_After a copyright photograph by Elliott & Fry, London._
[_To face p. 52._]
_Ex Oriente lux._ We see from this table that all the chief religions of
the world have their rise, like the sun, in the East.
I have observed with no little astonishment that certain pundits of
to-day speak in somewhat offensively patronizing tones of Max Müller, as
if he were a thing of the past, all very well in his day, but not up to
date, and already superseded. As to that, whether his theories upon the
subject of mythology and comparative religion were sound or not, I am not
competent to judge; but I feel that if others have pushed his work a step
further than the point at which he left it, we may fairly ask whether,
without his great labours, these sages would have attained their own
success. There is no finality in science, and a Newton or a Faraday is in
no way dethroned if others have built on the foundations which he laid.
The world does not stand still, and it is the common fate of the pioneer
that some new man should go beyond what he has reached. However that may
be, the collating, translating and editing of the sacred books of India,
and the editing of the thirty volumes of the sacred books of the East,
including Chinese and Arabic works, were a colossal labour—the work of a
lifetime, which has been of national and international value. All honour
to the workman!
I first met Max Müller sixty years ago at the Deanery at Christ
Church, where the evening parties were gatherings of all that was
most distinguished in university life. He was then a most attractive
personality, brilliant, of course, still young, not very tall, but
extremely good-looking, an accomplished musician, the friend of
Mendelssohn. His conversation was delightfully illuminating, and he
was generous enough not to grudge the enjoyment of it to a humble
undergraduate who was only too ready to sit at his feet. It was a regret
to me that I left Oxford to enter the Foreign Office without having had
the chance of attending his lectures; but his works on the Science of
Language, and especially his “Chips from a German Workshop,” written at
the behest of the great Bunsen, who persuaded the directors of the old
East India Company on public grounds to defray the expense of his edition
of the Vedas, have been to me the joy of many years, and still continue
to fill many an idle moment, robbing it of its idleness, for who could be
idle with Max Müller?
* * * * *
A very charming book is Sabatier’s “Life of St. Francis of Assisi.” To
me one of its chief attractions lies in the strong parallel between
the life of the mediæval saint and the Eastern reformer. The points of
divergence are no more than would be accounted for by the differences of
time, place and surroundings. St. Francis was not a prince of the blood
royal like the Buddha, but he was the son of a rich man, one of those
merchants and men of mark who travelled through the world, visiting all
the important fairs of those days, and received as welcome guests by
the great nobles. Indeed, they, too, had a sort of patent of nobility
of their own, belonging to a guild of popularity—for in those days
when newspapers were not, the rare visits of a man who could bring the
latest court gossip from Paris or London, and whose waggons were often
laden with golden tribute sent from beyond the sea to the Pope, were
looked forward to with no little pleasure. So Francis, in his gilded
youth, became one of the leading youngsters of the town, foremost in all
mischief and riotous living, a fighter and a daredevil, ruffling it in
all the fantastic coxcombry of weapons and dress which the ingenuity of
mediæval tailors and armourers could devise.
Fighting there was in plenty in the Italian cities of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, and who so ready to fight as the extravagant
young scapegrace, who was as keen to throw away his life as his money?
After one of the local raids came imprisonment for a year—then more
fighting, followed by illness, fever and repentance; after that solitude,
meditation, and the final renunciation of the world, the flesh and the
devil, when the manifest likeness to the Buddha first asserted itself.
The long, lonely silences in the _carceri_, the little natural caves
on the side of Mount Subasio, when the saint, plunged in profoundest
thought, was dreaming dreams of founding an order which was to save
mankind, cannot but remind us of the royal prince starving in the
wilderness, he, too, dreaming of the rescue of the world from sin. Both
founded their orders on principles which involved the giving up of
everything to which men hold most firmly. There was to be no property,
no house, no home, no family. Rags and beggary were no disgrace—rather
the hall-mark of a spiritual nobility. Homeless, their disciples were
to wander forth, trusting in Providence and charity, which should do
something towards filling the beggar’s bowl. Neither saw at first that
these were conditions which sooner or later must break down. Religion
needs its luxuries and will have them: a school of absolute effacement
of the world was impossible in the West as it had been in the East. To
venture any minute sketch of the aims of the two reformers is beyond
what I can do here. Both were animated by the most perfect spirit of
self-sacrifice with which they vainly endeavoured to inspire their
orders, but no founder of religion has yet succeeded in establishing
principles from which their so-called disciples have not sooner or later
found self-justified means of breaking away.
