POPULAR HINDUISM
In the last chapter we dwelt upon what may be called the Higher
Hinduism--that system of thought and religious exercise which engages
the attention, attracts the thought, and invites the devotion of the
thinking classes of the Hindu fold. The Bhagavad Gita is only one of
many writings which seriously present to the thoughtful Hindu some of
the higher conceptions and deepest yearnings of the soul. Of all the
faiths of the "Far East" none dwells so much upon these profound
religious realities, or engages in such lofty flights of spiritual
aspiration, as does this religion of the Brahmans. And no one can
study these products of the greatest minds and most sensitive
religious souls of India without entertaining a great and growing
admiration for them.
But it is well to remember these are not all of Hindu literature; nor
do they represent the current thought or the general religious life of
the people.
[Illustration: A DRAVIDIAN SHRINE, SOUTH INDIA]
They indeed reveal the highest and the best that has ever come to
light in the thought and spiritual culture of this people. For that
reason, the Bhagavad Gita is worthy of the name we gave it--the Hindu
bible.
In view of all these things, who would say that God did not visit this
people, or left Himself without witness among them? While He was
leading the Hebrews in the time of Moses, He was also stirring this
people through its old rishis, or sages. While He was rebuking the
degenerate Jewish people through their later prophets, He was raising
and inspiring the great prophet of India, the Buddha, to protest
against a debased Brahmanism.
But let it not be supposed that this literature of "Higher Hinduism"
is, in any sense, popular in India. Those religious books which engage
the mind of the masses are of a very different class. They are the
wild legends of the Puranas, and inane dialogues and lying
incantations of the Tantras--two classes of works which are both the
most popular and are lowest in the range of their ideas and most
demoralizing in the cults which they present.
These books were ostensibly written for the common people and for
women. And the common people delight in them and are intoxicated by
their religious exaggerations and excesses.
Thus the faith of the people, as a whole, is far removed, in its
grovelling thought, its idolatrous practices, and its thousand-headed
ritual, from the teaching of Higher Hinduism.
Above all, we must remember that the Hinduism of to-day is not the
Brahmanism of thirty centuries ago. It has been the passion of that
faith, from the beginning, to absorb all cults and faiths that have
come into contact with it. Hinduism is an amorphous thing; it has been
compared to a many-coloured and many-fibred cloth, in which are mixed
together Brahmanism, Buddhism, Demonolatry, and Christianity. And all
these, utterly regardless of the many contradictions which they bring
together, form modern Hinduism.
This is true also of the gods of India. The earliest of the Vedic gods
had elements of nobility in them. The most universally recognized of
their divinities in primitive times, Varuna, is free from the vain
passions and moral obliquities of more recent gods. Indeed, as one
follows the course of time and the consequent multiplication of
deities in India, one sees in their pantheon a steady deterioration of
character, until we come to the most popular of modern Hindu deities,
Krishna and Kali, the one well-called "the incarnation of lust," and
the other "the goddess of blood." One is the deification of human
passion, while the other is an apotheosis of brute force. And yet the
cults of those two deities have attained, at the present time, the
maximum of popularity throughout the land.
The same fact is manifest in connection with the customs of the
people. In early Vedic times, hardly one of those institutions which
now so disfigure this religion existed among the people. Idolatry, the
caste system, and the many forms of degradation of women are of later
growth. Never, in all the history of the country, did they exist and
flourish as they do at the present time.
Thus it will be seen that, while the religion of the Brahmans in its
earliest, primitive stage was merely an ethnic faith and largely the
echo of the spiritual yearning of the human soul, its development has
neither added to its power nor broadened its horizon. On the contrary,
it grows weaker and has, age after age, added superstition to
superstition, until it has reached its maximum of error and of evil at
the present time.
It is wise neither to ignore nor to underestimate the best that is in
a faith; nor is it fair to shut one's eyes to its achievement as
revealed in the life of the common people.
Indeed, the religious life of the masses is the truest index of the
real value of a religion, if it has wrought upon them many centuries,
as Hinduism has, in this land.
