PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND DESTINY
"If a man die, shall he live again?" The question is as old as the
Book of Job, but the affirmative answer is much older. The earliest
human remains in Europe imply some provision for the dead, and it did
not occur to the peoples of the lower culture all over the world to
doubt the reality of some kind of continued existence. Did not the
living still see them in their dreams (p. 86)?
But this life might be conceived in an infinite variety ol forms.
Where was it passed? under what conditions? what would be its
privileges and its requirements? how long would it last? To these and
a hundred other questions no uniform answers have been returned; and
numerous as are the stories of visits to the other world, there is
little agreement as to its place, its scenery, its occupations, its
society, its government, its duties, its punishments, or its rewards.
Yet no field of human imagination reflects more clearly the stage of
social and moral development which creates it. Into his pictures of
the future man has persistently woven his {227} criticism of the
present. But the tenacity of usage and convention in everything
affecting the dead has sometimes detained belief at a much lower level
than the general progress of ethical feeling might otherwise have
suggested. Religious thought does not always move forwards with equal
speed over all the relations and possibilities of life.
The logic of the treatment of the dead is full of gaps and
inconsistencies. The same people will perform rites which rest upon
quite different theories; customs have run together in strange
incoherence. This may be sometimes due to the necessity for making
provision for different elements in the person which were united while
on earth. The wealthy Egyptian required an elaborate home in the tomb
for his double or _ka_, while his _ba_ started on its perilous journey
through the mysterious regions of the world of the dead. From the
ethical point of view, however, which chiefly concerns the student of
comparative religion, the doctrine of the next life falls into two main
divisions, as Burton and Tylor pointed out more than a generation
ago--theories of continuance, and theories of retribution. They are
connected by many intermediate stages of transition, and they range all
the way from the crudest conceptions of prolonged existence in the
grave, up to exalted solemnities of judgment, of doom, and of the
fellowship of heaven.
When a man dies, where will his spirit dwell? {228} Perhaps it will
pass into some animal, a bear, a walrus, or a beautiful bird. Perhaps
it will haunt his old home. In that case it were well that he should
not die where he has lived; let him be carried into the open air as
death approaches, or laid in the loneliness of the woods. The Eskimo
of Greenland build a small snow hut, the entrance of which is closed as
death approaches that the inmate may pass away alone. Dr. Franz Boas
relates that a young girl once sent for him from such a lodging a few
hours before her end, to ask for some tobacco and bread, that she might
take them to her mother who had died only a few weeks before. Or the
connection between the dead man and his former dwelling may be severed
by burning down the hut and forsaking the locality, even though (as
among the Sakais of the Malay peninsula) the coming crop of tapioca or
sugar-cane should be lost by departure. Or strong measures may be
taken with the corpse by thrashing it to hasten the ejection of the
soul; the walls of the death-chamber may be beaten with sticks to drive
it away; or a professional functionary may be invoked with his broom to
sweep it out. And when the body has been carried forth, precautions
must be taken to prevent the spirit from finding its way back, and
barriers erected against its return. Only occasionally, as in ancient
Athens, was burial permitted in the house, where the venerated dead
could still protect and bless those whom they loved.
{229}
The tomb was sometimes constructed to resemble the home and admit the
members of the family together. Under the cliffs of Orvieto is an
Etruscan city of the dead, where the stone houses (usually with two
rooms) stand side by side in streets. The prehistoric gravemounds of
Scandinavia have disclosed sepulchral burial chambers, entered by a
gallery or passage, divided by large slabs of granite into alcoves or
stalls, round which the dead were seated. Just so does the Eskimo of
the present day arrange his dwelling. Those who had lived in caves and
left their dead there, retained the usage long after they had learned
to construct tents or build houses for themselves. The chief was
carried to the hills, as the barrows on our own moors show, or to the
mountain top, where his spirit blended perhaps with the spirit of the
place and lent an additional awe to the heights; or to secure him from
disturbance, as the Spanish observers noted in Columbia (S. America), a
river was diverted from its course, his grave was made in its bed, and
the waters, restored to their former channel, kept the secret safe.
The dream experience only provides the world of the dead with scenery
and occupations resembling those of common life, with more rapidity of
change and mysterious ease of transformation. But when tribes have
migrated from one locality to another,--and in the vast reaches of
prehistoric time such movements were incessant though {230} slow--the
various forces of association in memory, dreaming, and tradition, would
connect the dead with the places of the past. Sometimes the course of
travel might have lain through mountain passes, or across a river, or
from beyond the sea. A journey, or a voyage was thus
suggested--Samoans said of a chief that he had "sailed"; to reach the
abode of the dead might need days of travel; so shoes as well as food
(p. 138) must be provided, and the fires, first kindled for the warmth
of the dweller in the grave below, were continued to light him on his
way. On solar analogies, such as may be found in both hemispheres, the
homes of the departed were often assigned to the East or West.
The brotherhood of sleep and death has always been recognised, and we
still call our graveyards "cemeteries," or sleeping-places. The
ancient Israelite said of his dead that he "slept with his fathers."
Earth burial suggested a locality beneath the ground, vast and gloomy
like some huge cave. The Mesopotamian thought of it as a city, ringed
with seven walls; and even the Hebrew who pictured the underworld,
Sheol, as a gigantic pit, sometimes imagined it to be approached
through gates. There lay the nerveless feeble forms of the mighty ones
of earth. The separate nations had their several stations allotted to
them, where ghostly warriors lay dark and silent with their ghostly
swords around the ghostly thrones of ghostly kings. {231} The entry of
a new comer from Babylon awoke a ghostly wonder, and ghostly voices
greeted him from the dead. It is a strange contrast with the pageantry
of the skies, where various races, from the Australians to the Hindus
and the Greeks have seen their forefathers looking down on them as
stars. So inveterate is this belief that it was found necessary to
obtain a certificate from the Astronomer Royal to refute the rumour
that on the night on which Browning died a new star appeared in the
constellation of Orion. The Milky Way could thus be interpreted as the
path of Souls, and the Aurora Borealis resolved into the Dance of the
Dead.
