LECTURE THE FIFTH
The Beginnings of Hindu Theosophy
Statement of the problem — Time when theosophy originated — Metempsychosis and pessimism unknown in the earlier Vedic records — Place where the higher religion originated — Priest philosophy at the sacrifice — The theosophic charade — Specimens of the theosophic charade — The riddle hymn of Dirghatamas — Interrelation between the sacrifice and theosophy — On the supposed origin of theosophy with the royal caste — Criticism of this view — Transition from ritualistic polytheism to theosophy — Early scepticism — “Götterdämmerung” — Failure of God Varuna — Monism, or the idea of unity — The creation hymn — Translation and analysis of the creation hymn — Attempts at monotheism — Prajāpati, the Lord of Creatures — Viçvakarman, creator of the universe, and kindred conceptions — Purusha, the world man — Brihaspati, the Lord of Devotion — Transcendental monotheistic conceptions: “Time,” “Love,” etc. — Defects of the earlier monotheistic and monistic attempts.
THE appreciation of the higher forms of Hinduism has gotten to be one of the foremost intellectual arts of our time, because the final results of Hindu thought count really among the most noteworthy achievements of the human mind. In order to understand the origin and nature of the higher religion of the Veda it is necessary to twist many threads into a single skein. It is a question of when, where, by whom, and how; each phase of this question, if considered aright, will contribute to the clearness of the whole.
As regards the time when higher religious motives appear, I would remind my hearers of the indefinite and relative character of Vedic chronology. The older Upanishads, the Vedic texts which profess higher religion or theosophy, are written in about the same language and style as the so-called Brāhmana texts. These latter, as you may remember,[^38] are prose works which, quite like the Hebrew Talmud, define the sacrifice with minute prescript and illustrative legend. And the older Upanishads are part of the Brāhmanas; the majority of the older Upanishads, through the medium of the Āraṇyakas, join their theosophic speculations right on to the dead ritual. To some extent the bones of the ritual skeleton rattle about in early theosophy in quite a lively fashion. The Upanishads and theosophy are part of the Veda; neither Hindu believer nor western critic has ever doubted that. Now the thought of the Upanishads has its forerunners in all parts of Vedic literature clear back to the Rig-Veda; in the Atharva-Veda it even shows signs of at least temporary going to seed.[^39] We cannot expect the family-books of the Rig-Veda, or the ninth, soma book to break out in theosophy. These books are collections of hymns addressed to the gods at a definite sacrifice: to that business they attend. It does not follow that what they do not mention does not exist at that time. We must beware of too straight-lined a view of these matters, one type following another like a row of bricks, or like different troops of the same army. I am not wise enough to say when the following stanza was pronounced:
“They call (it) Indra, Mitra, Varuna, and Agni, or the heavenly bird Garutmant (the Sun). The sages call the One Being in many ways; they call it Agni, Yama, Matarigvan.”
This verse states that the great gods of the Veda are but One Being; therefore it at once takes a high stand in the range of possible human thought. And yet it occurs in a hymn of the Rig-Veda, namely, the famous riddle-hymn of Dirghatamas, in the first book of that collection.[^40] Another statement in the tenth book[^41] is as follows: “That One breathed without breath, by inner power; than it, truly, nothing whatever else existed besides.”
Here are two statements in two Brahmanical hymns, composed in the trishtubh metre, the same metre in which the Vedic poets love to call upon their fustian god Indra, and yet their intention is unmistakable. They herald monism; they claim that there is but one essence, one true thing: it is but a step from such ideas to the pantheistic, absolute, without a second, Brahman-Ātman of the Upanishads and the later Vedanta philosophy.
On the other hand, there are in the earlier religion, whether it be hymn and sacrifice to the gods, or theosophic thought, no clear signs of belief in the transmigration of souls; no pessimistic view of life, and consequently no scheme of salvation, or rather release (mukti) from the eternal round of existences, in which birth, old age, decay, and death are the nodal points in the chain of lives. That this phase of the higher religion belongs to a later time, to a different geographical locality, and to an economic and social state different from that of the earliest Vedic time, seems exceedingly likely. So we are led to the conclusion that there was a period of monistic speculation, tentative in character, yet fairly advanced at the time of the composition of at least the later hieratic hymns of the Rig-Veda. But this higher religious thought lacked the twin factors of metempsychosis and pessimism which really determine its Hindu character. Pessimist view of transmigration, and release from transmigration are the true signs of Hinduism in the broadest sense of that word: through these twin conceptions the Hindu idea, as we may call it, is marked off from all the rest of human thought; without these, Hindu speculations about the divine might readily pose as a kind of Volapük, or Esperanto, for all the world of religious thought from the Prophets and Plato to Spinoza and Kant. We may safely date the entrance of metempsychosis and pessimism towards the end, rather than the beginning of Vedic tradition. It seems to mark a most important division of the Veda into two periods. Other marks, such as more or less advanced priestly ritual; the presence or absence of complicated witchcraft practices; the sudden and unexpected glint of a brilliant theosophic idea; or the varying forms of Vedic literary tradition involve real distinctions of time, but they are more gradual, and are easily construed subjectively. They do not, at any rate, involve anything as vital as the presence or absence of that pessimist doctrine of transmigration which holds India captive—to its cost—even at the present day.