I
In the West the national evolutionist says to us, "Let the people of
India alone, that they may evolve their own faith. It is not by
cataclysmic change, but by growth, that they will ultimately find
their true redemption." Others, who have listened perhaps to the
pleasing words of a clever, yellow-robed Hindu Swami, ask the
question, "Why should we spend our money in sending the Gospel to
these wonderfully bright people of the East; are they not able to take
care of themselves; and is not their faith adequate to their needs?"
To this we simply say: "Come with us to India and see for yourselves.
Live, as some of us have, for a third of a century in this land, and
see, hear, feel, and understand what this Hinduism is. And, having
understood the situation, ask yourselves whether this ancestral faith
of India has in itself real saving power and redeeming efficacy for
any one." I maintain that, to know Hinduism, is to feel a deep
sympathy with the people who have inherited it as their faith, and to
desire to bring to them the Gospel of life and of salvation in Christ
Jesus. The people of India are, perhaps, the most religious upon
earth. In this respect they are very unlike the Japanese and Chinese,
who are worldly, prosaic, practical. Hindus are poetic, other-worldly,
and spiritually minded. They have a keen instinct for things of the
spirit. They are, also, very unlike the people of the West. Among
Westerners, religion is largely an incident in life. It has for them a
separate department, a small corner, in the life. In the East, on the
other hand, religion enters into every detail of life. There is hardly
a department or an interest in life which is not subsidized by faith
and which has not to be conducted religiously.
Moreover, the people of India thought out and elaborated most profound
systems of theosophic thought in the far, remote past. When our
ancestors were in the depths of savagery, Indian sages were indulging
in metaphysical disquisitions which are even to-day the admiration of
western sages. And there were many among those ancient Hindu rishis
whose self-propelled flight toward God and divine things, and whose
spiritual aspirations and yearnings were so beautiful that we can but
speak with profound respect and entertain the highest admiration of
them. Religion is not merely a philosophy, or even an aspiration; it
is something vastly more than this.
The Hindu Swami will visit the West and discourse sweetly, in
persuasive English, upon Hindu philosophy. But he will not practise
his religious rites or reveal his idolatrous habits and his bondage of
caste to those western people who admire him. These things would at
once create a revulsion of feeling against him and his philosophy. And
yet these are much more an essential part of his faith than all his
moral platitudes and eloquent disquisitions.
And it should not be forgotten that this same Swami, in the very act
of crossing the oceans to visit the West, violates one of the most
prominent commands of his faith.
II
_What, then, is Popular Hinduism?_
I shall endeavour to analyze it and present some of its outstanding
features, such as are witnessed all over the land.
1. That which obtrudes itself upon all sides and which is, perhaps,
its most determining factor is its caste system. In other lands, mean
social distinctions obtain and divide the people. In India only, Caste
is a religious institution, founded by the authority of Heaven,
penetrating every department and entering into every detail of life,
and enforced by strictly religious penalties. One has well said that
Hinduism and caste are convertible terms.
2. Another outstanding feature of popular Hinduism is its Polytheism.
While pantheism is the essential philosophy of the land,--a pantheism
which denies the existence of all beings and everything save Brahm
(the Supreme Soul),--nevertheless this pantheism has, in the popular
mind, degenerated into the greatest pantheon the world has ever known.
Even ten centuries ago its gods were said to number three hundred and
thirty millions! And this army of deities has been multiplying ever
since. Even twenty-five centuries ago, the fertile imagination of the
Brahman had so peopled this world with gods and godlets of all grades
that the stern and sensible mind of the great Buddha became disgusted
with the whole pantheon; and he established his new faith as a
reaction from the old to the extent of ignoring _any_ Divine Being.
If, in these earlier days, such a man was unable to endure this
manifestation of human folly, what can we not say in these days, when,
in addition to the acknowledged host of well-known Hindu deities,
every family has its god, and every hamlet its protecting demons; and
when trees, rivers, mountains, and a thousand other objects represent
to the popular mind separate godlets? One can well say that India has
gone mad in its passion for populating the world with gods.
3. Moreover, this pantheon has been incarnated. It has descended into
a wild and hideous idolatry. There is no other land on earth where
idolatry is so rampant as it is in India. Images are found everywhere.
If the gods are numberless, how much more the idols which represent
them, and which are found in every hamlet and house and upon
roadsides!
