Heathenism and Christianity--The Religion of the Hindoos--Caste--The
Brahmins--Their Tyranny--Superstition--The Influence of
Christianity--Keshub-Chunder-Sen, the Indian Reformer--His faith and
Influence.
Having given a sketch of the divine worship, religious rites and
sacrificial feasts of the Hindoos, I shall now call the attention of the
reader to a brief description of their religion and spiritual culture in
general.
"In the hoary past India had mighty religious leaders and authors who
laid claim to divine authority. Religious systems were announced, and
voluminous, erudite verses were published for the guidance of the
people, or rather the Brahmins or priests, which writings are still the
Bibles of the Hindoos. The most important of these books are called
'Vedas,' 'Shastras,' and 'Puranas.' The lively imagination of the
authors and the religious enthusiasm of the people were not content with
a few deities, therefore their number has been increased from time to
time, until they now amount to thirty-three million gods and goddesses.
The most important of the former are Brahma, Visnu and Shiva, and of the
latter Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. The former are worshiped as the
creating, preserving and destroying powers, and from these three all the
others have originated; at first considered as representatives of
certain attributes and principals of the three chief deities, but later
as independent, individual deities. Many of these gods are represented
by images and pictures, which originally the whole people, but at
present only the learned, regard merely as representations of certain
divine principals and attributes. Later on these were put in the place
of the things which they represented, so that the stone image, the
river, the tree, or the animal is regarded as the god himself by the
ignorant multitude.
"According to the Hindoo doctrine of creation the earth rests on the
back of a tortoise, and the human race was originally created members of
four different classes or castes. Thus the class or caste distinction of
India is closely incorporated with its religion, and shows that the
priests have been very shrewd in founding a religious system which
secured for themselves not only salvation after death, but, above all,
an abundance of the good things of this world. Brahma was from the
beginning, and from him emanated Vishnu and Shiva. Thereafter Brahma
created first water, then the earth, then from out of his head a man who
was the _Brahmin_, and became the chief of the caste of priests, or the
highest class. After this he let a _Kshatriya_ issue from out of his
arms, a _Vaisya_ from his loins and a _Sudra_ from his feet, and which
became respectively the progenitors of the three other castes, the
warriors, the craftsmen and merchants, and the common laborers. These
castes have gradually been divided into many subdivisions, but the four
principal ones still remain with all their rigid distinctions. Through
certain misdemeanors, which may be very insignificant, a person
belonging to a higher may be degraded to a lower caste, but one of a
lower caste can never rise to a higher, not even by the most meritorious
achievements."
Of all the cruel chains by which tyrants have fettered men, none has
been a more formidable enemy of liberty or a greater impediment to human
progress than this dreadful system of caste. It has stifled all noble
efforts, all brotherly love and humane feelings; it has plunged the
people into superstition, indifference and ignorance; it has doomed
ninety-nine hundredths of the myriads of India to the most cruel
slavery, in body and in soul; it has placed locks and fetters on the
human mind and branded the infant in its mother's womb to infamy and
execration; and, the worst of all, it has stifled all incentive to
progress and development. It has smothered many noble feelings, and
taught men to hate and despise each other; and so strong is the class
distinction of this system that a good Hindoo of our day would a
thousand times rather die of thirst or hunger than take a glass of water
or a piece of bread from a person of a lower caste. Like other evils it
has also been a curse to its authors, the Brahmins themselves, by
lulling the great majority of them into ignorance and indifference. For
why should they take the trouble to study or work when the whole world
with its joys, pleasures and honors is open to them anyway? Space does
not allow discussing this matter more fully, hence I will simply cite
some of the doctrines which the Brahmins claim to have found in the
divine books, and which the people still regard as sacred:
"Whoever disturbs a Brahmin during his religious contemplations shall
lose his life; if a person of a lower caste sits down on the mat of a
Brahmin, his back shall be burned with red-hot irons; if he touches the
hair, beard or neck of a Brahmin, the judge shall order both his hands
to be cut off; if he listens to evil reports about the Brahmins, molten
lead shall be poured into his ears; if he does not arise when a Brahmin
approaches, he will be changed into a tree after death; if he casts an
angry look at a Brahmin the god Yama shall pluck out his eyes. The
Shastras teach that a gift to a Brahmin is of incalculable value to the
giver. Whoever gives a Brahmin a cow shall gain a million years of bliss
in heaven, and whoever wishes success in anything must fete the
Brahmins and wash their feet. Whoever bequeathes land or other valuable
property to the Brahmins on his death-bed immediately receives
forgiveness of sins and the greatest bliss in heaven. To drink the water
in which a Brahmin has washed his feet and to lick the dust from under a
Brahmin's feet are works of great merit for the life which is to come.
No one but a Brahmin is allowed to give religious instruction, and all
offerings to the gods must be brought to the Brahmin, because no
ceremony will avail anything unless it is accompanied by an offering to
them. Therefore a multitude of ceremonies have been introduced by the
Brahmins in order that their coffers may be well filled. I will name a
few of those ceremonies which relate to everybody's life and death, and
which cannot, therefore, be neglected.
"As soon as a mother knows she has conceived, a Brahmin must be sent for
to read certain formulas; when the child is born a Brahmin must be
called for the same purpose, also when it is a week, six months, two
years and eight years old, and again when the young people are to be
married; in all cases of sickness, at the death-bed, at the cremation of
the body, and every month the first year after a person's death; and at
each one of these visits the Brahmin is entitled to money or other
gifts. Also if a family is subject to any misfortune the Brahmin must be
called to conjure the evil powers; if a bird of prey alights on the
roof, the owner of the house must call a Brahmin to purify the house by
his blessing; when he moves into a new house the Brahmin must bless it
beforehand; when a man dies on an _unlucky day_ his son must pay the
Brahmin money to ward off a similar calamity from him; when a well is
dug a Brahmin must bless it before its water can be used; during
eclipses of the sun and the moon everybody sends gifts to the Brahmins;
at every change of the moon the Brahmin is entitled to gifts as well as
on forty regular holidays every year; during small-pox or cholera
ravages he is called to ward off the plague; the farmer cannot reap his
grain, the fisherman cannot go to sea, the merchant cannot make a
bargain unless he has bought the blessing of the Brahmin and paid for
the same."
And still the Hindoos possess a high culture, and their civilization is
one of the oldest in the world. They are endowed with a strong religious
feeling. They are profound, peaceful, diligent, economical and law
abiding; many of them have become distinguished in learning, art and
science; they have been the teachers of the philosophers and scholars of
other nations, and for thousands of years they have pondered deeply on
questions pertaining to the human soul, immortality and the life to
come, and endeavored to satisfy their craving and yearning for a closer
union with the infinite by a devotion and self sacrifices which can well
be compared with the sufferings of the Christian martyrs. Accordingly if
any people could attain a higher development and a happy condition by
other means than the influence of the Christian religion, that people
ought to be the Hindoos. Yet, after all their struggles, we now find
them on a lower level than they were thousands of years ago. What a
picture! All these millions of civilized, peaceful, diligent, sensible
people bend their knees before thirty-three millions of disgusting
images and pictures, and among all this people, in all their thirty
thousand cities there was not a hospital for the sick, not an asylum for
the blind or deaf, not a home for lepers or insane, not one voice saying
to the lowly and the poor: "Thou art my brother."
Then came Buddha, the great reformer, preaching the religion of self
denial and human love. The old petrified social fabric and religion were
shaken to their foundation, and the system of caste was on the verge of
dissolution. Under the first wave of enthusiasm caused by the teachings
of Buddha, hospitals for the sick and asylums for the poor were
established. Every fifth year the Buddhistic kings gave away their
riches, not only to the monks but also to the poor, to the orphans and
outcasts, and even asylums for sick animals were established. But
Brahminism soon avenged itself by bloody wars, Buddhism was to a large
extent driven out of India, and gradually its noble principles were
forgotten. Nearly the same condition as that which prevailed before the
Buddhistic reformation again prevailed, until the Christian civilization
quite recently began to make itself felt through the practical measures
introduced by the English government. Woman without liberty, without
human worth, and almost without virtue; the countless many oppressed and
despised by the privileged few, and not even allowed to read a religious
book at the risk of eternal damnation; one of the greatest and mightiest
nations on earth, discordant within itself, divided into different
hostile classes; the one suspicious, envious, and full of hate toward
the other, all of them humiliated, conquered, and ruled by a few
strangers,--the English,--whose forefathers were savages a thousand
years after the period when the Hindoos possessed the highest
civilization of antiquity.
The cause of this deplorable condition is clear enough to those who have
grown up under the influence of Christian civilization. With all its
studies, all its wisdom, all its genius, and all its religious
contemplation, this people have neglected or spurned the simple truths
on which the Christian civilization is founded,--love and charity: "Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."--"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto
one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me,"--these
beautiful principles are not found in the Hindoo Bibles, and,
consequently, not in their acts and lives.
But a happier day has dawned on India. The star of Bethlehem is seen at
the horizon. A new light is kindled which shall soon lead the people out
of the ancient darkness to a true and happy condition. And, strange
enough, the youngest of the nations,--America,--is foremost in
missionary work among the oldest, and next to the Americans are the
Scotch, the English, the French, the Germans, the Belgians; and even
good old Sweden has one or two mission fields there where the results
are as yet rather meager; but in the course of time this work, too, will
undoubtedly bear golden fruits, for just as surely as people and races
are to continue, just as surely shall the simple doctrine which the
great Master taught be spread and accepted among them all, because it is
the only one by which the nations can reach their true destiny.
[Illustration: KESHUB-CHUNDER-SEN.]
A remarkable attempt at reformation in the spirit of Christianity has
been made in our day by a native Hindoo, the late Keshub-Chunder-Sen,
the founder of the society, Brahmo Somaj in Calcutta, whose object was
to introduce the Christian civilization in all its better forms. One day
I went to hear a lecture by this renowned Hindoo prophet and teacher,
which afforded me one of the most pleasant and instructive hours in my
life. The great hall contained an audience of nearly three thousand
people, consisting chiefly of persons of influence and high rank, among
the cultured Hindoos of the capital. The speaker was listened to with
the greatest attention and respect, and the impression he made could not
but be beneficial and lasting. I sat very close to the speaker, and took
pains to notice his ways and manners while speaking to the large
audience. His bearing in the pulpit made a remarkable impression,
especially when, under the influence of some absorbing and transporting
thought, his body was stretched out to its full height, and seemed to
grow by the glow of inspiration. He was at that time a man of about
forty-five years of age, of robust health, of symmetrical proportions,
and with a face which beamed with intelligence and enthusiasm. The fame
of this man is not limited to his native land, for even in Great
Britain, where he spent several months a few years ago, he is very
highly respected by thinking men and women of all classes who are
devoted to the progress and improvement of mankind, and in his own
country he is almost idolized. His faith, as far as formulated in
definite language, coincides with that of the Unitarians of America,
although he called it unitrinitarian, _i.e._, he believed in one God,
the Creator of the world and the father of all men; and also in Christ
and the Holy Spirit as revelations of the divine, which is one but not
as three different persons in the deity. He believed that the
propagation of true religion in the world has been greatly impeded by
what he called the idolatry which in Christian countries has grown up
around the human person of Jesus Christ, manifested as in the flesh, and
he begged the missionaries who came to India not to confuse the minds of
the Hindoos by any such idea as a deity consisting of three different
persons; polytheism had been the curse of India from time immemorial.
Such are the main features of the teaching of this reformer which seem
to promise a better time for the oppressed people of India. Later I
became more intimately acquainted with him, and he had intended to visit
America in my company, but was taken sick shortly before I left India,
and died a couple of months thereafter.