had aroused. Rising thus as freethought, the pantheistic
doctrine in itself ultimately became in India a dogmatic system, the
monopoly of a priestly caste, whose training in mystical dialectic
made them able to repel or baffle amateur criticism. Such fortifying
of a sophisticated creed by institutions--of which the Brahmanic caste
system is perhaps the strongest type--is one of the main conditions
of relative permanence for any set of opinions; yet even within
the Brahmanic system, by reason, presumably, of the principle that
the higher truth was for the adept and need not interfere with the
popular cult, there were again successive critical revisions of the
pantheistic idea.
Prof. Garbe (Philosophy of Anc. India, sect. on Hindu Monism)
argues that all monistic, and indeed all progressive, thinking in
ancient India arose not among the Brahmans, who were conscienceless
oppressors, but among the warrior caste; citing stories in the
Upanishads in which Brahmans are represented as receiving such
ideas from warriors. The thesis is much weakened by the Professor's
acceptance of Krishna as primarily a historic character, of the
warrior class. But there is ground for his general thesis, which
recognizes (p. 78) that the Brahmans at length assimilated the
higher thought of laymen. Max Müller puts it that "No nation was
ever so completely priestridden as the Hindus were 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...." (Selected Essays, 1881, ii, 244). "Sankhya
philosophy" [on which Buddhism is supposed to be based], "in
its original form, claims the name of an-îsvara, 'lordless' or
'atheistic,' as its distinctive title" (ibid. p. 283).
Of the nature of a freethinking departure, among the early
Brahmanists as in other societies, was the substitution of
non-human for human sacrifices--a development of peaceful
life-conditions which, though not primitive, must have ante-dated
Buddhism. See Tiele, Outlines, pp. 126-27 and refs.; Barth,
Religions of India, pp. 57-59; and Müller, Physical Religion,
p. 101. Prof. Robertson Smith (Religion of the Semites, p. 346)
appears to hold that animal sacrifice was never a substitute
for human; but his ingenious argument, on analysis, is found to
prove only that in certain cases the idea of such a substitution
having taken place may have been unhistorical. If it be granted
that human sacrifices ever occurred--and all the evidence goes
to show that they were once universal--substitution would be an
obvious way of abolishing them. Historical analogy is in favour
of the view that the change was forced on the priesthood from the
outside, and only after a time accepted by the Brahmans. Thus
we find the Khârvâkas, a school of freethinkers, rising in the
Alexandrian period, making it part of their business to denounce
the Brahmanic doctrine and practice of sacrifice, and to argue
against all blood sacrifices; but they had no practical success
(Tiele, p. 126) until Buddhism triumphed (Mitchell, Hinduism, 1885,
p. 106; Rhys Davids, tr. of Dialogues of the Buddha, 1899, p. 165).
In the earliest Upanishads the World-Being seems to have been figured
as the totality of matter, [136] an atheistic view associated in
particular with the teaching of Kapila, [137] who himself, however, was
at length raised to divine status, [138] though his system continues
to pass as substantially atheistic. [139] This view being open to all
manner of anti-religious criticism, which it incurred even within the
Brahmanic pale, [140] there was evolved an ideal formula in which
the source of all things is "the invisible, intangible, unrelated,
colourless one, who has neither eyes nor ears, neither hands nor feet,
eternal, all-pervading, subtile, and undecaying." [141] At the same
time, the Upanishads exhibit a stringent reaction against the whole
content of the Vedas. Their ostensible object is "to show the utter
uselessness--nay, the mischievousness--of all ritual performances;
to condemn every sacrificial act which has for its motive a desire or
hope of reward; to deny, if not the existence, at least the exceptional
and exalted character of the Devas; and to teach that there is no hope
of salvation and deliverance except by the individual self recognizing
the true and universal self and finding rest there, where alone rest
can be found." [142]
And the critical development does not end there. "In the old
Upanishads, in which the hymns and sacrifices of the Veda are looked
upon as useless, and as superseded by the higher knowledge taught by
the forest-sages, they are not yet attacked as mere impositions. That
opposition, however, sets in very decidedly in the Sutra period. In
the Nirukta (i, 15) Yâska quotes the opinion of Kautsa, that the hymns
of the Veda have no meaning at all." [143] In short, every form of
critical revolt against incredible doctrine that has arisen in later
Europe had taken place in ancient India long before the Alexandrian
conquest. [144] And the same attitude continued to be common within the
post-Alexandrian period; for Panini, who must apparently be dated then,
[145] "was acquainted with infidels and nihilists"; [146] and the
teaching of Brihaspati, [147] on which was founded the system of the
Khârvâkas--apparently one of several sections of a freethinking school
called the Lokâyatas [148] or Lokâyatikas--is extremely destructive of
Vedic pretensions. "The Veda is tainted by the three faults of untruth,
self-contradiction, and tautology.... The impostors who call themselves
Vedic pandits are mutually destructive.... The three authors of the
Vedas were buffoons, knaves, and demons: All the well-known formulas
of the pandits, and all the horrid rites for the queen commanded
in the Asvamedha--these were invented by buffoons, and so all the
various kinds of presents to the priests; while the eating of flesh
was similarly commanded by night-prowling demons." [149]
To what extent such aggressive rationalism ever spread it is now
quite impossible to ascertain. It seems probable that the word
Lokâyata, defined by Sanskrit scholars as signifying "directed
to the world of sense," [150] originally, or about 500 B.C.,
