By W. T. HARRIS.
We often hear in our time the fear expressed that there is a danger in
too much education, and especially in a too great extension of free
education at the expense of tax-payers. “Where shall society obtain its
hewers of wood and its drawers of water?” is asked in an anxious tone.
“Education renders people unwilling to earn their living by hand labor
alone, and they resort to crime rather than work at an honest trade.”
Investigation, however, does not confirm these fears. We find, upon
studying social science, that those states of the world that enforce
universal education are by far the greatest wealth producers and
accumulators of wealth.
The statistics of the seventeen states in our nation (the seventeen
that kept statistics of illiteracy in jails and prisons in 1870),
show that out of a total of 110,538 prisoners, 27,581, or 25 per
cent. could not write, while only 3½ per cent. of the adults of those
seventeen states were illiterate—that 3½ per cent. of the population,
if illiterate, furnish as many criminals as 32 per cent. of the people,
if able to read and write—or that the one who can not read and write
is nine times as liable to get to prison as the one who can read and
write. Of course we must remember that the education of the school is
powerfully reinforced by the education of the family, the community,
the State, and the Church, and that the school is not the only
educational influence, nor the most potent one. We must not place a too
high estimate on the phase of civilization that merely keeps men out
of prison. Chinese education does that, although it does not produce
scientific thinkers, a literature of freedom, or a people that worship
the true God, or any god that allows man to participate in his being.
We shall learn this lesson again in studying the caste education of
India. The duties of each person to members of his own caste and then
to the members of the other castes form the chief staple of Hindoo
education. There the hewers of wood and the drawers of water are
effectually provided for, first by birth and then by education.
If we desire to behold the effects of caste-education made supreme
over all others, we must look carefully into East Indian life, and
interpret it by its laws, religion, and philosophy. The division of
labor is necessary in order that men may gain the requisite skill to
conquer nature. Food, clothing, and shelter are rendered necessary
by nature—that is to say, by our bodies—and can be supplied only
by nature—the mineral, vegetable, and animal realms. Besides food,
clothing, and shelter, there is the fourth want, that of culture or
spiritual direction, and the fifth want, or that of protection,—the
realm of religious and scientific education, and the realm of the
political government.
In India one caste is devoted to spiritual direction—the Brahmin,
which reads and interprets the Vedas and gives counsel to the rulers
of the state. Next is the Kshatrya, or warrior caste, that manage the
secular or political government, with the counsel and advice of the
Brahmins. Then the food, clothing, and shelter providers, who devote
themselves to agriculture and the arts and trades of commerce, form a
third caste, the Vaisyas; and lastly is the Sudra caste, which consists
of day-laborers, or servants. The caste is determined by birth, not by
the free choice of the individual, but by an accident of nature. For
the East Indian the division of labor is the great divine fact of life.
Brahma, the highest god, created the caste of Brahmins from his head,
the warriors from his arms, the trades peoples from his loins, and the
servants from his feet. Manu says that the first part of the name of a
Brahmin ought to express sanctity; of a warrior power; of a merchant
wealth; of a laborer contempt. The second part of the Brahmin’s name
should express blessing; of a warrior protection; of a merchant means
of subsistence; of a Sudra menial servitude.
Caste being of divine origin and imposed upon man, how shall it be
preserved and transmitted? The answer is a perpetual education in the
duties of one’s caste and in the abnegation of all that looks toward
the recognition of identity of human nature and the equality of all in
the substance of manhood. The greatest possible care is taken not to
educate children beyond the position into which they are born and which
has been occupied by their ancestors (if they belong to one of the
regular castes). By marriage other castes are produced. The Hindoo must
have for his first wife one of his own caste, and then he may take one
more from each caste below him. Thus the Brahmin may have four wives,
three being from the lower castes; the warrior may have three wives and
the merchant two, while the Sudra can have only one. The children of
the wives from the lower castes are classified according to a scheme
invented by one of the kings, and there are more than thirty castes in
all. The chandalas have for their vocation the removal of corpses, the
execution of criminals, and such impure offices. General duties, common
to all castes, are very few.
