ancient Vedic poetry was said to be, if not of foreign origin, at
least very much infected by foreign, and more particularly by Semitic
influences. It had always been urged by Sanskrit scholars as one of
the chief attractions of Vedic literature that it not only allowed us
an insight into a very early phase of religious thought, but that the
Vedic religion was the only one the development of which took place
without any extraneous influences, and could be watched through a
longer series of centuries than any other religion. Now with regard to
the first point, we know how perplexing it is in the religion of
ancient Rome to distinguish between Italian and Greek ingredients, to
say nothing of Etruscan and Phoenician influences. We know the
difficulty of finding out in the religion of the Greeks what is purely
home-grown, and what is taken over from Egypt, Phoenicia, it may be
from Scythia; or at all events, slightly colored by those foreign rays
of thought. Even in the religion of the Hebrews, Babylonian,
Phoenician, and at a later time Persian influences have been
discovered, and the more we advance toward modern times, the more
extensive becomes the mixture of thought, and the more difficult the
task of assigning to each nation the share which it contributed to the
common intellectual currency of the world. In India alone, and more
particularly in Vedic India, we see a plant entirely grown on native
soil, and entirely nurtured by native air. For this reason, because
the religion of the Veda was so completely guarded from all strange
infections, it is full of lessons which the student of religion could
learn nowhere else.
Now what have the critics of the Veda to say against this? They say
that the Vedic poems show clear traces of _Babylonian_ influences.
I must enter into some details, because, small as they seem, you can
see that they involve very wide consequences.
There is one verse in the Rig-Veda, VIII. 78, 2,[128] which has been
translated as follows: "Oh Indra, bring to us a brilliant jewel, a
cow, a horse, an ornament, together with a golden Mana."[129]
Now what is a golden Mana? The word does not occur again by itself,
either in the Veda or anywhere else, and it has been identified by
Vedic scholars with the Latin _mina_, the Greek [Greek: mna], the
Phoenician _manah_ ([Hebrew: Ma-ne]),[130] the well-known weight
which we actually possess now among the treasures brought from Babylon
and Nineveh to the British Museum.[131]
If this were so, it would be irrefragable evidence of at all events a
commercial intercourse between Babylon and India at a very early time,
though it would in no way prove a real influence of Semitic on Indian
thought. But is it so? If we translate sa_k_a mana hira_n_yaya by
"with a mina of gold," we must take mana hira_n_yaya as instrumental
cases. But sa_k_a never governs an instrumental case. This translation
therefore is impossible, and although the passage is difficult,
because mana does not occur again in the Rig-Veda, I should think we
might take mana hira_n_yaya for a dual, and translate, "Give us also
two golden armlets." To suppose that the Vedic poets should have
borrowed this one word and this one measure from the Babylonians,
would be against all the rules of historical criticism. The word mana
never occurs again in the whole of Sanskrit literature, no other
Babylonian weight occurs again in the whole of Sanskrit literature,
and it is not likely that a poet who asks for a cow and a horse, would
ask in the same breath for a foreign weight of gold, that is, for
about sixty sovereigns.
But this is not the only loan that India has been supposed to have
negotiated in Babylon. The twenty-seven Nakshatras, or the
twenty-seven constellations, which were chosen in India as a kind of
lunar Zodiac, were supposed to have come from Babylon. Now the
Babylonian Zodiac was solar, and, in spite of repeated researches, no
trace of a lunar Zodiac has been found, where so many things have been
found, in the cuneiform inscriptions. But supposing even that a lunar
Zodiac had been discovered in Babylon, no one acquainted with Vedic
literature and with the ancient Vedic ceremonial would easily allow
himself to be persuaded that the Hindus had borrowed that simple
division of the sky from the Babylonians. It is well known that most
of the Vedic sacrifices depend on the moon, far more than on the
sun.[132] As the Psalmist says, "He appointed the moon for seasons;
the sun knoweth his going down," we read in the Rig-Veda X. 85, 18, in
a verse addressed to sun and moon, "They walk by their own power, one
after the other (or from east to west), as playing children they go
round the sacrifice. The one looks upon all the worlds, the other is
born again and again, determining the seasons."