One prominent feature in the characters of these two saintly men has in
it a touch of poetry which it were ill to miss. Both loved animals with
a love that was almost holy. The Buddha held the taking of all life to
be a sin, and it is impossible to read the Birth Stories, to which I
have alluded elsewhere, without feeling that they were inspired by the
tenderest sympathy. St. Francis preached to the birds, and when Buddha
taught in the Deer Forest near Benares, stags and hinds stood still and
listened.
“Birds, my brethren,” said St. Francis to the birds that fluttered round
him, “it is your duty greatly to praise and love your Creator. He has
given you feathers for raiment, wings to fly, and filled all your needs.
He has made you the noblest of His creatures; He allows you to live in
the pure air: you have no need to sow or to reap, but He cares for you,
protects you and directs you.” And the birds stretched their necks,
spread their wings, opened their beaks and looked at him as if thanking
him, while he walked about amongst them, caressing them with the hem of
his robe. Then he gave them his blessing and took leave of them.
When he was preaching at Alviano the swallows made such a noise with
their twittering that he could not make himself heard. The gentle saint
rebuked them: “It is my turn to speak,” he said. “Swallows, little
sisters, listen to the Word of God, be silent and hold your peace, until
I shall have said my say!” But for all this and much more, how St.
Francis praised God for all His creatures and specially for “My Lord
the Sun, for of Thee, oh! Most High, he is the symbol,”[6] we must turn
to the pages of Sabatier. To St. Francis, as to the Buddha, all God’s
creatures and the life which He gave them were sacred.
If there was much that was alike in the two men, there was one point in
which they essentially differed. St. Francis was no scholar. He knew a
little Latin, which he had learnt from the monks of St. George; that was
a necessity for a man in his position, for Latin was a sort of lingua
franca in his day, and was the language of sermons and of political
discussions. Writing was a difficulty to him; he rarely took a pen in
his hand and could do little more than sign his name. The autograph
of the Sacro Convento, which is held to be genuine, gives evidence of
great awkwardness. For the most part, he dictated, and would sign his
letters with a simple T, the symbol of the Holy Cross. The Buddha, on
the contrary, like St. Paul among the Pharisees, was a man of learning,
deeply versed in the classics of the Brahmans, and well able to hold
his own in discussions with the priests upon religion and upon the
interpretation of the poems of the Rig Veda.
[Illustration: ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI PREACHING TO THE BIRDS.
_By Giotto._
[_To face p. 58._]
There is no ancient historical problem of so great interest as that of
the Aryas, that mysterious people of whom we talk so much and know so
little, as has been pointed out. The movements of the planets, the orbits
of comets, have been accurately calculated; Nature is continually being
compelled to yield many of her secrets to the patient investigations of
science. But of this masterful white race, some of whom, from the high
tablelands of Central Asia, swarmed down upon India as conquerors, while
others, wandering by the shores of the Caspian Sea, overran Europe to
become the progenitors of all that is noblest in mankind, there is no
record, no history, and in regard to them even fable is silent. Where
there is no writing, not so much as a graven stone, there can be no
Champollion, no Rawlinson. The migrations of the Aryas, which meant so
much for the children of men, were long unsuspected, and only in recent
times realized. Even so, the few men of learning who gave thought to this
crucial human enigma were travellers in a dense and dark forest, until
in the Cimmerian gloom comparative philology opened out vistas—none too
broad—through which they were enabled to gain glimpses of a civilization
and people of whom all trace had been lost in the mist of many decades of
centuries. Narrow as they were, they afforded the ποῦ στῶ, from which the
investigation of the lost history was set in motion.
