SACRED PRODUCTS
In the intimate connection of religion with life all primitive
interests are placed under its sanction. A large portion of time is
occupied with its ceremonials. The fortunes of the tribe are bound up
with it. To the bounty of its powers they owe abundant food and safety
or success in war. Beneath its protection the newly born enter the
world, and to its care the elders are committed when they die. Its
holy persons rule in their midst; its holy places are all round about
them; its sacred objects are in their homes. It is not surprising,
therefore, that all the higher possessions of the tribe, its arts and
crafts, its traditions, its customs and laws, its stories of the gods
and their dealings with each other or with man, should be ascribed to
the same origin. Where individuality is hampered at every turn by
time-honoured conventions, and personal initiative is imperfectly
developed and timidly confined within the narrowest limits, all higher
intellectual products, command over nature, inventions, poetry and
song, the usages of {171} the social order, and the rituals for serving
the gods, carry with them a secret force, a mysterious authority, which
passes the bounds of human wisdom, and has been imparted from some
higher source. Each man is dimly conscious that his single wit could
not have compassed these things; he does not observe the long processes
and imperceptible stages of advance; he accepts the theory offered to
him by those who should know best, and looks back to the days when
kindly powers took in hand the instruction of men.
Thus at the present day many of the Australian tribes whose condition
has probably changed little since the date of the oldest civilisations
of antiquity, regard their scanty institutions as ordained by beings
above. Ask the Narrinyeri why they adhere to any custom, the answer is
that Nurrundere commanded it. Baiame and Bunjil laid down the marriage
laws for their respective tribes; Bunjil, moreover, taught the Kulin
the arts of life; and Daramulun gave the Yuin laws which the old people
handed down from generation to generation.
The elaborate cultures of Babylonia and Egypt claimed similar origins.
In the vast prehistoric period before the Flood the people round the
lower Euphrates had lived without rule or order, like the beasts of the
field, till a wondrous Fish-Man, whom the Greek historian called
Cannes, appeared out of the Persian Gulf with wisdom from the sea. He
{172} taught them arts and laws, and wrote concerning the generation of
mankind, their different ways of life, and their civil polity. It was
no other than Ea, god of the encircling Deep, the source of all.
Historic inscriptions told of his "books," which may have included
ancient oracles, and which certainly laid down the duties of a king.
So the famous code of Hammurabi (about 1950 B.C.), recently discovered
at Susa (1901), was handed to him, as the tablet shows, by the great
Sun-god, Shamash.
The Egyptian priests, perhaps as late as the great Nineteenth Dynasty,
before the days of Moses, threw into definite shape the vague
traditions of immemorial antiquity, when men had lived devouring one
another, ignorant how to till the ground. Osiris (p. 119) taught the
art of tillage, the use of the plough and hoe, how to grow wheat and
barley, and the culture of the vine; and Isis added the domestic arts
of making bread and weaving linen. Osiris, moreover, appointed the
offerings to the gods, regulated the ceremonies, composed the texts and
melodies of the hymns. And among his successors was Thoth of
Hermopolis (p. 8), who introduced astronomy and divination, medicine,
arithmetic, and geometry, and whose "books," embracing a kind of
religious encyclopædia, were known to the Christian teacher, Clement of
Alexandria, in the second century of our era.
{173}
So Zeus gave laws to Minos in Crete, and Apollo revealed the Spartan
constitution to Lycurgus; Numa, the traditional founder of the Roman
ceremonial law, received instruction from the nymph Egeria. The
shepherd slave, Zaleucus (whom Eusebius placed about 660 B.C.), taught
the Locrians what Athena had first taught him, and prefaced his laws by
enjoining them to revere the gods as the real causes of all things fair
and good in life, and keep their hearts pure from all evil, inasmuch as
the gods do not take pleasure in the sacrifices of the wicked, but in
the righteous and fair conduct of the good.
