LECTURE THE SIXTH

The Final Philosophy of the Veda

Death and future life in paradise — Early notions of Hell — The idea of retribution — Limit of reward for good deeds — The notion of “death-anew,” or “re-death” — How comes the belief in transmigration — Hindu doctrine of transmigration — The method of transmigration — The doctrine of karma, or spiritual evolution — How transmigration and karma appear to Western minds — The pessimist theory of life — Cause of Hindu pessimism — Pessimism and the perfect principle (Brahma) — Dualistic pessimism — Salvation through realisation of one’s own Brahmahood — The conception of the ātman, “breath,” as life principle — Atman, the soul of the Universe — Brahma, the spiritual essence of the Universe — Fusion of Atman and Brahma — Maya, or the world an illusion — The unknowableness of Brahma — Emerson’s poem on the Brahma — The fulness of Brahma: a story of Yajnavalkya and his wife Maitreyi — Transition from philosophy to piety — Hindu asceticism — Professor Huxley’s critique of asceticism — Pilgrim’s progress under the religion of Brahma — Investiture and disciplehood — The life of the householder — The life of the forest-dweller and wandering ascetic — Ultima Thule.

THE Veda’s conception of the polytheistic gods, and the relations which the early Hindus have established with them by means of their songs of praise and nourishing gifts, are of a spirit very simple. The temper of these things almost guarantees beforehand equally simple notions about death and future life. There is a paradise above, conceived oftenest as a solar paradise, where the gods are having a delightful time. Man would be most happy to have a share in this delight, like the gods immortal. Therefore the gods are implored to let come to them the pious man that has spent his substance freely in their behalf.¹ Next, this elementary belief is fittingly padded out with simple rites and ancient legends. The bodies of the dead are burned and their ashes are consigned to earth. But this is viewed, symbolically, merely as an act of preparation—cooking it is called forthright—for that other life of joy. Arms and utensils, especially sacrificial utensils, are buried with the corpse. For the occupations and necessities of those “who have gone forth” (preta), as the dead are called euphemistically, are the same as upon the earth, sacrificing included. The righteous forefathers of old who have gone forth in the past—they have found another good place. Especially Yama, the first royal man, went forth as a pioneer to the distant heights in the skies. He searched and found a way for all his descendants. He went before and found a dwelling from which no power can debar mortal man. The Fathers of old have travelled it, and this path leads every earth-born mortal thither. There in the midst of highest heaven, in the lap of the Goddess Dawn, beams unfading light, there eternal waters flow. There Yama sits under a tree of beautiful foliage, engaged in an everlasting bout in the company of the gods; there mortals gather after death at Yama’s call to behold Varuna. They have left all imperfections behind them on returning to their true home, the rich meadows of which no one can rob them. In that place there are no lame nor crooked of limb; the weak no longer pay tribute to the strong; all alike share with Yama and the gods the feast of the gods.

Underneath the coat of sugar the pill of death is bitter after all. Fitfully the Vedic Hindu regales himself with the hope of paradise, but his real craving is expressed in Vedic literature countless times: “May we live a hundred autumns, surrounded by lusty sons!” On the way to Yama the dead must pass the two broad-nosed, four-eyed dogs, the speckled and the dark; according to another turn of this myth these same dogs, originally sun and moon,² wander among men and pick the daily candidates that are to go on their last pilgrimage. Soon we hear of the foot-snare of Yama. Think or do what you will, death remains uncanny. The prospect of paradise is marred to some extent by visions of hell, the inevitable analogical opposite of paradise, that deep place of bottomless, blind darkness, which in a later time is fitted out with the usual gruesome stage-setting in the style of Dante’s Inferno, or the wall-paintings in the Campo Santo at Pisa.

From the start there is the idea of retribution. To Yama’s blissful seat only they who have done good may aspire. We remember the belief that the things sacrificed and given the priests (the ishtāpūrta) await in highest heaven the faithful as a sort of twin guardian angels, securing for them bliss. On the other hand, the oppressors of the Brahmans, “they who spit upon the Brahmana sit in the middle of a pool of blood chewing hair.” . . . “The tears which did roll from the eyes of the oppressed, lamenting Brāhmana, these very ones, O oppressor of Brahmans, the gods did assign to thee as thy share of water.”³ In an early version of hell the sage Bhrigu observes some yelling men who are being cut up and devoured by other men who also yell: “So they have done to us in yonder world, so we do to them in return in this world.”⁴

But now the Hindu, subtle and at the same time naive, given over to rigid schematism and mechanical consistency, as all his intellectual history shows, becomes nervous about the permanence of life after death. What if the effect even of his good deeds should not last forever? What if, instead of the hoped-for immortality in yonder world, there be death again? One text fancies a limited immortality which lasts only a hundred years, that is, the ideal length of the life of man upon earth. The treasure of good deeds is after all finite; day and night, or, as we should say, time may exhaust the stock of one’s good works. In strict logic that must mean death anew. So we read in the Brahmana texts of fervent wishes and cunning rites potent to ensure imperishableness of one’s good works, and to cut off the possible recurrence of death.⁵ There are also performances intended to secure to the deceased ancestors who, for aught one knows, are in the same danger of re-dying, genuine, instead of temporary and conditional immortality.⁶ This “death-anew,” or “re-death” (punarmrtyu) as the Hindus call it, is an exceedingly characteristic idea, but it is not yet transmigration of souls. As long as its scene is located entirely in the other world, and as long as it is thought possible to avoid or cure it by the ordinary expedients of sacrifice, so long the essential character of that belief is not yet present. But the transition from one to the other was easy. If men can die in heaven there is no way, short of annihilation, to secure peace for anything that started out by being mortal. Next, the notion of “re-death” in the imagined world beyond was after all too shadowy; it lacked the practical data of experience. It was very natural to transplant the consequences of “re-death” to this earth, the home and hearth of death where men, like fish, die at every wink of the eye. He who must die again comes on to do it on earth where the trick is so well understood—lo and behold, we have the essential of metempsychosis, namely a succession of lives and deaths in the career of one and the same being. I am far from believing that even such smooth reasoning, taken by itself, suffices to account for the presence of this important doctrine in India. The germs of the belief in transmigration are very likely to have filtered into the Brahmanical consciousness from below, from popular sources, possibly from some of the aboriginal, non-Aryan tribes of India. Brahmanical religion has always borrowed immensely from folk beliefs and practices, and has always managed to impart to these borrowings the look of integral Brahmanical doctrine.

Like a will-o’-the-wisp the belief in transmigration⁷ flares up in many parts of the world. We hear of it among the Egyptians and the Celts, but it has developed most significantly among the Greeks and Hindus. Its wide vogue is due to a fusion of some of the simplest observations and reasonings about life and death, such as can scarcely fail to come to the mind of primitive man. It is pure folk-lore. Three suppositions are required for this belief:

First, man has a soul, separate and separable from the body.

Secondly, animals, plants, and even inanimate objects similarly have souls.

Thirdly, all these souls can change their habitations.

The belief that man has a soul depends in the main upon two observations: First, breath of life and its cessation after death. Life’s breath is construed by primitive observers as an entity which lives with the living body and leaves it at death. When life’s breath departs, the soul departs. Secondly, intercourse of the living with the dead continues in dreams and hallucinations. This shows that the dead after all exist. Primitive man does not recognise illusions.

The belief in animal and plant souls, and even souls of inanimate objects (fetish), is based upon the same sort of simple logic. Animals have both life’s breath and some measure of reason. Nomads, cattle-raisers, hunters, inhabitants of forest and seacoast are thrown into intimate intercourse, each with particular classes of animals whose mental resources are not only obvious, but often clash with man’s interests. Clear up into the high literature of beast fable and fairy-tale survives the folk’s very real belief in reasoning, soul-inhabited animals: see Reynard the Fox and Bre’r Rabbit. Primitive man, too, in the search after his own origin has often blundered into the notion that man is descended from one or the other animal. This has given rise to the very important religious, political, and economic institutions known as Totemism.

As regards plants, the Hindu Law-Book of Manu forbids the chewing of red rosin, doubtless because it looks like coagulated blood, and blood must not be drunk.⁸ The tree is supposed to be alive. The weird twilight shapes of trees and plants, the sough of the wind in the leaves of the forest-trees again suggest life in the vegetable kingdom.