Of this modern learning we must acknowledge Max Müller as the foremost
prophet. Bopp, Schlegel, Humboldt, Grimm and Burnouf were great men,
but Max Müller, like Saul among the Benjamites, “from his shoulders and
upward was higher” than any of them, and he it was who introduced the
science of language into this country. To one who, like myself, has been
a faithful believer in his teaching, it is a matter of unceasing wonder
that there should be men of undoubted scientific and literary merit who
hold in opposition to him that the Aryas were originally a European
race, who in remote times found their way into Central Asia. This bold
theory was started about the year 1839 by a famous Belgian geologist
and ethnologist, Omalius d’Halloy, and it was taken up by no less a man
than Robert Gordon Latham, by Benfey, Spiegel, Poesche, Penka, Schrader
and others. Max Müller appears to attribute the idea to Benfey, a Jew,
who was a learned Orientalist and professor of comparative philology at
Göttingen. In Vol. IV., page 223, of Max Müller’s “Chips from a German
Workshop,” we read: “We have all accustomed ourselves to look for the
cradle of the Aryan languages in Asia, and to imagine these dialects
flowing like streams from the centre of Asia to the south, the west
and the north. I must confess that Professor Benfey’s protest against
this theory seems to me very opportune, and his arguments in favour of
a more Northern, if not European, origin of the whole Aryan family of
speech deserve, at all events, far more attention than they have hitherto
received.”
In spite of this, Max Müller does not seem to have bestowed that
attention upon them, for I can find nothing either in confirmation or
contradiction of the theory. He at once goes off at a tangent on the
comparative inter-relations of the various Aryan _languages_ among
themselves, but on the supposed European origin of the Aryan _race_ he
is silent. I think it just possible that Max Müller may have wished to
pay Benfey a compliment without committing himself to an endorsement of
his views. Benfey had been strongly recommended to him by Bunsen, his
own great friend and patron, for whom he cherished the most grateful
affection.
In a letter, dated from Heidelberg, February 26th, 1855, Bunsen writes:
“I wish you would take advantage of my communication to put yourself
into correspondence with Benfey. He is well disposed towards you, and
has openly spoken of you as the ‘apostle of German science in England.’
And then he stands infinitely higher than the present learned men of his
department.” The desire to please Bunsen would account for Max Müller’s
faint praise of Benfey’s theory, but its adoption would have seemed
nothing less than the negation of all that he had so long striven to
teach. (Cf. “Chips from a German Workshop,” Vol. III., page 469.) Of
Omalius d’Halloy, Latham and the rest, Max Müller seems to take no heed.
At any rate, I do not find them mentioned either in the “Chips” or in the
lectures on the Science of Language.
I, for my part, should as soon accept the doctrine, in which I saw the
other day that there is still here and there a believer, that the world
is a flat surface, justifying the terrors of the sailors of Columbus
lest, when they reached the extreme west, they should topple over, ship
and all, into space or Hades, by whatever name you choose to call it.
To some men disputation and contradiction are an intellectual
necessity—witness the beliefs that Bacon wrote _Romeo and Juliet_,
and that Homer was an unlimited liability company of prehistoric
ballad-mongers. According to the ethnological faith in which I have lived
for the last sixty years, there existed in times so remote that they
go back beyond the birth of chronology a white folk of shepherds and
husbandmen who fed their flocks and tilled the soil in the valleys of
the Highlands of Central Asia. There they increased and multiplied until
the land of their birth could no longer hold them, and their pastures
became insufficient for their flocks and herds. Then began their many
wanderings. Toughened by a climate in which they had to live under most
trying conditions of burning heat and extreme cold, they were a hardy
race, having little to fear from the opposition of the weaker tribes who
might seek to bar their way.