Next, where did the higher religion spring up? There is at this time no centre of learning, no stoa, no monastery, no university. With the beginning of the growth of the higher religion there are connected many names, but not one name. There is no great teacher of genius like Buddha who is of a later time. We have no reason to look to some confined space within which this business of world philosophy was carried on exclusively. Indeed, the sporadic, tentative nature of the earliest high thought, the way in which it was approached from many different sides and in many different moods, shows that it flitted about from place to place, and was the play-ball of many minds. But, I believe, we can tell pretty definitely the kind of environment from which theosophy received its first impulse, and within which it prospered up to goodly size and strength. That, curiously enough, was the great Vedic sacrifice with its mock business and endless technicalities, calculated to deaden the soul, and apparently the very thing to put the lid tight on higher religious inspiration and aspiration.
The great Vedic sacrifices, the so-called çrauta sacrifices, such as the râjasuya (coronation of a king), or the açvamedha (horse-sacrifice) were performances intended to strengthen the temporal power of kings. They were, of course, undertaken either by kings or at least rich Kshatriyas, rather than by the class of smaller house-holders who could not afford them, and did not have any use for them. They had in them the elements of public, tribal or national festivals.[^42] Of course they were expensive. A large number of priests were present. We have seen in the past that these gentlemen were not at all shy about asking fees (dakshina) for their services. Now we are told distinctly that the Vedic Kings, or tribal Rajas, were not only interested in the mechanical perfection and outward success of the sacrifices undertaken under their patronage, but that they were even more impressed by the speculative, mystic, and theosophic thoughts which were suggested by various phases of the sacrifice. Both in the Brahmanas and in the Upanishads kings appear as questioners of the great Brahmans who solve for them some knotty sacrificial problem, or even some question connected with the riddle of existence. Whenever their questions are answered to their satisfaction, in the midst of a continuous discourse, the King again and again is excited to generosity: “I give thee a thousand (cows),” says King Janaka of Videha to the great theosopher Yajnavalkya, as the latter unfolds his marvellous scheme of salvation in the “Great Forest Upanishad.”[^43] Kings were known to give away their kingdoms on such occasions, and kings became themselves glorious expounders of theosophic religion.
The beginnings of theosophic thought are not in the Upanishads but, as we have said before, in the polytheistic and ritualistic religion that preceded the Upanishad. Especially in connection with the great sacrifices of the kind just mentioned the Brahmans, in the long run, found it to their advantage to impress the “generous givers,” the patrons of the sacrifice, not only with their mastery of sacrificial technique, but also with their theological profundity. To some extent learned theological discussions in prose, of a highly scholastic (Talmudic) nature, fulfil this purpose. This we may call the philosophy of the sacrifice, such as is displayed, for instance, in the exposition of the agnihotra sacrifice in Çatapatha Brahmana ii. 6. 2. But furthermore, they employ a very interesting form of poetic riddle or charade to enliven the mechanical and technical progress of the sacrifice by impressive intellectual pyrotechnics. I question whether such a type of religious literature is known in any other religion, or whether the riddle has ever elsewhere been drafted into the service of religion as one of the stages of its advancement. In other words, religious charades are a part of Hindu religious literature.[^44]
The Vedic word for higher speculative discussion as a whole, and especially for the religious, mostly poetic, riddle is brahmodya or brahmavadya, that is, “analysis or speculation about the brahma, or religion.” It is very generally carried on by two priests, one of whom asks questions, the other answers them. It is a kind of theological “quiz,” prearranged by the two parties: questioner and responder know their parts to perfection.
At the horse-sacrifice two priests ask and answer:
“Who, verily, moveth quite alone; who, verily, is born again and again; what, forsooth, is the remedy for cold; and what is the great (greatest) pile”?
The answer is:
“The sun moveth quite alone; the moon is born again and again; Agni (fire) is the remedy for cold; the earth is the great (greatest) pile.”[^45]
The priest called Hotar asks the priest called Adhvaryu:
“What, forsooth, is the sun-like light; what sea is there like unto the ocean; what, verily, is higher than the earth; what is the thing whose measure is not known”?
The answer is:
“Brahma is the sun-like light; heaven is the sea like unto the ocean; (the god) Indra is higher than the earth; the measure of the cow is (quite) unknown.”[^46]
Again the following questions and answers:
“I ask thee for the highest summit of the earth; I ask thee for the navel of the universe; I ask thee for the seed of the lusty steed; I ask thee for the highest heaven of speech.”
“This altar is the highest summit of the earth; this sacrifice is the navel of the universe; this soma (the intoxicating sacrificial drink) is the seed of the lusty steed (God Indra?); this Brahman priest is the highest heaven (that is to say, the highest exponent) of speech.”[^47]
It is interesting to note that these riddles show us again the Hindu mind preoccupied with the nature phenomena of the world, at a time when the old nature gods have become completely crystallised. Again, as regards the status of these riddles, the Kena Upanishad opens with a very similar pair of riddle-stanzas, showing that the state of mind at the bottom of nature-worship, brahmodya, and Upanishad marks advancing mental interests, but yet advance along the same line.