As regards inanimate things, we need but remember the child’s relation to its doll, or, that children punish with their own oft-tasted penalties the stick over which they stumble. In brief, the nearer or remoter analogies of human life which pervade, or seem to pervade all objects in nature present themselves to early man as guarantees or suggestions of universal animation, of souls present in every shapen thing.

And now the passage of these souls from one kind of receptacle to another, from man to man, from man to animal, plant, or stock, or stone, follows inevitably. The records of primitive beliefs are full of it. I will merely remind you of the belief in werewolves as one instance of this kind. In the final outcome of all these notions some peoples, eager to account for the destiny of man after death, have assumed a chain of variegated existences. And with this goes very generally some notion of evolution forward or backward. The character of the creature in a certain given existence controls the degree of the next existence. This last bit of logic has flowered out in India as the important doctrine of karma or “deed.”⁹

As far as India is concerned one thing is certain: real metempsychosis does not enter into the higher thought of India, or, at least, is not stated unmistakably until we come to the Upanishads. When, however, this belief has finally taken shape we find in it the following established items of faith: Every living creature is reborn in some organic shape; every living creature had a previous existence; and every living creature is again and again the prey of death, until in some life all desire and all activity as the outcome of desire shall have been laid aside. This is the Hindu salvation, namely, absolute resignation of the finite, futile, illusory world; cessation of the will to live, and the act of living. This of itself produces union with Brahma. Not until mortal man has cast off every desire of his heart does he enter immortal into Brahma. We have now arrived at the thought or the position of the Upanishads, the last in the long line of Vedic texts. Like all Vedic thought, the thought of the Upanishads is not systematic, but tentative, fanciful, and even romantic. It feels its way through misty, wavering, sometimes conflicting beginnings. The more rigid conclusions come later on in one or the other of the so-called systems of Hindu philosophy.

Still even in the Upanishads so important a doctrine must be established on reason. There are two questions to be asked. First, why must the soul wander from life to life; secondly, why does its habitation differ from life to life, liable to reincarnation: at one time as an animal high or low; at another as a human being of various degrees; and at yet another even as a god? For our convenience we may answer the second question first. The celebrated Law-Book of Manu, at a time when this doctrine has become cut and dried, teaches that a Brahman priest who steals the substance which has been entrusted to him for sacrifice to the gods will in his next existence become a vulture or a crow.¹⁰ Why? Because the vulture and the crow make their living by stealing food. Briefly, man is what he does.

Note the superb moral possibilities of this teaching. This is the well-known doctrine of karma, or “deed,” now famous wherever men are interested in the evolution of the human mind. Deed and the will, or “desire,” as the Hindus call it, back of the deed, are essentially one and the same thing. On desire man’s nature is founded; as his desires so are his endeavors, as his endeavors so are his deeds. By his deeds the character of his next birth in the round of existences is regulated, for he is himself the sum of his own deeds. If his karma in a given life has accumulated for him a good balance, as it were, the next life will be delightful and noble; conversely, if his life is evil, the next birth will be, consequently, as a low and degraded being. Life is character—character inherited and inherent from previous existence, and character modelled and shaped by the deeds of the present existence. Now we may answer the first question, namely, Why must the soul wander at all? The answer is: No deed leads the way to salvation, to release from life and union with Brahma. Aye, to be sure, as the fragrance of a tree in blossom so the fragrance of a good deed is wafted afar, saith the Chandogya Upanishad.¹¹ But even the best deed is a thing from its very nature limited and vitiated by the finite. It rewards itself, it punishes itself, according to a process of automatic psychic evolution, but the fruit of the finite can itself be only finite:

“Yajnavalkya,” says Artabhaga in the “Great Forest Upanishad,”¹² “if, after the death of this man, his speech goes into fire, his breath into wind, his eye into the sun, his mind into the moon, his ear into the directions of space, his body into the earth, his self (atman) into ether, the hair of his body into plants, the hair of his head into trees, his blood and semen into water,—what then becomes of the man?” Then spake Yajnavalkya: “Take me by the hand, my dear! Artabhaga, we two must come to an understanding about this privately, not here among people.” And they went out and consulted. And what they said was DEED (karma), and what they praised was DEED: ‘Verily, one becomes good through good deed, evil through evil deed.’

Later in the same tract¹³ Yajnavalkya describes the departure of the soul from the body and its consequences to man: “Then his knowledge and his works and his previous experience take him by the hand. As a caterpillar which has wriggled to the tip of a blade of grass draws itself over to (a new blade), so does this man, after he has put aside his body, draw himself over to a new existence. . . Now verily they say: ‘Man is altogether desire (kama); as is his desire so is his insight (kratu); as is his insight so is his deed (karma); as is his deed so is his destiny.’”

More than one Western reader, when he ponders the doctrine of transmigration as rooted in desire and deed, is likely to ask the question why the Hindus did not rest content with its outcome. The bulk of their spiritual energy in Brahmanism, as well as in Buddhism and the other Hindu sects, is expended in the effort to break the chain that ties man to existence. Why is this so? The Western man, if I gauge him aright, is willing to tarry in the life garden of will, desire, and deed, plucking its fruits and flowers at the risk of an occasional prick from its thorns, or sting from its noxious insects. We want more life, fuller life. Here are some of the points connected with transmigration that are naturally sympathetic to Western minds:

1. Love of life, and abhorrence of annihilation: transmigration ensures life in some form for ever and ever.

2. The twin ghosts of fatalism and predestination are laid. Where will and deed, with character as their result, rule every destiny, nothing is accidental, nothing is pre-determined. Man himself, free from outside interference, is the arbiter of his own destiny.

3. It involves the perfection of retribution: reward and punishment adjust themselves automatically and organically to virtue and vice. It opens wide the door of hope to the lowly and oppressed, and checks the excesses of the cruel mighty. Byron’s despairing,

“Methinks we have sinned in some old world And this is Hell,”

loses its sting. It is mere justice. But it is the justice that knows how to reward merit just as unerringly, as it knows how to punish sin inexorably. There is no human being so hedged in by calamity, vice, and degradation, but what he or she may start on the upward road by some act of determination for good. If the wish, “Grant me my heaven now,” fails of fulfilment, who knows that it may not be fulfilled in the train of heroic effort?

And yet the deep-seated instinct of life which makes men all over the earth, India included, wail and cry out against death, and which makes them cling to existence with a tenacity that is almost pathetic, has in India been overborne by a philosophy which declares that life itself is the root of all evil. This is the pessimistic view of life. The Hindus have reasoned somewhat as follows: Life is a succession of desires; desire is the root of all suffering; therefore life is suffering. The very fact that we are born is a calamity; the very fact that we must die is a calamity; the very fact that we must grow old and weak is a calamity; the very fact that we must be sick is a calamity. Separation from the beloved is suffering; association with the hated is suffering; the failure to obtain what we desire is suffering. In brief, existence itself is suffering. This is the pessimistic view of life which has taken possession of the Hindu mind, and which, through Buddhism, has spread to other parts of Asia. It is not a view which has sprung from the morbid temperament of a few philosophers. It is a view which has taken root in the very heart of the people. It is a view which has shaped the institutions and the ideals of Hindu society. It is a view which has produced the ascetic ideal, and which has made the renunciation of the world the highest good.

Now, how did this pessimistic view of life come to be adopted by the Hindus? The answer is not far to seek. The Hindus observed that in the world as it is, there is much suffering. They observed that the rich and the powerful are often wicked, and that the poor and the weak are often virtuous. They observed that virtue does not always bring happiness, and that vice does not always bring misery. They observed that the good man often suffers, and that the wicked man often prospers. In short, they observed that there is no perfect justice in the world. But they also believed in the doctrine of karma, which teaches that every deed has its consequences, and that these consequences must eventually be realized. How, then, could they reconcile the apparent injustice of the world with the doctrine of karma? The answer was that the injustice which we observe in the world is not real injustice, but is the result of the deeds which men have done in their previous existences. The poor man who is virtuous is poor because of the evil deeds which he did in a previous existence; the rich man who is wicked is rich because of the good deeds which he did in a previous existence. In this way, the doctrine of karma and the pessimistic view of life are reconciled.