The transfer of souls through death from one kind of life to another
does not necessarily involve any moral change. The relations of earth
are resumed in the new scene. The ancient Celts who placed letters to
their friends on the pyre of a dead relative, or even expected to
receive in the next world the repayment of loans in this, conceived
existence hereafter on the same plane as the present, like the modern
Chinaman who celebrates the wedding of his spirit-son with the
spirit-daughter of a suitable friend, and thus brings peace to a
tormented house. The spirit-land of Ibo on the lower Niger had its
rivers and forests, its hills, and towns, and roads, below the ground
like those above, only more gloomy. In Tuonela, the land of the dead,
Finnic imagination pictured rivers of black water, {232} with
boisterous waterfalls and dangerous whirlpools, forests full of wild
beasts, and fields of grain which provided the death-worm with his
teeth; but it is still homely enough for Wainamoinen to find the
daughter of its ruler, Tuoni, god of death, busy with her washing. The
dead of the Mordvinians, a group of Ural-Altaic origin in the heart of
Russia, are believed to marry and beget children as on earth. Such
conceptions naturally resulted in a continuity of occupation, rank, and
service. The Spanish historian, Herrera, relates that in Mexico "every
great man had a priest or chaplain to perform the ceremonies of his
house, and when he died the chaplain was called to serve him in the
same manner, and so were his master of the household, his cup-bearer,
his dwarf, the deformed people he kept, and the brothers that had
served him, for they looked upon it as a piece of grandeur to be served
by them, and said they were going to keep house in the other world."
Yet in Mexico, as will be seen immediately, the differentiation of the
future lot had already begun.
The chief is usually sure of admission into high society in the next
world. The Maori paradise was a paradise of the aristocracy; heroes
and men of lofty lineage went to the skies. But common souls, in
passing from one division to another of the New Zealand Hades, lost a
little of their vitality each time, until at last they died outright.
Polynesian fancy {233} sometimes mingled the seen and the unseen in
strange juxtaposition. The Fijian route to the world beyond, Mbulu,
lay through a real town with ordinary inhabitants. But it had also an
invisible portion, where dwelt the family of Samuyalo who held inquest
on departed spirits. If this trial was surmounted, a second judgment
awaited them at the hands of Ndengei, by which they were assigned to
one or other of the divisions of the underworld. A great chief who had
destroyed many towns and slain many in war, passed to Mburotu, where
amid pleasant glades the occupants lived in families and planted and
fought. But bachelors, those who had killed no enemy, or would not
have their ears bored, women who refused to be tatooed, and generally
those who had not lived so as to please the gods, were doomed to
various forms of penal suffering and degradation.
Courage and daring are of immense social importance, and are among the
most important elements in primitive virtue. Strength, valour, skill
in war and hunting, lift men into leadership, and the pre-eminence won
here is retained hereafter. But these qualities are not limited to
chiefs. The happy land of the Greenlanders, Torngarsuk, received the
valiant workers, men who had taken many whales and seals, borne much
hardship, and been drowned at sea, and women who had died in
childbirth. A mild and unwarlike tribe in Guatemala might be persuaded
that to die by any {234} other than a natural death was to forfeit all
hope of life hereafter, the bodies of the slain being left to the
vultures and wild beasts. On the other hand, the Nicaraguan Aztecs
declared that the shades of those who died in their beds went downwards
till they came to nought; while those who fell in battle for their
country passed to the East, to the rising of the sun.
Such was the destiny, also, of the Mexican warriors, who daily climbed
to the zenith by the sun's side with shouts of joy, and there resigned
their charge to the celestial women, who had given their lives in
childbed. Merchants, too, were in the procession, who had faced risk
and peril and died upon their journeys. But this privilege tasted only
four years, when they became birds of beautiful plumage in the
celestial gardens. In the far East, in the abode of Tlaloc, god of
waters, were those who had died by lightning or at sea, sufferers from
various diseases, and children who had been sacrificed to the
water-deities. These last, after a happy time, were born again; the
rest passed in due course to the underworld of Mictlan in the far
north, "a most obscure land, where light cometh not, and whence none
can ever return." There the rich were still rich, and the slaves still
slaves. But their term was short. Mictlan had nine divisions, and at
the end of the fourth year the spirit reached the ninth and ceased to
be.
{235}
This curious distribution has little moral significance, save for its
recognition of valour, as in the Teutonic welcome of the warrior into
Valhalla, or of social service, as in the case of those who give their
lives for the community, the merchant like the Greenland whaler, or the
mothers who did not survive their labour. But the beginnings of
ethical discrimination sometimes present themselves in very much more
simply organised communities. A rude social justice expresses itself
in the belief of the Kaupuis of Assam that a murdered man shall have
his murderer for his slave in the next life. The Chippeways predict
that the souls of the wicked will be pursued by phantoms of the persons
they have injured; and horses and dogs which have been ill-treated will
torment their tormentors. Murder, theft, lying, adultery, draw down a
singular chastisement in the Banks Islands. The spirits of the dead
assemble on the road to Panoi, when each fresh comer is torn to pieces
and put together again. Then the injured man has his chance. He
seizes a part of the dismembered soul, so that it cannot be
reconstructed, or at least suffers permanent mutilation. No judge
presides over the process, no law regulates it; punishment is still a
private affair. But the entry into the new life is not unconditional.
The American Choctaws conceived their dead to journey to the east, till
they reached the summit of a hill. There a long pine-trunk, {236}
smooth and slippery, stretched over the river of death below to the
next hill-top. The just passed over safely and entered paradise, the
wicked fell off into the stream beneath. It was a self-acting test,
which needed not the prior ordeal of the Avestan balance under Mithra
and Rashnu at the Chinvat bridge (p. 9).