In addition to those idols which are made for regular and permanent
worship, there are myriad others which are made of clay and other
perishable substances, to be used for the time only, and then to be
thrown into the river or to be washed away by the rain.
And what hideous objects these idols of India are! The images of the
gods of the ancient Greeks were beautiful, and one feels sometimes
almost inclined to excuse an image-worship where ignorance weds art
to religion and combines beauty with devotion.
But there is no such excuse for the idolatry of India. In all my
travels through this great land I have hardly seen an image, or an
idol, which is what may be called an artistically beautiful object. On
the other hand, many of them are peculiarly gross and revolting in
appearance. The most universally worshipped god in all India is
Ganesh. His idols are found all over the land, not only in temples and
shrines, but on roadsides, and in all places where people assemble.
And this Ganesh, the son of Siva, is represented by the grossest and
most hideous idol. This "pot-bellied god" has his body crowned with an
elephant head!
Of course, Hindu taste cannot be judged by western standards. One
cannot fail to recognize this fact in trying to judge types of human
beauty in this land. But even Hindu types of beauty are not at all
realized in their idols. It would often seem as if that which was most
revolting in appearance is that which appeals most strongly to the
Hindu, as an outward expression of the divine. In any case, it is true
that the idolatry of India is farthest removed from the chaste, the
beautiful, and the elevating.
And this evil is intensified by the fact that all worshipped idols are
bathed with oil, and therefore attract all the dust, dirt, and grime
of the immediate vicinity.
Educated Hindus, though they tell you that these idols are only for
the ignorant masses, rarely decline to unite with their families in
bringing their offerings to, and in worshipping, the same.
Some will tell us that in idolatry people do not worship the idol
itself, but the god who is supposed to reside within it. Even if this
were true, one could not admire such a worship did he know the
character of the god which is supposed to reside therein. But their
statement regarding this is not true. I have personally inquired of
many of the common people who are idolaters, and I have never yet
found a man whose mind, in worship, passes beyond the idol itself. I
admit that the educated mind may leap in thought behind the image; but
the masses of the people do not. It is, at best, a debasing worship,
and drags the people down to the level of the hideous objects before
which they prostrate themselves.
[Illustration: TWO HINDU IDOLS, SOUTH INDIA]
A well-known Hindu writer said recently, in the _Christian College
Magazine_:--
"I do urge most emphatically that, whatever may have been the
original intention, and whatever may be the esoteric meaning, the
millions that perform idolatrous practice in this country see nothing
symbolic behind the image and take the whole show quite literally. And
can anything be more degrading to an intelligent human being? We know
that all religions are necessarily more or less anthropomorphic. But
our popular Hinduism surpasses everything else in this respect, too.
There is a famous shrine in this Presidency where the deity's _chota
hazri_ [early meal] begins with bread and butter, and he goes on
eating without respite till midnight, when he appropriately takes a
decoction of dried ginger to help his digestion before he retires to
his bedroom with his consorts; there is another famous shrine where a
cigar is left in the bedroom every night for his godship to smoke; in
another shrine, under the management of a nominal ascetic, fetters are
applied to the god's feet whenever the temple's exchequer runs low, to
extort money offerings from the devotees and pilgrims; in numerous
other shrines the deity is taken out in procession and whipped
publicly for having committed petty thefts; in one shrine the whole
process of a high-way robbery is acted out in detail during the
annual festival; births, marriages, deaths, and similar occurrences
are, of course, as common and frequent in our temples as in our homes.
Gentlemen, can any amount of esoteric whitewashing justify these
disgraceful and fairly incredible practices? Then there are the _deva
dasies_, our 'vestal virgins,' of whom even small and poor temples
have one or two to boast. They are the recognized prostitutes of the
country, and many sociologists are of opinion that no 'civilized'
human society can completely get rid of such a class. Is that any
reason why we should associate them with our religion and tempt the
devil himself with their presence in our holiest places and shrines?"
4. Another marked feature of modern Hinduism is its devil-worship.
This is peculiarly manifest in South India. In the Madras Presidency,
whose fifty million population is mostly Dravidian, nine-tenths of the
people follow the faith of their ancestors, which is Demonolatry.