From the New World come a series of similar figures. Mr. Curtin claims
to show that the vast area of the American continent is pervaded by one
system of thought incalculably old. In the central group of the most
sacred personages is the Earth with Sky and Sun conceived sometimes as
identical sometimes as distinct. The Earth-maiden on whom the Sun has
gazed, becomes a mother, and gives birth to a great hero. He bestows
on men all gifts that support existence, and it is through him that the
race lives and prospers. To the Algonkins he was Michabo or Manibozho,
the "Great Light," who imparted vision, author of wisdom, arts, and
institutions. Among the Toltecs at Tulla he was Quetzalcoatl,
virgin-born, founder of civilisation, who organised worship without
human or animal sacrifices, and endured no {174} war. The Miztecs
called him Votan, prince and legislator of his people, representative
of a higher wisdom, so that he rose to be the mediator between earth
and heaven. In the plains of Begota the white-bearded Bohica appeared
to the Mozca Indians, taught them how to sow and build, formed them
into communities, contrived an outlet for the waters of their great
lake, and, having settled the government and the ritual, retired into
ascetic penance for two thousand years. Out of the depths of Lake
Titicaca in Peru there rose one day the son and daughter of the sun and
moon, Manco Capac and Mama Ogllo, sent by their father in compassion
for men's wretched plight. They taught the ignorant folk agriculture,
the chief trades, the art of building cities, aqueducts, and roads, and
Mama Ogllo showed the women how to spin and weave. Then when all was
in order, and overseers were appointed to see that each one did his
duty, they went back to the skies.
These stories all belong to the class known as myths. They are not
accounts of what actually happened, they are the work of religious
imagination operating on a particular group of facts, and endeavouring
to explain them. The scope of mythology, whatever may be its
particular origins, is of the widest compass. It embraces the whole
field of nature and life. It first came into modern view through the
study of classical antiquity {175} in Greece and Rome. The discovery
of Sanskrit and the investigation of its literature, especially of the
Vedic hymns, concentrated the attention of scholars for a time,
pre-eminently under the genius of Max Müller, on the relations of myth
to language, and the resolution of various deities of India and Greece
into the phenomena of dawn and sunshine, of the thunderstorm or the
moon.
But it was gradually found necessary to abandon one after another of
the philological identifications which had at one time been proposed
with confidence. New aspects of mythology demanded consideration. It
was not only concerned with the incidents and powers of nature, or with
the various relations of the gods. It appeared also in the field of
ritual. It often contained antique secrets of the meaning of religious
performance. It was the key to the dramatised representations of the
sacred dance, the ceremonials on which depended the welfare of the
tribe. And in proportion as action acquired a larger psychological
recognition in shaping the character of religion, and belief receded
into the background, the significance of the development of myths was
changed.
As religion, however, became more self-conscious, the intellectual
element in it gained more force and energy, and the thinkers of the
priestly schools endeavoured to bring the claims of different deities
into some sort of order, and regulate the hierarchy of heaven. {176}
But they were often confronted with ancient elements of savagery which
could be imperfectly harmonised with the more refined ideas of a
progressive culture. Thus already in Homer, Zeus, as supreme God,
bears one significant epithet; he is _mêtieta_, full of _mêtis_ or
counsel. The word is of doubtful derivation, but with the strong
tendency of Greek imagination to turn abstract ideas into persons,
Mêtis is presented by Hesiod (next in literary succession to Homer) as
the daughter of Ocean, the Hellenic equivalent of the Babylonian Deep,
source of all being even for the gods. Greek thought was not yet ripe
for the ontological conception of wisdom or intelligence as inherent in
the divine nature, so the union of Thought with Zeus is represented
mythologically as a marriage, and Mêtis becomes the bride of the great
"king of gods and men." The result is conceived in truly savage
fashion. In order to possess her in the most intimate manner, and
embody her in his own person, Zeus suddenly swallows her. Mythology,
of course, has to provide a reason; she would bear a son who would
overthrow him. The poet (or perhaps his editor), desirous of
correcting this brutal selfishness, suggests a further plea; the
goddess should be his perpetual monitor, and warn him inwardly of good
and evil. The myth is being directly moralised. Whatever, therefore,
may be the origins of myth, whether in connection with tribal {177}
tradition, in the interpretation of the incidents of nature--as when a
Siberian described to Baron von Wrangell the occultation of one of
Jupiter's moons by saying that the blue star had swallowed another very
small star and soon after vomited it up again--or in endeavours to
picture the characters and relations of the gods, the beginnings of the
world, the birth of man, the entry of evil, sin, and death, or the
condition of those who have already passed away, the myth becomes the
reflex of the culture in the midst of which it rises. It is the
depository of human experience, of man's criticism of his own life.