Sometimes a new religious motive is more or less plainly apparent.
Even the rude Fijian award depended in some way on the satisfaction of
the gods. The Tonga Islanders were more explicit; neglect of the gods
and failure to present due offerings would involve penalties hereafter.
The sun-worshipping people of Achalaque in Florida placed men of good
life and pious service and charity to the poor in the sky as stars,
while the wicked languished in misery among mountain precipices and
wild beasts. Two centuries ago Bosnian heard some of the negroes on
the Guinea coast tell of a river in the heart of the land where they
would be asked by the divine judge if they had duly kept the holy days,
abstained from forbidden meats, and maintained their oaths inviolate,
and those who could not answer rightly would be drowned. Such
anticipations really introduce a fresh principle. Above the tribal
morality, the custom of the clan, rises an obligation of no obvious and
immediate use; even ritual practice, the observance of special seasons,
or of proper taboos, the offering of prescribed {237} sacrifice, may
create new standards of order in conformity with a higher will. They
supply the groundwork on which the prophet may build the temple of the
ideal.
The ancient Semitic cultures formulated no general doctrine of
immortality in the higher sense of the word. Faint traces of a hope of
resurrection appear here and there in Babylonian texts; but there is no
judgment beyond the grave; the chastisements of the gods arrive in this
life; and it is only occasionally that the fellowship of heaven becomes
the privilege of the great. In Israel the higher prophecy from Amos
onward interprets "Yahweh's day" as a day of doom instead of victory;
but the divine judgment would alight on the whole people, and would be
realised in no future life but in some overwhelming national
catastrophe. In Egypt the destiny of the dead was already
individualised. Around it gathered the solemnities of the Osirian
judgment-seat (p. 8); the ritual and the ethical demands of the
forty-two assessors show the moral tests advancing through the
ceremonial. The believer who passed safely through the ordeal of the
balance and was duly fortified with the proper spells, was mystically
identified with Osiris as the "justified," and different texts present
different types of future bliss. He might find a home in the fields of
Ialu, where numerous servants answered to his call, and he feasted on
the magic corn. Or a fresh form might be {238} provided for him, when
he was washed with pure water at the _meshken_ or place of new birth.
Mysterious transformations assimilated him with various gods; or he was
admitted on to the sun-bark among the worshippers of Rê, and fed on his
words. But the guilty souls were subjected to unspeakable torments;
there were magistrates to measure the duration of those appointed for
extinction, and at the allotted time they were destroyed.
Egypt, thought Herodotus, had been the teacher of immortality to
Greece. The statement is at least interesting as a sign that in the
traveller's view the Hellenic faith of his day possessed some analogies
with the Egyptian. The ethical element in it, at any rate, was gaining
more and more force. In Homer Hades, who is after all another form of
Zeus in the underworld, is sovereign, but not judge, of the nether
realm. The Erinnyes, who are originally ghosts of the dead, inflict
their punishments mostly in the life of earth; only for broken oaths is
penalty imposed below; and Tartarus, in the lowest deep, is reserved
for the giant Titans who had challenged the majesty of heaven. In the
stony asphodel meadow Achilles is but a shade among the rest; if
Menelaus is admitted to the Elysian plain, it is no superior valour but
aristocratic connection which wins him his place. Rare is the allusion
to a judgment; the tribunal of Minos, son of {239} Zeus, may be the
moralising addition of some later bard.
But in the fifth century B.C. fresh influences are at work. Pythagoras
has founded his communities, half philosophical, half religious. The
higher thought has become markedly monotheistic, and Orphism with its
rude sacrament (p. 147) has helped to develop conceptions of fellowship
with deity which made new hopes for the future possible. So Pindar,
nearest of kin among Greek poets to the prophetio voices of Israel,
emphasises the retributive government of God. Man may be nothing more
than "a dream of a shadow," nevertheless he is not too insignificant to
escape the dooms of heaven upon his guilt, and if there is requital for
evil there are also happy islands for the blest. The ethical leaven is
already powerfully at work. The language of Cebes and Simmias in
Plato's dialogue of the _Phædo_ shows, however, that the belief was by
no means universal; and the beautiful sepulchral reliefs at Athens give
no hint of that august tribunal of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Æacus, which
Plato pictures as engaged in judging souls.
But the great mysteries of Eleusis certainly fostered the hope of
immortality. The conviction grew stronger that the initiated would
have a happier lot in the life to come, so that Diogenes sarcastically
inquired whether an initiated robber would be better off than an
uninitiated honest man. The inscriptions of {240} the last centuries
before our era show nothing like the consensus of feeling in an
Egyptian cemetery or a modern English graveyard. The soul is piously
committed to the ether, or, if there be rewards in the realm below, is
confided to Persephonê; or it is reverently placed among the stars, in
the councils of the immortals, or in the home of the gods. Such were
the popular conventions. Philosophical speculation gathered round the
idea of transmigration, or pleaded for at least a continuance of
consciousness till the great conflagration which should end the world;
while Orphic religion held out the hope that the soul, entangled in
this earthly scene, might after long discipline rise once more to its
home with God.
The theories of continuance all assume that the world will go upon its
usual way. Generation will follow generation in this life, but the
lower culture does not ask what will happen in the next. It cannot
take big time-surveys, like the Egyptian "millions of years" or the
Hebrew "ages of ages." The future will be like the present, as the
present has been like the past. Imagination can conceive a beginning,
it does not at first advance to an end. But the development of
astronomy in Babylonia, with the discovery of regular periodicities in
Nature, seems to have suggested the idea of a great World-Year, an
immense period beginning with creation, which would be brought to an
end by some {241} great catastrophe such as flood or fire. The flood
had already taken place. Traditions of it floated to India and Greece;
they were incorporated in ancient Hebrew story. After another immense
revolution of time would there be a similar close? There is some
evidence that this was part of Babylonian teaching in the days of
Berosus, in the middle of the third century B.C. (p. 39), but it has
not yet been discovered in the ancient cuneiform texts. The next
agency of dissolution would be heat. It was part of early Buddhist
speculation, and lodged itself in Indian thought; and from the days of
Pythagoras, in the sixth century B.C., it formed part of the Greek
philosophical outlook in different schools towards the "last things."