"He becomes new and new, when he is born; as the herald of
the days, he goes before the dawns. By his approach he
determines their share for the gods, the moon increases a
long life."
The moon, then, determines the seasons, the _ri_tus, the moon fixes
the share, that is, the sacrificial oblation for all the gods. The
seasons and the sacrifices were in fact so intimately connected
together in the thoughts of the ancient Hindus, that one of the
commonest names for priest was _ri_tv-i_g_, literally, the
season-sacrificer.
Besides the rites which have to be performed every day, such as the
five Mahaya_gn_as, and the Agnihotra in the morning and the evening,
the important sacrifices in Vedic times were the Full and New-moon
sacrifices (darsapur_n_amasa); the Season-sacrifices (_k_aturmasya),
each season consisting of four months;[133] and the Half-yearly
sacrifices, at the two solstices. There are other sacrifices
(agraya_n_a, etc.) to be performed in autumn and summer, others in
winter and spring, whenever rice and barley are ripening.[134]
The regulation of the seasons, as one of the fundamental conditions of
an incipient society, seems in fact to have been so intimately
connected with the worship of the gods, as the guardians of the
seasons and the protectors of law and order, that it is sometimes
difficult to say whether in their stated sacrifices the maintenance of
the calendar or the maintenance of the worship of the gods was more
prominent in the minds of the old Vedic priests.
The twenty-seven Nakshatras then were clearly suggested by the moon's
passage.[135] Nothing was more natural for the sake of counting days,
months, or seasons than to observe the twenty-seven places which the
moon occupied in her passage from any point of the sky back to the
same point. It was far easier than to determine the sun's position
either from day to day, or from month to month; for the stars, being
hardly visible at the actual rising and setting of the sun, the idea
of the sun's conjunction with certain stars could not suggest itself
to a listless observer. The moon, on the contrary, progressing from
night to night, and coming successively in contact with certain stars,
was like the finger of a clock, moving round a circle, and coming in
contact with one figure after another on the dial-plate of the sky.
Nor would the portion of about one third of a lunation in addition to
the twenty-seven stars from new moon to new moon, create much
confusion in the minds of the rough-and-ready reckoners of those early
times. All they were concerned with were the twenty-seven celestial
stations which, after being once traced out by the moon, were fixed,
like so many mile-stones, for determining the course of all the
celestial travellers that could be of any interest for signs and for
seasons, and for days and for years. A circle divided into
twenty-seven sections, or any twenty-seven poles planted in a circle
at equal distances round a house, would answer the purpose of a
primitive Vedic observatory. All that was wanted to be known was
between which pair of poles the moon, or afterward the sun also, was
visible at their rising or setting, the observer occupying the same
central position on every day.
Our notions of astronomy cannot in fact be too crude and too imperfect
if we wish to understand the first beginnings in the reckoning of days
and seasons and years. We cannot expect in those days more than what
any shepherd would know at present of the sun and moon, the stars and
seasons. Nor can we expect any observations of heavenly phenomena
unless they had some bearing on the practical wants of primitive
society.
If then we can watch in India the natural, nay inevitable, growth of
the division of the heaven into twenty-seven equal divisions, each
division marked by stars, which may have been observed and named long
before they were used for this new purpose--if, on the other hand, we
could hardly understand the growth and development of the Indian
ceremonial except as determined by a knowledge of the lunar asterisms,
the lunar months, and the lunar seasons, surely it would be a
senseless hypothesis to imagine that the Vedic shepherds or priests
went to Babylonia in search of a knowledge which every shepherd might
have acquired on the banks of the Indus, and that, after their return
from that country only, where a language was spoken which no Hindu
could understand, they set to work to compose their sacred hymns and
arrange their simple ceremonial. We must never forget that what is
natural in one place is natural in other places also, and we may sum
up without fear of serious contradiction, that no case has been made
out in favor of a foreign origin of the elementary astronomical
notions of the Hindus as found or presupposed in the Vedic hymns.[136]
The Arabs, as is well known, have twenty-eight lunar stations, the
_Manzil_, and I can see no reason why Mohammed and his Bedouins in the
desert should not have made the same observation as the Vedic poets in
India, though I must admit at the same time that Colebrooke has
brought forward very cogent arguments to prove that, in their
scientific employment at least, the Arabic Manzil were really borrowed
from an Indian source.[137]
The Chinese, too, have their famous lunar stations, _the Sieu_,
originally twenty-four in number, and afterward raised to
twenty-eight.[138] But here again there is no necessity whatever for
admitting, with Biot, Lassen, and others, that the Hindus went to
China to gain their simplest elementary notions of lunar chrononomy.