signified "Nature-lore," and that this passed as a branch of Brahman
learning. [151] Significantly enough, while the lore was not extensive,
it came to be regarded as disposing men to unbelief, though it does
not seem to have suggested any thorough training. At length, in the
eighth century of our era, it is found applied as a term of abuse,
in the sense of "infidel," by Kumârila in controversy with opponents
as orthodox as himself; and about the same period Sankara connects
with it a denial of the existence of a separate and immortal soul;
[152] though that opinion had been debated, and not called Lokâyata,
long before, when the word was current in the broader sense. [153]
Latterly, in the fourteenth century, on the strength of some doggerel
verses which cannot have belonged to the early Brahmanic Lokâyata,
it stands for extreme atheism and a materialism not professed by any
known school speaking for itself. [154] The evidence, such as it is,
is preserved only in Sarva-darsana-samgraha, a compendium of all
philosophical systems, compiled in the fourteenth century by the
Vedantic teacher Mâdhavâchâra. [155] One source speaks of an early
text-book of materialism, the Sutras of Brihaspati; [156] but this has
not been preserved. Thus in Hindu as in later European freethought for
a long period we have had to rely for our knowledge of freethinkers'
ideas upon the replies made by their opponents. It is reasonable to
conclude that, save insofar as the arguments of Brihaspati were common
to the Khârvâkas and the Buddhists, [157] such doctrine as his or that
of the later Lokâyatikas cannot conceivably have been more than the
revolt of a thoughtful minority against official as well as popular
religion; and to speak of a time when "the Aryan settlers in India
had arrived at the conviction that all their Devas or Gods were mere
names" [158] is to suggest a general evolution of rational thought
which can no more have taken place in ancient India than it has done
to-day in Europe. The old creeds would always have defenders; and
every revolt was sure to incur a reaction. In the Hitopadesa or "Book
of Good Counsel" (an undated recension of the earlier Panchatantra,
"The Five Books," which in its first form may be placed about the fifth
century of our era) there occur both passages disparaging mere study
of the Sacred Books [159] and passages insisting upon it as a virtue
in itself [160] and otherwise insisting on ritual observances. [161]
They seem to come from different hands.
The phenomenon of the schism represented by the two divisions
of the Yazur Veda, the "White" and the "Black," is plausibly
accounted for as the outcome of the tendencies of a new and an
old school, who selected from their Brahmanas, or treatises of
ritual and theology, the portions which respectively suited
them. The implied critical movement would tend to affect
official thought in general. This schism is held by Weber to
have arisen only in the period of ferment set up by Buddhism;
but other disputes seem to have taken place in abundance in the
Brahmanical schools before that time. (Cp. Tiele, Outlines,
p. 123; Weber, Hist. Ind. Lit., pp. 10, 27, 232; Max Müller,
Anthropol. Relig., 1892, pp. 36-37; and Rhys Davids, Buddhism,
p. 34.) Again, the ascetic and penance-bearing hermits, who were
encouraged by the veneration paid them to exalt themselves above
all save the highest Gods, would by their utterances of necessity
affect the course of doctrine. Compare the same tendency as seen
in Buddhism and Jainism (Tiele, pp. 135, 140).
But in the later form of the Vedânta, "the end of the Veda," a monistic
and pantheistic teaching holds its ground in our own day, after all
the ups and downs of Brahmanism, alongside of the aboriginal cults
which Brahmanism adopted in its battle with Buddhism; alongside,
too, of the worship of the Veda itself as an eternal and miraculous
document. "The leading tenets [of the Vedânta] are known to some
extent in every village." [162] Yet the Vedântists, again, treat
the Upanishads in turn as a miraculous and inspired system, [163]
and repeat in their case the process of the Vedas: so sure is the law
of fixation in religious thought, while the habit of worship subsists.
The highest activity of rationalistic speculation within the Brahmanic
fold is seen to have followed intelligibly on the most powerful
reaction against the Brahmans' authority. This took place when their
sphere had been extended from the region of the Punjaub, of which alone
the Rig-Veda shows knowledge, to the great kingdoms of Southern India,
pointed to in the Sutras, [164] or short digests of ritual and law
designed for general official use. In the new environment "there was a
well-marked lay-feeling, a widespread antagonism to the priests, a real
sense of humour, a strong fund of common sense. Above all there was
the most complete and unquestioned freedom of thought and expression
in religious matters that the world had yet witnessed." [165]
The most popular basis for rejection of a given system--belief in
another--made ultimately possible there the rise of a practically
atheistic system capable, wherever embraced, of annulling the
burdensome and exclusive system of the Brahmans, which had been
obtruded in its worst form, [166] though not dominantly, in the new
environment. Buddhism, though it cannot have arisen on one man's
initiative in the manner claimed in the legends, even as stripped of
their supernaturalist element, [167] was in its origin essentially
a movement of freethought, such as could have arisen only in the
atmosphere of a much mixed society [168] where the extreme Brahmanical
claims were on various grounds discredited, perhaps even within their
own newly-adjusted body. It was stigmatized as "the science of reason,"
a term equivalent to "heresy" in the Christian sphere; [169] and its
definite rejection of the Vedas made it anti-sacerdotal even while
it retained the modes of speech of polytheism. The tradition which
makes the Buddha [170] a prince suggests an upper-class origin for
the reaction; and there are traces of a chronic resistance to the
Brahmans' rule among their fellow-Aryans before the Buddhist period.