When the next periodic destruction took place, what would happen?
According to one answer the restoration of all things would set in, and
the entire cycle would be repeated over again. Eudemus, a pupil of
Aristotle, is said to have observed in one of his lectures that if the
Pythagoreans were to be trusted, his audience would have the privilege
of hearing him again: "You will be sitting there in the same way, and I
shall be telling you my story, holding my little stick, and everything
else will go on the same."
This mechanical reproduction of a whole previous age down to its
minutest details did not, however, really engage the higher Greek
thought. That was chiefly occupied with the {242} abiding contrast
between that which is and that which _appears_; how could the ultimate
Unity present itself in such infinite diversity? what was the relation
of the world of change and succession to the enduring substance that
lay behind? In such questions man and his destiny had but a small
share. Pindar might sing how "God accomplisheth all ends according to
his wish; God who overtaketh the winged eagle and outstrippeth the
dolphin of the sea, and layeth low many a mortal in his haughtiness,
while to others he giveth glory unspeakable: if any man expect that in
doing ought he shall be unseen of God, he erreth." The tragedians
might wrestle with dark problems of crime and fate; and poetry and
philosophy might agree in presenting the world as the scene of a divine
thought, the manifestation of a divine energy. Regularities, fixities,
invariable successions, pointed to a definite order, divinely
maintained. But to what did it lead? What place was there in it for
man? His future might be moralised; the unethical Hades of Homer might
be replaced by the judgment-scenes of Plato; but no world-process is
suggested for the elimination of evil or the fulfilment of any divine
end. Plato might throw out the hint that Delphi should become the
interpreter of religion to all mankind; the mysteries might be opened
to slave as well as freeman, and might even admit those who were not of
Hellenic race; but there were no prophet's {243} glimpses of a purpose
leading to some all-embracing goal. Zeus orders all as he wills.
Individuals are punished, but the misdeeds, like the sufferings or
sorrows of man, are lost in the harmonious majesty of the Whole.
Indian thought, as has been already indicated, worked out a complete
identification of life with the moral order by means of the doctrine of
the Deed (p. 217). The scheme of transmigration took up the earlier
ideas of the elder thinkers. The Vedic poets had told of the land of
Yama, who was sometimes presented as the first man to die and enter the
heavenly world. In one hymn he is associated with Varuna in the
highest heaven, where the pious live from age to age, and are sometimes
identified with the sun's rays or the stars. There kindred were
gathered, and warriors and poets received their reward, and the devout
realised the object of their prayers; and Yama sat under a tree of
goodly leaves, drinking with the gods the life-giving soma-juice,
father and master of the house, tending the heavenly sires. Deep below
was the dark pit for those who would not sacrifice to Indra, or
persecuted his worshippers. There were fiends of various kinds to
torment the wicked, the untruthful, or the seducer. But there are no
traces of any specific judgment, with definite awards of heaven and
hell. In the later scheme of life founded on the conception of Karma
such a tribunal might seem unnecessary: the product of the past works
{244} out its own result. But as Buddhist folklore shows, popular
theology required the pronouncement of a judge, and Yama took his place
as Lord of hell and King of Righteousness.
By what channels the doctrine of successive world-ages entered Hindu
religion cannot be definitely determined. Early Buddhist teaching
assumes it as familiar, though it is not included in the prior
Brahmanical literature; and minutely describes the great conflagration
which will consume the universe through the heat engendered by the
appearance of seven suns. Karma, however, could not be destroyed. No
fire could burn it, nor could the other agencies of dissolution, like
water or wind, drown or disperse it. It must proceed unerringly to its
results. These might be for a time suspended, they could not be
frustrated for ever. Their energies lay latent, waiting their
opportunity. So a new world would arise to provide the means and the
field for their operation, and from age to age, through seasons of
dissolution and restoration, with intervals of incalculable time, the
endless process would fulfil its round. This would be no literal
repetition. The history of a new world-age would be quite fresh, for
the potencies of Karma were of infinite variety, and were for ever
being re-shaped, cancelled, or extended by the action of the new
personalities--divine, human, demonic--(reincarnation might also take
place in animal or plant)--in {245} which they were embodied. But the
immense series led to nothing. Buddhist imagination filled the
universe with worlds, each with its own systems of heaven and hell, and
projected æons upon æons into immeasurable time, but the sequence
pointed to no goal, for what could arrest the inexorable succession?
Was there any escape from its law?
To that question different answers were returned by different teachers.
The forest-sages had already pleaded for the recognition of the
identity of the self within the heart with the Universal Self (p. 60).
There was the path by which the phenomenal scene could be transcended,
and the soul brought into its true fellowship with the Infinite Being,
Intelligence, and Joy. But inasmuch as this deliverance was only
realised by a few, and could not be self-wrought, it must be the result
of a divine election; they only could attain it whom the Self chose as
his own. With its repudiation of all ontological ideas of soul, or
substance, or universal Self, early Buddhism threw the whole task of
achieving emancipation on the individual, who must himself win the
higher insight and discipline his character with no aid but that of the
Teacher and his example. The passion for the salvation of the world
might generate an unexampled missionary activity, transcending all
bounds of caste and race. It might express itself in singularly {246}
comprehensive vows such as these, which were carried from China to
Japan in the seventh century A.D., and are still part of Buddhist
devotion: "There are beings without limit, let me take the vow to take
them all unto the further shore: there are depravities without number,
let me take the vow to extinguish them all: there are truths without
end, let me take the vow to know them all: there is the way of Buddha
without comparison, let me make the vow to accomplish it." But only
the wisdom of Amida, All-Merciful and All-Potent (p. 17), could avail
to harmonise the issues of Karma with the operations of grace, and
carry the world-process to the goal of universal salvation.