The Rig-Veda (i. 164) contains a hymn which is nothing but a collection of fifty-two verses of poetry, all of them, except one, riddles whose answers are not given. There can be little doubt that the occasion upon which these riddles were let off was the same as with those just cited, namely, the sacrifice. The subjects of these riddles are cosmic, that is, pertaining to the nature phenomena of the universe; mythological, that is, referring to the accepted legends about the gods; psychological, that is, pertaining to the human organs and sensations; or, finally, crude and tentative philosophy or theosophy. Heaven and earth, sun and moon, air, clouds and rain; the course of the sun, the year, the seasons, months, days and nights; the human voice, self-consciousness, life and death; the origin of the first creature and the originator of the universe—such are the abrupt and bold themes. Here figures also (stanza 46) that seemingly precocious statement which contains the suggestion, symptomatic for all future Hindu thought, namely, that above and behind the great multitude of gods there is one supreme personality; behind the gods there is that “Only Being” of whom the gods are but various names—πολλῶν ὀνομάτων μορφῇ μία:
“They call it Indra, Mitra, Varuna, and Agni, or the heavenly bird Garutmant (the sun). The sages call the One Being in many ways; they call it Agni, Yama, Matarievan.”
How closely attached to the sacrifice theosophic speculations remained as they grew in clearness and importance, we cannot say; all that we can say is, that in time the two intrinsically uncongenial themes parted company. Nor can we assert that theosophic thought would not have sprung up in the Hindu mind, endowed as we see it to be, independently from the sacrifice and its perverted scholastic scintillations. Given the mind, the thought will come. But it is easy to see that the beginnings of higher religion started around the sacrifice, by calling out the higher aspirations of the patrons of the sacrifice. Wisdom-searching Rājas, weary of the world, Janaka and Ajātaçatru at an earlier time, Buddha and Bimbisara at a later time, have as much to do with the development of Hindu religion as the thirst for newer and larger truth on the part of the Brahmans themselves. The Rājas were the Maecenases of the “poor clerics.” We imagine very easily that some of them got a surfeit of the world, and were attracted to the things beyond. The beginnings of theosophy grew up around the sacrifice which was under their patronage. The Brahmans grew up to their patrons’—and, we may add, to their own—higher needs. They began to offer these patrons something more than ritual technicalities. In the long run they must hold their position and reputation by something better than by handling with ludicrous correctness fire-wood and sacrificial ladle; soma drink and oblations of melted butter. And in the long run their minds, which somehow, the hocus-pocus of the sacrifice had neither deadened nor satisfied, rose to those higher and permanent requirements which led to practical abandonment of the sacrifice and lasting devotion to philosophic religion.
The question, next, as to who carried on the higher religion has been answered incidentally in what has just been said. If what is stated there is stated correctly, we shall not go astray if we assume that the Brahmans were the mainspring in the advance of higher thought, just as they were the main factors in the worship of the gods and in ceremonial practices. But this same question requires to be stated more precisely for the following reason. A number of distinguished scholars have recently advanced the theory that Hindu theosophy is not, as has been tacitly assumed, in the main the product of Brahmanical intellect, but that it was due to the spiritual insight of the Royal or Warrior Caste.[^48]
Professor Garbe of the University of Tübingen, an eminent student of Hindu philosophy and at the same time a scholar well versed in the early literature of the Vedas, is the most ardent advocate of this view. Garbe is not at all an admirer of Brahman civilisation; on more than one occasion has he poured out the vials of his just wrath against the intolerable pretensions and cruelties which the Brahmans have practised during the period of their ascendancy in India through several milleniums. But not content with that, he believes that the Brahmans were not only bold bad men, but also that they were too stupid to have worked their way from the sandy wastes of ritualism to the green summits where grows the higher thought of India. For centuries the Brahmans were engaged in excogitating sacrifice after sacrifice, and hair-splitting definitions and explanations of senseless ritualistic hocus-pocus. “All at once,” says Professor Garbe, “lofty thought appears upon the scene. To be sure, even then the traditional god-lore, sacrificial lore, and folk-lore are not rejected, but the spirit is no longer satisfied with the cheap mysteries that surround the sacrificial altar. A passionate desire to solve the riddle of the universe and its relation to the own self holds the mind captive; nothing less will satisfy henceforth.”
Parts of this observation of Professor Garbe are correct, nay even familiar. But not every part, it seems to me. Having in mind Yājnavalkya and Uddalaka Āruṇi of the Upanishads, or Çankara and Kumārila of the Vedānta Philosophy, one may fairly doubt the unredeemed stupidity of the Brahmans at any period of India’s history. I would, for my part, question more particularly the expression “all at once” in the above statement.
Mental revolutions rarely come all at once, least of all in India. The evidence of India’s remarkably continuous records shows that every important Hindu thought has its beginning, middle, and final development. As regards theosophy, its beginnings are found in the Vedic hymns; its middle in the Upanishads; and its final development in the “Systems” of Philosophy, like the Vedānta and Sānkhya of later times. I am afraid that Professor Garbe has somehow gotten into the state of mind that there is only one kind of good Brahman, namely, a dead Brahman, to paraphrase a saying about that other Indian, the American Indian. Selfishness, foolishness, bigotry, and cruelty galore—the marks of these some Brahmans have left in their compositions, foolishly as behooves knaves. But there were, and there are, Brahmans and Brahmans. The older Upanishads, written in approximately the same language and style as the so-called prose Brāhmana (Talmudic) texts, figuring largely as parts of these compositions, were composed by Brahmans who had risen to the conviction that not “the way of works” lies the salvation that is knowledge. Countless Brahman names crowd these texts: Naciketas and Çvetaketu, Gargya and Yājnavalkya, and many others. Even the wives or daughters of great Brahmans, Gārgi and Maitreyi, take part in spiritual tourneys, and occasionally, as in the case of Gārgi in the Great Forest-Upanishad (3. 6 and 8), rise to a subtler appreciation than the Brahman men of the mystery of the world and the riddle of existence.