"The royal families, the warriors, who, it may be supposed,
strenuously supported the priesthood so long as it was a question
of robbing the people of their rights, now that this was effected
turned against their former allies, and sought to throw off the
yoke that was likewise laid upon them. These efforts were, however,
unavailing: the colossus was too firmly established. Obscure
legends and isolated allusions are the only records left to us
in the later writings of the sacrilegious hands which ventured
to attack the sacred and divinely consecrated majesty of the
Brahmans; and these are careful to note at the same time the
terrible punishments which befel those impious offenders" (Weber,
Hist. Ind. Lit., p. 19).
The circumstances, however, that the Buddhist writings were from the
first in vernacular dialects, not in Sanskrit, [171] and that the
mythical matter which accumulated round the story of the Buddha is
in the main aboriginal, and largely common to the myth of Krishna,
[172] go to prove that Buddhism spread specially in the non-Aryan
sphere. [173] Its practical (not theoretic) [174] atheism seems to
have rested fundamentally on the conception of Karma, the transition
of the soul, or rather of the personality, through many stages up to
that in which, by self-discipline, it attains the impersonal peace
of Nirvana; and of this conception there is no trace in the Vedas,
[175] though it became a leading tenet of Brahmanism.
To the dissolvent influence of Greek culture may possibly be
due some part of the success of Buddhism before our era, and
even later. Hindu astronomy in the Vedic period was but slightly
developed (Weber, Hist. Ind. Lit., pp. 246, 249, 250); and "it
was Greek influence that first infused a real life into Indian
astronomy" (Id. p. 251; cp. Letronne, Mélanges d'Érudition, 1860
(?), p. 40; Narrien, Histor. Acc. of Orig. and Prog. of Astron.,
p. 33, and Lib. Use. Kn. Hist. of Astron., c. ii). This implies
other interactions. It is presumably to Greek stimulus that we must
trace the knowledge by Aryabhata (Colebrooke's Essays, ed. 1873,
ii, 404; cp. Weber, p. 257) of the doctrine of the earth's
diurnal revolution on its axis; and the fact that in India as in
the Mediterranean world the truth was later lost from men's hands
may be taken as one of the proofs that the two civilizations alike
retrograded owing to evil political conditions. In the progressive
period (from about 320 B.C. onwards for perhaps some centuries)
Greek ideas might well help to discredit traditionalism; and their
acceptance at royal courts would be favourable to toleration
of the new teaching. At the same time, Buddhism must have been
favoured by the native mental climate in which it arose.
The main differentiation of Buddhism from Brahmanism, again, is its
ethical spirit, which sets aside formalism and seeks salvation in an
inward reverie and discipline; and this element in turn can hardly
be conceived as arising save in an old society, far removed from the
warlike stage represented by the Vedas. Whatever may have been its
early association with Brahmanism [176] then, it must be regarded
as essentially a reaction against Brahmanical doctrine and ideals;
a circumstance which would account for its early acceptance in the
Punjaub, where Brahmanism had never attained absolute power and was
jealously resisted by the free population. [177] And the fact that
Jainism, so closely akin to Buddhism, has its sacred books in a dialect
belonging to the region in which Buddhism arose, further supports the
view that the reaction grew out of the thought of a type of society
differing widely from that in which Brahmanism arose. Jainism, like
Buddhism, is substantially atheistic, [178] and like it has an ancient
monkish organization to which women were early admitted. The original
crypto-atheism or agnosticism of the Buddhist movement thus appears as
a product of a relatively high, because complex, moral and intellectual
evolution. It certainly never impugned the belief in the Gods; on
the contrary, the Buddha is often represented as speaking of their
existence, [179] and at times as approving of their customary worship;
[180] but he is never said to counsel his own order to pray to them;
he makes light of sacrifice; and above all he is made quite negative
as to a future life, preaching the doctrine of Karma in a sense which
excludes individual immortality. [181] "It cannot be denied that
if we call the old Gods of the Veda--Indra and Agni and Yama--Gods,
Buddha was an atheist. He does not believe in the divinity of these
deities. What is noteworthy is that he does not by any means deny
their bare existence.... The founder of Buddhism treats the old Gods
as superhuman beings." [182] Thus it is permissible to say both that
Buddhism recognizes Gods and that it is practically atheistic.
"The fact cannot be disputed away that the religion of Buddha
was from the beginning purely atheistic. The idea of the Godhead
... was for a time at least expelled from the sanctuary of the
human mind, [183] and the highest morality that was ever taught
before the rise of Christianity was taught by men with whom the
Gods had become mere phantoms, without any altars, not even an
altar to the unknown God" (Max Müller, Introd. to the Science of
Religion, ed. 1882, p. 81. Cp. the same author's Selected Essays,
1881, ii, 300.)