And in its representations of a distant age when gods visibly consorted
with men, and deigned to instruct them in the conditions of social
welfare, mythology is the direct product of religion.
When the gods have withdrawn from human fellowship, and no longer
choose their brides from the dwellers upon earth, or even vouchsafe to
appear among them in various forms for temporary help or promise of
blessing, the communications from heaven do not cease altogether. The
Vedic poet might challenge the existence of Indra, the fool might say
in his heart, "There is no God"; but the Powers above never left
themselves without a witness. The negro going out of his hut one
morning strikes his foot against a peculiarly shaped stone. "Art thou
there?" he inquires, and recognises the presence of a guardian and
{178} helper. The Samoan watches the behaviour of a spinning
cocoa-nut, or the flight of a bird to right or left. The Central
Asiatic notes the cracks on a tortoise's shell, much as a modern
palmist traces the lines in a human hand. The liver is selected as the
special seat of the prophetic faculty, and Babylonian and Etruscan
developed a common diagnosis of its marks. The Celt divined by the
water of wells, or the smoke and flames of ascending fires, and slew
his prisoners that the secrets of destiny might be discovered in their
entrails. China and Rome made divination the basis of elaborate state
systems. Rome produced a literature of Augury, with books of
regulations and minutes of procedure, while Plato commended it as "the
art of fellowship between gods and men," and the philosophy of the
Stoics justified it on the ground of a providential harmony between
nature and man, so that divine guidance was vouchsafed to human need.
Did not clouds and stars move by Heaven's great ordinance?
The lot took the responsibility of decision out of the hands of man,
and vested it in the presiding deity. There is always a mystery in
chance, which could be interpreted as the will of God. The oath
implied that the heavenly Powers could be at any moment summoned to
attest man's veracity; and the vow must be fulfilled, though it might
cost Jephthah the sacrifice of his daughter. Perjury and broken vows
were early recognised {179} among the gravest of crimes. The ordeal
was in like manner the inquisition of a divine judge. When the Adum
draught was administered to an accused Ashanti upon the Gold Coast, the
god condescended to enter with it; he looked around for the signs of
guilt, and if he found none he returned with the nauseous mixture to
the light of day. It was a procedure analogous to the ancient rite
embedded in the Levitical Law as the test of a wife's faithlessness
(_cp._ Num. v. 11 _sqq._).
Another mystery lay in dreams, which have been connected with
supersensual powers all the world over. To the savage who cannot
analyse his experience the dream-world is as real as that of his waking
hours. The dreams that follow fasts, whether compulsory through
deficient food, or voluntary through preparation for some solemn event,
possess peculiar vividness; and, when attention has been fixed upon
some expected crisis, readily acquire a prophetic significance. Divine
forms are seen, and strange intimations are conveyed from another
world. The dream verses of the Icelander brought tidings from those
who had been lost at sea. To sleep upon the grave of a dead kinsman,
still more of a hero or a seer, was the means of receiving
communications from the wisdom of the dead. Did not philosophy teach
that in sleep the mind is less hampered by its physical environment,
and attains truth more nearly; {180} and what condition was so
suitable, therefore, for the beneficent revelation of a god?
In Greece, accordingly, the practice of sleeping at the tombs of heroes
or in the temples of gods was regularly organised. The sanctuaries of
Æsculapius, of which more than two hundred can be traced round the
Eastern Mediterranean and in Italy, were specially frequented by
patients who resorted thither for medical treatment and the advice of
the god. The sufferer must pass through the preliminary discipline of
the bath, and to his purifications must add the due offering of a
sheep. The victim's fleece was carried into the holy precincts, and on
it the sick man lay down for the night. In the visions of the dark
hours the god appeared, and prescribed the mode of cure, or even
condescended to operate himself. An inscription at Epidaurus records
that the stiffened fingers of a patient were straightened out and
restored for use by the god's own grasp. Was it surprising that
Æsculapius should become the object of increasing reverence, and in the
second century of our era should be enthroned in the highest as
"Saviour (or Preserver) of the universe"?