The theologians and philosophers of India might devise various methods
for the believer's escape from the round of re-births; but on the
ecclesiastical side they never surmounted the practical limitation of
nationality, or sought to address themselves to the world at large;
while the mystics who more easily passed the bounds of race usually
lacked the aggressive energy which demanded the conquest and
suppression of evil and the assurance of the victory of good. It was
reserved for the Persian thinkers, led by Zarathustra, to work out a
scheme for the ultimate overthrow of the power of "the Lie" (p. 211).
Egyptian theology had impersonated the forces of evil in Set. There
were the constant oppositions of darkness {247} and light, of sickness
and health, of the desert against fertility, of drought against the
Nile, of foreign lands against Egypt. Mythically, the antagonism
between Set and his brother Osiris was continued by Isis' son Horus.
It was renewed again and again, and Set was for ever defeated, yet
always returned afresh to the strife. But no demand was raised for his
elimination. Osiris had passed into the land of Amenti, where Set
could trouble him no more. And apparently the later identification of
the deceased with Osiris meant that for him, too, the powers of death
and evil were overcome. But this did not affect Set's activity in the
existing scene, where the strife continued over the survivors day by
day. The insight of the Iranian prophet could not admit this division
of spheres, and demanded not only new heavens, but also a new earth,
where evil should have no more power, and the Righteous Order, the Good
Mind, the Bounteous Spirit, and the rest of the Immortals, should be
the unchallenged ministers of Ahura's rule.
The history of the world, accordingly, was ultimately arranged in four
periods of three thousand years each. The life of Zarathustra closed
the third. At the end of the fourth the great era of the
_Frasho-kereti_, the entry into a new age and a new scene, would
arrive. It would be preceded at the close of each millennial series by
the advent of a deliverer, wondrously born of Zarathustra's seed.
During {248} the third of these, the last of the whole twelve, the
ancient serpent would be loosed to ravage Ahura Mazda's good creation.
But the _Saoshyant_ or "Saviour," the greatest of the three successors
of the prophet, would bring about the general resurrection. From the
Home of Song and from the hells of evil thought and word and deed the
spirits of the dead would resume their bodies. Families would be
reunited in preparation for the last purifying pain. For a mighty
conflagration would take place; the mountains would be dissolved with
fervent heat, and the whole multitude of the human race would be
overflowed by the molten metal for three days. The righteous would
pass through it like a bath of milk; the evil would be purged of the
last impulses to sin. Saoshyant and his helpers would dispense the
drink of immortality, and the final conflict with the powers of evil
would begin. Añra Mainyu, the great Serpent, with all their satellites
and the multitude of the demonic hosts, should be finally driven into
hell and consumed in the cleansing flame; and hell itself should be
"brought back for the enlargement of the world."
The Iranian Apocalypse is not the only presentation of conflict and
victory in the widespread Indo-Germanic group. The Old Teutonic
religion produced its Volospa, the seer's high song of creation and the
overthrow of evil. Here is in brief the story of the {249} great
world-drama, the degeneracy of man, the conflicts of the gods. The
universe slowly surges to its end; there are portents in the sky,
disorders on the earth, till the whole frame of things dissolves and
all goes up in flame. But a new vision dawns: "I behold earth rise
again with its evergreen forests out of the deep; the fields shall
yield unsown; all evil shall be amended; Balder shall come back. I see
a hall, brighter than the sun, shingled with gold, standing on Gem-lea.
The righteous shall dwell therein and live in bliss for ever. The
Powerful One comes to hold high judgment, the Mighty One from above who
rules over all, and the dark dragon who flies over the earth with
corpses on his wings is driven from the scene and slinks away." There
are possibly Christian touches here and there, but the substantial
independence of the poet seems assured.
Above the theories of world-continuance and world-cycles must be ranked
those of a world-goal, which imply more or less clearly the conception
of a world-purpose. The supreme expression of this in religious
literature is found in the Christian Bible. The prophecy of
Zarathustra belonged to the same high ethical order as that of Israel.
How much the Apocalyptic hopes of the later Judaism were stimulated by
contact with Persian thought cannot be precisely defined: the estimates
of careful scholars differ. But there is no doubt whatever of the
dependence {250} of Christianity upon Jewish Messianic expectation.
The title of its founder, Christ, is the Greek equivalent of the Jewish
term Messiah, or "Anointed." Its pictures of human destiny, of
resurrection, of judgment, of one world where the righteous shine like
the sun, and another full of fire that is not quenched, are pictures
drawn by Jewish hands. Its promises of the Advent of the Son of Man in
clouds of glory from the sky, who shall summon the nations to his great
assize, are couched in the language of earlier Jewish books. For one
religion builds upon another, and must use the speech of its country
and its time. Its forms must, therefore, necessarily change from age
to age, as the advance of knowledge and the widening of experience
suggest new problems and call for fresh solutions. But it will always
embody man's highest thought concerning the mysteries that surround
him, and will express his finest attitude to life. Its beliefs may be
gradually modified; its specific institutions may lose their power; but
history shows it to be among the most permanent of social forces, and
the most effective agent for the slow elevation of the race.
{251}
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Out of the immense literature produced since Max Müller's _Essay on
Comparative Mythology_ (1856) only a small number of the most important
books can be here named, and the list is limited to works in English.
Superior figures attached to titles indicate the edition.