"He [Buddha] ignores God in so complete a way that he does not even
seek to deny him; he does not suppress him, but he does not speak
of him either to explain the origin and anterior existence of man
or to explain the present life, or to conjecture his future life
and definitive deliverance. The Buddha knows God in no fashion
whatever" (Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion,
1866, p. v).
"Buddhism and Christianity are indeed the two opposite poles with
regard to the most essential points of religion: Buddhism ignoring
all feeling of dependence on a higher power, and therefore denying
the very existence of a supreme deity" (Müller, Introd. to Sc. of
Rel., p. 171).
"Lastly, the Buddha declared that he had arrived at [his]
conclusions, not by study of the Vedas, nor from the teachings
of others, but by the light of reason and intuition alone"
(Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 48). "The most ancient Buddhism
despises dreams and visions" (Id., p. 177). "Agnostic atheism
... is the characteristic of his [Buddha's] system of philosophy"
(Id., p. 207).
"Belief in a Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe,
is unquestionably a modern graft upon the unqualified atheism of
Sákya Muni: it is still of very limited recognition. In none of
the standard authorities ... is there the slightest allusion to
such a First Cause, the existence of which is incompatible with
the fundamental Buddhist dogma of the eternity of all existence"
(H. H. Wilson, Buddha and Buddhism, in Essays and Lectures,
ed. by Dr. R. Rost, 1862, ii, 361. Cp. p. 363).
On the other hand, the gradual colouring of Buddhism with popular
mythology, the reversion (if, indeed, this were not early) to
adoration and worship of the Buddha himself, and the final collapse
of the system in India before the pressure of Brahmanized Hinduism,
all prove the potency of the sociological conditions of success and
failure for creeds and criticisms. Buddhism took the monastic form
for its institutions, thus incurring ultimate petrifaction alike
morally and intellectually; and in any case the normal Indian social
conditions of abundant population, cheap food, and general ignorance
involved an overwhelming vitality for the popular cults. These the
orthodox Brahmans naturally took under their protection as a means
of maintaining their hold over the multitude; [184] and though their
own highest philosophy has been poetically grafted on that basis,
as in the epic of the Mahâbhârata and in the Bhagavat Gita, [185]
the ordinary worship of the deities of these poems is perforce
utterly unphilosophical, varying between a primitive sensualism
and an emotionalism closely akin to that of popular forms of
Christianity. Buddhism itself, where it still prevails, exhibits
similar tendencies. [186]
It is disputed whether the Brahman influence drove Buddhism
out of India by physical force, or whether the latter decayed
because of maladaptation to its environment. Its vogue for some
seven hundred years, from about 300 B.C. to about 400 A.C.,
seems to have been largely due to its protection and final
acceptance as a State religion by the dynasty of Chandragupta
(the Sandracottos of the Greek historians), whose grandson
Asoka showed it special favour. His rock-inscribed edicts (for
which see Max Müller, Introd. to Science of Rel., pp. 5-6, 23;
Anthrop. Relig., pp. 40-43; Rhys Davids, Buddhism, pp. 220-28;
Wheeler's Hist. of India, vol. iii, app. 1; Asiatic Society's
Journals, vols. viii and xii; Indian Antiquary, 1877, vol. vi)
show a general concern for natural ethics, and especially for
tolerance; but his mention of "The Terrors of the Future" among
the religious works he specially honours shows (if genuine) that
normal superstition, if ever widely repudiated (which is doubtful),
had interpenetrated the system. The king, too, called himself
"the delight of the Gods," as did his contemporary the Buddhist
king of Ceylon (Davids, Buddhism, p. 84). Under Asoka, however,
Buddhism was powerful enough to react somewhat on the West, then
in contact with India as a result of the Alexandrian conquest
(cp. Mahaffy, Greek World under Roman Sway, ch. ii; Weber's
lecture on Ancient India, Eng. tr., pp. 25-26; Indische Skizzen,
p. 28 [cited in the present writer's Christianity and Mythology,
p. 165]; and Weber's Hist of Ind. Lit., p. 255 and p. 309, note);
and the fact that after his time it entered on a long conflict
with Brahmanism proves that it remained practically dangerous to
that system. In the fifth and sixth centuries of our era Buddhism
in India "rapidly declined"--a circumstance hardly intelligible
save as a result of violence. Tiele, after expressly asserting the
"rapid decline" (Outlines, p. 139), in the next breath asserts that
there are no satisfactory proofs of such violence, and that, "on
the contrary, Buddhism appears to have pined away slowly" (p. 140:
contrast his Egypt. Rel., p. xxi). Rhys Davids, in his Buddhism,
p. 246 (so also Max Müller, Anthrop. Rel., p. 43), argues for a
process of violent extinction; but in his later work, Buddhist
India, he retracts this view and decides for a gradual decline
in the face of a Brahmanic revival. The evidences for violence
and persecution are, however, pretty strong. (See H. H. Wilson,
Essays, as cited, ii, 365-67.) Internal decay certainly appears
to have occurred. Already in Gautama's own life, according to the
legends, there were doctrinal disputes within his party (Müller,
Anthrop. Rel., p. 38); and soon heresies and censures abounded
(Introd. to Sc. of Rel., p. 23), till schisms arose and no fewer
than eighteen sects took shape (Davids, Buddhism, pp. 213-18).
