HINDU DOCTRINES--HOW THEY CHANGE
"As men's minds receive new ideas, laying aside the old and
effete, the world advances. Society rests upon them; mighty
revolutions spring from them; institutions crumble before their
onward march."
--_Extract from Mr. Kiddle, an American writer, which occurs in
a letter "received" by Madame Blavatsky from Koot Humi in
Thibet_.
[Sidenote: Will the new religious organisations survive?]
The four new religious organisations described in the preceding chapters
may or may not survive--who can tell? What would they become, or what
would become of them, in the event, say, of the great nations of Europe
issuing from some deadly conflict so balanced that India and the East
had to be let alone, entirely cut off? The Indian Christian Church,
hardly yet acclimatised so far as it is the creation of modern efforts,
would she survive? The English sweet-pea, sown in India, produced its
flowers, but not at first any vigorous self-propagating seed. The
Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j, graft of West on East, and still sterile as an
intellectual coterie, how would it fare, cut off from its Western
nurture? The [=A]rya Sam[=a]j--what, in that event, would be her
resistance to the centripetal force that we have noted in her blind
patriotism? The reactionary Theosophists--after the provocative action
had ceased--what of them? Would not the Indian jungle, which they are
trying to reduce to a well-ordered garden of indigenous fruits, speedily
lapse to jungle again? We shall not attempt to answer our own questions
directly, but proceed to the second part of our programme sketched on p.
122. How far then have Christian and modern religious ideas been
_naturalised_ in New India, whether within the new religious
organisations or without? Whatever the fate of the organisations, these
naturalised ideas might be expected to survive.
[Sidenote: Modification of doctrines.]
[Sidenote: Elements of Christianity being naturalised in India--three.]
We recall the statements made on ample authority in an earlier chapter,
that certain aspects of Christianity are attracting attention in India
and proving themselves possessed of inherent force and attractiveness.
These, the dynamical elements of Christianity, were specially the idea
of God the Father, the person of Jesus Christ, and the Christian
conception of the Here and Hereafter. For although Hinduism declares a
social boycott against any Hindu who transports his person over the sea
to Europe, within India itself the Hindu mind is in close contact with
such modern religious ideas. The wall built round the garden will not
shut out the crows. Indeed, like the ancient Athenian, the modern Hindu
takes the keenest interest in new religious ideas.
To comprehend the impression that such new religious ideas are making,
we must realise in some measure the background upon which they are cast,
both that part of it which the new ideas are superseding and the
remainder which constitutes their new setting and gives them their
significance. In brief, what is the present position of India in regard
to religious belief; and in particular, what are the prevailing beliefs
about God?
[Sidenote: Indian beliefs about God--Polytheists; Theists; Pantheists.]
A rough classification of the theological belief of the Hindus of the
present day would be--the multitude are polytheists; the new-educated
are monotheists; the brahmanically educated are professed pantheists.
Rough as it is, we must keep the classification before us in trying to
estimate the influence upon the Indian mind of the Christian idea of
God. From that fundamental classification let us try to understand the
Hindu position more fully.
[Sidenote: No one doctrine is distinctive of Hinduism.]
Let it be realised, in the first place, how _undefined_ is the Hindu's
religious position. From the rudest polytheism up to pantheism, and even
to an atheistic philosophy, all is within the Hindu pale, like fantastic
cloud shapes and vague mist and empty ether, all within the same sky. To
the student of Hinduism, then, the first fact that emerges is that there
are no distinctive Hindu doctrines. No one doctrine is distinctive of
Hinduism. There is no canonical book, nowhere any stated body of
doctrine that might be called the Hindu creed. The only common measure
of Hindus is that they employ brahmans in their religious ceremonies,
and even that does not hold universally. A saying of their own is, "On
two main points all sects agree--the sanctity of the cow and the
depravity of women." In contrast to Hindus in this respect of the
absence of a standard creed, Mahomedans call themselves _kitabi_ or
possessing a book, since in the Koran they do possess such a canon. In
the words of Mahomed, Christians and Jews likewise are "the peoples of
the book," and have a defined theological position. But regarding
Hindus, again, we note there is no doctrinal pale, no orthodoxy or
heterodoxy. "We Europeans," writes Sir Alfred Lyall regarding Hinduism,
"can scarcely comprehend an ancient religion, still alive and powerful,
which is a mere troubled sea without shore or visible horizon."[62] In
these days of opportunist denunciation of creeds, the amorphous state of
creedless Hinduism may be noted.
The experience of the late Dr. John Henry Barrows, President of the
Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893, may be quoted in
confirmation of the absence of a Hindu creed. After he had won the
confidence of India's representatives as their host at Chicago, and had
secured for them a unique audience there, being himself desirous to
write on Hinduism, he wrote to over a hundred prominent Hindus
requesting each to indicate what in his view were some of the leading
tenets of Hinduism. He received only one reply.
