A3: L. c., p. 290.
A4: Jolly, l. c., p. 322. He places Katyayana and B_ri_haspati after
Narada, possibly Vyasa and Harita also. See also Stenzler, Z. d D. M.
G. ix. 664.]
[Footnote 108: Professor Mueller rejects the theory of the Samvat era
and the Renaissance of Sanskrit literature in the first century.
Instead, he acknowledges the existence of a _S_aka era, bearing date
with the coronation of Kanishka, 78 A.D. Although this monarch was a
patron of the Buddhists, and the third collection of their sacred
books was made under his auspices, our author considers the period of
_S_aka or Yuen-chi domination from 24 B.C. till 178 A.D. as a literary
interregnum. He is not willing to suggest any date for the Mahabharata
or Ramaya_n_a, which appear to have been then extant. He exonerates
Indian epic poetry, however, from any imputation of Greek influence.
Not so with astronomy. Aryabha_t_a, the elder, who described the
motion of the earth very accurately, he considers to have had no
predecessors; and also cites other Indian authors who described the
twelve signs of the zodiac with Greek names or their equivalents, and
assigned each to a region in the body of the Creator, as we now see it
marked out in our almanacs. In this matter he is certainly plausible.
The period of the Renaissance and the reign and proper era of
Vikramaditya are set down at about 550 A.D. He follows Dr. Bhao Daji,
and is sustained by Mr. Fergusson, author of "Tree and Serpent
Worship," and other works on religious architecture. It was the period
of learned and literary men, as well as of active religious
controversy. "Believers in Buddha and believers in the Veda lived
together at this time," he remarks, "very much as Protestants and
Roman Catholics do at the present day--fighting when there is an
opportunity or necessity for it, but otherwise sharing the same air as
fellow-creatures." Among a crowd of others we may instance Dignaga, a
Buddhist, Kalidasa, a Siva worshipper, and Manatunga, a _G_aina, as
frequenting the royal court. Vasubandhu, to whom the revival of
Buddhist literature was largely due, was the son of a Brahman and a
student of the Nyaya philosophy; as, indeed, Hiouen-thsang, the
Chinese traveller, also studied logic under a Brahma_n_a teacher.
Vikramaditya oscillated between all parties. Having quarrelled with
the King of Ka_s_mira and Manorhita, the great Buddhist teacher at the
convent near Peshawer, he called an assembly of Sastrikas and
_S_ramanas, at which the latter were denounced. He also placed
Matrigupta (Kalidasa?) over that country. At his death, however, the
regal authority was surrendered to the legitimate king, who in his
turn reinstated _S_iladitya, the successor of Vikrama, on the throne.
This king also called an assembly of divines, and the Buddhists were
restored to their former position. As they seem to have constituted
the principal men of learning, I am disposed to believe that they were
the actual restorers of the golden period to India. The "Nine Gems,"
Professor Mueller is very confident, belong to this period. He declares
that the philosophical Sutras have no ascertained date prior to 300
A.D.
According to him, we need not refer many famous authors to a period
anterior to the fifth century. Kalidasa, from being the contemporary
of Augustus, becomes the contemporary of Justinian, and the very books
which were most admired by Sanskrit students as specimens of ancient
Indian poetry and wisdom find their rightful place in the period of
literary renaissance, coinciding with an age of renewed literary
activity in Persia, soon to be followed there, as later in India, by
the great Mohammedan conquests. It appears to me that he is altogether
too iconoclastic. It is more than probable that the apparent lateness
of date is due to the destruction of books when the Buddhists were
driven out of India. It would be as logical, it seems to me, to assign
a post-Christian date to the _Vendidad_ and _Yasna_ because they had
been lost and were collected anew under the auspices of a Sassanid
king. We are told in the second book of the Maccabees that Antiochus
Epiphanes burned the Hebrew Scriptures, and that Judas Makkabaeus made
a new collection; yet nobody pretends that they ought to be assigned
to the second century B.C. In fact, we must in due sincerity give some
room to faith.
Astronomy was also studied. Aryabhatta the elder had described the
earth as making a revolution which produced the daily rising and
setting of the sun. Professor Mueller thinks he had no predecessors.