Thus early in our inquiry we may gather, from a fairly complete
historical case, the primary laws of causation as regards alike the
progress and the decadence of movements of rationalistic thought. The
fundamental economic dilemma, seen already in the life of the savage,
presses at all stages of civilization. The credent multitude, save
in the very lowest stages of savage destitution, always feeds and
houses those who furnish it with its appropriate mental food; and
so long as there remains the individual struggle for existence,
there will always be teachers ready. If the higher minds in any
priesthood, awaking to the character of their traditional teaching,
withdraw from it, lower minds, howbeit "sincere," will always take
their place. The innovating teacher, in turn, is only at the beginning
of his troubles when he contrives, on whatever bases, to set up a new
organized movement. The very process of organization, on the one hand,
sets up the call for special economic sustenance--a constant motive
to compromise with popular ignorance--and, on the other hand, tends to
establish merely a new traditionalism, devoid of the critical impulse
in which it arose. [187] And without organization the innovating
thought cannot communicate itself, cannot hold its own against the
huge social pressures of tradition.
In ancient society, in short, there could be no continuous progress
in freethinking: at best, there could but be periods or lines of
relative progress, the result of special conjunctures of social and
political circumstance. So much will appear, further, from the varying
instances of still more ancient civilizations, the evolution of which
may be the better understood from our survey of that of India.
§ 3. MESOPOTAMIA
The nature of the remains we possess of the ancient Babylonian and
Assyrian religions is not such as to yield a direct record of their
development; but they suffice to show that there, as elsewhere,
a measure of rationalistic evolution occurred. Were there no other
ground for the inference, it might not unreasonably be drawn from
the post-exilic monotheism of the Hebrews, who, drawing so much of
their cosmology and temple ritual from Babylon, may be presumed to
have been influenced by the higher Semitic civilizations in other
ways also. [188] But there is concrete evidence. What appears to
have happened in Babylonia and Assyria, whose religious systems were
grafted on that of the more ancient Sumer-Akkadian civilization,
is a gradual subordination of the numerous local Gods (at least in
the thought of the more philosophic, including some of the priests)
to the conception of one all-pervading power. This process would be
assisted by that of imperialism; and in the recently-recovered code of
Hammurabi we actually find references to Ilu "God" (as in the European
legal phrase, "the act of God") without any further God-name. [189]
On the other hand, the unifying tendency would be resisted by the
strength of the traditions of the Babylonian cities, all of which
had ancient cults before the later empires were built up. [190]
Yet, again, peoples who failed in war would be in some measure led
to renounce their God as weak; while those who clung to their faith
would be led, as in Jewry, to recast its ethic. The result was a
set of compromises in which the provincial and foreign deities were
either treated genealogically or grouped in family or other relations
with the chief God or Gods of the time being. [191] Certain cults,
again, were either kept always at a higher ethical level than the
popular one, or were treated by the more refined and more critical
worshippers in an elevated spirit; [192] and this tendency seems to
have led to conceptions of purified deities who underlay or transcended
the popular types, the names of the latter being held to point to one
who was misconceived under their grosser aspects. [193] Astronomical
knowledge, again, gave rise to cosmological theories which pointed to
a ruling and creating God, [194] who as such would have a specially
ethical character. In some such way was reached a conception of a
Creator-God as the unity represented by the fifty names of the Great
Gods, who lost their personality when their names were liturgically
given to him [195]--a conception which in some statements even had
a pantheistic aspect [196] among a "group of priestly thinkers," and
in others took the form of an ideal theocracy. [197] There is record
that the Babylonian schools were divided into different sects, [198]
and their science was likely to make some of these rationalistic. [199]
Professor Sayce even goes so far as to say that in the later cosmogony,
"under a thin disguise of theological nomenclature, the Babylonian
theory of the universe has become a philosophical materialism." [200]
It might be taken for granted, further, that disbelief would
be set up by such a primitive fraud as the alleged pretence of
the priests of Bel Merodach that the God cohabited nightly with
the concubine set apart for him (Herodotos, i, 181-82), as was
similarly pretended by the priests of Amun at Thebes. Herodotos
could not believe the story, which, indeed, is probably a late
Greek fable; but there must have been some skeptics within the
sphere of the Semitic cult of sacred prostitution.
As regards freethinking in general, much would depend on the
development of the Chaldæan astronomy. That science, growing out of
primitive astrology (cp. Whewell, Hist. of the Induct. Sciences,
3rd ed. i, 108), would tend to discredit, among its experts,
much of the prevailing religious thought; and they seem to have
carried it so far as to frame a scientific theory of comets
(Seneca, citing Apollonius Myndius, Quaest. Nat., vii, 3;
cp. Lib. Use. Kn. Hist. of Astron., c. 3; E. Meyer, Gesch. des
Alterthums, i, 186; and Weber, Ind. Lit., p. 248). Such knowledge
would greatly favour skepticism, as well as monotheism and
pantheism. It was sought to be astrologically applied; but, as
the horoscopes varied, this was again a source of unbelief (Meyer,
p. 179). Medicine, again, made little progress (Herod., i, 197).