Under other conditions the visitation of the god expresses itself in
poetic form. Among the ruder peoples whose songs are of the
simplest--perhaps the most childish--kind, the faculty of rhythmic
utterance seems superhuman. Words, lines, stanzas, follow {181} each
other with a spontaneity which seems out of the reach of ordinary
effort. The chants of worship have been again and again carried back
to divine authorship in a distant past. The marriage of speech with
music is no art of man. So the Finnic hero, Wäinamöinen, conceived by
the wind, and born (after seven hundred years in the womb) by the
maiden Dmatar, added to his gifts of fertility and fire the invention
of the harp, and the teaching of wisdom, poetry, and music to man.
Odin was the god of wisdom and poetry for Scandinavia, god also of the
holy draught, which, like the Indian Soma, gave inspiration. The poet
brewed Odin's mead, bore Odin's cup; and in old Teutonic speech was
_godh-mālugr_, "god-inspired." Hermes passed in Greece as the
inventor of the lyre, which he gave to Apollo, chief among the deities
who declared to man the unerring counsel of Zeus; and Homer already
counts singer and song as alike divine.
The lovely forms of the Muses, daughters of Zeus and Memory, or with an
alternative mother in Harmony, were endowed with functions of song and
prophecy, and between them and the historic poets stood a group, half
mythical, half human, whose names were attached to actual hymns and
poems. Such were Orpheus, Musseus, Eumolpus, Thamyris, and Linos. The
verses ascribed to them tended to acquire an authoritative character;
they were cited as a rule or norm for conduct; {182} they were on the
way to become a Scripture. Homer and Hesiod were employed in the same
way; and Plato denounces the mendicant prophets who went to rich men's
doors offering to make atonements, and quoting Homer and Hesiod as
religious guides. Nevertheless, though he proposed to banish from his
ideal State the poets who said unworthy things of the gods, he
elsewhere formulates the highest claim for poetry as a supernatural
product. The poets are only the interpreters of the gods by whom they
are severally possessed; "God takes away the minds of the poets;" "God
himself is the speaker, through them he is conversing with us." It is
the lament of the Bantus of South Africa that since the white man came
the springs of music and song have ceased to flow: "The spirits are
angry with their children, and do not teach them any more."
Another mode of converse between deity and man was found in the oracle.
Widespread was the belief that through certain chosen persons or in
certain peculiar spots the gods deigned to communicate with those who
sought their aid. Such agencies were peculiarly numerous in the
Hellenic world, and the oracle at Delphi acquired supreme importance.
As early as the eighth century B.C., in the days of Amos and Isaiah, it
is rising into prominence as an authority that may take the leading
place in Greek religion. At one time it almost seemed as if it might
succeed {183} in co-ordinating the separate and often opposing forces
of the City States, and blend them into national unity. If that hope
was ever cherished by its guardians, they failed to realise it. The
higher minds discerned in it capacities which were never fulfilled.
They saw it give counsel to rival powers, promote enterprise, and
support plans of colonisation. They knew that it exercised a
far-reaching moral authority; it compelled reverence for oaths, and
secured respect for the lives of women, suppliants, and slaves; and
again and again in true prophetic spirit it subordinated ritual to
ethical demands. With the widest outlook over human affairs, Plato
proposes to establish the midpoint of religious legislation in Delphi
at Apollo's shrine: "He is the god who sits in the centre, on the navel
of the earth, and he is the interpreter of religion to all mankind." It
is the note of universalism: had not Jeremiah proclaimed two centuries
before on behalf of Yahweh at Jerusalem: "My house shall be called a
house of prayer for all nations"?
When the Israelites had renewed their temple in the days of Darius, and
the scribes were beginning to busy themselves with the remains of their
national literature, Greek writers also interested themselves in the
collection of the utterances of the past. About 500 B.C. Onomacritus
gathered together the oracles of Musæus. It was the first instance of
what became a frequent practice {184} in later days; one of Plato's
disciples, Heracleides of Pontus, undertook a similar task; so did
Chrysippus the Stoic. A special literature was thus begotten. The
circumstances which called for the successive oracles were duly
narrated; and had Delphi maintained its early position, here would have
lain the nucleus of a Scripture, which might have developed into a
permanent record of revelation.