When Brahmanism came to South India, many centuries ago, it found
intrenched among the people, everywhere and universally, this ancient
cult. The Brahmans, recognizing this, did what they have always done;
they said to the people: "We have not come to destroy your religion;
we will take your demons and demonesses, marry them to our gods, and
give them shrines and worship in our temples. Come with them and be a
part of our religion. We will give to you the privileges, and confer
upon you the dignity and blessing, of our great religion." The people
were impressed by this offer, accepted the situation, and were
absorbed, with their religion, into the Brahmanical faith. From that
time forward they have been recognized as Hindus, and have, after a
fashion, been loyal members of that faith.
But let it not be supposed that, by becoming Hindus, they have
deserted their ancestral religion, and have ceased to be
devil-worshippers. Far from it. Hinduism proper is to them a mere
plaything, or a festival pastime. On special Hindu holidays, and
perhaps on occasions of pilgrimage, they will visit these Hindu
temples and bring their offering to the deities of Brahmanism. But
their chief concern and their daily religious occupation is found in
the appeasing of the many devils whose abode is supposed to be in
their countless village shrines and under well-known trees in their
hamlets. They have not abated one jot of their belief in the supremacy
of these devils in their life-affairs; and they always stand in fear
of them, and do what they can to satisfy their bloody demands.
Thus at least nine-tenths of the people of South India are, first of
all, demonolaters, and secondly, but a long way behind, are Hindus.
And yet a great many people in the West think of these people as the
pure worshippers of the highest type of the Brahmanical faith!
And it should not be forgotten that all over India there are probably
fifty millions of people who are the so-called outcasts of the land,
the miserable product of the caste system of Hinduism. They are "the
submerged tenth" of India. They are not only socially ostracized, they
are under the definite ban of the Hindu faith. They are the hewers of
wood and drawers of water of Brahmanism. They have no place in
Hinduism proper; they are not permitted to enter any of its temples.
They have no right to receive whatever comforts religion may confer;
its rights and its privileges are entirely denied to them. But the
tyranny of the religion has been such, during the many centuries of
the past, as to keep this class of people not only in absolute social
servitude, but also in religious dependence; and has taught them
(because it has compelled them) to be satisfied with the spiritual
crumbs which are the meanest remnants of what the religion professes
to give its members.
I have often felt, as I have talked with these poor, miserable
Pariahs, that I was incapable of understanding their willingness to
remain thus loosely attached to a faith which denied to them its most
elementary comforts and blessings. The mystery is doubtless to be
explained by their supreme abjectness and helplessness, which have
been ground into them by many centuries of bondage. The consequence
is, that while these many millions of outcast people are numbered
among the Hindus, and regard themselves as Hindus, Hinduism itself has
for them nothing but curses, and, more than all others, they must be
satisfied with the devil-worship of their fathers.
5. Beneath all these lower aspects of popular Hinduism is still found
what may be called its lowest stratum--Fetichism. There are many
people and tribes in India who have not ascended sufficiently high, in
religious conception, to make for themselves definite images of the
gods they worship. Like the African, they are content to take natural
objects, such as a rock or a stone, and regard it as possessed of some
spirit and worship it. Sir Alfred Lyall, that well-known authority on
India, has told us that one can find in India, as in no other land,
religion of all forms and in all grades of development,--from the
lowest step of animism to the most spiritual and abstruse pantheism. I
myself have seen, within the area of one acre of land in South India,
the instruments of these varied forms of worship, from a greasy, round
stone, before which the lowest classes prostrated themselves, to an
image of one of the supreme gods of Hinduism. There is not a phase of
worship, however high or mystic, or however mean or degraded, which
has not its devotees in this land.
6. Modern Hinduism is also guilty of harbouring and fostering
immorality.
This is a cruel statement to make concerning any faith. But justice
compels me to add this as one of the characteristics of Hinduism. Some
of the most revered and popular writings of this religion are so full
of obscenity and impure suggestion, that, to publish them in a
Christian land, in the English tongue, would make the publisher liable
to imprisonment. When, years ago, Lord Dalhousie, the Viceroy of
India, enacted a law punishing obscenity, the leaders of the Hindu
religion were so exercised by it that the government had to exempt
religious writings of Hinduism, and emblems of that faith, from the
action of the law. There are many religious books in India to-day
which are classical in the beauty of their language, but which the
Universities of India decline to use as text-books because of their
gross obscenity.