But there is another reason for the pessimistic view of life. The Hindus have observed that all things are transient. The rich man becomes poor; the strong man becomes weak; the beautiful woman becomes ugly; the young man becomes old. Everything that we love must eventually be taken from us by death. In this way, the Hindus have come to the conclusion that all worldly things are illusory and transient, and that the only reality is the eternal and unchanging Brahma. This is the doctrine of maya, or the world as illusion.

Now, given the pessimistic view of life and the doctrine of karma, the Hindus have concluded that the only way to escape from the suffering of existence is to escape from the cycle of birth and death. This can be done only by realizing one’s identity with Brahma, the eternal and unchanging reality. This realization is called moksha, or liberation. It is the ultimate goal of Hindu religion and philosophy.

The path to moksha is not through the performance of good deeds, for even good deeds bind one to the cycle of birth and death. The path to moksha is through the realization of one’s identity with Brahma. This realization is achieved through knowledge, or jnana. The knowledge which leads to moksha is not intellectual knowledge, but intuitive knowledge. It is the direct realization of one’s identity with Brahma.

This is the final philosophy of the Veda. It is a philosophy which has profoundly influenced the thought and the institutions of India. It is a philosophy which has produced the ascetic ideal, and which has made the renunciation of the world the highest good. It is a philosophy which has shaped the destiny of India for thousands of years.

Footnotes

“Gieb regen und gieb sonnenschein Für Reuss und Schleuss und Lobenstein; Und wollen andre auch was ha’n So mögen sie’s dir selber sa’n.”

My colleague, Professor Gildersleeve, proposes the following English transfusion:

“Give rain and sunshine we implo' For us upon the Eastern sho’; If any others want a share Themselves may offer up the prayer.”

The Religion of the Veda

The Final Philosophy of the Veda

the present existence. Now we may answer the first question, namely, Why must the soul wander at all? The answer is: No deed leads the way to salvation, to release from life and union with Brahma. Aye, to be sure, as the fragrance of a tree in blossom so the fragrance of a good deed is wafted afar, saith the Chândogya Upanishad.¹⁴ But even the best deed is a thing from its very nature limited and vitiated by the finite. It rewards itself, it punishes itself, according to a process of automatic psychic evolution, but the fruit of the finite can itself be only finite: “Yajnavalkya,” says Artabhaga in the “Great Forest Upanishad,”¹⁵ “if, after the death of this man, his speech goes into fire, his breath into wind, his eye into the sun, his mind into the moon, his ear into the directions of space, his body into the earth, his self (atman) into ether, the hair of his body into plants, the hair of his head into trees, his blood and semen into water,—what then becomes of the man?” Then spake Yajnavalkya: “Take me by the hand, my dear! Artabhaga, we two must come to an understanding about this privately, not here among people.” And they went out and consulted. And what they said was DEED (karma), and what they praised was DEED: ‘Verily, one becomes good through good deed, evil through evil deed.’

Later in the same tract¹⁶ Yajnavalkya describes the departure of the soul from the body and its consequences to man: “Then his knowledge and his works and his previous experience take him by the hand. As a caterpillar which has wriggled to the tip of a blade of grass draws itself over to (a new blade), so does this man, after he has put aside his body, draw himself over to a new existence. . . Now verily they say: ‘Man is altogether desire (kâma)’, as is his desire so is his insight (kratu); as is his insight so is his deed (karma); as is his deed so is his destiny.’”

More than one Western reader, when he ponders the doctrine of transmigration as rooted in desire and deed, is likely to ask the question why the Hindus did not rest content with its outcome. The bulk of their spiritual energy in Brahmanism, as well as in Buddhism and the other Hindu sects, is expended in the effort to break the chain that ties man to existence. Why is this so? The Western man, if I gauge him aright, is willing to tarry in the life garden of will, desire, and deed, plucking its fruits and flowers at the risk of an occasional prick from its thorns, or sting from its noxious insects. We want more life, fuller life. Here are some of the points connected with transmigration that are naturally sympathetic to Western minds:

1. Love of life, and abhorrence of annihilation: transmigration ensures life in some form for ever and ever.

2. The twin ghosts of fatalism and predestination are laid. Where will and deed, with character as their result, rule every destiny, nothing is accidental, nothing is pre-determined. Man himself, free from outside interference, is the arbiter of his own destiny.

3. It involves the perfection of retribution: reward and punishment adjust themselves automatically and organically to virtue and vice. It opens wide the door of hope to the lowly and oppressed, and checks the excesses of the cruel mighty. Byron’s despairing,

“Methinks we have sinned in some old world And this is Hell,”

loses its sting. It is mere justice. But it is the justice that knows how to reward merit just as unerringly, as it knows how to punish sin inexorably. There is no human being so hedged in by calamity, vice, and degradation, but what he or she may start on the upward road by some act of determination for good. If the wish, “Grant me my heaven now,” fails of fulfilment, who knows that it may not be fulfilled in the train of heroic effort?

And yet the deep-seated instinct of life which makes men all over the earth, India included, wail their dead, goes hand in hand in all higher forms of Hindu religion with the apparently sincere expression of a desire to be released from life. Pessimism, at first negative, in the end positive and profound, becomes the ruling theory of Hindu life. With all the attractions, fascinations, and beauties of life, life is felt to be a fetter, or a knot which ties the heart to the world of sense; and release (moksha) from the everlasting round of lives (samsâra) is the Hindu salvation (nirvâna). Buddhism later on expresses the urgent need of salvation from existence in its well-known fourfold doctrine of suffering. Its first clause establishes the truth of suffering: Birth is suffering; age is suffering; disease is suffering; union with what is not loved is suffering; separation from what is loved is suffering. The conviction that all life is futile is expressed hardly less distinctly in the Great Forest Upanishad (3. 5. 2), where hunger and thirst, woe and delusion, age and death, desire for children, and desire for possessions are lumped alike as the evils and vanities of life, before the highest knowledge has been attained.¹⁷ Anyhow, all the principal Hindu systems of religion and philosophy start out with the assurance that the world is full of suffering, and that is their particular business to account for it and to remove it.

We must not forget that the perpetual decay and death and replacement which is the gist of human life when looked at purely from the outside is not redeemed in India by any theory, or instinctive faith in general advancement. There is in all Hindu thought no expression of hope for the race, no theory of betterment all along the line. Each individual must attend to his own uplifting that is to free him from a world whose worthlessness is condemned in unmeasured terms. Admitting that this is to no small extent mere theory; that the average Hindu worries along, sustained by life, hope, sunshine, and what not, whence the theory?

The question has frequently been put point blank: How did Hindu pessimism originate? I believe that the answer, or at least a partial answer, may be made with some degree of certainty, to wit: India herself, through her climate, her nature, and her economic conditions, furnishes reasonable ground for pessimism. As regards economic conditions political economists say that the value of human life in any country may be estimated by the average wage of its earners. A low caste servant may to-day be engaged for a wage of five cents a day out of which he must, owing to caste laws, find his own keep, and possibly that of a family besides. India’s nature is more malignant than that of any other civilised country. The floods of great rivers devastate at times entire districts; per contra, when the rains are withheld at the time of the capricious monsoons, famine with plague or cholera in its wake, decimate the population. The tribe of venomous serpents and the blood-lust of the tiger claim their regular quota of victims.

Our first acquaintance with the Aryan Hindus in the hymns of the Veda shows them to us a sturdy, life-loving people on the banks, or in the region of the river Indus, the land of the five streams, the modern Punjab in Northwestern India. That country they had conquered, fresh from the highlands that separate India from Iran. By successive contests, hinted at in a very interesting legend of the Brahmana texts¹⁸ they advanced eastward, until they had overrun the plain of the Ganges—the hottest civilised land on the face of the earth. This is the land of Hindu theosophy, the land of the Upanishads, the land where Buddha preached, some centuries after the earliest Upanishads. Buddha’s most famous sermon was delivered at Benares, in the very centre of the plain of the Ganges. There in the land of Bengal, if anywhere on the face of the civilised earth, the doubts and misgivings that beset human life at its best might permanently harden into the belief that life is a sorry affair. Hindu literature that comes from these lands shows us that the Aryans did not succumb to this change, for they remain a great and remarkable people. But this habitat of theirs unquestionably left an indelible impression on their character. The mental subtleness of the race did not perish, but their bodies suffered; hypochondria, melancholia, dyspepsia—call it what we may—conquered the conquering Aryan, whose stock was no doubt the product of a more northerly and invigorating climate.