First of all, the Chinese began with twenty-four, and raised them to
twenty-eight; the Hindus began with twenty-seven, and raised them to
twenty-eight. Secondly, out of these twenty-eight asterisms, there are
seventeen only which can really be identified with the Hindu stars
(taras). Now if a scientific system is borrowed, it is borrowed
complete. But, in our case, I see really no possible channel through
which Chinese astronomical knowledge could have been conducted to
India so early as 1000 before our era. In Chinese literature India is
never mentioned before the middle of the second century before Christ;
and if the _K_inas in the later Sanskrit literature are meant for
Chinese, which is doubtful, it is important to observe that that name
never occurs in Vedic literature.[139]
When therefore the impossibility of so early a communication between
China and India had at last been recognized, a new theory was formed,
namely, "that the knowledge of Chinese astronomy was not imported
straight from China to India, but was carried, together with the
Chinese system of division of the heavens into twenty-eight mansions,
into Western Asia, at a period not much later than 1100 B.C., and was
then adopted by some Western people, either Semitic or Iranian. In
their hands it was supposed to have received a new form, such as
adapted it to a ruder and less scientific method of observation, the
limiting stars of the mansions being converted into zodiacal groups or
constellations, and in some instances altered in position, so as to be
brought nearer to the general planetary path of the ecliptic. In this
changed form, having become a means of roughly determining and
describing the places and movements of the planets, it was believed to
have passed into the keeping of the Hindus, very probably along with
the first knowledge of the planets themselves, and entered upon an
independent career of history in India. It still maintained itself in
its old seat, leaving its traces later in the Bundahash; and made its
way so far westward as finally to become known and adopted by the
Arabs." With due respect for the astronomical knowledge of those who
hold this view, all I can say is that this is a novel, and nothing
but a novel, without any facts to support it, and that the few facts
which are known to us do not enable a careful reasoner to go beyond
the conclusions stated many years ago by Colebrooke, that the "Hindus
had undoubtedly made some progress at an early period in the astronomy
cultivated by them for the regulation of time. Their calendar, both
civil and religious, was governed chiefly, not exclusively, by the
moon and the sun; and the motions of these luminaries were carefully
observed by them, and with such success that their determination of
the moon's synodical revolution, which was what they were principally
concerned with, is a much more correct one than the Greeks ever
achieved. They had a division of the ecliptic into twenty-seven and
twenty-eight parts, suggested evidently by the moon's period in days,
and seemingly their own; it was certainly borrowed by the Arabians."
There is one more argument which has been adduced in support of a
Babylonian, or, at all events, a Semitic influence to be discovered in
Vedic literature which we must shortly examine. It refers to the story
of the _Deluge_.
That story, as you know, has been traced in the traditions of many
races, which could not well have borrowed it from one another; and it
was rather a surprise that no allusion even to a local deluge should
occur in any of the Vedic hymns, particularly as very elaborate
accounts of different kinds of deluges are found in the later Epic
poems, and in the still later Pura_n_as, and form in fact a very
familiar subject in the religious traditions of the people of India.
Three of the _Avataras_ or incarnations of Vish_n_u are connected with
a deluge, that of the _Fish_, that of the _Tortoise_, and that of the
_Boar_, Vish_n_u in each case rescuing mankind from destruction by
water, by assuming the form of a fish, or a tortoise, or a boar.
This being so, it seemed a very natural conclusion to make that, as
there was no mention of a deluge in the most ancient literature of
India, that legend had penetrated into India from without at a later
time.