[Sidenote: Pantheism, Maya, and Transmigration may be called Hindu
doctrines.]
No one doctrine is distinctive of Hinduism. It is an extreme misleading
statement, nevertheless, to say as some Western writers have done, and
at least one Hindu writer,[63] that Hinduism is not a religion at all,
but only a social system. There are several doctrines to which a great
many Hindus would at once conventionally subscribe, and these I venture
to call Hindu doctrines. In theological conversations with Hindus, three
doctrines very frequently show themselves as a theological background.
These are, first, Pantheism; secondly, Transmigration and Final
Absorption into Deity; and, thirdly, Maya, i.e. Delusion, or the
Unreality of the phenomena of Sense and Consciousness. I find a recent
pro-Hindu writer making virtually the same selection. In the ninth
century, she writes, Sankarachargya, the great upholder of Pantheism,
"took up and defined the [now] current catch-words--maya, karma [the
doctrine of works, or of re-birth according to desert], reincarnation,
and left the terminology of Hinduism what it is to-day."... "But," she
also adds, "they are nowhere and in no sense regarded as essential."[64]
Naturally, then, the inquiry that we have set ourselves to will at the
same time be an inquiry how far Christian thought has affected these
three main Hindu doctrines of Pantheism, Transmigration, and Maya.
[Sidenote: Commingling of contradictory beliefs--]
[Sidenote: Polytheism with Monotheism.]
Nor is it to be imagined that the Hindu polytheism, theism, and
pantheism are distinguishable religious strata. "Uniformity and
consistency of creeds are inventions of the European mind," says a
cynical writer already quoted. "Hinduism bristles with contradictions,
inconsistencies, and surprises," says Sir M. Monier Williams. The common
people are indeed polytheists, at different seasons of the year and on
different social occasions worshipping different deities, male or
female, and setting out to this or that shrine, as the touts of the
rival shrines have persuaded them. Nevertheless, an intelligent member
of the humbler ranks is always ready to acknowledge that there is really
only one God, of whom the so-called gods are only variations in name. Or
his theory may be that there is one supreme God, under whom the popular
deities are only departmental heads; for the presence of the great
central British Government in India is a standing suggestion of
monotheism. The officer who drew up the _Report of the Census of India_,
1901 (p. 363) gives an instance of this commingling of monotheism and
polytheism. "An orderly," he writes, "into whose belief I was inquiring,
described the relation between the supreme God and the Devata [minor
Gods] as that between an official and his orderlies, and another popular
simile often used is that of the Government and the district
officer."[65] The polytheism of the masses may thus blend with the
theism which is the ordinary intellectual standpoint of the educated
classes.
[Sidenote: Monotheism with Polytheism.]
Rising to the next stage, namely, the theism of the educated class--the
blending of their theism with the polytheism of the masses is
illustrated in the July number of the magazine of the Hindu College,
Benares, the headquarters of the late Hindu revival and of the
pantheistic philosophy. In answer to an inquirer's question--"Is there
only one God?" the reply is, "There is one supreme Lord or Ishvara of
the universe, and there are minor deities or devas who intelligently
guide the various processes of nature in their different departments in
willing obedience to Ishvara." The Hindu College, Benares, be it
remembered, is primarily one of the modern colleges whence the modern
new-Indians come.
[Sidenote: Monotheism with Pantheism.]
Again, the modern theism of the educated, in like manner, very readily
passes into the pantheism of the philosophers and of those educated in
Sanscrit, which I have described as part of the accepted Hindu
orthodoxy. For, whatever its origin, an observer finds the pantheistic
idea emerge all over educated India. The late Sir M. Monier Williams
speaks of pantheism as a main root of the original Indo-Aryan creed,
which has "branched out into an endless variety of polytheistic
superstitions." Whether that be so, or whether, as is now more generally
believed, the polytheism is the aboriginal Indian plant into which the
pantheistic idea has been grafted as communities have become
brahmanised, the pantheistic idea very readily presents itself to the
mind of the educated Hindu. In any discussion regarding human
responsibility the idea crops up that _all_ is God, "There is One only,
and no second." We can scarcely realise how readily it comes to the
middle-class Hindu's lips that God is all, and that there can be no such
thing as sin. The pantheists are thus no separate sect from the theists,
any more than the theists are from the polytheists. The same man, if a
member of the educated class, will be polytheist in his established
domestic religion, theist in his personal standpoint and general
profession, and probably a pantheist in a controversy regarding moral
responsibility, or should he set himself to write about religion.