Now it is time to remember once more that the conception of the One True Being—let us now call it Brahma—had risen to a considerable height, apparently long before the doctrine of transmigration had taken hold of the Hindu mind, and established in it the theory of despair of the world. Even aside from such a theory it is natural for the mind of man in every clime and time to evolve some great power that is behind the phenomena of the world, to establish to its own satisfaction some sort of perfect principle that is underneath this obviously imperfect world, and then to long for some kind of association with that power or principle. So teach us all higher religions and religious philosophies. Without doubt the Hindus did this before pessimism and independently of pessimism. But when pessimism began to taint the Hindu view of life, then the eternal all-force, the root of all, the One True and Perfect Thing offered the only logical escape from the evils of existence.

The theory of the Brahma and the theory of transmigration united like the two branches of a river. The wandering of the soul through the realms governed by death must be the consequence of its separation from Brahma. As long as lasts the will to live this life of death, as long as this will means finite desires and finite deed, so long the soul remains separate from Brahma in the chain of successive lives and deaths, each new life shaped by the karma of the preceding life. Escape from this chain can be accomplished only by union with the Single True Being, the Brahma.

Hinduism has again in this matter taken a remarkable turn, if we test it by the normal temper of the Western mind. It is a kind of dualistic pessimism, in which the good that is in the world as well as the evil that is there are both made to emphasise the evil. It is a pessimism that is reached through both avenues; the avenue of evil, because it is evil; and the avenue of good, because it suggests by its very terms the existence of evil. We Westerners have learned one way or another to endure this naughty world fairly well. But when it becomes too bad we are apt to remember that the refuge is with the Omnipotent Power. That is the silver lining to the cloud of human existence. The Hindu mind turns this the other way; the silvery sheen of Brahma has a cloud lining. The conception of this One True Being, out of which flow all visible things, might have been an anchor of strength and a head-spring of hope and joy for the Hindus. A palpably possible consequence of their thought is, that all men have the divine or Brahmic spark, that all are microcosms, flung off—for some reason—by that superb macrocosm, the Brahma. If so, then individual human existence must be based upon truth and wholesomeness, no less than the Universal Brahma. Not so did the Hindus proceed. They lavish upon the Brahma all imaginable attributes of perfection, and then proceed to apply the same standard to this world: of course they find it by contrast a very sorry affair. The world ceases to be a desirable home in which one may live, sustained perhaps by the hope of better things to come, because it is measured by the standard of Brahma and found wanting. When the Brahma is praised, that Brahma which is lifted above hunger and thirst, above grief and worry, above old age, decay, and death, the persistent personal application is, that this world of creatures is full of hunger, thirst, grief, worry, old age, decay, and death.

There is yet one consequence to be drawn. The question is asked, as it must be: “What is the cure for desire, the thirst for life and its contents? How cut the fetter, or the knot of adhesion to the illusory world? How get rid of the will to live?” The answer is, through knowledge. Knowledge, or perhaps it would be better to say intuition, of the unity of the individual self with the great True One; and the recognition, ever present, of the divided, distracted, illusory nature of everything finite: When a mortal has recognised Brahma, feeling, “He is myself,” how can he longer desire and cling to bodily life? This is the culminating thought of the Upanishads and the Veda, expressed in the solemn three words tat tvam asi, “Thou art That.” That is to say, the essence of man is itself Brahma. The wise man when once he has seen That (tad apaçyat), becomes That (tad abhavat), because in truth he always was and is That (tad âsît).¹⁹ Thus the final attainment of man is this knowledge; it is the “works” of the Jew, and the “faith” of the Christian—salvation by the complete ascendency of the divine in one’s self, and the consequent submergence of all that is temporal and illusory.

It is time now that we return to the last question which I propounded for to-day’s lecture. How did the brahma, the One, the Universal spirit, finally shape himself from out of the mass of ideas whose constant drift was in the direction of oneness, or, as we may finally call it, monistic pantheism? One of the main circumstances of the higher religious thought of the time just preceding the Upanishads was a strong monotheistic tendency which seemed to develop simultaneously and peacefully along with the monistic ideas, such as the “That,” the “Only,” the “Being.” In the Upanishads monotheism is practically at an end, whereas the attempts to designate the abstract conceptions just mentioned emerge from the stage of tremulous venture to confident and familiar statement. Yet they are not any one of them the final name of the Universal Being. Even the Upanishad mind seems to prefer something more tangible and suggestive, something that after all has attributes.

In the seething caldron of the earlier speculation there occur yet two other conceptions which have become pretty well crystallised even before the time of the Upanishads. The first of these is the conception of the ātman, which means first “breath,” and then “self.” As far as the early poetry is concerned there is not the least doubt about the primary meaning of ātman.¹⁵ It is familiarly correlated with wind, “the breath of the gods.”¹⁶ The ātman or soul of man after death returns to mingle with the wind from which it is supposed to have come.¹⁷ The later Veda abounds in crude and fanciful psycho-physical observations in which the parts and functions of the human body, the little cosmos, are correlated more or less skilfully with the phenomena of the outer world, the big cosmos. An important thought of this sort is, that the human body is pervaded by plural breaths, prānas or ātmans; these vivify the body, and are the essential part, the ego, of the living individual. Several of the older Upanishads contain a fable, resembling the Latin fable of “the belly and the members.” The vital powers are quarrelling among themselves for supremacy. They bring their case before Prajāpati, “the lord of creatures.” Prajāpati advises them to leave the body one by one and to observe which loss affects it most. The voice, the eye, the ear, the mind departed, discommoding the body quite a good deal. But when the breath was on the point of departing, “just as the proud steed from the Indus would pull and tear the pegs of his tether, so it pulled and tore the other vital powers.” And they yielded the palm to the ātman. Hence a text declares: “From the ātman all the members spring into existence. Of all things that come into existence the ātman is the first.” The ātmans, or breaths, are finally conceived as coming from a single ātman, the universal breath, or self, or ego. A Brāhmana text declares: “Ten (kinds of) breath dwell in man; the universal ātman is the eleventh: all the breaths are contained in him.” That is, the ātman, after its supreme place in the own self has been permanently fixed, is transferred on exactly the same terms to the universe outside of man. The ātman, the lord of breaths, is at the same time the lord of the gods, the creator of all beings; all the worlds are an emanation of his great universal self: finally the ātman is the all.

It is easy to see that with all the refinement of the term ātman in its final outcome, it certainly has a strong physical touch, at least in the beginning of its use. The final shaping of the idea consisted in associating, or rather fusing, with this ātman another conception, coming from a totally different quarter, namely, the olden Vedic sphere of devotion, prayer, holy performance, in fact religion in general. Even in the Vedic hymns, as we have seen, the epithet “Goddess” is freely given to the numerous names for prayer, devotion, religious emotion, and kindred ideas. Unquestionably the sāvitrī stanza owes its puzzlingly paramount position in Hindu religion to the same estimate of devotion as a thing essentially divine.¹⁸ We have also made acquaintance with a symbolic “Lord of Prayer,” Brihaspati, an important, but not lasting attempt to pour the sacred function of the poets and priests into the mould of a personal god. He marks one of those false starts towards personal monotheism in which the later Veda abounds. More and more the sacred word, the constant companion of the sacrifice, is felt to be a kind of uplifting spiritual essence. The sacred word is brahma. Starting as prayer,¹⁹ charm, sacred formula, religious act, it becomes the symbol of holy thought and holy utterance (logos), the outpouring of the soul in its highest longings. It is the best wish of a spiritually minded and gifted people that becomes for a while personal god, and at last the divine essence of the universe. The conception is intellectually not as subtle and abstract as the monistic philosophical conception of “That Only True Being,” which comes entirely from the head. But from the point of view of heart-felt emotion it is the most exalted divine conception of gentile folk. Such is the brahma, used in the neuter gender, not yet the masculine God Brahma who, after a renewed personification is placed at the head of the later Hindu so-called trinity, Brahma, Vishnu, and Çiva: “The brahma is the word, the truth in the word is brahma. Through brahma heaven and earth are held together.”