Italy, in like manner, had its _libri fatales_, its sacred books of
destiny. There were Etruscan oracles under the name of the nymph Begoe
or Vegone; there were the Marcian Songs, said to have been adopted as
genuine by the Roman Senate in 213 B.C. The ancient city of Veii had
its books; Tibur (Tivoli) the "lots" of the nymph Albunea. Most famous
of all were the Sibylline books, brought (according to later tradition)
from Cumæ to Rome, perhaps in the last days of the monarchy, or a
little later (about 500 B.C.), and placed in the Temple of Jupiter on
the Capitol under the charge of two special guardians. These were
afterwards increased to ten, and in the year 51 B.C. to fifteen. The
office remained till the books were destroyed in A.D. 400, when
Christianity had been finally established as the imperial religion.
What they contained is doubtful; how they were consulted is not known.
Their aid was sought after prodigies, pestilence, or disaster had
awakened general alarm; but their actual {185} words were not made
public. Nevertheless they supplied the basis for important religious
innovations. The introduction of Greek deities by their sanction
profoundly affected Roman religious ideas, and left deep marks on
literature and art.
In the year 83 B.C. the temple which contained the books was burned.
The greatest anxiety was displayed for their restoration. Envoys were
sent to Sicily, Greece, and Asia Minor to collect fresh verses; they
were deposited in a new temple, and prophecies were founded on them in
the last days of the Republic. But it was believed that spurious
verses had got into circulation, and Augustus ordered a rigid
examination. Some two thousand volumes, it is alleged, were destroyed;
those which were admitted as genuine were removed to a temple of Apollo
which Augustus had himself dedicated on the Palatine hill. Here are
the characteristics of a Canon. The books are kept under special
charge in a temple. Their authority suffices to modify old cults and
introduce new. When they perish, they must be restored. The false
must be separated from the true, the genuine eliminated from the
spurious. The Amoral element in them seems to have been entirely
subordinated to the ritual; but they were believed to express in
seasons of difficulty and danger the demands of the gods.
The transition to what are formally called "Sacred Books" leaves a
considerable {186} literature upon the boundary. The collection of the
ancient national Finnic songs, made with so much patience by the
Swedish Lonrott, under the name of the Kalevala, presents no claim to
inspiration, but it is the poetical expression of the national
religion. In the literature of the Eddas, the Volospa (p. 248) is a
product of the prophetic spirit. After Herodotus remarked that Homer
and Hesiod made the gods of the Greeks, the Homeric poems acquired more
and more authority, until by the usage of centuries they gained a
semi-canonical position. Lectures were given upon their sacred text,
and the most extravagant methods of interpretation were employed to
reconcile them with the world-view of philosophy. The ancient Egyptian
accepted the "Book of the Dead" as his guide to the next world.
Chapters of it were inscribed on the walls of his tomb, engraved on his
coffin, or laid inside it with his mummy. It contained the charms
needful for the preservation of his soul on its journey to the land of
the West. Its authors were unknown, but it contained the secrets of
the life to come.
The "Bibles of Humanity," as the foundation-books of the great
religions have been called, belong to one continent. Asia has been the
mother of them all. The oldest takes shape in India in the Vedic
hymns; and the immense literatures of Brahmanism, early and later
Buddhism, and the Hinduism which {187} finally drove Buddhism off the
field, follow in due course. Cognate in language with the immigrant
Aryans, the ancient Persians preserved, amid many losses, some of the
compositions of their prophet Zarathustra, mingled with religious
documents of later date, known to modern students by the name Zend
Avesta. Palestine produces Judaism, with its collection of national
literature embracing law, history, prophecy, poetry, and wisdom.
Judaism gives birth to Christianity, which sets its New Testament
beside the Old; and Judaism and Christianity lie behind Mohammed and
the Koran, where the person and the book blend in the closest union.