[Sidenote: Illustration of polytheism, monotheism, and pantheism
commingling.]
Take a statement of the mingling of polytheism, monotheism, and
pantheism from the extreme south of India, a thousand miles away from
Benares. "Though those men all affirmed," we read, "that there is only
one God, they admitted that they each worshipped several. They saw
nothing inconsistent in this. Just as the air is in everything, so God
is in everything, therefore in the various symbols. And as our king has
diverse representative Viceroys and Governors to rule over his dominions
in his name, so the Supreme has these subdeities, less in power and only
existing by force of Himself, and He, being all pervasive, can be
worshipped under their forms."[66]
[Sidenote: Pure pantheism rare.]
At the top of all is the pure pantheist, a believer in the illusion of
the senses, and generally though not always an ascetic. For life is not
worth living if it is merely an illusion, and the illusion must be
dispelled, and the world of the senses renounced. If "father and
brother, etc., have no actual entity," said the reformer Raja Rammohan
Roy [1829] when combating pantheism, "they consequently deserve no real
affection, and the sooner we escape from them and leave the world the
better." So the pantheist is generally an ascetic cut off from the world
to be consistent in his pantheism. Yet again, we repeat that such pure
pantheists are very rare, and that "in India forms of pantheism, theism,
and polytheism are ever interwoven with each other."[67]
To one familiar with India, such a medley is neither inconceivable nor
improbable; the debatable question only is, what sufficient account of
the cause thereof can be given. Why is it that Hindu doctrine has never
set? Why this incongruity between doctrine and domestic practice? Why
this double-mindedness in the same educated individual? Much might be
said in the endeavour to account for these characteristic features of
India, the despair of the Christian missionary. I confine myself to the
bearing of the question upon the influence of Christian ideas, and
particularly of Christian theism.
[Sidenote: Fluidity of Hindu thought; rigidity of Hindu practice.]
For the student of this special aspect of Hinduism a second pertinent
fact here emerges, namely, that Hindu practice is much more established
than Hindu doctrine. The unchangeableness of Hindu ritual is not a new
idea; it is its bearing on doctrine that has not been clearly
considered. There _is_, then, a distinctly recognised Hindu orthodoxy in
manners and worship, at least for each Hindu community, while there is
no orthodoxy in doctrine. The broad distinctive marks of Hindu practice,
we may repeat, are the social usage of caste, and the employment of
brahmans in religious ritual. With ideas, then, thus fluid and practice
thus rigid, it will be easily understood that Christian and modern ideas
have made much greater headway in India than Christian customs and modes
of worship. The mind of educated India has been Christianised to a much
greater extent than the religious or domestic practices have been.
Perhaps it might be said that all down the centuries of Christian Church
history, opinion has often been in advance of worship and the social
code, that social and religious conventionalities have lagged behind
belief. If so, it is the marked conservatism in ceremonial that is
noteworthy in India. While Hindu beliefs are dissolving or dropping out
of the mind, Hindu practices are successfully resisting the solvent
influences or only slowly being transformed.
[Sidenote: More progress towards Christian thought than Christian
practice.]
It is not too much to say that the educated Hindu does not regard a
fixed creed as a part of his Hinduism, but rather boasts of the
doctrinal comprehensiveness of his religion. He joyfully lives in a
ferment of religious thought, surrendering to the doctrine of a
satisfying teacher, but the idea of creed subscription, or a doctrinal
stockade, is utterly foreign to his nature. For him the standards are
the fixed social usages and the brahmanical ritual. Hear a Hindu himself
on the matter, the historian of _Hindu Civilisation during British Rule_
[i. 60]: "Hinduism has ever been and still is as liberal and tolerant in
matters of religious belief as it is illiberal and intolerant in matters
of social conduct." In a recent pamphlet[68] an Anglo-Indian civilian
gives his evidence clearly, if too baldly, of the fixity of practice and
the mobility of belief. "The educated Hindu," he writes, "has largely
lost his belief in the old myths about the gods and goddesses of the
Hindu pantheon, and has learned to smile at many of the superstitions of
his uneducated countrymen. But Hinduism as a religion that tells a man
not only what he shall eat, what he shall drink, and wherewithal he
shall be clothed, but tells him how to perform innumerable acts that men
of other nations never think have anything to do with religion at all,
Hinduism as an intricate social code, stands largely unaffected by the
flood of Western education that has been poured upon the country. He
instances a brahman, one of his own subordinates, college-bred and
English-speaking, who, when away from home with his superior officer,
had to cook his food for himself, because the brahman servant he had
with him was of a lower division than his own, and he could not afford
to hire a man of his own status among brahmans."
[Sidenote: Thought independent of act.]