The two conceptions of ātman and brahma, in their origin, respectively, the physical and spiritual essences of the universe, are fused into one conception. They are used in general as synonyms. Still there is a tendency to use brahma, “Holy Thought,” as the designation of the universal principle in the outer world; ātman, “Self,” as the same principle in the inner life of man. The conviction that the brahma without and the ātman within are one and the same, that is the real religion of the Upanishads. The power which operates in the universe, creating, sustaining, and destroying, the power behind this imperfect world that perchance moves on to some final development; the power that manifests itself in every living thing;—this eternal power is identical with our own innermost and truest self, equally imperishable when stripped of all its external and accidental circumstances. This conviction is embalmed in the famous words, tat tvam asi, “Thou art That,” or aham brahma asmi, “I am the Brahma.” These are the slogans of higher religious thought; and they contain the corollary that the world of things which we see in space, as we ideally assume it to be with our eyes and bodies, themselves phenomena, are mere shadows cast by the one truth—the innermost Personal Self identical with the outer Universal Self, the brahma-ātman.²⁰

Now we have seen that our empirical knowledge which shows us a manifold variegated world wherein truth there is only brahma, and a body where there is in truth only ātman, or the brahma in ourselves, that all that is mere ignorance, distraction, or illusion. The things that are unfolded before our eyes in space, those things to which we ourselves belong with our ponderable bodies, are not true entities, they are not the ātman. As long as this is not recognised, the Hindus say there is avidyā “ignorance,” or, more literally and philosophically “nescience.” Or they say that there is māyā “illusion.” All else aside from this single truth is a mere mirage in the desert, and is so far as it must after all have some kind of a connection with Brahma, have some reality in Brahma, it is no more real than the reflection of the real moon which we see trembling on the ripple of the waters. Even the very conception of nescience or illusion is, of course, not real, because it can be annihilated, and whatever is temporary is not real. What induced the time-less, space-less, and cause-less Brahma to enter upon the escapade of this phenomenal world of time, space, and causality, the Hindu thinkers cannot tell us. Their mythology is full of crude ideas of the primitive being’s loneliness and desire to multiply, but these ideas belong to the lower forms of their religion; they are not entertained by their philosophers. This is the point where Hinduism like every system of idealistic philosophy breaks down. Plato’s τὸ ὄντως ὄν; the ens realissimum; Kant’s ding an sich; the Upanishads’ “That only True” are all very well, but the world of phenomena to explain that—aye there’s the rub. This pesky world of plural things, full of irrational quantities—why does it exist, and is it not pounding along toward some end that will show a uniting principle? With that kind of suggestion the Hindu will have nothing to do. Entranced by the absolute reality of the one Brahma he wafts away the world of experience as a conjurer an optical delusion.

Into the maze of difficulties and inconsistencies which opens out here we need not go. The manifold modifications, adjustments, and the trimming down of the main thought which the Upanishads are driven to undertake belong to philosophy rather than religion. According to the Upanishads’ own definition of the ātman, everything that these works undertake to say about anything other than the ātman is mere figure of speech, and every definition of the ātman itself is also figure of speech. Every definition is necessarily stopped by the words: “No, No” (na neti). The Brahma has no attributes (nirguna). Yea, the Hindu when in the proper mood, advancing straight to the last consequence, looking neither to the right nor to the left, denies the possibility of knowing Brahma altogether. Tremendous paradox this, considering all depends upon the intuition of this very conception. In a conversation with his wife Maitreyi¹⁵ the great thinker Yājnavalkya asserts that there is no consciousness after death, because there must be two in order that one should see the other, smell, hear, address, understand, recognise the other. “But if one has himself become Ātman (that is, “Self”) by means of what and whom should he then see? By means of what and whom should he then smell, hear, address, understand, recognise?” In brief and dry language, being himself the subject, and there being no object, there is no cognition nor consciousness.

Emerson’s keen and terse poem on the Brahma in which the Brahma itself speaks, approaches this idea of absolute unity. But the chilly sombre theme is made warm and glowing in these lines which may be counted among the best in the English language:

If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far and forgot to me is near, Shadow and sunlight are the same, The vanished gods to me appear, And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt. And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode And pine in vain, the Sacred Seven; But thou meek lover of the good! Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

But we are concerned with the value of the Upanishads as religion, in a world which for practical purposes must be admitted to be real, for man who for practical purposes must be admitted to be real. The Çvetāçvatara Upanishad starts out with the old question:

Whence are we born? Whereby do we live, and whither do we go? O ye who know Brahma, tell us at whose command we abide here, whether in pain or in pleasure? Should Time, or nature, or necessity, or chance, or the elements be considered as the cause, or he who is called Purusha, that is, the Supreme Spirit?

The Upanishads answer for practical purposes:

The Supreme Spirit that is alike in the universe and in man—that is the essence of all. It is Being, without a second, without beginning and without end, without limitations of any kind. Whatever there is, or seems to be, mind and matter, nature and man, is one substance only, namely, Brahma.

The same Yājnavalkya, whose desperately rationalistic answer to his wife Maitreyi we have just heard, takes also a more human view of the Atman. This is told in the frame of a quaint little story, as follows¹⁶:

Yājnavalkya had two wives, Maitreyi and Kātyāyani. Of these two Maitreyi knew how to discourse about the brahma; Kātyāyani, on the other hand, knew only what women are supposed to understand. Now Yājnavalkya desired to change his life of householder to that of religious hermit.

“Maitreyi,” says he, “I shall now retire from the condition of householder, and as a preliminary divide my goods between thee and Kātyāyani.” Then spake Maitreyi: “If, O lord, this whole earth with all its wealth belonged to me, would I then become immortal, or not?” “By no means,” replies Yājnavalkya. “Only like the life of the rich would thy life be; wealth does not carry with it the expectation of immortality.” Then replied Maitreyi: “That through which I do not become immortal, what good is that to me? Expound to me rather thy knowledge.” Then Yājnavalkya: “Truly thou wast previously dear to us, beloved lady, and now thou hast increased our love. Well then, I shall expound it to thee; attend then, to what I say: All things of the world, and every relation in the world are dear to us not because of their own value, but because of the ātman, their true essence. Wife, husband, sons, wealth; the high stations of priest and warrior; the worlds, the gods, the Veda, and the sacrifice are dear to us not because of their own value, but because of the ātman, their true essence. As one grasps the tones of an instrument with the instrument itself so are grasped all things when the ātman is grasped. Truly he that hath seen, heard, recognised, and understood the ātman he knows the whole world.”¹⁷

We may be sure that Yājnavalkya does not really intend to expound to his beloved Maitreyi the extremes of super-sensual rationalism. In effect he expresses the ideal of union with the supreme being, the ultimate endeavor of all religions that have evolved a supreme being worth uniting with. At a later period there comes out of the permanently untenable, cool intellectualism of the Upanishads the religion of the Bhaktas or “pious devotees.” The destiny of Upanishad thought is, after all, an acute and mystic monotheism, very like the mysticism of those Christian “friends of god,” John Tauler and Thomas à Kempis. By knowledge they discover the Supreme Intelligence and perceive its essence; by devotion (bhakti) they feel the sweetness of the Supreme Being and reciprocate its loving intent. So the Bhagavadgītā, the “Song of the Celestial,” can finally make the Supreme Being say of the pious man: “Through love he recognises me in truth, my greatness and my essence. He that loves me is not lost.” It comes to this finally, that knowledge of the Supreme is but a preparation for what we call love of God. In the words of the modern Bengali Saint and Ascetic Ramakrishna: “The Knowledge of God may be likened to a man, while the Love of God is like a woman. Knowledge has entry only up to the outer rooms of God, but no one can enter into the inner mysteries of God save a lover, for a woman has access even to the privacy of the Almighty.”¹⁸ And finally the same thinker arrives at the last possible conclusion: “Knowledge and love of God are ultimately one and the same. There is no difference between pure knowledge and pure love.” We might have predicted the same result. To a religion which strives with all its might to know the truth, truth’s sister, love, does not long remain a stranger.