When, however, the Vedic literature became more generally known,
stories of a deluge were discovered, if not in the hymns, at least in
the prose writings, belonging to the second period, commonly called
the Brahma_n_a period. Not only the story of Manu and the _Fish_, but
the stories of the _Tortoise_ and of the _Boar_ also, were met with
there in a more or less complete form, and with this discovery the
idea of a foreign importation lost much of its plausibility. I shall
read you at least one of these accounts of a Deluge which is found in
the _S_atapatha Brahma_n_a, and you can then judge for yourselves
whether the similarities between it and the account in Genesis are
really such as to require, nay as to admit, the hypothesis that the
Hindus borrowed their account of the Deluge from their nearest Semitic
neighbors.
We read in the _S_atapatha Brahma_n_a I. 8, 1:
"In the morning they brought water to Manu for washing, as
they bring it even now for washing our hands.
"While he was thus washing, a fish came into his hands.
"2. The fish spoke this word to Manu: 'Keep me, and I shall
save thee.'
"Manu said: 'From what wilt thou save me?'
"The fish said: 'A flood will carry away all these creatures,
and I shall save thee from it.'
"Manu said: 'How canst thou be kept?'
"3. The fish said: 'So long as we are small, there is much
destruction for us, for fish swallows fish. Keep me therefore
first in a jar. When I outgrow that, dig a hole and keep me
in it. When I outgrow that, take me to the sea, and I shall
then be beyond the reach of destruction.'
"4. He became soon a large fish (_gh_asha), for such a fish
grows largest. The fish said: 'In such and such a year the
flood will come. Therefore when thou hast built a ship, thou
shalt meditate on me. And when the flood has risen, thou
shalt enter into the ship, and I will save thee from the
flood.'
"5. Having thus kept the fish, Manu took him to the sea. Then
in the same year which the fish had pointed out, Manu, having
built the ship, meditated on the fish. And when the flood had
risen, Manu entered into the ship. Then the fish swam toward
him, and Manu fastened the rope of the ship to the fish's
horn, and he thus hastened toward[140] the Northern Mountain.
"6. The fish said: 'I have saved thee; bind the ship to a
tree. May the water not cut thee off, while thou art on the
mountain. As the water subsides, do thou gradually slide down
with it.' Manu then slid down gradually with the water, and
therefore this is called 'the Slope of Manu' on the Northern
Mountain. Now the flood had carried away all these creatures,
and thus Manu was left there alone.
"7. Then Manu went about singing praises and toiling, wishing
for offspring. And he sacrificed there also with a
Paka-sacrifice. He poured clarified butter, thickened milk,
whey, and curds in the water as a libation. In one year a
woman arose from it. She came forth as if dripping, and
clarified butter gathered on her step. Mitra and Varu_n_a
came to meet her.
"8. They said to her: 'Who art thou?' She said: 'The daughter
of Manu.' They rejoined: 'Say that thou art ours.' 'No,' she
said, 'he who has begotten me, his I am.'
"Then they wished her to be their sister, and she half agreed
and half did not agree, but went away, and came to Manu.
"9. Manu said to her: 'Who art thou?' She said: 'I am thy
daughter.' 'How, lady, art thou my daughter?' he asked.
"She replied: 'The libations which thou hast poured into the
water, clarified butter, thickened milk, whey and curds, by
them thou hast begotten me. I am a benediction--perform (me)
this benediction at the sacrifices. If thou perform (me) it
at the sacrifice, thou wilt be rich in offspring and cattle.
And whatever blessing thou wilt ask by me, will always accrue
to thee.' He therefore performed that benediction in the
middle of the sacrifice, for the middle of the sacrifice is
that which comes between the introductory and the final
offerings.
"10. Then Manu went about with her, singing praises and
toiling, wishing for offspring. And with her he begat that
offspring which is called the offspring of Manu; and whatever
blessing he asked with her, always accrued to him. She is
indeed I_d_a, and whosoever, knowing this, goes about
(sacrifices) with I_d_a, begets the same offspring which Manu
begat, and whatever blessing he asks with her, always accrues
to him."
This, no doubt, is the account of a deluge, and Manu acts in some
respects the same part which is assigned to Noah in the Old Testament.
But if there are similarities, think of the dissimilarities, and how
they are to be explained. It is quite clear that, if this story was
borrowed from a Semitic source, it was not borrowed from the Old
Testament, for in that case it would really seem impossible to account
for the differences between the two stories. That it may have been
borrowed[141] from some unknown Semitic source cannot, of course, be
disproved, because no tangible proof has ever been produced that would
admit of being disproved. But if it were, it would be the only Semitic
loan in ancient Sanskrit literature--and that alone ought to make us
pause!