Varahamihira wrote during the reign of Vikramaditya, and employs the
Yuga in opposition to the Saka era. It is apparent, however, that the
Greek zodiac was employed. Badaraya_n_a describes the pictorial
representations of the Twelve Signs and their relation to the body of
Brahman or the Creator:
"The Ram is the head; the face of the Creator is the Bull; the breast
would be the Man-pair; the heart, the Crab; the Lion, the stomach; the
Maid, the hip; the Balance-bearer, the belly; the eighth (Scorpion),
the membrum; the Archer, his pair of thighs; the Makara, his pair of
knees; the Pot, his pair of legs; the Fish-pair, his two feet."
Another writer gives them in like series as the members of Kala or
Time. Other evidence seems even more conclusive; Varahamihira giving
the actual Greek names in a Sanskrit dress.--A. W.]
[Footnote 109: Kern, Preface to "B_ri_hatsa_m_ahita," p. 20.]
[Footnote 110: During times of conquest and migration, such as are
represented to us in the hymns of the Rig-Veda, the system of castes,
as it is described, for instance, in the Laws of Manu, would have been
a simple impossibility. It is doubtful whether such a system was ever
more than a social ideal, but even for such an ideal the materials
would have been wanting during the period when the Aryas were first
taking possession of the land of the Seven Rivers. On the other hand,
even during that early period, there must have been a division of
labor, and hence we expect to find and do find in the gramas of the
Five Nations, _warriors_, sometimes called nobles, leaders, kings;
_counsellors_, sometimes called priests, prophets, judges; and
_working men_, whether ploughers, or builders, or road-makers. These
three divisions we can clearly perceive even in the early hymns of the
Rig-Veda.]
[Footnote 111: Boehtlingk, Sprueche, 5101.]
[Footnote 112: Mahabh. XI. 121.]
[Footnote 113: Pa_nk_at. II. 127 (117).]
[Footnote 114: Mahabh. V. 1144.]
[Footnote 115: L. c. XII. 12050.]
[Footnote 116: L. c. XII. 869.]
[Footnote 117: L. c. XII. 872.]
[Footnote 118: L. c. XII. 12453.]
[Footnote 119: L. c. XII. 12456.]
[Footnote 120: L. c. III. 13846 (239).]
[Footnote 121: L. c. III. 13864.]
[Footnote 122: Kam. Nitis, 1, 23 (Boehtlingk, 918).]
[Footnote 123: _Atman_, see Lecture VII.--A. W.]
[Footnote 124: Vish_n_u-sutras XX. 50-53.]
[Footnote 125: Apastamba Dharma-sutras I. 8, 22.]
[Footnote 126: Can a state be justly regarded as one of happiness, in
which the essential being is overlooked and not regarded; whereas that
subtler essence is the reality which gives life, energy, and purity to
all our motives? Is to be "of the earth, earthy," a greater felicity
than to acknowledge that which is from heaven? I trow not.--A. W.]
LECTURE IV.
OBJECTIONS.
It may be quite true that controversy often does more harm than good,
that it encourages the worst of all talents, that of plausibility, not
to say dishonesty, and generally leaves the world at large worse
confounded than it was before. It has been said that no clever lawyer
would shrink from taking a brief to prove that the earth forms the
centre of the world, and, with all respect for English juries, it is
not impossible that even in our days he might gain a verdict against
Galileo. Nor do I deny that there is a power and vitality in truth
which in the end overcomes and survives all opposition, as shown by
the very doctrine of Galileo which at present is held by hundreds and
thousands who would find it extremely difficult to advance one single
argument in its support. I am ready to admit also that those who have
done the best work, and have contributed most largely toward the
advancement of knowledge and the progress of truth, have seldom wasted
their time in controversy, but have marched on straight, little
concerned either about applause on the right or abuse on the left. All
this is true, perfectly true, and yet I feel that I cannot escape from
devoting the whole of a lecture to the answering of certain objections
which have been raised against the views which I have put forward with
regard to the character and the historical importance of Vedic
literature. We must not forget that the whole subject is new, the
number of competent judges small, and mistakes not only possible, but
almost inevitable. Besides, there are mistakes and mistakes, and the
errors of able men are often instructive, nay one might say sometimes
almost indispensable for the discovery of truth. There are criticisms
which may be safely ignored, criticisms for the sake of criticism, if
not inspired by meaner motives. But there are doubts and difficulties
which suggest themselves naturally, objections which have a right to
be heard, and the very removal of which forms the best approach to the
stronghold of truth. Nowhere has this principle been so fully
recognized and been acted on as in Indian literature. Whatever subject
is started, the rule is that the argument should begin with the
purvapaksha, with all that can be said against a certain opinion.