It can hardly be doubted, finally, that in Babylonia and Assyria
there were idealists who, like the Hebrew prophets, repudiated
alike image-worship and the religion of sacrifices. The latter
repudiation occurs frequently in later Greece and Rome. There,
as in Jerusalem, it could make itself heard in virtue of the
restrictedness of the power of the priests, who in imperial
Babylonia and Assyria, on the other hand, might be trusted to
suppress or override any such propaganda, as we have seen was
done in Brahmanical India.
Concerning image-worship, apart from the proved fact of pantheistic
doctrine, and the parallels in Egypt and India, it is to be noted
that Isaiah actually puts in the mouth of the Assyrian king
a tirade against the "kingdoms of the idols" or "false gods,"
including in these Jerusalem and Samaria (Isa. x, 10, 11). The
passage is dramatic, but it points to the possibility that in
Assyria just as in Israel a disbelief in idols could arise from
reflection on the spectacle of their multitude.
The chequered political history of Babylon and Assyria, however, made
impossible any long-continued development of critical and philosophical
thought. Their amalgamations of creeds and races had in a measure
favoured such development; [201] and it was probably the setting up
of a single rule over large populations formerly at chronic war that
reduced to a minimum, if it did not wholly abolish, human sacrifice
in the later pre-Persian empires; [202] but the inevitably subject
state of the mass of the people, and the chronic military upset
of the government, were conditions fatally favourable to ordinary
superstition. The new universalist conceptions, instead of dissolving
the special cults in pantheism, led only to a fresh competition of
cults on cosmopolitan lines, all making the same pretensions, and
stressing their most artificial peculiarities as all-important. Thus,
when old tribal or local religions went proselytizing in the enlarged
imperial field, they made their most worthless stipulations--as Jewish
circumcision and abstinence from pork, and the self-mutilation of
the followers of Cybelê--the very grounds of salvation. [203] Culture
remained wholly in the hands of the priestly and official class, [204]
who, like the priesthoods of Egypt, were held to conservatism by their
vast wealth. [205] Accordingly we find the early religion of sorcery
maintaining itself in the literature of the advanced empires. [206]
The attitude of the Semitic priests and scribes towards the old Akkadic
as a sacred language was in itself, like the use of sacred books in
general, long a check upon new thought; [207] and though the Assyrian
life seems to have set this check aside, by reason of the lack of a
culture class in Assyria, the later Babylonian kingdom which rose on
the fall of Assyria was too short-lived to profit much by the gain,
being in turn overthrown in the second generation by Cyrus. It is
significant that the conqueror was welcomed by the Babylonian priests
as against their last king, the inquiring and innovating Nabonidos
[208] (Nabu-nahid), who had aimed at a monarchic polytheism or
quasi-monotheism. He is described as having turned away from Mardouk
(Merodach), the great Babylonian God, who accordingly accepted Cyrus
in his stead. It is thus clear that Cyrus, who restored the old
state of things, was no strict monotheist of the later Persian type,
but a schemer who relied everywhere on popular religious interests,
and conciliated the polytheists and henotheists of Babylon as he did
the Yahweh-worshipping Jews. [209] The Persian quasi-monotheism and
anti-idolatry, however, already existed, and it is conceivable that
they may have been intensified among the more cultured through the
peculiar juxtaposition of cults set up by the Persian conquest.
Mr. Sayce's dictum (Hib. Lect., p. 314), that the later ethical
element in the Akkado-Babylonian system is "necessarily" due
to Semitic race elements, is seen to be fallacious in the light
of his own subsequent admission (p. 353) as to the lateness of
the development among the Semites. The difference between early
Akkadian and later Babylonian was simply one of culture-stage. See
Mr. Sayce's own remarks on p. 300; and compare E. Meyer (Gesch. des
Alt., i, 178, 182, 183), who entirely rejects the claim made for
Semitic ethics. See, again, Tiele, Outlines, p. 78, and Mr. Sayce's
own account (Anc. Em. of the East, p. 202) of the Phoenician
religion as "impure and cruel." Other writers take the line of
arguing that the Phoenicians were "not Semites," and that they
differed in all things from the true Semites (cp. Dr. Marcus
Dods, Israel's Iron Age, 1874, p. 10, and Farrar, as there
cited). The explanation of such arbitrary judgments seems to be
that the Semites are assumed to have had a primordial religious
gift as compared with "Turanians," and that the Hebrews in turn
are assumed to have been so gifted above other Semites. We shall
best guard against à priori injustice to the Semites themselves,
in the conjunctures in which they really advanced civilization,
by entirely discarding the unscientific method of explaining the
history of races in terms of hereditary character (see below, §
6, end).
§ 4. ANCIENT PERSIA
The Mazdean system, or worship of Ahura Mazda (Ormazd), of which we
find in Herodotos positive historical record as an anti-idolatrous
and nominally monotheistic creed [210] in the fifth century B.C., is
the first to which these aspects can be ascribed with certainty. As
the Jews are found represented in the Book of Jeremiah [211] (assumed
to have been written in the sixth century B.C.) worshipping numerous
Gods with images: and as polytheistic and idolatrous practices are
still described in the Book of Ezekiel [212] (assumed to have been
written during or after the Babylonian Captivity), it is inadmissible
to accept the unauthenticated writings of ostensibly earlier prophets
as proving even a propaganda of monotheism on their part, the so-called
Mosaic law being known to be in large part of late invention and of
Babylonian derivation. [213] In any case, the mass of the people were
clearly image-worshippers. The Persians, on the other hand, can be
taken with certainty to have had in the sixth century an imageless
worship (though images existed for other purposes), with a supreme
God set above all others. The Magian or Mazdean creed, as we have
seen, was not very devoutly held by Cyrus; but Dareios a generation
later is found holding it with zeal; and it cannot have grown in a
generation to the form it then bore. It must therefore be regarded as
a development of the religion of some section of the "Iranian" race,
centering as it does round some deities common to the Vedic Aryans.