Yājnavalkya, as we have seen, abandons his wives and goes to live in the forest. Such “Forest-Hermits” (ἱλόβιοι) must have been common in India several centuries before Christ. Buddha criticises them, and declares himself as against their ascetic life and practices as a hindrance rather than a help to a life of perfect freedom from passions and desires, a life of true emancipation. He himself advocates moderation in all things, salvation included. He prefers the “middle of the road,” as both he and we say (the media via, or madhyamamārga). About 300 B.C. a clever Greek by the name of Megasthenes was the ambassador of the Graeco-Persian king Seleukos at the court of Chandragupta in the city of Pātaliputra (311-302 B.C.). Chandragupta—Sandrakottos or Sandrokyptos as the Greeks called him—had succeeded, after the death of Alexander the Great, in founding the great Indian empire of the Maurya dynasty, the largest empire known up to that time in India. Megasthenes wrote a work called Indica which contains much important information about the India of his day. He tells that these ascetics were indifferent to the good or evil that happens to man; that all being, in their opinion, is dreamlike illusion; that they regard the world as created and perishable; and believe that God who has created it pervades it completely. Considering the source, this is an uncommonly good description of the pessimistic pantheism of the Upanishads.

Alexander the Great himself was much impressed with these “Sages of the Forest.” He sent one Onesikritos to talk with them. After having been laughed at by the ascetics for his full dress of mantle, hat, and boots, and told to lie naked upon the stones if he would learn from them, he was finally initiated into the Hindu idea, to wit, that the best doctrine is that which removes not only sorrow but also joy from the soul of man.

Professor Huxley in his Evolution and Ethics (p. 65) has subjected the Hindu ideal to severe criticism. According to him the summum bonum of the Hindu is a state of impassive quasi-somnambulism which but for its acknowledged holiness might run the risk of being confounded with idiocy. It leads to the abandonment of property, social ties, family affections, and common companionship, until all that remains of a man is the impassive attenuated mendicant monk, self-hypnotised into cataleptic trances which the deluded mystic takes for foretastes of final union with Brahma. Professor Huxley has in mind the extreme case of Yogin of the later time, who confounds hocus-pocus and humbug with religion. As a matter of fact the Upanishad religion is a religion of perfect freedom, and equally as a matter of fact the religious of the Upanishads do find it advisable as a rule to retire from active life after having done their duty in active life.

Yājnavalkya’s step marks not only the new order of thought but also the new order of life which the religion of the atman-brahma imposes upon India. In fact we may say that henceforth India leads a double life. The first is the life of every day. The fragile human creature enters through the mother’s womb, where it has been protected by the pious prayers and ceremonies of its parents, into the bewildering sunshine of this world. If it only knew it, it would be glad that the karma of its former existence entitles its soul in the present existence to the shelter of a human body, howsoever lowly. Worse might have happened in the hazard of the lottery of transmigration. Birth means that the soul in question has not yet joined Brahma. He who has not done so, alas, is born again as worm or as fly; as fish or as fowl; as lion or as boar; as bull or as tiger, or man; or as something else—any old thing as we might say—in this place or in that place, according to the quality of his works, and the degree of his knowledge, that is in accordance with the doctrine of karma.¹⁵ Thanks to the past the present is secure: worse might have happened than to pass through the temporary shelter of a human mother’s body into the more enduring shelter of the mother’s love. The Hindu mother, like any other mother, rejoices in her child, especially if he is a boy, and asks no questions about his ultimate cosmic destiny. Father and mother now bend every energy to raise the child so that he may become an honored member of the Brahmanical community, beloved alike of god and man. The Hindu books of Rules of Home Life, the so-called Grihyasutras,¹⁶ tell a touching story of the pious care with which the child is piloted through infancy. Indeed the life of the Brahmanical Hindu is sacramental throughout. Every important phase of his life has its own sacraments. The most important of them are the investiture by his teacher with the sacred cord, and his marriage.

This investiture is looked upon as a spiritual second birth, or regeneration. The little mortal becomes a man in a higher sense, because his teacher teaches him the Veda, syllable by syllable, word by word, stanza by stanza. During the period of his disciplehood he is the devoted servant of his teacher who, throughout Hindu tradition, is regarded as even better entitled to respect than his own parents. No matter how rich and powerful his own family, he now lives obedient to his teacher, taking care of his wants to the point of gathering his fire-wood and begging for him in the village, humble and chaste in his own life. In return he obtains from his teacher the sacred knowledge, the Veda. Especially, the sacrosanct Savitri, that famous brief stanza¹⁷ which at an early time carries within it the presentiment of the deep theosophy that is to come, by placing in the relation of cause and effect the physical and spiritual essences of the universe:

“That lovely glory of Savitar, The heavenly god, we contemplate: Our pious thoughts he shall promote.”

After he has absolved the study of the Veda he becomes a full-grown man. The teacher, according to the beautiful account of the Taittiriya Upanishad (i. 11), dismisses his pupil with the following last injunction: “Tell the truth; do your duty, do not neglect the study of the Veda! After having given to your teacher your gift of love, see to it that the thread of your race be not cut off! Do not neglect truth, duty, health, property, and the study of the Veda! Honor your mother as a god! Honor your father as a god! Honor your teacher as a god! Honor your guest as a god! Live an irreproachable life; honor your superior; give alms in true spirit! When in doubt follow the judgment of Brahmans of tried authority!”

Then he passes into the life stage of full-grown man, husband and householder (grhastha). His great duties are now worship and sacrifice to the gods,—and the begetting of sons. The latter are of great importance, because they carry on through unbroken generations the cult of the Manes or Fathers who, in a vaguely inconsistent way, are still carrying on a happy life in the abodes of the blessed—between transmigrations we must suppose. This as reward for their supposedly very pious lives.

It is at the end of this stage that we may suppose Yājnavalkya takes leave of his beloved Maitreyi. The curtain now drops on the scene of all temporal interests: wife, children, home, and property. It is a curious fact that in theory at least the higher religion of the Upanishad begins where the religions of other peoples are content to conclude their offices. Having disciplined the young Brahman; having taught him how to live an orderly, god-fearing, god-protected life; having secured safe continuation of his race through pious sons; and having finally gained his admission to the heavenly home of the blessed Fathers—what more is needed?

Not so the Hindu. Over this pigmy religion which is engaged only with the needs of the ponderable, perishable man, towers as a giant the grandiose conception, than which, in its way, no higher is possible, that the True in man is in fact the One True in all the Universe. There is one eternal truth: of this we ourselves are part. The distracting, misleading, adhesion, cemented by every sense, to a divided individual existence in a world of illusory phenomena, come no one knows whence, but none the less certainly false, requires time and patience to undo. The Hindu theory assumes four stages or asramas (literally, “hermitages”) in the life of man after his rebirth at the investiture. The first two stages, as we have seen, are disciplehood and householdership. Then come the two stages of Forest-dweller, or Hermit, and Wandering Ascetic. In the hermit stage he simply lives in the forest, and may yet keep up some connection with wife and children, and continue his sacred practices. But in the last stage all worldly interest is abandoned, every fetter of affection, desire, passion is sundered. There is no fixed abode, he lives as it happens, subsists as he may, indifferent to all but the realisation that he is the brahma. This realisation of itself means the destruction of nescience: with it the phantom world of sorrow and joy sinks out of sight. The soul knowing at last that it is brahma, namely truth, sunders the chain that holds it captive through transmigration to the world, namely illusion. This is the salvation of the Hindu, namely the perfect knowledge that the soul of man that dwells in him is the unpolluted, not to be polluted, serene, holy, eternal, blissful, divine self—the atman, or brahma. The realisation of this truth, unhindered by any other desire, that is all that is needed; than it nothing else whatsoever can have anything more than temporary importance.

INDEX

A

Aborigines of India, 24, 175 Abstract gods, 96, 109, 131, 135, 191, 242 Açoka or Piyadassi, Buddhist Emperor, 19, 53 Açvamedha, “horse-sacrifice” 213, 216 Açvins, or Dioscuri, 46, 90 ff., 94, 110, 112 ff., 141, 160, 167, 172 Aditi, 130 ff. Adityas, 78, 92, 120, 129 ff., 153; meaning of the word, 131 Agni and Soma, 78 Agni, “God Fire,” 78, 87, 89, 91, 92, 110, 127, 156 ff., 244; son of Ushas (Dawn), 73, 160; his descent from heaven (lightning), 165; produced by friction, 139, 158; progenitor of men (Ayu), 139, 158; servant of the gods, 162; and his brothers, story of, 162 Agni Jatavedas (“Omniscient”), 164, 189 Ahalya, story of, 229 Aham brahma asmi, “I am the Brahma,” 275 Ahura Mazda (Ormazd), 120 ff., 126, 133, 232. See Asura Airyama, 129. See Aryaman Ajatacatru, 219, 227 Akbar, Emperor, 52 ff. A Kempis, Thomas, 281 Alexander the Great, 18, 282 Altar, three altars, 161 Amesha Spentas, “Holy Immortals,” 133 ff. Anca, 130 Andra, 176. See Indra Angiras, semi-divine priests, 144, 163 Anquetil du Perron, 54 Antiope of Boeotia, mother of Dioscuri, 116 Apri-hymns, 78, 79 Apsaras (nymphs), 46, 191 Aranyaka Texts, 49, 50, 209 Arati, “Demon of Grudge,” 191 Arrested anthropomorphism, 85, 93, 165 Arta. See Rta Artabhaga, a theosopher, 260 Aryaman, 129, 134, 153 Aryan. See Indo-Iranian Aryans, Indian, geographical provenience of, 23 Arya Samaj, a reform association, 9 Asceticism, criticised by Buddha, 282; by Professor Huxley, 283 Ascetic wanderer, 288 Asha. See Rta Asura = Ahura, 133 Atharvangirasah, “blessings and curses,” 26, 29 Atharva-Veda, 17, 25 ff., 39, 40 ff., 77; its theosophy, 209

Continued Index Entries

Atman, “Supreme Spirit,” 87, 211, 270 ff., 280. See Brahma and cf. Breath Atmospheric Gods, 92 Aurengzeb, Emperor, 52 Avesta and Veda, mutual relations of, 13, 15, 24, 118 Ayu, “Living,” designation of fire and man, 139, 158

B

Babylonian influence on Aryan religion, 133, 135 Baksheesh, 69 ff., 71, 190 ff., 194 ff., 197, 227, 229, 252; hymn addressed to, 197 Behistan rock, cuneiform inscription on, 14 “Being and non-being,” 235, 237, 238 “Belly and the members,” fable of, 271 Benfey, Theodor, 102, 108 Bentinck, Lord William, 9 Bergaigne, Abel, 72 Bhaga, old word for “God,” 109, 130, 134 Bhagavadgita, 201, 281 Bhakti, “devotion,” 195, 281. Cf. Devotion Bhrigu, a sage, 252 Bhrigvangirasah, name of Atharva-Veda, 40 Bimbisara, a Buddhist, 219 Brahma, the ultimate principle, 87, 118, 211, 232, 248, 260; meaning of the word, 205, 273; final shaping of, 273; without attributes, 277; pessimistic conception of, 267 ff.; Emerson’s poem on, 278; final union with, 266, 289. Cf. Atman Brahmanas, or Brahmana Texts, 45 ff., 48, 209 Brahmanaspati: see Brihaspati Brahmanical philosophies, 2, 51, 108, 229 Brahmanism, extent of, 2; criticised, 221; contrasted with Buddhism, 3 Brahma Samaj, a reform association, 9, 11 Brahma-Veda, name of Atharva-Veda, 40 Brahmodya, or Brahma-vadya, theosophic riddles, 216 ff. Breath of life, as entity, 255. Cf. Atman Brihaspati, “Lord of Prayer,” 243, 273 Buddha, 213, 219, 282; date of, 18; his sphere of activity, 268 Buddhism, 2, 3, 108

C

Candragupta, or Chandragupta, 18, 282 Çankara, a philosopher, 221, 227 Caste, system of, 5, 6, 7, 8, 264; revulsion against, 8; its relation to theosophy, 225 Castor and Pollux (Poludeukes), 110, 113 Celestial gods, 92 Cerberus and Cerberi, myth of, 105 ff. Chandogya-Upanishad, 234, 238, 260 Chandragupta. See Candragupta Chase, G. D., Professor, 115

D

Daksha, a god, 130 Dakshina, “Baksheesh,” name of Ushas, Dawn, 71. See Baksheesh Dana-stuti, “gift-praises,” 196 Dara Shukoh, a Mogul prince, 52 ff. Darius I. Hystaspes, 14 Dawn, mother of Agni, 160. See Ushas Death, early notions of, 249 ff. “Death anew,” or “Re-death,” 253 Deivos, “Shiners,” Indo-European word for gods, 108, 148 “Desire,” Kama, personified, 237 Deucalion, myth of, 138 Deussen, Paul, Professor, 56, 233, 234 Devotion, 105, 202 ff., 281; personified, 206, 273; contrasted with Faith, 193. Cf. Prayer Devotional (creative) fervor, 237 Dhatar, “Maker,” 242 Dhena, “Holy Song,” wife of Brihaspati, 244 Diespiter, Jupiter, 110 Dioscuri. See Açvins Dirghatamas, author of a riddle-hymn, 210, 217, 229, 233 Djemshed (Yima Khshaeta), Persian epic hero, 143 Dogs of Yama, dogs of death, 105, 106, 251 Dreams and hallucinations, 255 Dyaus, Dyaush Pitar, “Father Sky,” 66, 92, 95, 110, 139, 148, 152 ff.

E

Economic conditions and pessimism, 264 Emerson’s poem on Brahma, 278 Eros, “Love,” personified, 237, 245 Ethics, Vedic system of, 126 ff. Ethnology, its relation to Mythology, 93 Faith, conception of, 109, 186 ff.; personified, 189; faith and works, 190, 269; related to truth and wisdom, 188; reward of, postponed to heaven, 193 “Family-books” of Rig-Veda, 27, 79, 210 Father God, 138 Fathers in heaven, 250, 251, 287 “Father Sky.” See Dyaus

F

Festivals, public and tribal, 214 Fetish, 256 ff. Fire, emblem of Brahmanism, 189; production of, 139, 158. Cf. Agni Fjorgyn and Fjorgynn, 111 Flood, Hindu story of, 45, 143 “Forest-dwellers,” 282, 288 Four stages of life, 4, 288 Future life, early notions of, 149, 249 ff.

G

Ganges, a river, 23, 265 Garbe, R., Professor, 220 ff. Gargya and Gargi, theosophers, 223 Garutmant (the sun), 210, 218 Gatha ndrdfansyah, “praises of men,” 196 Ghee, food of the gods, 63, 161 “Gift-praises,” 196 Girdle, sacred, 188 Gods, Indo-European words for, 108; three classes of, 87, 91; chronology of, 90, 93; relative importance of, 89, 90, 93; relative clearness of their origin, 93-96; daily order of their appearance, 90 ff.; character of, 184 ff.; glory of, 199 Gospel of John, beginning of, 206 Graeco-Parthian rulers of India, 14 Greek and Hindu mythology compared, 83 Greeks’ estimate of their own religion, 84 Grihyasutras: see “House-Books”

H

Haridrumata, a teacher, 225 Heaven and Earth. See Dyaus Helena, sister of Dioscuri, 113 Hell, descriptions of, 252 Henotheism (Kathenotheism), 164, 199 Heracles and three-headed Geryon; Hercules and three-headed Cacus, 180 Hermits (ἱλόβιοι), 282, 288 Hestia-Vesta, 158 Hieratic religion of Veda, 60; belongs to the upper classes, 77 Hillebrandt, A., Professor, 179 ff. Hindu and Greek Mythology compared, 83 Hindu life and institutions intensely religious, 3, 4 Holiness, conception of, 109 Hopkins, E. W., Professor, 23, 155 Horse-sacrifice, 213, 216 “House-Books” (Grihyasutras), 41, 77, 159, 285 Huxley’s critique of asceticism, 283 Hymns, artistic quality of, 75, 203

I

Ignorance, or “nescience,” 276 Illusion (maya), 276, 288 Images, absence of in Veda, 89 India and Persia, historical contact between, 14, 118 India, land of religions, 2; geographical isolation of, 11; her nature, climate, etc., 85, 265 Indian and Persian religions contrasted, 118 India’s exploration, future of, 22 India’s religion, continuity of, 10 Indo-European period, 100; of religion, 16, 108 Indo-Iranian period, 100; of religion, 13, 118 Indo-Parthian Kingdoms, 14 Indra, 78, 89, 92, 94, 130, 131, 147, 157, 177, 186, 187, 217, 244; cause of scepticism, 174, 229 Indra and Agni, 78 Indra and Varuna, 78 Indra-Vritra myth, explanations of, 178, 179 Indus, a river, 23, 265 Initiation of a young Brahman, 188 Investiture of a young Brahman, 285 Ishtapurta, “sacrifice and baksheesh,” 194 ff., 252. See Baksheesh