In the Far East Chinese culture reposes on the so-called Classics, the
five King and the four Shu, which had a chequered history till they
finally acquired their position as fountains of knowledge and models of
composition. The ancient odes of the Shî King, the traditions of
rulers and the counsels of statesmen in the Shu King, the collections
of the teaching of Confucius and Mencius, and the remaining works which
need not be mentioned here, raise none of the claims which have been
preferred for the Indian Veda, or the Christian Bible. Nor does the
singular little book of aphorisms ascribed to Lao-Tsze, which serves as
the starting-point for Taoism (p. 67). The Shintoist of Japan finds
the earliest records of his religion in the national chronicles known
as the Kojiki and the Nihongi; and the {188} modern believer, who has
been offered an infallible Bible, responds with a profession of faith
in the practical inerrancy of his own traditional books.
Some smaller communities claim a passing word. The Jains (p. 61), once
the rivals of the Buddhists, possess a sacred literature only less
copious. Group after group appears in mediæval India singing the hymns
of its founder, such as the Kabir-panthis, till the poet Tulsi-Das
(born 1532) embodies in his version of the ancient Rāmāyana the
essence of Hindu religion for some ninety millions from Bengal to the
Punjab. The Sikhs (p. 62) stay themselves upon the words of their holy
teachers in the _Ādi-Granth_. The followers of Mani in the third
century of our era, who threatened the progress of the Christian
Church, and spread all the way from Carthage to Middle Asia, possessed
a gospel and epistles of their Prophet, portions of which were brought
to Berlin a few years ago from Chinese Turkestan. The Druzes of the
Lebanon, whose origin goes back to the Caliph Hakim at Cairo in the
eleventh century A.D., treasure the documents of the faith in 111
treatises and epistles, starting from Hakim's vizier, Hamza. And the
hapless prophet of Persia, who designated himself the Bab (p. 70),
composed in the _Beyyan_ (among numerous other works) an exposition of
the Truth for his disciples. For such small communities a sacred
literature is in fact a necessity. {189} Without it they have no
adequate cohesion. It is at least one of the conditions of permanent
resistance to the forces of decay.
Around the Scriptures of the greater religions devout reverence has
gathered with ardent faith. The Hindu term Veda (meaning literally
"knowledge") has a narrower and a wider sense. In its limited
application it denotes the four collections of hymns, of ritual
formulæ, and sacrificial songs, of which the Rig-Veda is the most
important (p. 10). Their history must be inferred from their contents;
of the circumstances of their formation there is no external evidence,
save that the early Buddhist texts show that the fourth or Atharva-Veda
had not acquired canonical value in the days of the Teacher Gotama.
But the term Veda is also extended to include a mass of ceremonial
compositions known as Brāhmanas, attached to one or other of the
ancient collections, and handed down in different religious schools.
These are all included more or less definitely in what a Western
theologian might term "Revelation." They are technically designated as
_çruti_ or "hearing"; they form the matter of the sacred teaching
transmitted orally, which must be reserved for a special order and not
imparted to the world outside.
The books of household law, on the other hand, prescribing the domestic
ceremonies for birth, marriage, and death, regulating caste-privileges,
and laying down rules for {190} the conduct of life, were open to all.
But just as the Rig-Veda was exalted into a reproduction on earth of
what existed eternally in heaven, so endeavours were made to convert
the legal works current in particular schools into sacred codes of
divine origin. One was boldly ascribed to Vishnu, who communicated it
to the goddess of the earth. Another, most famous of all, was attached
to Manu, the eponymous hero of the human race. "Father Manu" he is
called in the Rig-Veda, and as the sire of mankind he was the founder
of social and moral order. First king, and Rishi (or seer) privileged
to behold the sacred texts, he was the inventor of rites and author of
the maxims of law. And yet higher dignity belonged to him, for he
sprang from the Self-Existent and could thus be identified with Brahma
himself; and as Prajāpati (p. 143) he took part in the creation of
the world. In due course poetry and philosophy had their turn. The
immense epic known as the Mahābhārata, where tradition and myth
and imaginative speculation are blended in rich confusion, was put in
the scales by the gods against the four Vedas, and its sanctity
outweighed them all.