What is a virtue in one caste may be a sin in another. The duties are
prescribed with such minuteness that a very complex system arises
for each person, which must be obeyed in its smallest particular,
under penalty of excommunication from one’s caste. The observances
and formalities are more numerous with the higher castes. Hence even
for the Brahmin, who is as a god to the other castes there is such a
weight of formalities and observances that life is not worth living for
him. He must perform tedious ceremonies of purification to remove the
effect of the most casual accidents. Should he walk abroad and meet one
of a lower caste, he must turn back and purify himself. If he should
step over a rope to which a calf is tied, he must purify himself. If
he should happen to look up and see the sun when setting, or at any
time see it reflected in the water, he must purify himself. If he
should chance to go out and get caught in a shower, he must purify
himself; and so, too, if he happens to step on the wrong foot when
he rises from bed. He must not look at his wife when she sneezes or
gapes or eats. He must not step on a cotton seed, on a piece of broken
crockery, or on ashes. When out in the sun he must look northward; when
under the stars, southward; only when under a tree or a roof he may
look in any direction. If he should fail to purify himself he will be
excommunicated from his caste, and can be restored only by a painful
ceremony.
The first, second, and third castes are of the twice-born, and they
may hear the Vedas, but the Sudras must not read, nor hear read, those
holy books. Burning hot oil poured into his ears was the penalty for
breaking this law. If the Sudra were to speak evil of a Brahmin or
warrior or merchant, the code of Manu decrees that a red-hot iron bar
shall be thrust into his mouth.
There is more respect shown toward cows than toward the lowest caste
of human beings. In fact, the Hindoo will not tread upon ants nor kill
brute animals, but founds hospitals for sick or aged cows and monkeys,
while he is entirely indifferent to the sufferings of a man from a
lower caste.
The women, even of the highest caste, are treated like lower castes in
spiritual things,—no woman is allowed to read the Vedas or to become
learned. The children of whatever caste, too, may be sacrificed to the
deities by their parents. A mother may throw her child, especially if
it be a girl, into the Ganges, or any sacred river. The women are
excluded from education, and are given in marriage in their seventh
or eighth year. A woman who is discovered to possess a knowledge
of reading and writing draws down upon her head the most severe
condemnation. There is one exception to this in the dancing girls, and
the bayaderes, who are purchased from poor parents for service at the
temples. These are taught by the priests reading and writing, music,
dancing, and singing, as well as the female arts of coquetry. They are
dedicated to the gods, and do not learn housework.
Although the warrior caste and merchant caste may read the Vedas, they
must do it under the supervision of the Brahmins.
Elementary instruction to the regenerated, or twice born, includes
reading, writing, and arithmetic. The children learn to form letters
on the sand first, and afterward on palm leaves with an iron pencil;
at last with ink on plantain leaves. The monitorial system is
practiced—one child hearing the other recite his lesson and assisting
him to learn it. The Brahmin’s children are in all cases treated with
partiality.
The chief branch of study in school is, of course, the Vedas, or holy
books. This exercise must be approached with due ceremony—of girding
with bands, purification, consecrated fires, and solemn ceremonies
performed morning, noon, and night. The pupil must seize his teacher’s
feet before he begins, and then read with clasped hands, and at the
close of his reading again seize his master’s feet. This ceremony of
greeting his teacher he performs by crossing his hands and taking his
master’s right foot in his right hand and the left foot in his left
hand.
Pupils generally reside with their teachers—in a sort of
boarding-school—each teacher having the care of ten or twelve pupils. A
very strict surveillance is kept up.
“Without his teacher the pupil must not enter a house nor look to the
right or left, but bend his look to the ground as he follows behind
his teacher.” “When reading the holy scriptures one must not cough
nor take any food or drink. In blowing the nose one must not make too
much noise—nor spit in a clean place—nor offer tea with his hand—he
must hold his arm-sleeve before his mouth when he gapes—he must not
smack his lips when he eats nor scratch his head.” Such directions
are found in the educational code. We often find sublime moral duties
intermingled with trivial details of ceremonial. If the pupil does
not say “_Om_” on beginning and ending his reading of the Vedas, the
exercise will do him no good.
The moral maxims are taught in the form of fables. The book used
is what we know as the Fables of Bidpai (“Friend of Science”) from
an Indian work, which was rewritten as the _Hitopadesa_ (“Friendly
Advice”) some centuries ago. It contains profound ethical wisdom, mixed
with some things whimsical and absurd. Proverbs are quoted at every
turn, being strung on the thread of the fable, like glittering stones
on a necklace.