Every possible objection is welcome, if only it is not altogether
frivolous and absurd, and then only follows the uttarapaksha, with all
that can be said against these objections and in support of the
original opinion. Only when this process has been fully gone through
is it allowed to represent an opinion as siddhanta, or established.
Therefore, before opening the pages of the Veda, and giving you a
description of the poetry, the religion, and philosophy of the ancient
inhabitants of India, I thought it right and necessary to establish,
first of all, certain points without which it would be impossible to
form a right appreciation of the historical value of the Vedic hymns,
and of their importance even to us who live at so great a distance
from those early poets.
The _first_ point was purely preliminary, namely that the Hindus in
ancient, and in modern times also, are a nation deserving of our
interest and sympathy, worthy also of our confidence, and by no means
guilty of the charge so recklessly brought against them--the charge
of an habitual disregard of truth.
_Secondly_, that the ancient literature of India is not to be
considered simply as a curiosity and to be handed over to the good
pleasure of Oriental scholars, but that, both by its language, the
Sanskrit, and by its most ancient literary documents, the Vedas, it
can teach us lessons which nothing else can teach, as to the origin of
our own language, the first formation of our own concepts, and the
true natural germs of all that is comprehended under the name of
civilization, at least the civilization of the Aryan race, that race
to which we and all the greatest nations of the world--the Hindus, the
Persians, the Greeks and Romans, the Slaves, the Celts, and last, not
least, the Teutons, belong. A man may be a good and useful ploughman
without being a geologist, without knowing the stratum on which he
takes his stand, or the strata beneath that give support to the soil
on which he lives and works, and from which he draws his nourishment.
And a man may be a good and useful citizen, without being an
historian, without knowing how the world in which he lives came about,
and how many phases mankind had to pass through in language, religion,
and philosophy, before it could supply him with that intellectual soil
on which he lives and works, and from which he draws his best
nourishment.
But there must always be an aristocracy of those who know, and who can
trace back the best which we possess, not merely to a Norman count, or
a Scandinavian viking, or a Saxon earl, but to far older ancestors and
benefactors, who thousands of years ago were toiling for us in the
sweat of their face, and without whom we should never be what we
are--the ancestors of the whole Aryan race, the first framers of our
words, the first poets of our thoughts, the first givers of our laws,
the first prophets of our gods, and of Him who is God above all gods.
That aristocracy of those who know--_di color che sanno_--or try to
know, is open to all who are willing to enter, to all who have a
feeling for the past, an interest in the genealogy of our thoughts,
and a reverence for the ancestry of our intellect, who are in fact
historians in the true sense of the word, _i.e._ inquirers into that
which is past, but not lost.
_Thirdly_, having explained to you why the ancient literature of
India, the really ancient literature of that country, I mean that of
the Vedic period, deserves the careful attention, not of Oriental
scholars only, but of every educated man and woman who wishes to know
how we, even we here in England and in this nineteenth century of
ours, came to be what we are, I tried to explain to you the
difference, and the natural and inevitable difference, between the
development of the human character in such different climates as those
of India and Europe. And while admitting that the Hindus were
deficient in many of those manly virtues and practical achievements
which we value most, I wished to point out that there was another
sphere of intellectual activity in which the Hindus excelled--the
meditative and transcendent--and that here we might learn from them
some lessons of life which we ourselves are but too apt to ignore or
to despise.