We ask again for the cause of this progress in thought and stagnation in
practice. In India, creed and practice go their own way; thinking is
independent of acting. Listen to the naive standpoint assumed in the
Confession or Covenant of a Theistic Association established in Madras
in 1864. We read in article 3 that the person being initiated makes this
declaration: "In the meantime, I shall observe the ceremonies now in
use, but only where indispensable. I shall go through such ceremonies,
where they are not conformable to pure Theism, as mere matters of
routine, destitute of all religious significance--as the lifeless
remains of a superstition which has passed away." And again in article
4: "I shall never endeavour to deceive anyone as to my religious
opinions." In the revision of 1871, both articles were dropped, but in
the earlier form there was no attempt to disguise that thought was
independent of act. The familiar figure of Buddha in meditation, seated
cross-legged and motionless, with vacant introspective eyes, oblivious
of the outer world, is a type of the separation of thought from act that
seems natural to India or to the Indian mind, type also of the
independence of each thinker. The thinker secludes himself; "the mind is
its own place." To become a thinker signifies to become an ascetic
recluse; even modern enlightenment often removes an Indian from
fellow-feeling with his kind.
[Sidenote: No Theological Faculties.]
How is it so? I say nothing of the climate of tropical India as a
contributory cause. The way in which Hindu learning was and is
transmitted, is itself almost sufficient explanation of the independence
and the fluidity of religious doctrine. Hinduism has no recognised
Theological Faculties as training schools for the priesthood. _Buddhist_
monasteries of the early Christian centuries we do read of, institutions
corresponding to our universities, to which crowds of students resorted,
and where many subjects were taught; but the _Hindu_ lore is transmitted
otherwise. Beside or in his humble dwelling, the learned Hindu pandit
receives and teaches and shares his poverty with his four, five, or it
may be twenty disciples, who are to be the depositaries of his lore, and
in their turn its transmitters. Such an institution is a Sanscrit tol,
where ten to twenty years of the formative period of a young pandit's
life may be spent. Without printed books and libraries and intercourse
with kindred minds, there may be as many schools of thought as there are
teachers. And all this study, be it remembered, has no necessary
connection with the priesthood. Tols have no necessary connection with
temples, or temples with tols. Hereditary priests are independent of
Theological Schools. Recently, indeed, in Bengal these tols have been
taken up by the Education Department, and their studies are being
directed to certain fixed subjects.
[Sidenote: The twofold priesthood--religious teachers and celebrants.]
[Sidenote: How doctrine moves independently of ritual.]
Another feature of the organisation of Hinduism, hitherto insufficiently
noticed, has a still closer connection with this freedom of thought and
fixity of practice. The Indian mind is open to new religious ideas,
while the religious customs of India remain almost unaffected, _because_
the priesthood of Hinduism is two-fold. One set of priests, called
purohits, are merely the celebrants at worship and ceremonies; the
second set, called gurus, theoretically more highly honoured, are or
were the religious teachers of the people. Among Mahomedans there is a
somewhat similar two-fold priesthood, although among them doctrine is
not divorced from religious worship and ritual. But in Christianity we
have not specialised so far. A Christian clergyman, as we know, holds
both offices; he is both the religious teacher and the celebrant at
sacraments, etc. In Hinduism, with these two sets of priests entirely
separate, it is evident that a change may take place in the creed
without the due performance of the Hindu ritual being affected. A
striking instance of the divergence of guru from purohit is given by Sir
Monier Williams in another connection. In India, he says, no temples are
more common than those containing the symbol of the God Siva--there are
said to be thirty million symbols of Siva scattered over India--yet
among gurus there is scarcely one in a hundred whose vocation is to
impart the mantra (the saving text) of Siva.[69] It has already been
explained how the creed of Hinduism is dissolving while its practices
remain; to restate the fact otherwise now--The hereditary purohits
continue to be employed many times a year in a Hindu household, as
worship, births, deaths, marriages, and social ceremonies recur, but the
hereditary gurus as religious teachers have become practically
defunct.[70] Literally, the _one_ duty of a guru has come to be to
communicate once in a lifetime to each Hindu his saving mantra or
Sanscrit text; periodically thereafter, the guru may visit his clients
to collect what dues they may be pleased to give. The place of religious
teacher in Hinduism is vacant, and Christianity and modern thought are
taking the vacant place. The modern middle-class Hindu is in need of a
guru. For mere purohits, as such, he has a small and a declining
reverence; but holy men, as such, his instinct is to honour--one of the
pleasing features of Hinduism. We can understand it all when we remember
how in the Christian Church, in a crisis like that from which the Church
is now emerging, many come to be married by the clergyman who have
practically lapsed from the faith.