The Mazdean system, as we first trace it in history, was the religion
of the Medes, a people joined with the Persians proper under Cyrus;
and the Magi or priests were one of the seven tribes of the Medes,
[214] as the Levites were one of the tribes of Israel. It may then be
conjectured that the Magi were the priests of a people who previously
conquered or were conquered by the Medes, who had then adopted their
religion, as did the Persians after their conquest by or union with
the Medes. Cyrus, a semi-Persian, may well have regarded the Medes
with some racial distrust, and, while using them as the national
priests, would naturally not be devout in his adherence at a time
when the two peoples were still mutually jealous. When, later,
after the assassination of his son Smerdis (Bardes or Bardija) by
the elder son, King Cambyses, and the death of the latter, the Median
and Magian interest set up the "false Smerdis," Persian conspirators
overthrew the pretender and crowned the Persian Dareios Hystaspis,
marking their sense of hostility to the Median and Magian element
by a general massacre of Magi. [215] Those Magi who survived would
naturally cultivate the more their priestly influence, the political
being thus for the time destroyed; though they seem to have stirred up
a Median insurrection in the next century against Dareios II. [216]
However that may be, Dareios I became a zealous devotee of their
creed, [217] doubtless finding that a useful means of conciliating
the Medes in general, who at the outset of his reign seem to have
given him much trouble. [218] The richest part of his dominions [219]
was East-Iran, which appears to have been the original home of the
worship of Ahura-Mazda. [220]
Such is the view of the case derivable from Herodotos, who
remains the main authority; but recent critics have raised some
difficulties. That the Magians were originally a non-Median tribe
seems clear; Dr. Tiele (Outlines, pp. 163, 165) even decides that
they were certainly non-Aryan. Compare Ed. Meyer (Gesch. des Alt.,
i, 530, note, 531, §§ 439, 440), who holds that the Mazdean system
was in its nature not national but abstract, and could therefore
take in any race. Several modern writers, however (Canon Rawlinson,
ed. of Herodotos, i, 426-31; Five Great Monarchies, 2nd ed. ii,
345-55, iii, 402-404; Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, Eng. tr. pp. 197,
218-39; Sayce, Anc. Emp. of the East, p. 248), represent the
Magians as not only anti-Aryan (= anti-Persian), but opposed to the
very worship of Ormazd, which is specially associated with their
name. It seems difficult to reconcile this view with the facts; at
least it involves the assumption of two opposed sets of Magi. The
main basis for the theory seems to be the allusion in the Behistun
inscription of Dareios to some acts of temple-destruction by the
usurping Magian Gomates, brother and controller of the pretender
Smerdis. (See the inscription translated in Records of the Past,
i, 111-15.) This Meyer sets aside as an unsettled problem, without
inferring that the Magians were anti-Mazdean (cp. § 449 and §
511, note). As to the massacre, however, Meyer decides (i, 613)
that Herodotos blundered, magnifying the killing of "the Magus"
into a slaughter of "the Magi." But this is one of the few points
at which Herodotos is corroborated by Ktesias (cp. Grote, iii, 440,
note). A clue to a solution may perhaps be found in the facts that,
while the priestly system remained opposed to all image-worship,
Dareios made emblematic images of the Supreme God (Meyer, i,
213, 617) and of Mithra; and that Artaxerxes Mnemon later put an
image of Mithra in the royal temple of Susa, besides erecting many
images to Anaitis. (Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, iii, 320-21,
360-61.) There may have been opposing tendencies; the conquest of
Babylon being likely to have introduced new elements. The Persian
art now arising shows the most marked Assyrian influences.
The religion thus imposed on the Persians seems to have been imageless
by reason of the simple defect of art among its cultivators; [221]
and to have been monotheistic only in the sense that its chief deity
was supreme over all others, including even the great Evil Power,
Ahriman (Angra Mainyu). Its God-group included Mithra, once the
equal of Ahura-Mazda, [222] and later more prominent than he; [223]
as well as a Goddess, Anahita, apparently of Akkadian origin. Before
the period of Cyrus, the eastern part of Persia seems to have been but
little civilized; [224] and it was probably there that its original
lack of images became an essential element in the doctrine of its
priests. As we find it in history, and still more in its sacred book,
the Zendavesta, which as we have it represents a late liturgical
compilation, [225] Mazdeism is a priest-made religion rather than
the work of one Zarathustra or any one reformer; and its rejection
of images, however originated, is to be counted to the credit of its
priests, like the pantheism or nominal monotheism of the Mesopotamian,
Brahmanic, and Egyptian religions. The original popular faith had
clearly been a normal polytheism. [226] For the rest, the Mazdean ethic
has the usual priestly character as regards the virtue it assigns to
sacrifice; [227] but otherwise compares favourably with Brahmanism.
As to this cult being priest-made, see Meyer, i, 523, 540,
541. Tiele (Outlines, pp. 167, 178) assumes a special reformation
such as is traditionally associated with Zarathustra, holding
that either a remarkable man or a sect must have established
the monotheistic idea. Meyer (i, 537) holds with M. Darmesteter
that Zarathustra is a purely mythical personage, made out of a
Storm-God. Dr. Menzies (Hist. of Relig. p. 384) holds strongly
by his historic actuality. The problem is analogous to those
concerning Moses and Buddha; but though the historic case of
Mohammed bars a confident decision in the negative, the balance
of presumption is strongly against the traditional view. See the
author's Pagan Christs, pp. 286-88.
There is no reason to believe, however, that among the Persian peoples
the higher view of things fared any better than elsewhere. [228] The
priesthood, however enlightened it may have been in its inner culture,
never slackened the practice of sacrifice and ceremonial; and the
worship of subordinate spirits and the propitiation of demons figured
as largely in their beliefs as in any other. In time the cult of the
Saviour-God Mithra came to the front very much as did that of Jesus
later; and in the one case as in the other, despite ethical elements,
superstition was furthered. When, still later, the recognition of
Ahriman was found to endanger the monotheistic principle, an attempt
seems to have been made under the Sassanian dynasty, in our own era,
to save it by positing a deity who was father of both Ahura-Mazda
and Angra-mainyu; [229] but this last slight effort of freethinking
speculation came to nothing. Social and political obstacles determined
the fate of Magian as of other ancient rationalism.
According to Rawlinson, Zoroastrianism under the Parthian
(Arsacide) empire was gradually converted into a complex system
of idolatry, involving a worship of ancestors and dead kings
(Sixth Orient. Mon. p. 399; Seventh Mon. pp. 8-9, 56). Gutschmid,
however, following Justin (xli, 3, 5-6), pronounces the Parthians
zealous followers of Zoroastrianism, dutifully obeying it in
the treatment of their dead (Geschichte Irans von Alexander bis
zum Untergang der Arsakiden, 1888, pp. 57-58)--a law not fully
obeyed even by Dareios and his dynasty (Heeren, Asiatic Nations,
Eng. tr. i, 127). Rawlinson, on the contrary, says the Parthians
burned their dead--an abomination to Zoroastrians. Certainly
the name of the Parthian King Mithradates implies acceptance of
Mazdeism. At the same time Rawlinson admits that in Persia itself,
under the Parthian dynasty, Zoroastrianism remained pure (Seventh
Mon. pp. 9-10), and that, even when ultimately it became mixed
up with normal polytheism, the dualistic faith and the supremacy
of Ormazd were maintained (Five Monarchies, 2nd ed. iii, 362-63;
cp. Darmesteter, Zendavesta, i, lxvi, 2nd ed.).
§ 5. EGYPT
The relatively rich store of memorials left by the Egyptian religions
yields us hardly any more direct light on the growth of religious
rationalism than do those of Mesopotamia, though it supplies much
fuller proof that such a growth took place. All that is clear is that
the comparison and competition of henotheistic cults there as elsewhere
led to a measure of relative skepticism, which took doctrinal shape in
a loose monism or pantheism. The language is often monotheistic, but
never, in the early period, is polytheism excluded; on the contrary,
it is affirmed in the same breath. [230] The alternate ascendancy
of different dynasties, with different Gods, forced on the process,
which included, as in Babylon, a priestly grouping of deities in
families and triads [231]--the latter arrangement, indeed, being only
a return to a primitive African conception. [232] It involved further
a syncretism or a combining of various Gods into one, [233] and also
an esoteric explanation of the God-myths as symbolical of natural
processes, or else of mystical ideas. [234] There are even evidences
of quasi-atheism in the shape of materialistic hymns on Lucretian
lines. [235] At the beginning of the New Kingdom (1500 B.C.) it had
been fully established for all the priesthoods that the Sun-God was
the one real God, and that it was he who was worshipped in all the
others. [236] He in turn was conceived as a pervading spiritual force,
of anthropomorphic character and strong moral bias. [237] This seems to
have been by way of a purification of one pre-eminent compound deity,
Amen-Ra, to begin with, whose model was followed in other cults. [238]
"Theocracies of this kind could not have been formed unconsciously. Men
knew perfectly well that they were taking a great step in advance of
their fathers." [239] There had occurred, in short, among the educated
and priestly class a considerable development, going on through
many centuries, alike in philosophical and in ethical thought; the
ethics of the Egyptian "Book of the Dead" being quite as altruistic
as those of any portion of the much later Christian Gospels. [240]
Such a development could arise only in long periods of peace and
law-abiding life; though it is found to be accelerated after the
Persian conquest, which would force upon the Egyptian priesthood
new comparisons and accommodations. [241] And yet all this was done
"without ever sacrificing the least particle of the beliefs of the
past." [242] The popular polytheism, resting on absolute ignorance,
was indestructible; and the most philosophic priests seem never to have
dreamt of unsettling it, though, as we shall see, a masterful king did.