[Transcriber's note: the superscripted edition numbers have been
replaced with the edition in brackets.]
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.--Tylor, _Primitive Culture_ (4th ed.) (2 vols.
1903); Max Müller, _Introd. to the Science of Religion_ (1873),
_Hibbert Lectures_ (1878), _Gifford Lectures_ (4 vols. 1889-93); W.
Robertson Smith, _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_ (2nd ed.)
(1902); J. G. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_ (3rd editioin) (now in course
of publication); A. Lang, _Myth, Ritual and Religion_ (2nd ed.) (2
vols. 1899), _The Making of Religion_ (2nd ed.) (1900), _Magic and
Religion_ (1901); Goblet d'Alviella, _Origin and Growth of the
Conception of God_ (Hibbert Lectures, 1892); Tiele, _Elements of the
Science of Religion_ (2 vols. 1897); F. B. Jevons, _Introduction to the
History of Religion_ (2nd ed.) (1902); Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_
(1902), _The Tree of Life_ (1905); Farnell, _The Evolution of Religion_
(1905); Westermaarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_
(1906), 2 vols.; Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_ (1906), 2 vols.;
Marett, _The Threshold of Religion_ (1909).
RELIGION IN THE LOWER CULTURE.--Ratzel, _The History of Mankind_, tr.
Butler (1896), 3 vols.; Turner, _Samoa_ (1884); Codrington,
_Melanesians_ (1891); A. B. Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_ (1890);
_Yoruba-speaking Peoples_ (1894); _Tshi-speaking Peoples_ (1897);
Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_ (2 vols.
1896); Miss M. H. Kingsley, _Travels in West Africa_ (1898), _West
African Studies_ (1899); Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central
Australia_ (1899), _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_ (1904);
Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-eastern Australia_ (1904); Dennett, _At
the Back of the Black Man's Mind_ (1906); Roscoe, _The Baganda, their
Customs and Beliefs_ (1911); Brinton, _Myths of the New World_ (2nd
ed.) (1878); McClintock, _The Old North Trail_ (1910); _Reports of the
Bureau of Ethnology_, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
{252}
For the higher religions a few of the best English introductions are
here named, in addition to the copious collection of materials in the
_Sacred Books of the East_ (50 vols.).
BABYLONIA: Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_ (1887), _Religions of Ancient
Egypt and Babylonia_ (1902); Jastrow, _Religion of Babylonia and
Assyria_ (1898), _American Lectures_.
CELTS: Rhys, _Hibbert Lectures_ (1886); Macculloch, _The Religion of
the Ancient Celts_ (1911).
CHINA: Legge, _Chinese Classics_ (2nd ed.) (1893), 5 vols. (in 8
parts); de Groot, _The Religious System of China_ (1892-1910), 6 vols.:
already published, _The Religion of the Chinese_ (1910).
CHRISTIANITY (primitive): Wernle, _Beginnings of Christianity_ (1903),
2 vols.; Pfleiderer, _Primitive Christianity_ (1906), 4 vols. Fuller
bibliography in _Encycl. Brit._, (11th ed.) by G. W. Knox.
EGYPT: Renouf, _Hibbert Lectures_ (1879); Maspero, _The Dawn of
Civilisation_ (1894); Sayce, _Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_
(1902); Erman, _Handbook of Egyptian Religion_ (1907); Budge, _Osiris
and the Egyptian Resurrection_ (1911), 2 vols.
GREECE: Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_ (1896-1909), 5 vols.,
_Greece and Babylon_ (1911), _Higher Aspects of Greek Religion_ (1912);
Miss J. E. Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_
(1903), _Themis_ (1912); Sir W. M. Ramsay, in Hastings' _Dict. of the
Bible_, extra vol. (1904), "Religion of Greece and Asia Minor."
INDIA: Barth, _Religions of India_ (1882); Hopkins, _Religions of
India_ (1895). VEDIC: Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_ (1897) in Bühler's
_Grundriss_; Bloomfield, _Religion of the Veda_ (1909). For BUDDHISM,
_see_ Mrs. Rhys Davids' vol. in this series. HINDUISM: Monieu
Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_ (1883).
ISRAEL: Kuenen, _Religion of Israel_ (1874), 3 vols.; Montefiore,
_Hibbert Lectures_ (1892); Kautzsch, in Hastings' _Dict. of the Bible_,
extra vol. (1904), "Religion of Israel." Kent, _Hist. of the Hebrew
People_, 2 vols. (1890-7); _Hist. of the Jewish People_ (1899); Addis,
_Hebrew Religion_ (1906); Marti, _Religion of the Old Testament_ (1907).
JAINS: Jacobi in _Sacred Books of the East_, vols. xxii (1884) and xlv
(1895); Bühler, _On the Indian Sect of the Jainas_ (1904).
JAPAN: _The Nihongi_, tr. Aston (1896), 2 vols.; Aston, _Shinto_
(1905); papers in the _Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan_;
Griffis, _The Religions of Japan_ (4th ed.) (1904, New York); Knox,
_Development of Religion in Japan_ (1907); Tada Kanai, _The Praises of
Amida_, tr. Lloyd (1907, Tokyo).
{253}
MEXICO AND PERU: Reville, _Hibbert Lectures_ (1884); Payne, _History of
the New World called America_ (1892), 2 vols.
MOHAMMEDANISM: see Prof. Margoliouth's vol. in this series.
PERSIA: Jackson, _Zoroaster, the Prophet of ancient Iran_ (1899);
Sanjana, _Zarathushtra and Zarathushtrianism in the Avesta_ (1906,
Leipzig); Moulton, _Early Religious Poetry of Persia_ (1911).
ROME: W. Warde Fowler, _The Roman Festivals_, 1899, _The Religious
Experience of the Roman People_ (1911); Glover, _Studies in Virgil_,
1904; Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_ (1904);
Carter, _The Religion of Numa_ (1906), _The Religious Life of Ancient
Rome_ (1912); Cumont, _Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism_ (1911),
_Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans_ (1912).