The instruction of the Brahmin’s son extended to the philosophic
doctrines of Hindoo pantheism. To understand the nature of this
pantheism is most important. There is Brahm—above all the individual
gods. Brahm expresses pure abstraction from all distinctions—merely
to think it is to become unconscious of all things. Brahma is the
personification of that substance (Brahm) as the creator, Vishnu as
the preserver, and Siva as the destroyer. Below these high gods there
are terrestrial ones presided over by Indra, the Hindoo Jupiter, ruler
of the sky. Creation is not an act of the will of deity, but a sort of
emanation “like the growth of plants from seed or the hair from the
head.” The world proceeds from nothingness, growing out of Brahma, and
returns into nothingness—it is all an illusion, a sort of dream, which
the Hindoo calls “Maya.” Brahm is the substance of all the gods, and
of the beings of the world, and hence all their differences vanish to
the Brahmin, who meditates long enough to reach the idea of Brahm.
Hence the highest aim of education is to reach this annihilation of all
distinction—passing beyond all the gods, even to Brahm.
The Sankhya philosophy expresses this doctrine of annihilation of all
particular things and beings through reflection: “So through the study
of principles the conclusive, incontrovertible, one only knowledge, is
attained, that neither I am nor is aught mine, nor do I exist.”
One must not suppose that the Hindoo education is so complete that the
lower castes remain without aspiration. They learn by degrees in what
rests the power of the Brahmin to ascend above the gods by the exercise
of meditation and abstraction. This is taught in the Bhagavad Gita—even
a Sudra can by meditation come to Brahm.[H] The lower castes may become
partakers of the divine life through regeneration—“immense self-denial,
torture and penance” are requisite. They become “yogis,” and undertake
some painful exercise, such as standing for twelve years without once
lying down, then clasping the hands over the head for another twelve
years; then a third grade by standing between four fires and the
tropical sun, afterward swinging backward and forward over a fire for
nearly four hours; lastly, if life is not extinct, being buried alive
for the same length of time. If he lives still, the devotee has now
become a Brahmin.
From the bondage of caste there is therefore one possible
escape—through self-torture and penance,—but the remedy is as bad as
the disease. It was Buddha who taught a doctrine that furnished a
real relief from all this in the utter abolition of the caste system.
Driven out of India, this doctrine spread throughout Ceylon, Farther
India, China, Thibet, and among the Tartars of Siberia, and to this day
numbers more human beings in its faith than any other form of religion.
It gives all families a chance to ascend to the highest state of
religious culture.
Buddhistic emancipation is from the rigid bonds of family as well as
from caste. Any family having four sons must devote one to a monastic
life. This demands the renunciation of all personal wishes and
longings—all desires, all pride, and anger, and stubbornness; then the
devotee reaches Nirvana and all will and consciousness have sunk into
the rest and quiet of non-existence, and are purified of all finitude
and special existence. In Nirvana ceases all change—no more beginning
and ending—no more birth and death—perfect rest.
In the catechism of Chinese Buddhism there are ten duties prescribed:
(1) Slay no living being; (2) steal not; (3) be chaste; (4) speak
nothing wrong; (5) drink nothing intoxicating—these are also found in
primitive Buddhism—another five duties are added relating to external
rules of the order: (6) Do not perfume the hair on the top of the
head, nor paint the body; (7) do not listen to songs nor attend the
theater; (8) do not sit or lie on a large cushion or pillow; (9) do not
eat except at meal-time; (10) do not own gold or silver, or anything
of value as private property. The ideal is that of mendicancy—pious
beggary.
Its ideal of the divine is no higher than that of India. God is
conceived, not as a personal being having consciousness and will
and love (our Christian conception), but rather as a being above
personality and consciousness (the Hindoo conception). Hence the
Buddhist still strives for the annihilation or extinction of his
conscious individuality, just as the Indian devotee, but without those
frightful penances, and without cruel laws of caste.
We can not commend the views of those who find in Buddhism, as
portrayed in the “Light of Asia,” a doctrine almost or quite equal
to Christianity. To us it seems to be infinitely below Christianity.
Its conception of God and of God’s creation is just the opposite of
the Christian conception, for in Christianity we believe God to be a
personal being, who reveals himself in nature and man, and even becomes
human in his Son, and dies on a cross out of love for the human race.
Man can grow forever into the image of God, realizing that image in
his will, his love, his intellect, because God is all there in an
infinite degree, while to the Buddhist God is none of these but a being
who is the negative of nature and of man too. Hence the education of
Brahminism and Buddhism is based on an idea radically opposed to our
own.