The story of the boar and the tortoise too, can be traced back to the
Vedic literature. For we read in the Taittiriya Sa_m_hita:[142]
"At first this was water, fluid. Pra_g_apati, the lord of
creatures, having become wind, moved on it. He saw this
earth, and becoming a boar, he took it up. Becoming
Vi_s_vakarman, the maker of all things, he cleaned it. It
spread and became the widespread Earth, and this is why the
Earth is called P_ri_thivi, the widespread."
And we find in the _S_atapatha Brahma_n_a[143] the following slight
allusion at least to the tortoise myth:
"Pra_g_apati, assuming the form of a tortoise (Kurma),
brought forth all creatures. In so far as he brought them
forth, he made them (akarot), and because he made them he was
(called) tortoise (Kurma). A tortoise is (called) Ka_s_yapa,
and therefore all creatures are called Ka_s_yapa,
tortoise-like. He who was this tortoise (Kurma) was really
Aditya (the sun)."
One other allusion to something like a deluge,[144] important chiefly
on account of the name of Manu occurring in it, has been pointed out
in the Ka_th_aka (XI. 2), where this short sentence occurs: "The
waters cleaned this, Manu alone remained."
All this shows that ideas of a deluge, that is, of a submersion of the
earth by water and of its rescue through divine aid, were not
altogether unknown in the early traditions of India, while in later
times they were embodied in several of the Avataras of Vish_n_u.
When we examine the numerous accounts of a deluge among different
nations in almost every part of the world, we can easily perceive that
they do not refer to one single historical event, but to a natural
phenomenon repeated every year, namely, the deluge or flood of the
rainy season or the winter.[145]
This is nowhere clearer than in Babylon. Sir Henry Rawlinson was the
first to point out that the twelve cantos of the poem of Izdubar or
Nimrod refer to the twelve months of the year and the twelve
representative signs of the Zodiac. Dr. Haupt afterward pointed out
that Eabani, the wise bull-man in the second canto, corresponds to the
second month, Ijjar, April-May, represented in the Zodiac by the bull;
that the union between Eabani and Nimrod in the third canto
corresponds to the third month, Sivan, May-June, represented in the
Zodiac by the twins; that the sickness of Nimrod in the seventh canto
corresponds to the seventh month, Tishri, September-October, when the
sun begins to wane; and that the flood in the eleventh canto
corresponds to the eleventh month, Shaba_t_u, dedicated to the
storm-god Rimmon,[146] represented in the Zodiac by the waterman.[147]
If that is so, we have surely a right to claim the same natural origin
for the story of the Deluge in India which we are bound to admit in
other countries. And even if it could be proved that in the form in
which these legends have reached us in India they show traces of
foreign influences,[148] the fact would still remain that such
influences have been perceived in comparatively modern treatises only,
and not in the ancient hymns of the Rig-Veda.
Other conjectures have been made with even less foundation than that
which would place the ancient poets of India under the influence of
Babylon. China has been appealed to, nay even Persia, Parthia, and
Bactria, countries beyond the reach of India at that early time of
which we are here speaking, and probably not even then consolidated
into independent nations or kingdoms. I only wonder that traces of the
lost Jewish tribes have not been discovered in the Vedas, considering
that Afghanistan has so often been pointed out as one of their
favorite retreats.
After having thus carefully examined all the traces of supposed
foreign influences that have been brought forward by various scholars,
I think I may say that there really is no trace whatever of any
foreign influence in the language, the religion, or the ceremonial of
the ancient Vedic literature of India. As it stands before us now, so
it has grown up, protected by the mountain ramparts in the north, the
Indus and the Desert in the west, the Indus or what was called the sea
in the south, and the Ganges in the east. It presents us with a
home-grown poetry and a home-grown religion; and history has preserved
to us at least this one relic, in order to teach us what the human
mind can achieve if left to itself, surrounded by a scenery and by
conditions of life that might have made man's life on earth a
paradise, if man did not possess the strange art of turning even a
paradise into a place of misery.[149]
FOOTNOTES: