not to be dried up. It is imperishable, unchanging,
immovable, without beginning.
"It is said to be immaterial, passing all understanding, and
unchangeable. If you know the Self of man to be all this,
grieve not.
"There is nothing higher than the attainment of the knowledge
of the Self.[125]
"All living creatures are the dwelling of the Self who lies
enveloped in matter, who is immortal, and spotless. Those who
worship the Self, the immovable, living in a movable
dwelling, become immortal.
"Despising everything else, a wise man should strive after
the knowledge of the Self."
We shall have to return to this subject again, for this knowledge of
the Self is really the _Vedanta_, that is, the end, the highest goal
of the Veda. The highest wisdom of Greece was "to know ourselves;" the
highest wisdom of India is "to know our Self."
If I were asked to indicate by one word the distinguishing feature of
the Indian character, as I have here tried to sketch it, I should say
it was _transcendent_, using that word, not in its strict technical
sense, as fixed by Kant, but in its more general acceptation, as
denoting a mind bent on transcending the limits of empirical
knowledge. There are minds perfectly satisfied with empirical
knowledge, a knowledge of facts, well ascertained, well classified,
and well labelled. Such knowledge may assume very vast proportions,
and, if knowledge is power, it may impart great power, real
intellectual power to the man who can wield and utilize it. Our own
age is proud of that kind of knowledge, and to be content with it, and
never to attempt to look beyond it, is, I believe, one of the happiest
states of mind to be in.[126]
But, for all that, there is a Beyond, and he who has once caught a
glance of it, is like a man who has gazed at the sun--wherever he
looks, everywhere he sees the image of the sun. Speak to him of finite
things, and he will tell you that the Finite is impossible and
meaningless without the Infinite. Speak to him of death, and he will
call it birth; speak to him of time, and he will call it the mere
shadow of eternity. To us the senses seem to be the organs, the tools,
the most powerful engines of knowledge; to him they are, if not
actually deceivers, at all events heavy fetters, checking the flight
of the spirit. To us this earth, this life, all that we see, and hear,
and touch is certain. Here, we feel, is our home, here lie our duties,
here our pleasures. To him this earth is a thing that once was not,
and that again will cease to be; this life is a short dream from which
we shall soon awake. Of nothing he professes greater ignorance than of
what to others seems to be most certain, namely what we see, and hear,
and touch; and as to our home, wherever that may be, he knows that
certainly it is not here.
Do not suppose that such men are mere dreamers. Far from it! And if we
can only bring ourselves to be quite honest to ourselves, we shall
have to confess that at times we all have been visited by these
transcendental aspirations, and have been able to understand what
Wordsworth meant when he spoke of those
"Obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized."
The transcendent temperament acquired no doubt a more complete
supremacy in the Indian character than anywhere else; but no nation,
and no individual, is entirely without that "yearning beyond;" indeed
we all know it under a more familiar name--namely, _Religion_.
It is necessary, however, to distinguish between religion and _a_
religion, quite as much as in another branch of philosophy we have to
distinguish between language and _a_ language or many languages. A man
may accept _a_ religion, he may be converted to the Christian
religion, and he may change his own particular religion from time to
time, just as he may speak different languages. But in order to have
_a_ religion, a man must have religion. He must once _at least_ in his
life have looked beyond the horizon of this world, and carried away in
his mind an impression of the Infinite, which will never leave him
again. A being satisfied with the world of sense, unconscious of its
finite nature, undisturbed by the limited or negative character of all
perceptions of the senses, would be incapable of any religious
concepts. Only when the finite character of all human knowledge has
been received is it possible for the human mind to conceive that which
is beyond the Finite, call it what you like, the Beyond, the Unseen,
the Infinite, the Supernatural, or the Divine. That step must have
been taken before religion of any kind becomes possible. What kind of
religion it will be, depends on the character of the race which
elaborates it, its surroundings in nature, and its experience in
history.
Now we may seem to know a great many religions--I speak here, of
course, of ancient religions only, of what are sometimes called
national or autochthonous religions--not of those founded in later
times by individual prophets or reformers.