The scholars mentioned have been attracted to their position by the interesting fact that the Upanishads narrate several times that the ultimate philosophy was in the keeping of men of royal caste; and that these warriors imparted their knowledge to Brahmans. This is put in such a way that the Brahman, after having aired his own stock of theosophy “lays down” before the king’s superior insight. The king is then represented as graciously bestowing his saving knowledge upon the Brahman. Once or twice, however, the king turns braggart, and mars his generosity by claiming that the warrior caste are the real thing, and that they alone in all the world are able to illumine these profound and obscure matters. Thus the extreme example of this kind is narrated in two Upanishads.[^49] The Brahman Çvetaketu Āruṇi, ignorant of the doctrine of transmigration, is compelled to look for instruction to King Pravāhana Jaivali, who receives him graciously and condescends to become his teacher. In the course of his preachment the King says to the Brahman:
“Because, as thou hast told me, this doctrine ere this and up to thy time has not been in vogue among the Brahmans, therefore in all the world sovereignty has remained in the hands of the warrior caste. As surely as we desire that thou and all thy ancestors shall remain well-disposed towards us, so surely has to this day no Brahman ever possessed this knowledge.”
I doubt whether this statement, and others of a similar nature, justify us in regarding the warrior caste as the spiritual saviors of India. As regards King Pravāhana Jaivali’s statement, it is specious on the face of it. For what have royalty and transmigration to do with one another? In its essence the doctrine of transmigration has no more regard for royalty than for the lowest caste, because its purpose is release from any form of individual existence (see the sixth lecture). Then again, the very texts that narrate these exploits of the Kshatriyas are unquestionably Brāhmanic. Would the arrogance and selfishness of the Brahmans have allowed them to preserve and propagate facts calculated to injure permanently their own standing? Surely not.
The situation is somewhat as follows: there never was a time in India when the Aryas, that is, the three upper of the four ancient castes, were excluded from Brāhmanic piety.[^50] Now, as theosophy, by its very terms, shuts down on the ritual, the special profession of the Brahmans, there is nothing at all in it to exclude occasional intelligent and aspiring men from the other noble (Arya) castes. This is true even at the present day: Svāmi Vivekananda was no Brahman, but a member of the Kayastha or clerk caste. The Chāndogya Upanishad (4. 4) narrates how Satyakāma, the son of the gadabout servant-maid Jābāla, was admitted to Brahmanic disciplehood by Hāridrumata, for the very reason that he did not try to cover up his low birth. Satyakāma, in the end, obtains the highest knowledge. When it comes to higher religion the bars are consciously let down at all times. In the Mokshadharma of the Mahābhārata[^51] the Vaiçya (Vanik) caste man Tulādhāra, “seller of juices, scents, leaves, barks, fruits, and roots,” teaches righteousness to the Brahman Jājali. In the same text[^52] the Rishi Parāçara declares that Brahmans learned in the Veda regard a virtuous Çūdra, or low caste man, as the equal of Brahmans.
Here, I think, is where the good Brahman, of whom Professor Garbe will not hear, comes in. The Brahman authors of the Upanishads, just as high-minded Brahmans of all ages, were honest and liberal enough to permit all fit men to participate in higher religious activity, in wisdom and in piety. Nay, they express particular admiration in such participation, because, after all, there was to them something unexpected in all this. They were carried away by it to a certain ecstasy, the kind of ecstasy that goes with a paradox, as when the son of a peasant in Europe works his way to a professorship in a university. As regards the Rājas, or other nobles, we must not forget, too, that they were after all the source from which all blessings flowed. Even in theosophic occupation the Brahman remains, as I have said before, the poor cleric with the Raja as his Maecenas. I think that any one who reads these statements of royal proficiency in the highest wisdom attentively will acknowledge that they are dashed in the Upanishads, as they are in the Ritual, with a goodly measure of captatio benevolentiae. In other words, the genuine admiration of high-minded nobles is not necessarily divorced from the subconsciousness that it is well to admire in high places. Even really good Brahmans might do that.
If King Janaka of Videha punctuates the Brahman Yājnavalkya’s brilliant exposition of theosophy by repeated gifts of a thousand cows—we may wonder who counted them, and what Yājnavalkya did with them—King Ajātaçatru of Benares, real intellectual as he is, will not allow admiring Brahmans to starve. I think that a saying of the modern sage and pious ascetic, the Paramahansa Rāmakrishna,[^53] throws essentially the right light upon the exceptional character of the theosophic exploits of kings: “Men always quote the example of the King Janaka, as that of a man who lived in the world and yet attained perfection. But throughout the whole history of mankind there is only this solitary example. His case was not the rule but the exception.” We may tone down this statement, and apply it to the present question as follows: Not all Brahmans were intellectually or morally sound, but some Brahmans were at all times, as they were in the days of Çankara and Kumārila, the intellectual leaders of India; brilliant helpers from the other castes, more especially the Royal caste,[^54] lent occasional aid, and this aid justly compelled acknowledgment and admiration.