There is one point in regard to the theory that the Aryas were originally
a European race, which, so far as I know, has not been taken into
consideration. The Aryas were obviously a superior people. That they
proved wherever they went. In every migration they came, conquered and
remained. Has there ever been known a case where a superior race—not a
handful of men, like the crew of the _Mayflower_, but a whole nation—has
migrated, taking all the risks and uncertainties incident to travel and
climate, and leaving the inferior race to enjoy the old well-proved home
undisturbed?
Yet that is what the Aryas must have done if they left Europe for the
terrors and privations of the Highlands of Asia, remaining to face the
hardships of that inhospitable region for long centuries, until its
insufficiencies drove them to seek the kindlier soil and climate which
their forbears had deserted. But whether the Aryas left Europe for Asia
and thence again descended upon Europe, or whether they were originally
an Asiatic race of dominant nobility, that is a question over which we
may leave the doctors to break their learned heads, in the confident
assurance that never can they arrive at any certainty. Theory without a
backing of facts, without documentary evidence, must remain valueless.
Only one thing in regard to the European migration or migrations is
certain, and that is the fact that all the European languages, barring
those of the Huns, their cousins the Finns, the Basques and the Turks (if
we may call them Europeans, which let us hope will soon no longer be the
case), can be traced back to the speech of the old tribe which perhaps
three or four thousand years ago flitted south, east and west from the
storm-vexed valleys of the Pamirs, conquering and civilizing, driving the
aborigines before it like chaff before the wind.
When I was a lad we used to be taught by such pedagogues as were
sufficiently advanced to have heard of Sanskrit, that this and that Greek
or Latin or other European word was “derived from the Sanskrit.” That is
all changed, and no teacher would nowadays dare to preach such nonsense.
We know now that Sanskrit, which must have been more or less a dead
language in Buddha’s time, only known at any rate by the more learned
among the priests, was the descendant, like Greek, Latin, Russian,
English, the Celtic tongues and others, from a much older language which
was spoken by our forefathers in the Highlands of Central Asia. But
Sanskrit, albeit not our parent speech, but rather a distant cousin of
our own European tongues, dead and buried though it has been for some two
thousand years, has been the key by which the learned have unlocked the
door of the most secret muniment-room of ethnological lore.
It is not possible to realize all that the Buddha achieved in the world
unless we have some conception of the religious and social condition
of Asia at the time of his great renunciation. That condition was the
result of the two great inroads of the Aryas, the one of the south into
Persia, the other to the south and east overrunning India. The one
was that of the fire-worshippers and Zarathustra (Zoroaster), whose
sacred canon was the Zend Avesta; the other that of the Brahmans, whose
inspired message was the Rig Veda. From the former are descended the
modern Parsees and Guebres, and there is some justification for believing
that the separation of these two streams of invasion may have been due
to religious dissent; for to the Parsee—the believer in Ahura Mazda
(Ormuzd), the one God, Creator of the Universe—the gods of the Brahmans
are an abomination, and no book is to a pious Parsee so much to be
abhorred as the Rig Veda. In the Veda the Gods are called Deva. This
word in Sanskrit means bright, brightness or light being one of the most
general attributes shared by the various manifestations of the Deity,
invoked in the Veda as Sun, or Sky, or Fire, or Dawn, or Storm.... In
the Zend Avesta the same word Deva means evil spirit. Like the Buddha,
Zarathustra was a heretic and a dissenter, and his sacred book, the Zend
Avesta, was an attempt to replace the worship of the forces of nature
by a religion—purer and more spiritual—under one Divine Creator, Ahura
Mazda, the wise spirit.
It is much to be regretted that, like our Lord, the Buddha should have
left no written word of his own. It would have been interesting to
know whether he held the Brahmanic gods in the same contempt as did
Zarathustra and his followers. Inasmuch as he denied the inspiration of
the Veda, he obviously must have repudiated them, and in his teaching,
as it has been recorded, they play no part. But Max Müller certainly
underestimates the respect assigned to them in the later Buddhism of the
monks when he says: “In Buddhism we find these ancient Devas, Indra and
the rest, as merely legendary beings carried about at shows, as servants
of Buddha, as goblins or fabulous heroes; but no longer worshipped or
even feared by those with whom the name of Deva had lost every trace of
its original meaning.”