_Fourthly_, fearing that I might have raised too high expectations of
the ancient wisdom, the religion and philosophy of the Vedic Indians,
I felt it my duty to state that, though primitive in one sense, we
must not expect the Vedic religion to be primitive in the
anthropological sense of the word, as containing the utterances of
beings who had just broken their shells, and were wonderingly looking
out for the first time upon this strange world. The Veda may be called
primitive, because there is no other literary document more primitive
than it; but the language, the mythology, the religion and philosophy
that meet us in the Veda open vistas of the past which no one would
venture to measure in years. Nay, they contain, by the side of simple,
natural, childish thoughts, many ideas which to us sound modern, or
secondary and tertiary, as I called them, but which nevertheless are
older than any other literary document, and give us trustworthy
information of a period in the history of human thought of which we
knew absolutely nothing before the discovery of the Vedas.[127]
But even thus our path is not yet clear. Other objections have been
raised against the Veda as an historical document. Some of them are
important; and I have at times shared them myself. Others are at least
instructive, and will give us an opportunity of testing the foundation
on which we stand.
The first objection then against our treating the Veda as an
historical document is that it is not truly national in its character,
and does not represent the thoughts of the whole of the population of
India, but only of a small minority, namely of the Brahmans, and not
even of the whole class of Brahmans, but only of a small minority of
them, namely of the professional priests.
Objections should not be based on demands which, from the nature of
the case, are unreasonable. Have those who maintain that the Vedic
hymns do not represent the whole of India, that is the whole of its
ancient population, in the same manner as they say that the Bible
represents the Jews or Homer the Greeks, considered what they are
asking for? So far from denying that the Vedic hymns represent only a
small and, it may be, a priestly minority of the ancient population of
India, the true historian would probably feel inclined to urge the
same cautions against the Old Testament and the Homeric poems also.
No doubt, after the books which compose the Old Testament had been
collected as a Sacred Canon, they were known to the majority of the
Jews. But when we speak of the primitive state of the Jews, of their
moral, intellectual, and religious status while in Mesopotamia or
Canaan or Egypt, we should find that the different books of the Old
Testament teach us as little of the whole Jewish race, with all its
local characteristics and social distinctions, as the Homeric poems do
of all the Greek tribes, or the Vedic hymns of all the inhabitants of
India. Surely, even when we speak of the history of the Greeks or the
Romans, we know that we shall not find there a complete picture of the
social, intellectual, and religious life of a whole nation. We know
very little of the intellectual life of a whole nation, even during
the Middle Ages, ay, even at the present day. We may know something of
the generals, of the commanders-in-chief, but of the privates, of the
millions, we know next to nothing. And what we do know of kings or
generals or ministers is mostly no more than what was thought of them
by a few Greek poets or Jewish prophets, men who were one in a million
among their contemporaries.
But it might be said that though the writers were few, the readers
were many. Is that so? I believe you would be surprised to hear how
small the number of readers is even in modern times, while in ancient
times reading was restricted to the very smallest class of privileged
persons. There may have been listeners at public and private
festivals, at sacrifices, and later on in theatres, but readers, in
our sense of the word, are a very modern invention.
There never has been so much reading, reading spread over so large an
area, as in our times. But if you asked publishers as to the number of
copies sold of books which are supposed to have been read by
everybody, say Macaulay's History of England, the Life of the Prince
Consort, or Darwin's Origin of Species, you would find that out of a
population of thirty-two millions not one million has possessed itself
of a copy of these works. The book which of late has probably had the
largest sale is the Revised Version of the New Testament; and yet the
whole number of copies sold among the eighty millions of
English-speaking people is probably not more than four millions. Of
ordinary books which are called books of the season, and which are
supposed to have had a great success, an edition of three or four
thousand copies is not considered unsatisfactory by publishers or
authors in England. But if you look to other countries, such, for
instance, as Russia, it would be very difficult indeed to name books
that could be considered as representative of the whole nation, or as
even known by more than a very small minority.