Among the most demoralizing institutions to the youth of India are the
temple cars, which are found in every village of any consequence
throughout the land. They are erected at great expense, by temple
authorities, are most elaborately carved, and are used for the
conveyance of the gods through the village streets upon festival
occasions. There is hardly one of these cars, in South India at any
rate, which is not disfigured by grossly sensual carvings such as
ought to bring blushing shame to any decent and self-respecting
community. They are open to the public gaze, and children of the
village play under their shadow, and gaze daily upon their vile and
disgusting sights. The government would forbid the erection of such
cars to-morrow, if they had not pledged themselves not to interfere
with the religion of the people!
In the Vaishnava cult of Hinduism there is at least one sect, well
known throughout the land, whose worship is loaded with impurity, and
whose worshippers, at certain festivals, specially, yield themselves
to all forms of sexual practices such as cannot be mentioned.
Sakti worship, or the worship of the goddesses, lends itself
definitely to this gross evil; and the leading Tantraic books of this
cult are so filthy that they are not fit to be translated. In Bengal,
where the worship of Durgai, the wife of Siva, is dominant, the Hindus
themselves are beginning to protest against the lewdness, obscenity,
and licentiousness which prevail at their great Holi festival, which
is the annual festival of the goddess.
Another institution connected with the temple worship of India, and of
which Hindus ought to be heartily ashamed, is that of dancing-girls.
Little girls in their infancy are devoted and dedicated by their own
mothers to the temples. They are supposed to be married to the gods of
the temple, and are called "the servants of the gods." They dance in
attendance upon the gods, upon festival occasions, and are an inherent
part of the temple worship. But the sad thing about these women is
that their own mothers knew, when they dedicated them in infancy, that
they were binding them to a life of shame. For the dancing-girls are
the professional prostitutes of India. There are a host of these women
(twelve thousand in South India alone) who, without their own consent,
and in the sacred name of religion, have been handed over to this
life of shame, to corrupt and debase the youth of the land. Their life
is a loud cry against their mother-faith, which systematically devotes
them to destruction of soul and body. Some educated men of the land
denounce this as an evil which should be stopped. But the leaders of
the faith turn a deaf ear to all such cries.
7. The treatment of woman within Hinduism is worthy of attention.
Hinduism has never looked with kindness or consideration upon women.
It seems to have been its settled policy to treat them with contempt
and unkindness. The consequence is that the girl babe is never welcome
in the Hindu family. And from the cradle to the grave woman has no
independence or right within the pale of this faith. During childhood
she is in bondage to her father, during her marriage she must give
implicit obedience to her husband, and as a widow she remains the ward
of her sons.
Look at the disabilities under which the Hindu woman labours to-day.
She is held in ignorance. Only six Hindu women out of one thousand are
able to read and write. She has never been regarded as worthy of
education. Her ignorance has been regarded as her safety, and has
been the studied policy of Hinduism.
She has never been regarded as worthy to know the sacred books of her
own faith. It is a sin in Hinduism to-day for any man to teach a woman
the most sacred truths of the faith. Her mind is not a fit receptacle
for such truths.
While she has nothing to do in choosing for herself a husband, she is
bound in infancy, through holy wedlock, to a child like herself. Her
child husband may die before he attains manhood, when she becomes a
widow. And, because her stars are supposed to have had influence in
his death, she is treated with cruelty and is regarded as the evil
star of the home.
Owing to this evil custom of child marriage, there are to-day
twenty-six million widows in this land, of whom four hundred thousand
are under fifteen years of age. It is not simply that the lot of these
poor women is one of greatest hardship and contempt; they also become
the prey of lustful men and fall into grossest sins. In modern times
the government has tried to lighten the burdens of womanhood in the
land; but the representatives of Hinduism, and its custodians, all
stand in the way of any helpful legislation, and are determined to
keep woman in servitude at all hazards.