SIKHS: Macauliffe, _The Sikh Religion_ (1909), 6 vols.
TEUTONS: Vigfusson and Powell, _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_ (1883), 2
vols.; Grimm, tr. Stallybrass, _Teutonic Mythology_ (1900), 4 vols.;
Chantepie de la Saussaye, _Religion of the Teutons_ (1902).
Small popular volumes in the series on "Non-Christian Religious
Systems" (Soc. for Promoting Christian Knowledge), and more recently in
Constable's series, "Religions Ancient and Modern." Valuable articles
in Hastings' _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_, and in
_Encyclopædia Britannica_.
{253}
INDEX
Ādi-Granth, the, 188
Aditi, 155
Adonis, 119
Æschylus, 130
Æsculapius, 44, 127, 180, 221
Africa, 111, 113 f., 140, 148, 163, 182, 203
Agni, 34, 94
Ahriman (Añra Mainyu), 155, 212, 248
Ahura Mazda, 131, 211 f., 248
Aius Locutius, 126
Akhnaton, 129
"All-gods," the, 129
American Indians, North, 57, 81, 110, 173, 235
Amida (Amitâbha), 16 ff., 132, 246
Animism, 55, 59
Annam, 83
Apollo, 123, 127, 145, 159, 173, 181, 183
Artemis, 127
Asceticism, 168
Asha, 216, 221
Asista, 148
Athena, 123, 127, 173
Athens, 228
Attis, 119
Augury, 178
Augustine, St., 35, 42, 52
Augustus, 125
Australia, 33, 75, 78 f., 86, 110, 114 f., 149, 162, 171, 199, 202
Avalokiteçvara, 131, 154
Awona-wilona, 111
Bab, the, 70, 188
Babylonia, 39, 58, 102, 109, 145, 151, 171, 178, 205, 209, 237, 240
Baiame, 149, 171
Balder, 210, 249
Baptism, rites of, 160
Berosus, 39, 241
Bhagavad-Gītā, the, 128
Bhakti, 157
Bible, the, 194
Birth, deities and rites of, 121, 159
Blackfoot Indians, the, 35, 167
Book of the Dead, the, 186
Brahma, 60, 156
Brahmā, 60, 62, 129, 158
Brāhmanas, the, 189, 217
Brahmanaspati, 156
Brahmanical sacrifice, 143
Brahmanism, 24, 128
Buddha, the future, 159. Cp. Gotama
Buddhism, 15, 24, 61, 65, 131, 153, 155, 219, 241, 244 f.
Buddhist Scriptures, 190
Bjunjil, 171
Celts, the, 27, 41, 104, 142, 231
Chemosh, 107
China, 58, 63, 65, 68, 87, 90, 95, 125, 150, 178, 214, 231
Chinese Classics, 187
Christianity, 187, 225, 250
Chrysippus, 184
Cicero, 42, 46
Çiva, 62, 128 f.
Classification of religions, 220
Clement of Alexandria, 50 f.
Confucius, 27 f., 63, 96
Corea, 66
Creation-myths, 110
Cybelê, 40
Dahomey, 138
Dance, the sacred, 166
Daramulun, 162, 171
Dead, cultus of the, 20, 90, 137 ff.
Death, 121
Delphi, 182, 221, 242
Demeter, 40, 119, 164
Deng-deet, 148
Dionysos, 40, 119, 127, 147
Divination, 178
Dreams, 86, 179, 229
Druzes, the, 188
Ea, 113, 172
Earth, mother, 59, 95, 97, 173
Eating the god, 146
Edda, the, 27, 186
Egypt, 7, 39, 46, 102, 109, 113, 124, 129, 151 f., 171 f., 209,
213, 227, 237 f., 246
Eleusinian Mysteries, 164, 239
Entheos, 147
Erinnyes, the, 238
Eskimo, the, 228 f., 233
Etruscans, the, 178, 229
Euahlayi, the, 149
Euripides, 48, 151
Eusebius, 39, 52
Fijians, the, 197, 233
Finnic peoples, the, 104, 231
First-borns sacrificed, 142
Florida, 236
Food-deities, 115 ff.
Gabriel, 131
Gāthās, the, 191, 221
Genius, the, 123
Gold Coast negroes, 107, 138, 144, 197
Gotama, 15, 127, 219
Greece, 37, 90, 121 f., 145, 161
Hades, 238
Hammurabi, 172
Heaven and Earth, 63, 94 ff., 213 ff.
Hebrews, the, 140. _See_ Israel.
Heracleides, 184
Heracleitus, 48, 50
Herbert, Lord, 31
Hermes, 9 f., 181
Herodotus, 26, 38, 238
Hesiod, 182, 186, 213
Hestia, 122
Hierography, Hierology, Hierosophy, 29 f.
Hinduism, 62
Hirata, 92 f., 135
Homer, 181 f., 186, 238, 242
Homeric Hymn, 164
Huitzilopochtli, 147
Incubation, 180
India, 58, 90, 127, 139, 141
Indra, 34, 155, 177
Initiation ceremonies, 161 ff.
Irish sacrificed first-borns, 142
Isis, 39 ff., 51, 109, 127, 165
Islam. _See_ Mohammedanism.
Israel, 201, 222, 230, 237, 249
Jacob, 168
Jains, the, 61, 188
Japan, 63, 66, 91, 125, 135, 138 f., 152, 246
Jephthah, 107
Jeremiah, 182
Jews, the, 39, 58. _See_ Israel.
Judaism, 187, 223, 249
Judgment after death, 7 ff., 233 ff.
Jumala, 105
Juno, 145
Jupiter, 35, 109, 130, 145
Justin the Martyr, 49
Kabir, 157, 188
Kalevala, the, 27, 57, 186
Kami, the, 64, 91 ff., 135
Karma, 60, 217, 219, 243 ff.