I am now come at last to the “how” of Hindu higher thought, that is, my task is now to show how the main or essential thoughts of Hindu theosophy arose. In the transition from the nature gods, the legends, the ritual, and the folk-lore practices, to the settled theosophy of later times, many conceptions flit like phantoms across the vision of these speculators or seers, sometimes not to be heard of a second time. The air is charged with experimental, electric thought. No religious or philosophic literature of ancient times has buried so many “lost children” as the Hindu in the storm and stress period that ends with the Upanishads. No people of thinkers have started to rear so many edifices of thought to be abandoned without regret or scruple when found wanting in the end. They have left behind them many a ruin which they might well enough have finished, and within which the religious thinkers of many another nation, less exacting, would have cheerfully settled upon as permanent and congenial habitations. Philip Sidney’s saying: “Reason cannot show itself more reasonable than to leave off reasoning on things above reason,” does not hold with the Hindus. They would certainly have stigmatised such sweet reasonableness as the philosophy of sloth, if they had ever heard of it. On the contrary, the old questions of whence, why, and whither fascinate and enthrall their thoughts from the time of the Vedic Rishis to the present day. Remarkable as this may sound, we have really no record of any period of Hindu thought of which we can say definitely that it was wanting in the highest and most strenuous thought, from the time of the riddle-hymn of Dirghatamas and the creation-hymn,[^55] to the modern Vedantins and Paramahansas of the type of Rāmakrishna and Vivekananda.
To begin with, negatively speaking, there are at a very early time traces of scepticism. The old mythological gods in strong flesh tints are just the least bit disconcerting. There are those who begin to say of the gods: “They are not,” and, doubtless, there is a growing number of those who begin to weaken in that faith (çraddha) which means monotonously sacrifice, and gifts to the Brahmans. The way in which the Veda insists upon this faith shows that it could not always be taken for granted. Especially the god Indra who is a good deal of a Bombastes Furioso must have presented himself to the eye of the more enlightened as a brummagem god, tricky, braggart, drunken, and immoral. Indra, like Zeus, will have his fling. There is a story about himself and a lady by the name of Ahalyā in which he assumes the outer form of that lady’s august priestly husband for his own purposes, and this as well as other treacherous acts are a fruitful source of moralising in the later Veda. Even in the Rig-Veda, if we read between the lines, there are those who mock Indra, and those who apologise for him:
“Bring lovely praise to Indra, vying one with the other, truthful praise, if he himself be true. Even though one or another says: ‘Indra is not, who ever saw him, who is he that we should praise him?’” (Rig-Veda 8. 100. 3.)
Or again:
“The terrible one of whom they ask, ‘where is he?’ Nay verily they say of him, ‘he is not at all’. He makes shrink the goods of his enemy like a gambler the stakes of his opponent: Put your faith in him—He, O folks, is Indra.” (Rig-Veda 2. 12. 5.)
Hence they that have no faith are called açraddha, “infidel,” or anindra, “repudiators of Indra.”[^56]
Every onward movement of Hindu thought takes place at the expense of the old gods of nature; the divine attribute becomes more important than the mythological person. The individual natural history of the gods becomes a thing of minor interest. In this sense polytheism is decadent even in the hymns of the Rig-Veda themselves. It shows signs of going to seed for philosophy. The gods in turn perform about the same feats of creating and upholding the world: the interest of the poets in the acts has evidently increased at the expense of the agents. The gods, too, we must not forget, have taken, very mechanically, fixed positions in the ritual devoted to their service. One thing is certain, in the host of figures that crowd the canvass in the transition period from mythology to theosophy the nature gods play no real rôle. They are, if not exactly abandoned, at least relegated to a subordinate position and treated with comparative coldness. Every embodiment of the divine idea is now abstract or symbolic. The higher forms of early Hindu religion operate decidedly from the ontological side, from the severely intellectual side. Faith and piety, sentiment and emotion, right and wrong, invariably take the second place, as long as there is to settle the question of the universe, the great cosmos; man, the little cosmos; time; space; causality. Therefore, perhaps, the plastic possibilities of the early gods through poetry, legend, and the art of reproduction remain in India a coarse-grained exercise of second rate power: one needs but to call up for comparison the part that Greek mythology plays in Greek literature and art.
It is interesting to test this on the person of one great nature god of the early time. We have seen that in a very early prehistoric time, the common period of the Hindus and Iranians, there existed a high view of the gods as moral forces, as the omniscient guardians of the moral law and order of the universe. Avestan Ahura Mazda and Vedic Varuna are the guardians-in-chief of the rta, the cosmic and moral order of the universe and man.[^57] Vedic Varuna in his ethical strength has a Hebraic flavor. By the side of even the loftiest figure and the loftiest traits of the Hellenic or Teutonic Pantheon Varuna stands like a Jewish prophet by the side of a priest of Dagon. And yet what permanent moral strength have the Hindus derived from Varuna, and what becomes of Varuna himself in the course of his development? A second rate Neptune, “Lord of the Waters,” a mere stage figure. In the straight-lined advance, looking neither to the right nor to the left, to the recognition of the one Brahma, the universal spirit, as the one Reality, and the consequent illusoriness of the entire phenomenal world, there is really no more room for righteous and stern Varuna than for an idol of clay, unless you can make out that Varuna is but a particular manifestation of the One Brahma, and then he is no more important than any other manifestation.