8. The religious ascetic represents one of the characteristic features
of modern Hinduism.
Religious asceticism has been the ideal of the Hindu life from time
immemorial. The man who has given up all earthly pursuits and wanders
with beggar's cup in hand from place to place, making pilgrimages to
the holy places of India, or who separates himself entirely from men
and devotes years to the solitude of the wilderness in the cultivation
of piety,--he it is who is the admiration of the whole Hindu
community. And it is for this very reason that so many men in India
to-day don the yellow robe of this profession, and make capital out of
this sentiment of the people.
There are millions of these religious mendicants who are entirely
non-productive and live upon the common people. A few of them,
doubtless, are sincere and are seeking after communion with God. But
the vast majority are lazy and rotten to the core. Their life is known
to be utterly worthless, and they are morally pestiferous in their
influence upon the whole community. And yet the people accept them as
the highest types of piety in the land. Even the poorest among them
would give his last morsel to these worthless men. There are, indeed,
very few in the community who would dare to refuse an offering to
these beggars, because they are so ready to invoke dreadful
imprecations upon those who decline to give anything to them. There
are few things that an orthodox Hindu dreads more than the curse of a
religious ascetic.
Thus, though these men are known to trample under foot every law of
God and are utterly useless to the whole community, the people
nevertheless regard them very highly and shower their blessings upon
them.
In any land the maintenance of such an army would be a great burden
upon the people; in India, where they are so poor, how heavy this
burden must be, and how great must be the curse of such a host preying
both morally and physically upon the rest of the community!
It is equally disastrous to the conception of the common people
concerning their faith that so large a body of recognized hypocrites
should, nevertheless, be so highly esteemed as types of piety.
The existence of this class of worthless men reveals, also, another
striking fact which characterizes the religion of India, and that is
the utter divorce of faith and morals. Hinduism has never recognized
any connection, and least of all any essential union, between piety
and ethics. As we have seen, the most pious men in the land, according
to Indian ideas, may be the most immoral. This has been one of the
fatal defects of Hinduism from the earliest times. Conscience has
found very small place in this religion of the Brahmans.
9. Modern Hinduism, also, inculcates the spirit of pessimism among its
people. The Puranas tell us, and the people universally believe it,
that we are now living in _Kali Yuga_, the iron age, in which all
things are evil, and in which righteousness is a thing largely unknown
to the people. All the forces of this age are against the good, and it
leaves no encouragement to any one to try to do, and to be, good.[4]
[Footnote 4: See Chapter X, Kali Yuga.]
10. Add to this the even more potent belief of the people in
astrology. The planets and the stars, the moon and the nodes are
living gods, they say, which wield an influence over the life and
destiny of human beings. The astrologer is perhaps the most important
functionary in the social and religious life of the people. No
marriage can be performed unless the horoscope of the bride and the
bridegroom harmonize. No social or domestic event of importance, and
specially no religious ceremony of any consequence, can be carried on
save during what are called auspicious days and moments. Astrology is
the right hand of Hinduism, and it has supreme authority in the
direction of most of its affairs.
Add to this the belief in omens, which enters very largely into human
life and thought. A Hindu will not start upon a journey save on what
is astrologically an auspicious day; and if even a crow crosses his
path from left to right, after he has begun his journey, it is
regarded as an ill omen, and he will at once return home. He spends
much of his time in watching such omens; even an ass's bray carries a
significance to him. If it is heard in the east, his success will be
delayed; in the southeast, it portends death; in the south, it means
wealth; etc. It matters not how important it may be that a man should
undertake a journey or a task at a certain time, he will not do it at
that time if he finds it to be inauspicious. When the new governor of
Madras recently arrived at his destination, the reception to be given
to him by the Hindus had to be postponed because it was ignorantly put
at an hour which was _Rahu Kala_--an inauspicious hour!
In a thousand similar ways, the Hindu people are controlled and
handicapped by silly superstitions which make life a burden to them
and which rob them of efficiency and sanity.
This, then, is the Hinduism of the masses; and no other people devote
themselves so faithfully to their faith as do these. And none, for
this very reason, are more worthy of our sympathy and of our
assistance to rise to better things in the realm of faith.