Now it is impossible to deny that all over the East, wherever there is a
Buddhist temple, there the images of the old Devas, grim and repellent,
are devoutly worshipped and propitiated by prayer, even by people who
have no inkling of their significance. Moreover, it has been for many
centuries the policy of Buddhist missionaries to claim the native saints
in countries which they seek to convert as reincarnations of the Buddha,
and therefore to be worshipped. For instance, in Japan, Hachiman, the
indigenous God of War, is adored in Buddhist temples, and there are many
such cases, where there is no question of “goblins or fabulous heroes.”
In modern times the Jesuits adopted the same policy in China, in regard
to so-called Worship of Ancestors and of Tien—Heaven; thereby bringing
down upon themselves the wrath of the meddling and muddling Dominicans
and Franciscans and the interference of the Pope, between whom and the
Emperor-King Hsi there arose a controversy, in which the former was
worsted and the cause of Christianity in China was set back for centuries.
I have spoken of the Aryas as of “a people of whom we know so little,”
and yet, in truth, the wonder is that we should know so much with the
almost mathematical certainty afforded by the study of language and
of the Rig Veda, those beautiful hymns for which the Brahmans claim
Sruti—divine inspiration—and which are by far the oldest document of the
whole Aryan race. That there should exist any writing of the age to which
they belong is a physical impossibility; the heat and damp of the Indian
climate are swift and ruthless in their work of destruction. Even in the
Buddha’s time the very language of the Vedas was dead and understood only
by the priests. But we know from the journals of the Chinese pilgrim,
Hsüan Chwang—as Max Müller points out—with what painful care the hymns
were preserved orally by the Brahmans in the seventh century A.D. We
have also, as he further points out, the analogy of Hebrew, the MSS. of
the Old Testament, none of which is older than the tenth century, but
of which the truth is tested by comparison with the Septuagint. We know
that “every hymn, every verse, every word and syllable in the Veda were
accurately counted by native scholars about five or six hundred years
before Christ.” It is supposed that the collection of hymns was finished
some eleven or twelve hundred years B.C. But some of the hymns were then
ancient, some modern, “so that we cannot well assign a date more recent
than 1200 to 1500 before our era for the original composition of those
simple hymns which up to the present day are regarded by the Brahmans
with the same feelings with which a Mohammedan regards the Koran, a Jew
the Old Testament, a Christian his Gospel.”[7]
Some of the hymns appear to me to contain passages of almost sublime
beauty, though Max Müller says: “The historical importance of the Veda
can hardly be exaggerated, but its intrinsic merit, and particularly
the beauty or elevation of its sentiments, have by many been rated far
too high. Large numbers of the Vedic hymns are childish in the extreme:
tedious, low, commonplace.” And then he goes on to show how the Gods are
invoked to grant long life, food, large flocks, large families, for which
they are to be rewarded with sacrifices, etc. Here I cannot but think
that the great professor, for whom I entertain such sincere respect, is
a little unfair. Is not the idea of looking to their God as the Giver of
all good things common to all primeval peoples?
The Jews, for instance, though they were full of wise words about the
vanity of riches, still looked to Jehovah to enable them to “eat the
riches of the Gentiles,” and to lead them to “a land of wheat and barley
and fig trees and pomegranates: a land of oil olive, and honey,” and of
mineral wealth. Again Solomon says: “My son, forget not my law, but let
thine heart keep my commandments; for length of days, and long life, and
peace shall they add to thee.” Prayers for material prosperity to God,
under whatsoever name He may be worshipped, are common to all religions,
and it is hardly just to brand the hymns of the Veda as “tedious, low,
commonplace,” because the ancient herdsmen of the Pamirs were no more
disinterested in their prayers than the rest of mankind, but addressed
their material petitions to God just as King David and King Solomon did.