Kings, as divine, 124
Koran, the, 13, 69, 155, 187, 192 f.
Krishna, 128
Kwan-yin, 132, 154
Lao-Tsze, 64, 214 f.
Lares, the, 123
Lesa, 140
Lessing, 22
Lî Chî, the, 150
Life after Death, 226 ff.
Life, in the universe, 83
Logos, the, 47 f., 50, 53
Loki, 210
Lot, the, 178
Lucretius, 42, 44
Lycurgus, 173
Maāt, 214
Magic, 75 ff., 120, 142, 148, 154
Mahābhārata, the, 190
Mama Ogllo, 174
Mana, 80, 85, 200
Manco Capac, 174
Manetho, 39
Manitou, 81
Manu, 190
Marcian Songs, 184
Marduk, 113, 140
Mawu, 198
Melanesia, 139, 164
Messiah, the, 250
Mêtis, 176
Mexico, 57, 117, 147, 161, 232, 234
Michabo, 173
Michael, 7, 9 f., 131
Migration, 229
Minerva, 109, 145
Minos, 44, 173
Minucius Felix, 49
Mithra, 9, 52, 166, 236
Mitra, 34, 155
Mohammed, 12 f., 67 f., 187, 193
Mohammedanism, 24, 26, 58, 63, 67, 155
Morality, 135, 195 ff.
Moses, 222
"Mothers," 104
Motowori, 92
Mulungu, 82
Musæus, 181, 183
Muses, the, 181
Mysteries, 51, 164 ff., 239
Mythology, 174 ff.
Nānak, 62
New Zealand, 232
Nezahuatl, 130
Niger, tribes of Lower, 150, 198, 231
Noah's sacrifice, 141
Norns, the, 161
Numa, 44 f., 173
Nurrundere, 171
Nyongmo, 113
Oannes, 171
Odin, 181, 210
Omophagy, 147
Onomacritus, 183
Oracles, 182 ff.
Ordeals, 179
Orenda, 81
Orpheus, 181
Orphism, 147, 165, 239 f.
Osiris, 8, 109, 119, 172, 209, 237, 247
Pāchacāmac, 152
Pan, 44, 153
"Parasites," 145
Parsees, the, 58
Pausanias, 41, 53
Penates, 123, 145
Persephonê, 40, 119, 240
Peru, 57, 108, 117, 174
Petronius Arbiter, 22
Pindar, 44, 48, 153, 213, 239, 242
Plato, 38, 45 f., 48 f., 133, 178, 182, 239, 242
Plutarch, 41, 44
Polydæmonistic religions, 55
Polynesia, 112, 164
Prajāpati, 12, 143 f.
Prayer, 35, 133, 148 ff.
Prometheus, 137
Pythagoras, 38
Pythagoreans, 220, 239 f.
Quetzalcoatl, 173
Rain-making, 54
Rameses, 108
Rashnu, 9, 236
Religio, 42
Rig Veda, 10 f., 59. _See_ Veda.
Rita, 216
Rites of passage, 159
Roman emperor, 124
Rome, 41, 52, 90, 109, 123, 131, 145, 161, 178, 201
Sabazius, 165
Sacred Books, 185 ff.
Sacrifice, 133, 136 ff.
Samuel, 161
Saoshyant, 248
Sarapis, 39, 146
Sâtân, the, 223
Scandinavia, 209, 229
Scape-goat, in Israel, 206
Schleiermacher, 23
Scriptures, 189 ff.
Self, doctrine of the, 85 ff.
Self, the Universal, 60, 245
Semites, the, 142
Set, 209
Shamash, 151, 172
Shang Tî, 97, 100
Sheol, 230
Shin, the, 95, 100
Shinto, 63, 91, 135, 187, 207
Sibylline books, 184
Sīkhs, the, 62, 188
Sin, communicable and removable, 204 ff.
Sin (moon-god), 151
Snake-dance, 167
Socrates, 50, 133, 153
Sophocles, 44
Sotêr (saviour, etc.), 124 f., 127
Spirits, 54, 102
Stars, the dead as, 231, 240, 243
Stoics, the, 178
Sūfiism, 70
Sun-dance, 34, 167
Syrians, the, 142
Taaroa, 112
Taboo, 200 ff.
Tammuz, 119
Tao, the, 215
Taoism, 65, 67, 187
Tertullian, 51, 124
Tezcatlipoca, 147
Thales, 37, 213
Thargelia, the, 206
Themis, 118, 213
Thor, 210
Thoth, 8, 152
Tibet, 66
Time, 143
Todas, the, 33, 148
Totemism, 55
Transmigration, 61, 218
Triads, 109
Trimurti, 129
Truth, goddesses of, 8
Tutanus Rediculus, 126
Ukko, 105
Universal Religions, 70
Valhalla, 235
Varro, 42
Varuna, 34, 106, 151, 155 f., 211, 243
Veda, the, 136, 142, 151, 155, 163, 177, 189, 205, 215, 243
Vegetation-gods, 118 ff.
Vesta, 122 f.
Vishnu, 62, 128 f., 158, 190
Volospa, the, 186, 248
Votan, 174
Vows, 168
Wäinamöinen, 181, 232
Wakanda, 81
World-year, 240
Xavier, Francis, 86
Yahweh, 107, 144, 161, 168, 222
Yama, 121, 243 f.
Yang and Yin, 95, 120 f.
Zaleucus, 44, 173
Zarathustra (Zoroaster), 38, 44, 58, 131, 163, 187, 201, 221, 246 f.
Zend Avesta, the, 187, 191 f., 211
Zeus, 103, 106, 109, 127, 153, 173, 176, 181, 213, 238, 243
Zi (Babylonian), 102
Zuñis, the, 83, 111
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