The absence of a strong chronological scaffolding is felt not only for the events of Hindu history, but also for the events of Hindu thought. It is the custom to speak rather glibly of “late” and “early” in these thought movements. As a matter of fact we are at the beginning of higher Hindu thought confronted with its most important and most permanent idea. Some poets of the Vedic time, writing, not badly, in Vedic metre, see more or less clearly that the idea of God, in so far as it can be conceived at all, presupposes the idea of absolute unity. It is a thought both independent and of leonine boldness. Independent, because there is no suspicion of foreign thinkers, or foreign literature. Bold, because it will soon lead to the conclusion that there is but one real thing, one “That,” one ding an sich, which exists both in the universe and in man, and that all else is illusion. Whatever else we may say of this conception, a bolder conception has not emanated from the brain of man; a bolder conception cannot, perhaps, come from the brain of man. We have become acquainted with one expression of this unity in the hymn of Dirghatamas: “They call it Indra, Mitra, Varuna, and Agni, or the heavenly bird Garutmant (the sun). The sages call the one being in many ways; they call it Agni, Yama, Matarigvan.” Professor Deussen, in his History of Philosophy,[^58] remarks that no more epoch-marking word has been uttered in India until we come to the famous tat tvam asi, “thou art the That,” of the Chāndogya Upanishad. Lest some one should suspect this to be a mere blundering thought for the nonce, a kind of freak or sport of mental rumination, the same Dirghatamas hymn contains the idea several times more; for instance in stanza 6:
“In ignorance do I ask here them that haply know, Who did support the six regions of the world? What was, forsooth, this one unborn thing”?
The tenth book of the Rig-Veda contains the famous creation hymn (10.129). This remarkable production has always interested Sanskritists profoundly; it has also passed over into the general literature of religion and philosophy. That great and sober critic, the late Professor William D. Whitney, remarked anent it in 1882, that the unlimited praises which had been bestowed upon it, as philosophy and as poetry, were well-nigh nauseating.[^59] And yet, twelve years later, in 1894, Deussen, who, I am sure, is not trying to contradict Whitney, breaks out into new praise, more ecstatic than ever: “In its noble simplicity, in the loftiness of its philosophic vision it is possibly the most admirable bit of philosophy of olden times.” And again, “No translation can ever do justice to the beauty of the original.”[^60] I think we may grant that the composition shows a good deal of rawness, unevenness, and inconsistency. Yet it is perhaps easier to undervalue such a performance than to exaggerate its importance. It occurs in one of the earliest literatures of the world; it brushes aside all mythology, and it certainly exhibits philosophic depth and caution when it designates the fundamental cause of the universe not by a name, but as “that” (tad), or “the one thing” (ekam). But let my hearers judge for themselves:
FIRST STANZA.
“Nor being was there nor non-being; there was no atmosphere and no sky beyond. What covered all, and where, by what protected? Was there a fathomless abyss of the waters?”
The poet describes as deftly as possible a primordial chaos. There was not non-being, for that is unconceivable[^61]; there was not being in the ordinary experience of the senses. What was there? The poet in the next stanza carries on his negation and then abruptly presses forward to a positive conclusion:
SECOND STANZA.
“Neither death was there nor immortality; there was not the sheen of night nor light of day. That One breathed, without breath, by inner power; than it truly nothing whatever else existed besides.”
The poet is careful in his thought of what positively was. It is “That One” (tad ekam); it exists and breathes, but it breathes in a higher sense, without breath (literally “wind”) which is physical and material. It is difficult to imagine a more cautious, or even a more successful attempt to conceive and express a first cause or principle without personality. Yet we must not fail to observe that even so subtle a conception as the neuter “That One” is furnished with the anthropomorphic attribute of breath, because after all, in the long run, it must be decked out in some sort of flesh and blood. The third stanza takes up anew the description of chaos, and follows it up with a second description of the primal force:
THIRD STANZA.
“Darkness there was, hidden by darkness at the beginning; an unillumined ocean was this all. The living force which was enveloped in a shell, that one by the might of devotional fervor was born”
Unquestionably we have here the idea, frequently expressed in the Brahmana tales of the creator Prajapati.[^62] According to this the primal being begins to create through the force of devotion (tapas). Here an even more primary condition is assumed: the fundamental force is itself put forth by, or is born from, devotion. This devotional fervor marks either another start at a primeval cause, or, paradoxical as this may seem, is the devotional fervor of the yet uncreated sages. Anyhow these sages appear upon the scene as deus ex machina in the next stanza, and then, after this gap has been spanned, the work of creation can really proceed.
FOURTH STANZA.
“Desire arose in the beginning in That; it was the first seed of mind. The sages by devotion found the root of being in non-being, seeking it in (their) heart.”
Desire, Kama, the equivalent of Greek “Eros” “Love,” means here the desire to live; it is the first possible seed or fruit of the mind, for there is no conceivable action of the mind which is not preceded by life. The second hemistich introduces an even more primordial creative role on the part of the sages, whose devotion is the real promotive force in the act of creation. The poet does not tell whence come the sages at this stage of the drama. The production of this creation, which is here defined as “being” coming out of “non-being,” contradicts, the first stanza where “non-being” is denied: “How can ‘being’ come out of ’non-being?’” asks the Chandogya Upanishad (6. 2. 2). Moreover it ignores the previously postulated “That Only” which by its terms eliminates “non-being.” The poet here unquestionably entangles himself in sham-profundity; he had better left out all reference to “non-being”; it is a term handled by the Hindus with a degree of deftness which is in the inverse ratio to their fondness for it.