Yet, among those ancient religions we seldom know, what after all is
the most important point, their origin and their gradual growth. The
Jewish religion is represented to us as perfect and complete from the
very first, and it is with great difficulty that we can discover its
real beginnings and its historical growth. And take the Greek and the
Roman religions, take the religions of the Teutonic, Slavonic, or
Celtic tribes, and you will find that their period of growth has
always passed, long before we know them, and that from the time we
know them, all their changes are purely _metamorphic_--changes in form
of substances ready at hand. Now let us look to the ancient
inhabitants of India. With them, first of all, religion was not only
_one_ interest by the side of many. It was the all-absorbing interest;
it embraced not only worship and prayer, but what we call philosophy,
morality, law, and government--all was pervaded by religion. Their
whole life was to them a religion--everything else was, as it were, a
mere concession made to the ephemeral requirements of this life.
What then can we learn from the ancient religious literature of India,
or from the Veda?
It requires no very profound knowledge of Greek religion and Greek
language to discover in the Greek deities the original outlines of
certain physical phenomena. Every schoolboy knows that in _Zeus_ there
is something of the sky, in _Poseidon_ of the sea, in _Hades_ of the
lower world, in _Apollo_ of the sun, in _Artemis_ of the moon, in
_Hephaestos_ of the fire. But for all that, there is, from a Greek
point of view, a very considerable difference between _Zeus_ and the
sky, between _Poseidon_ and the sea, between _Apollo_ and the sun,
between _Artemis_ and the moon.
Now what do we find in the Veda? No doubt here and there a few
philosophical hymns which have been quoted so often that people have
begun to imagine that the Veda is a kind of collection of Orphic
hymns. We also find some purely mythological hymns, in which the Devas
or gods have assumed nearly as much dramatic personality as in the
Homeric hymns.
But the great majority of Vedic hymns consists in simple invocations
of the fire, the water, the sky, the sun, and the storms, often under
the same names which afterward became the proper names of Hindu
deities, but as yet nearly free from all that can be called irrational
or mythological. There is nothing irrational, nothing I mean we cannot
enter into or sympathize with, in people imploring the storms to
cease, or the sky to rain, or the sun to shine. I say there is nothing
irrational in it, though perhaps it might be more accurate to say
that there is nothing in it that would surprise anybody who is
acquainted with the growth of human reason, or at all events, of
childish reason. It does not matter how we call the tendency of the
childish mind to confound the manifestation with that which manifests
itself, effect with cause, act with agent. Call it Animism,
Personification, Metaphor, or Poetry, we all know what is meant by it,
in the most general sense of all these names; we all know that it
exists, and the youngest child who beats the chair against which he
has fallen, or who scolds his dog, or who sings: "Rain, rain, go to
Spain," can teach us that, however irrational all this may seem to us,
it is perfectly rational, natural, ay inevitable in the first periods,
or the childish age of the human mind.
Now it is exactly this period in the growth of ancient religion, which
was always presupposed or postulated, but was absent everywhere else,
that is clearly put before us in the hymns of the Rig-Veda. It is this
ancient chapter in the history of the human mind which has been
preserved to us in Indian literature, while we look for it in vain in
Greece or Rome or elsewhere.
It has been a favorite idea of those who call themselves "students of
man," or anthropologists, that in order to know the earliest or
so-called prehistoric phases in the growth of man, we should study the
life of savage nations, as we may watch it still in some parts of
Asia, Africa, Polynesia, and America.
There is much truth in this, and nothing can be more useful than the
observations which we find collected in the works of such students as
Waitz, Tylor, Lubbock, and many others. But let us be honest, and
confess, first of all, that the materials on which we have here to
depend are often extremely untrustworthy.
Nor is this all. What do we know of savage tribes beyond the last
chapter of their history? Do we ever get an insight into their
antecedents? Can we understand, what after all is everywhere the most
important and the most instructive lesson to learn, how they have come
to be what they are? There is indeed their language, and in it we see
traces of growth that point to distant ages, quite as much as the
Greek of Homer or the Sanskrit of the Vedas. Their language proves
indeed that these so-called heathens, with their complicated systems
of mythology, their artificial customs, their unintelligible whims and
savageries, are not the creatures of to-day or yesterday. Unless we
admit a special creation for these savages, they must be as old as the
Hindus, the Greeks and Romans, as old as we ourselves. We may assume,
of course, if we like, that their life has been stationary, and that
they are to-day what the Hindus were no longer 3000 years ago. But
that is a mere guess, and is contradicted by the facts of their
language. They may have passed through ever so many vicissitudes, and
what we consider as primitive may be, for all we know, a relapse into
savagery, or a corruption of something that was more rational and
intelligible in former stages. Think only of the rules that determine
marriage among the lowest of savage tribes. Their complication passes
all understanding, all seems a chaos of prejudice, superstition,
pride, vanity, and stupidity. And yet we catch a glimpse here and
there that there was some reason in most of that unreason; we see how
sense dwindled away into nonsense, custom into ceremony, ceremony into
farce. Why then should this surface of savage life represent to us the
lowest stratum of human life, the very beginnings of civilization,
simply because we cannot dig beyond that surface?
Now, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not claim for the
ancient Indian literature any more than I should willingly concede to
the fables and traditions and songs of savage nations, such as we can
study at present in what we call a state of nature. Both are important
documents to the student of the Science of Man. I simply say that in
the Veda we have a nearer approach to a beginning, and an intelligible
beginning, than in the wild invocations of Hottentots or Bushmen. But
when I speak of a beginning, I do not mean an absolute beginning, a
beginning of all things. Again and again the question has been asked
whether we could bring ourselves to believe that man, as soon as he
could stand on his legs, instead of crawling on all fours, as he is
supposed to have done, burst forth into singing Vedic hymns? But who
has ever maintained this? Surely whoever has eyes to see can see in
every Vedic hymn, ay, in every Vedic word, as many rings within rings
as are in the oldest tree that was ever hewn down in the forest.
I shall say even more, and I have said it before, namely, that
supposing that the Vedic hymns were composed between 1500 and 1000
B.C., we can hardly understand how, at so early a date, the Indians
had developed ideas which to us sound decidedly modern. I should give
anything if I could escape from the conclusion that the collection of
the Vedic Hymns, a collection in ten books, existed at least 1000
B.C., that is, about 500 years before the rise of Buddhism. I do not
mean to say that something may not be discovered hereafter to enable
us to refer that collection to a later date. All I say is that, so far
as we know _at present_, so far as all honest Sanskrit scholars know
_at present_, we cannot well bring our pre-Buddhistic literature into
narrower limits than five hundred years.
What then is to be done? We must simply keep our preconceived notions
of what people call primitive humanity in abeyance for a time, and if
we find that people three thousand years ago were familiar with ideas
that seem novel and nineteenth-century-like to us, well, we must
somewhat modify our conceptions of the primitive savage, and remember
that things hid from the wise and prudent have sometimes been revealed
to babes.
I maintain then that for a study of man, or, if you like, for a study
of Aryan humanity, there is nothing in the world equal in importance
with the Veda. I maintain that to everybody who cares for himself, for
his ancestors, for his history, or for his intellectual development, a
study of Vedic literature is indispensable; and that, as an element of
liberal education, it is far more important and far more improving
than the reigns of Babylonian and Persian kings.
It is curious to observe the reluctance with which these facts are
accepted, particularly by those to whom they ought to be most welcome,
I mean the students of anthropology. Instead of devoting all their
energy to the study of these documents, which have come upon us like a
miracle, they seem only bent on inventing excuses why they need not be
studied. Let it not be supposed that, because there are several
translations of the Rig-Veda in English, French and German, therefore
all that the Veda can teach us has been learned. Far from it. Every
one of these translations has been put forward as tentative only. I
myself, though during the last thirty years I have given translations
of a number of the more important hymns, have only ventured to publish
a specimen of what I think a translation of the Veda ought to be; and
that translation, that _traduction raisonnee_ as I ventured to call
it, of twelve hymns only, fills a whole volume. We are still on the
mere surface of Vedic literature, and yet our critics are ready with
ever so many arguments why the Veda can teach us nothing as to a
primitive state of man. If they mean by primitive that which came
absolutely first, then they ask for something which they will never
get, not even if they discovered the private correspondence of Adam
and Eve, or of the first _Homo_ and _Femina sapiens_. We mean by
primitive the earliest state of man of which, from the nature of the
case, we can hope to gain any knowledge; and here, next to the
archives hidden away in the secret drawers of language, in the
treasury of words common to all the Aryan tribes, and in the radical
elements of which each word is compounded, there is no literary relic
more full of lessons to the true anthropologist, to the true student
of mankind, than the Rig-Veda.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 89: See Cunningham, "Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum," vol.
i., 1877.]
[Footnote 90: _K_ulavagga V. 33, 1. The expression used is _Kh_andaso
aropema'ti.]
[Footnote 91: See Rhys Davids, Buddhist Suttas, "Sacred Books of the
East," vol. xi., p. 142.]
[Footnote 92: The Brahmo-Samaj, a theistic school.--A. W.]
[Footnote 93: The _Liberal_, March 12, 1882.]
[Footnote 94: See R. G. Bhandarkar, Consideration of the date of the
Mahabharata, _Journal of the R. A. S. of Bombay_, 1872; Talboys
Wheeler, "History of India," ii. 365, 572; Holtzmann, "Ueber das alte
indische Epos," 1881, p. 1; Phear, "The Aryan Village in India and
Ceylon," p. 19. That the Mahabharata was publicly read in the seventh
century A.D., we learn from Ba_n_a; see _Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society_, Bombay, vol. x., p. 87, note.--A. W.]
[Footnote 95: "Hibbert Lectures," p. 157.]
[Footnote 96: "Every person acquainted with the spoken speech of India
knows perfectly well that its elevation to the dignity and usefulness
of written speech has depended, and must still depend, upon its
borrowing largely from its parent or kindred source; that no man who
is ignorant of Arabic or Sanskrit can write Hindustani or Bengali with
elegance, or purity, or precision, and that the condemnation of the
classical languages to oblivion would consign the dialects to utter
helplessness and irretrievable barbarism."--H. H. Wilson, _Asiatic
Journal_, Jan., 1836; vol xix., p. 15.]
[Footnote 97: It would be a most useful work for any young scholar to
draw up a list of Sanskrit books which are quoted by later writers,
but have not yet been met with in Indian libraries.]
[Footnote 98: "Hibbert Lectures," p. 133.]
[Footnote 99: This vague term, _Turanian_, so much used in the Parsi
Scriptures, is used here in the sense of unclassified ethnically.--A.
W.]
[Footnote 100: "Recherches sur les langues Tartares," 1820, vol. i.,
p. 327; "Lassen," I. A., vol. ii., p. 359.]
[Footnote 101: Lassen, who at first rejected the identification of
_G_ats and Yueh-chi, was afterward inclined to accept it.]
[Footnote 102: The Yueh-chi appear to have begun their invasion about
130 B.C. At this period the Grecian kingdom of Bactria, after a
brilliant existence of a century, had fallen before the Tochari, a
Scythian people. The new invaders, called [Greek: Ephthalitai] by the
Greeks, had been driven out of their old abodes and now occupied the
country lying between Parthia at the west, the Oxus and Surkhab, and
extending into Little Thibet. They were herdsmen and nomads. At this
time India was governed by the descendants of Asoka, the great
propagandist of Buddhism. About twenty years before the Christian era,
or probably earlier, the Yueh-chi, under Karranos, crossed the Indus and
conquered the country, which remained subject to them for three
centuries. The Chinese historians Sze-ma Tsien and Han-yo, give these
accounts, which are however confirmed by numismatic and other
evidence.--A. W.]
[Footnote 103: "Hibbert Lectures," p. 154, note.]
[Footnote 104: In June, 1882, a Conference on Buddhism was held at
Sion College, to discuss the real or apparent coincidences between the
religions of Buddha and Christ. Professor Mueller addressed two letters
to the secretary, which were afterward published, declaring such a
discussion in general terms almost an impossibility. "The name of
Buddhism," he says, "is applied to religious opinions, not only of the
most varying, but of a decidedly opposite character, held by people on
the highest and lowest stages of civilization, divided into endless
sects, nay, founded on two distinct codes of canonical writings." Two
Buddhist priests who were reading Sanskrit with him would hardly
recognize the Buddhism now practiced in Ceylon as their own religion.
He also acknowledged the startling coincidences between Buddhism and
Christianity, and that Buddhism existed at least 400 years before
Christianity. He would go farther, and feel extremely grateful if
anybody would point out to him the historical channels through which
Buddhism had influenced early Christianity. "I have been looking for
such channels all my life," says he, "but hitherto I have found none.
What I have found is that for some of the most startling coincidences
there are historical antecedents on both sides; and if we knew these
antecedents, the coincidences become far less startling. If I do find
in certain Buddhist works doctrines identically the same as in
Christianity, so far from being frightened, I feel delighted, for
surely truth is not the less true because it is believed by the
majority of the human race.
"I believe we have made some progress during the last thirty years. I
still remember the time when all heathen religions were looked upon as
the work of the devil.(A1) We know now that they are stages in a
growth, and in a growth not determined by an accidental environment
only, but by an original purpose, a purpose to be realized in the
history of the human race as a whole. Even missionaries have begun to
approach the heathen in a new and better spirit. They look for what
may safely be preserved in the religion of their pupils, and on that
common ground they try to erect a purer faith and a better worship,
instead of attempting to destroy the sacred foundations of religion,
which, I believe, exist, or at least, existed, in every human heart."
He also states that the publishing of the "Rig-Veda and Commentary,"
his life-work, had produced a complete revolution both in our views of
ancient religions and in the religious life of the Hindus themselves;
and this not so much on the surface as in its deepest foundations.--A.
W.
A1: We have no knowledge of such a belief. The common Christian theory
is that Christianity is as old as the garden of Eden, and that truth
in other religions is the result of contact, somewhere, at some time,
with Christianity.--AM. PUBS.]
[Footnote 105: Published by Fleet in the "Indian Antiquary," 1876, pp.
68-73, and first mentioned by Dr. Bhao Daji, Journal Asiatic Society,
Bombay Branch, vol. ix.]
[Footnote 106: Sir William Jones fixed their date at 1280 B.C.;
Elphinstone as 900 B.C. It has recently been stated that they could
not reasonably be placed later than the fifth century B.C.]
[Footnote 107: A very useful indication of the age of the
Dharma-sutras, as compared with the metrical Dharma-_s_astras or
Sa_m_hitas, is to be found in the presence or absence in them of any
reference to written documents. Such written documents, if they
existed, could hardly be passed over in silence in law-books,
particularly when the nature of witnesses is discussed in support of
loans, pledges, etc. Now, we see that in treating of the law of debt
and debtors,(A1) the Dharma-sutras of Gautama, Baudhayana, and
Apastamba never mention evidence in writing. Vasish_th_a only refers
to written evidence, but in a passage which may be interpolated,(A2)
considering that in other respects his treatment of the law of debt is
very crude. Manu's metrical code shows here again its usual character.
It is evidently based on ancient originals, and when it simply
reproduces them, gives us the impression of great antiquity. But it
freely admits more modern ingredients, and does so in our case. It
speaks of witnesses, fixes their minimum number at three, and
discusses very minutely their qualifications and disqualifications,
without saying a word about written documents. But in one place (VIII.
168) it speaks of the valuelessness of written agreements obtained by
force, thus recognizing the practical employment of writing for
commercial transactions. Professor Jolly,(A3) it is true, suggests
that this verse may be a later addition, particularly as it occurs
_totidem verbis_ in Narada (IV. 55); but the final composition of
Manu's Sa_m_hita, such as we possess it, can hardly be referred to a
period when writing was not yet used, at all events for commercial
purposes. Manu's "Law-book" is older than Ya_gn_avalkya's, in which
writing has become a familiar subject. Vishnu often agrees literally
with Ya_gn_avalkya, while Narada, as showing the fullest development
of the law of debt, is most likely the latest.(A4)
See Brihatsa_m_hita, ed. Kern, pref., p. 43; _Journal of the R. A.
S._, 1875, p. 106.
A1: "Ueber das Indische Schuldrecht von J. Jolly," p. 291.