The Buddhist Scriptures were early grouped in three divisions under the
title of the Three Baskets. The teachings of the Supremely Enlightened
were of course absolutely true, and his rules for the members of his
Order were of compelling authority. It was assumed {191} that they
were recited correctly at an assembly held immediately after his
decease. The "Buddha-Word" thus became the infallible standard of
faith and practice. There are traces of provision to meet difficulties
in case different elders should believe themselves to possess varying
traditions of the Buddha's commands: but not even the enormous
expansion of the Scriptures of the Great Vehicle, as preserved in China
and Japan, shook the faith of the disciple in the authentic character
of their doctrine. The higher teaching belonged to the later years of
the Buddha's life, and was transmitted by special channels. It is much
as if Gnosticism had established itself in the Christian Church of the
second century, and had formed its literature into a Canon beside our
New Testament. Nepal, according to the testimony of Bryan Hodgson,
raised its sacred books into objects of worship. Chinese respect was
satisfied when they were issued from time to time (p. 66) with a
preface by the imperial Son of Heaven.
The oldest portion of the sacred literature collected under the name of
the Zend Avesta consists of five hymns (called Gathas), ascribed to
Zarathustra himself. They bear many marks of high antiquity, and they
acquired a peculiar sanctity, so that the later sacrificial hymns
already regard them as objects of homage to which worship should be
offered. Above the actual Scriptures rose a radiant figure, in which
the conception of revelation {192} was impersonated. Iranian thought
was markedly idealist; each earthly object had its spiritual type, its
antecedent or counterpart in the heavenly realm. The religion and law
of Zarathustra had their representative in Daena, who is already
celebrated with pious praise in the Avesta. Sacrifice is offered to
her as she dwells in the Heavenly House, the Abode of Song. Thence
Zarathustra summons her, beseeching her fellowship--she is associated
with Cista, "religious knowledge"--and he asks of her mystic powers and
righteousness in thought and speech and deed. Later teaching declared
her to be produced by Vohu Mano, the "Good Mind" of Ahura Mazda himself
(p. 131). As the actual utterance of the Lord Omniscient, the sacred
Law might also be called his _mãthra çpenta_ or "Holy Word."
Jewish theology was not altogether deficient in similar conceptions.
Corresponding to the Torah or Law imparted to Moses, was a heavenly
Torah, infinitely richer in content. It formed one of a mysterious
group of seven Realities which existed, like the Throne of Glory, Eden,
and Gehenna, before the making of the earth and sky. It was a kind of
epitome of all possible cosmic relations, so that as an architect
frames his plan for a city, God looked into the Torah when he would
create the world. Christian theology has never employed this imagery
to express its conception of Revelation. But it lies at the back of
the curious language of the Koran concerning the "Mother {193} of the
Book" (p. 13). Mohammedan theologians reckoned no less than ten ways
in which the Prophet received his revelations. Sometimes the divine
inspiration came in a dream, sometimes like the noise of a bell through
which he recognised the words which Gabriel wished him to understand.
Other books had been given previously to Moses, to David, to Jesus, and
each nation would be summoned to its own book at the judgment. The
believer in Islam recognised in the "Mother of the Book" the
pre-existent or Eternal Word, which God from time to time "sent down"
to his Prophet. It had definite size and aspect for Arab imagination.
The commentator Jalâlain described it as existing in the air above the
seventh heaven. There angel guardians defended it from theft by Satan
or the change of any of its contents. It was as long as from heaven to
earth, and as broad as from east to west; and its consistency was of
one white pearl. Was it surprising that Mohammedan faith should
support the utterance of the pious Câdi Iyâd (who died in Morocco, A.D.
1149): "The Koran, as it lies between the two covers is God's own word,
which he imparted by way of inspiration to the Prophet. Therefore is
it in every way inimitable, and no man can produce anything like it"?
Christian theology has refrained from these physical emblems. But it
was possible for a scholar of unquestioned learning to declare {194} in
the pulpit of the University of Oxford barely half a century ago (1861)
that "the Bible is none other than the voice of him that sitteth upon
the throne. Every book of it, every chapter of it, every verse of it,
every word of it, every syllable of it (where are we to stop?), every
letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High ... faultless,
unerring, supreme."
{195}