The hymn continues with a mystical fifth stanza which is obscure, and in any case unimportant. Then it takes a wholly new turn into the direction of philosophic scepticism. This is quite unexpected in the wake of “That Only,” in whose mind creative desire had sprung forth: it ought to, aided by its own or the sages’ creative fervor, go on to create the world, if it does anything at all:
SIXTH STANZA.
“Who truly knoweth? Who can here proclaim it? Whence hither born, whence cometh this creation? On this side are the gods from its creating, Who knoweth then from whence it came to being?”
SEVENTH STANZA.
“This creation—from whence it came to being, Whether it made itself, or whether not— He who is its overseer in highest heaven, He surely knoweth—or perchance he knoweth not.”
The avowed purpose of all philosophy is to account for the presence of the world and its contents, as something which is not self-evident, and needs to be explained beyond the point of mere individual experience, or analysis through empirical knowledge. The creation hymn performs this act not without some unsteadiness and with petulance due to scepticism. In putting forth a fundamental principle without personality it does not fall far behind the best thought of later times inside or outside of India. It fails where all philosophy fails, in bridging over to this particular idealistic or phenomenal world, even after the fundamental principle has been abstracted, no matter in how rarefied and non-committal a form. We may expect, therefore, other starts towards the same end. The Veda, as I have hinted before, contains an astonishing number of attempts to establish a supreme monotheistic being who is far easier to handle than the monistic “That Only”; a monotheistic god who, when once conceived, conveniently assumes all responsibility. We have seen more than once how supreme divine action makes a show of gradually detaching itself from the persons of the various gods who figure in the earlier myth and cult, and how this action impresses itself upon the mind as really more important than the particular divine agent who was at any given time supposed to perform it.
Creation of the world; production of the sun; spreading out of the sky and the earth; and lordship over all that moves or stands—these are some of the grander acts in world life. Even in the Rig-Veda these acts are bunched and thrown into the lap of a divinity by the name of Prajāpati “Lord of Creatures.” Various earlier divinities of a more or less abstract and specialistic character, especially Savitar, the inspiring, enlivening principle of the sun, and Tvashtar, a kind of divine carpenter or artificer of less important objects, are blended in this product; it goes as far to realise personal monotheism as was ever possible in India. One hymn[^63] pictures Prajāpati in very glowing colors; he is a true creator, ruler, and preserver, and yet, it is very interesting to observe, that the description of him does not, after all, differ very materially from that of the polytheistic god Indra in the hymn, Rig-Veda 2. 12, as may be seen from a comparison of the two.[^64] Some of the stanzas of the Prajāpati hymn are as follows:
Rig-Veda 10. 121.
“A golden germ arose in the beginning, Born he was the one lord of things existing, The earth and yonder sky he did establish— What god shall we revere with our oblation?
“Who gives life’s breath and is of strength the giver, At whose behest all gods do act obedient, Whose shadow is immortality and likewise death— What god shall we revere with our oblation?
“The king, who as it breathes and as it shuts its eyes, The world of life alone doth rule with might, Two-footed creatures and four-footed both controls— What god shall we revere with our oblation?
“Through whose great might arose these snow-capped mountains, Whose are, they say, the sea and heavenly river, Whose arms are these directions of the space— What god shall we revere with our oblation?”
Not until we come to the tenth stanza does this omnipotent god who so far has not betrayed his name, unless we so regard the epithet “Golden Germ” in the first stanza, reveal himself as Prajāpati:
- “Prajāpati, thou art the one—and there’s no other— Who dost encompass all these born entities! Whate’er we wish while offering thee oblations, May that be ours! May we be lords of riches!”
It is easy to feel both the inferiority and the greater convenience of this Creator God who lords it over everything, without exactly having established any particular mental or moral claim to his prerogatives. As compared with the sheer philosophic “That Only,” the one thing without humanly definable quality, Prajāpati cuts a sorry figure, and marks a backward movement. There are, as we have said, many other monotheistic conceptions, symbolic, ritualistic, and philosophic, which make a short spurt and fall by the way. The supreme being is conceived as Viçvakarman, “fabricator of the universe”; as Parameshthin, “he who occupies the highest summit”; as Svayambhū, “the self-existing being”; as Skambha, “Support”; as Dhātar, “Maker”; as Vidhātar, “Arranger”; and others. These are mere symbolism.
In another way a move in the direction of monotheistic pantheism is made through the personification of all nature as a giant “man,” called Purusha. His head is heaven, his eye is the sun, his breath is the wind, and so on. Purusha reminds us of the cosmic giant, Ymir in the Edda. The notion that man is a microcosm, or small world, and that, conversely, the world is a huge man (macranthrōpos) is widely diffused. Here are some stanzas of Rig-Veda 10. 90:
“The Purusha with thousand heads, With thousand eyes and thousand feet, Surrounds the earth on every side, And goes ten digits yet beyond.
“Purusha, aye, is all this world, The world that was and that will be. He even rules th’ immortal world Which must sustain itself by food.
“Thus great is this his majesty— Yet even beyond in strength he goes. A quarter of him all beings are. Three quarters are immortal beyond.”