And if we turn our thoughts back to the ancient nations of Greece and
Italy, or of Persia and Babylonia, what book is there, with the
exception perhaps of the Homeric poems, of which we could say that it
had been read or even heard of by more than a few thousand people? We
think of Greeks and Romans as literary people, and so no doubt they
were, but in a very different sense from what we mean by this. What we
call Greeks and Romans are chiefly the citizens of Athens and Rome,
and here again those who could produce or who could read such works as
the Dialogues of Plato or the Epistles of Horace constituted a very
small intellectual aristocracy indeed. What we call history--the
memory of the past--has always been the work of minorities. Millions
and millions pass away unheeded, and the few only to whom has been
given the gift of fusing speech and thought into forms of beauty
remain as witnesses of the past.
If then we speak of times so distant as those represented by the
Rig-Veda, and of a country so disintegrated, or rather as yet so
little integrated as India was three thousand years ago, surely it
requires but little reflection to know that what we see in the Vedic
poems are but a few snow-clad peaks, representing to us, from a far
distance, the whole mountain-range of a nation, completely lost beyond
the horizon of history. When we speak of the Vedic hymns as
representing the religion, the thoughts and customs of India three
thousand years ago, we cannot mean by India more than some unknown
quantity of which the poets of the Veda are the only spokesmen left.
When we now speak of India, we think of 250 millions, a sixth part of
the whole human race, peopling the vast peninsula from the Himalayan
mountains between the arms of the Indus and the Ganges, down to Cape
Comorin and Ceylon, an extent of country nearly as large as Europe. In
the Veda the stage on which the life of the ancient kings and poets is
acted, is the valley of the Indus and the Punjab, as it is now called,
the Sapta Sindhasa_h_, the Seven Rivers of the Vedic poets. The land
watered by the Ganges is hardly known, and the whole of the Dekkan
seems not yet to have been discovered.
Then again, when these Vedic hymns are called the lucubrations of a
few priests, not the outpourings of the genius of a whole nation, what
does that mean? We may no doubt call these ancient Vedic poets
priests, if we like, and no one would deny that their poetry is
pervaded not only by religious, mythological, and philosophical, but
likewise by sacrificial and ceremonial conceits. Still a priest, if we
trace him back far enough, is only a _presbyteros_ or an elder, and,
as such, those Vedic poets had a perfect right to speak in the name of
a whole class, or of the village community to which they belonged.
Call Vasish_th_a a priest by all means, only do not let us imagine
that he was therefore very like Cardinal Manning.
After we have made every possible concession to arguments, most of
which are purely hypothetical, there remains this great fact that
here, in the Rig-Veda, we have poems, composed in perfect language, in
elaborate metre, telling us about gods and men, about sacrifices and
battles, about the varying aspects of nature and the changing
conditions of society, about duty and pleasure, philosophy and
morality--articulate voices reaching us from a distance from which we
never heard before the faintest whisper; and instead of thrilling with
delight at this almost miraculous discovery, some critics stand aloof
and can do nothing but find fault, because these songs do not
represent to us primitive men exactly as they think they ought to have
been; not like Papuas or Bushmen, with arboraceous habits and
half-animal clicks, not as worshipping stocks or stones, or believing
in fetiches, as according to Comte's inner consciousness they ought to
have done, but rather, I must confess, as beings whom we can
understand, with whom to a certain extent we can sympathize, and to
whom, in the historical progress of the human intellect, we may assign
a place not very far behind the ancient Jews and Greeks.
Once more then, if we mean by primitive, people who inhabited this
earth as soon as the vanishing of the glacial period made this earth
inhabitable, the Vedic poets were certainly not primitive. If we mean
by primitive, people who were without a knowledge of fire, who used
unpolished flints, and ate raw flesh, the Vedic poets were not
primitive. If we mean by primitive, people who did not cultivate the
soil, had no fixed abodes, no kings, no sacrifices, no laws, again, I
say, the Vedic poets were not primitive. But if we mean by primitive
the people who have been the first of the Aryan race to leave behind
literary relics of their existence on earth, then I say the Vedic
poets are primitive, the Vedic language is primitive, the Vedic
religion is primitive, and, taken as a whole, more primitive than
anything else that we are ever likely to recover in the whole history
of our race.