The most significant of all monotheistic personifications is derived from the sphere of worship and ritual, namely the God Brihaspati or Brahmanaspati, “Lord of Prayer or Devotion.” He presents himself at first as a mere personification of the acts of the poets and priests. We remember a preceding statement that the Vedic poets’ consciousness is invaded by and impressed with the dignity and charm of their own poetic devotions. They go so far as to lift this very devoutness to the level of divinity.[^65] In Brihaspati we have a personification of prayer and religious performance both in one. A beautiful stanza of the Rig-Veda[^66] has it: “When, O Brihaspati, men first sent forth the earliest utterance of speech, giving names to things, then was disclosed a jewel treasured within them, most excellent and pure.” In another famous hymn of the Rig-Veda[^67] Vac, “Holy Speech,” is represented as the companion and upholder of the gods, and as the foundation of all religious activity and its attendant boons. From a later time we have the significant metaphoric statement that “Holy Song” (Dhenā) is the wife of Brihaspati just as “Weapon” (Senā) is the wife of Indra.[^68]
Brihaspati at first is placed as an ally by the side of the more regal gods, like Indra, Agni, and Soma, in their fights against demons and stingy unbelievers. The Vedic gods derive strength from prayer and sacrifice, just as do Hindu men—this is a familiar conception from the beginning. The thought which underlies Brihaspati has in store for itself a greater future and a more permanent result in the still more abstract Brahma, which is religious devotion in the absolute. Of this in the last lecture. For the present Brihaspati rises from his modest position as aider and abettor of the war-gods to become father of the gods, upholder of the ends of the earth. Sun and moon’s alternate rise is his work. Like a blacksmith Brihaspati soldered together this world. That happened before the races of the gods came into being; perhaps at the time when “being” was born of “non-being.” More transcendental are the exploitations in the direction of monotheism of such conceptions as Kala, “Time,” “Father Time”; of Kama, “Love,” “Eros”; of Prāna “Breath of Life”; and others even more faint and tentative. The conception of Eros we have met above as the first movement in The One after it had come into life; its deification is never very pronounced. Prāna, or “Breath of Life,” is an almost universal cosmic principle; it will occupy our attention in connection with the final shaping of Hindu theosophy. The most transcendental of these personifications is that of “Time”—namely: Prajāpati, “the lord of creatures,” at first an abstraction, is readily associated with the generative power of nature. Now this generative power is revealed particularly in the cycle of the year. By easy association Prajāpati is next boldly identified with year: “Prajāpati reflected, ‘This verily, I have created as my counterpart, namely, the year.’ Therefore they say, ‘Prajāpati is the year,’ for as counterpart of himself he did create the year.” Thus the prose Brāhmana texts naively, yet closely, reason. And out of some such reasoning “Time” itself emerges as a monotheistic conception, in whose praise the Atharva-Veda sings two hymns[^69]:
“Time runs, a steed with seven reins, thousand-eyed, ageless, rich in seed. The seers thinking holy thoughts, mount him; all the beings are his wheels.
“Time begot yonder heaven, Time also these earths. That which was and that which shall be, urged forth by Time, spreads out.” (Atharva-Veda 19. 53. 1 and 5.)
After a survey of these manifold, all of them more or less shaky attempts to account for the universe and man, one impression, which I have spoken of before, grows mightily. I mean the presence of intellectual subtlety, the absence of sentiment. Anything like a practical bearing of all these earlier monotheistic and monistic creations upon the Hindu mind and heart seem as yet almost altogether wanting. In a sense they are not religious, but crudely philosophical. That is, if we define religion as the intimate, mutual, personal relation between man and the higher powers that surround him. In so far as they are religious in this sense these monotheistic and monistic creations do not advance perceptibly beyond the stage of the polytheistic nature gods, the ritual, and the sorcery of earlier times. The extravagant power of Prajāpati is still nothing more than a cause for cajolery:
“Prajāpati thou art the one—and there’s no other— Who dost encompass all these born entities! Whate’er we wish, while offering thee oblations, May that be ours! May we be lords of riches!” (Rig-Veda 10. 121.10.)
All this is far from being the final form of the higher religion. When Hindu theosophy has reached its full growth and has stretched its limbs we find that all its various intellectual movements still keep on differing among themselves considerably, to the end, as they did at the beginning. But they are absolutely agreed on one point, namely, their final purpose. Their final purpose is salvation; release from the endless chain of existences in which death marks the passage from link to link. This salvation can be effected in only one way, namely, profound and genuinely religious appreciation of the identity of one’s own self with the One True Being. This rests upon the twin doctrine of Transmigration and Monism without which India would not be India. The earlier forms of monotheistic and monistic speculation show no sign of a belief in transmigration. I thought it advisable to let this belief mark the division between the tentative, purely speculative philosophy of the earlier time, and the thought of the Upanishads, which is in its essence truly religious. The Upanishads, with all their curvy movements and through all their fluttering thought, never lose sight of that great purpose of salvation. How came the belief in transmigration in India; how it led to a pessimistic view of life; how Brahma, the One, the Universal, the True, finally shaped himself from out of the mass of conflicting and yet converging thoughts about the Divine which we have sketched to-day; and how release from the chain of existences through union with Brahma may be obtained—that will be the theme of our concluding lecture on the religion of the Veda.