J

Jabala, mother of Satyakama, 225 Jajali, 225 Janaka, king of Videha, 214, 219, 226, 227 Jatavedas, “Omniscient,” name of Agni, 164, 189 Jaundice, charm against, 42 Juggernaut, car of, 9 Jupiter, 110 Jyotishtoma-sacrifice, 77

K

Kala, “Time,” personified, 245 Kama, “Love,” personified, 237, 245 Kanvas, a family of poets, 28, 203, 205 Karma, or spiritual evolution, 195, 257, 259, 284; Western estimate of, 261 ff. Katyayani, wife of Yajnavalkya, 277 Kennings, 162 Kings, interested in theosophy, 214, 219, 220, 223, 227 Kronos, 84 Kuhn, Adalbert, 102, 108 Kumarila, a philosopher, 222, 227

L

Lithuanian dainos, or songs, 114, 172 Loge (Loki), Norse god of fire, 156 Logos, or “Word” (divine), 207, 273 Lost cattle, Lithuanian poem about, 172

M

Macdonell, A. A., Professor, 131 Maitreyi, wife of Yajnavalkya, 223, 277 Man, origin of, 138, 149 Manicheism, 85 Mannus, son of Tuisto, 140 Manu, Manush Pitar, “Father Manu,” 140, 143 Manu, Law-Book of, 256, 259 Martanda, 130 Maruts, 92 “Master-singers,” 201, 202 Matarigvan, 165, 210, 218 Maurya dynasty, 18, 283 Maya, “Illusion,” 276, 288 Megasthenes, Greek author, 282 Metempsychosis. See Transmigration Metres, 24; belonging to different hours of the day, 80; to individual gods, 80 Mithraism, 85 Mitra (Persian Mithra, Mithras), 92, 120 ff., 129, 132 ff., 153, 210, 218 Moderation in asceticism, 282, 284 Mohammedanism in India, 10, 52 ff. Mokshamulara, Sanskrit name of Max Müller, 53 Monism, idea of unity, 56 ff., 210, 218, 233, 247, 269. See Pantheism Moon and “Sun-Maiden,” marriage of, 114 Morning and evening star, 114 ff., 172 “Mother Earth,” 95, 110, 138, 148 Mountains as winged birds, legend of, 48 Muir, Dr. John, 154 Müller, Max, 53, 71, 102, 164, 199 Mystics, Christian, 275, 281 Mythology, 29; in its relation to Ethnology, 103. Cf. Indo-Iranian, and Indo-European

N

Naciketas, a theosopher, 192, 223 Na neti, “no, no,” 277 Nature myth, 29, 81, 108, 148, 152 ff.; nature phenomena in legends, 48; in riddles, 217 Neoplatonism, 207 Nidhanas of the Sama-Veda, 37

O

Odhin, a Norse god, 155 Oldenberg, H., Professor, 72, 133 ff., 273 Onesikritos, a Greek, 283 Opaque gods, 96, 174 Oupnekhat, Persian translation of the Upanishads, 54 ff.

P

Pairs of gods, 78 Pantheism, 242. See Monism Pantheon of the Veda, 78, 88 ff. Paracara, a Rishi, 225 Paradise, 250, 287; solar, 169 ff. Parameshthin, “He who occupies the highest place,” 242 Parjanya, God of Thunder, 92, 111, 178, 181 “Parliament of Religions,” in Chicago, 9 Parsis in India, 10, 14, 118 Patrons of sacrifice, 193 ff., 215; of theosophy, 219 Perkunas, Lithuanian God of Thunder, 111, 115 Persian and Hindu religion contrasted, 118 Persian names in arta, 12 Pessimism, 3, 4, 212, 263; its origin, 264; its final fixation, 267 Philosophy, its relation to practical life, 10. See Theosophy Phoebus Apollo and Marsyas, 84 Pischel, R., Professor, 113 Poetic inspiration, 75, 201 ff. Popular religion, 42, 77

Continued Index

Prajapati, “Lord of Creatures,” 236, 240, 245, 246, 271 Prana, “Breath of Life,” personified, 245 Pravahana Jaivali, a royal theosopher, 224 Prayer beatified and deified, 205, 243. Cf. Devotion Prayer of the gods, 205 Prehistoric gods, 90, 96, 99 ff. Priests, various kinds of, 80, 216 Prithivi, “Earth,” 92. Cf. “Mother Earth” Pururavas and Urvaci, story of, 46 Purusha, “cosmic man,” and supreme spirit, 242, 279 Pushan, 92, 170, 171

R

Raja Rammohun Roy, a reformer, 8, 53 Rajasuya, “coronation” of a king, 213 Ramakrishna, a saint and ascetic, 227, 229, 281 Religion, science of, 151 Religious liberty, 8, 19, 53 Renan, Ernest, 85 Retribution, 252, 262 Reverence, Indo-European conception of, 109 Ribhus, 78 Riddles, theosophic, 210, 215 ff., 218 Rig-Veda, 17, 25 ff.; geography of, 23; language of, 26; character of, 29; erroneous view of its authors and redaction, 61 ff.; quality of its hymns, 63; utilitarian and ritual character of, 31, 67, 75, 182; religious essence of, 198 ff. See Veda Ritual and theosophy, 213, 218 Royal caste, its influence upon theosophy, 214, 223, 227 Rta (asha, arta), “cosmic order,” 120, 121, 125 ff., 232; date of the conception, 12, 19, 135 Rudra, 92

S

Sacraments in daily life of Hindus, 4, 285 Sacrifice, philosophy of, 33, 215 Sacrifice post, 67, 79 Sacrificers, origin of, 138 Sages as creators, 237 Salvation, 5, 211, 247, 263, 269, 289 Sama-Veda, 25 ff.; Veda of music, 36; popular origin of, 38; inferior position of, 39; connected with god Indra, 37; related to Shamanism, 38 Sandrakottos, Sandrokyptos (Candragupta), 18, 282 Sankhya philosophy, 2 Saranyu, mother of the Açvins, 91, 113, 141 ff. Satyakama, son of Jabala, a low-caste theosopher, 225 Saule, Lettish “Sun-Maiden,” 115 ff. See “Sun-Maiden” Savarna, wife of Vivasvant, 142 Savitar, 74, 86, 91, 92, 240. See next Savitri, or Gayatri stanza, 86, 202, 273, 286. See preceding Scepticism, 174, 181, 220; philosophic, 238 Scheffler, Johannes, a mystic, 275 Schopenhauer and Upanishad philosophy, 55 ff. Seleukos, a Graeco-Persian king, 282 Self-hypnosis, 9, 284 Sena, wife of Indra, 244 Sentimental regard of gods, 200 Shah Jehan, a Mogul Emperor, 52 Shah Nameh, Persian Epic, 144 Shankar Pandurang Pandit, 21 Sikhs, religion of, 10 Skambha, “Support,” 242 Soma (haoma), plant, and liquor pressed from it, 77, 78, 120, 122, 138, 143, 145, 147, 175, 185; its function in Vedic religion, 65, 147; in Avestan religion, 147; brought from heaven by an eagle, 146, 165; personified, 78, 92, 172; as the moon, 113 “Sons of God,” Lithuanian myth of, 110, 114 Stages of life, four, 4, 288 Stobhas of the Sama-Veda, 37 Sun, universal worship of, 104; progenitor of man, 139, 141; as shepherd and finder of lost objects, 172 ff. See Savitar, and Surya Sun and moon as dogs, 105, 251 “Sun-Maiden,” 90, 91, 112 ff., 115 ff., 172 Surya (Helios), 86, 87, 92, 112, 153, 154, 172 Surya. See “Sun-Maiden” Suttee, or widow-burning, 9 Svayambhu, “The Self-existing,” 242 Symbolic gods, 96, 109, 131, 135, 191, 242

T

Talmud, 209, 215, 222 Tapas, “creative fervor,” 237 Tat tvam asi, “Thou art the That,” 233, 269, 275 Tauler, John, a mystic, 281 Teacher and pupil, 188, 286 Tel-el-Amarna, cuneiform tablets of, 11, 135 Temples, absence of, 89 Terrestrial gods, 92 Theosophy, beginnings of, 208, 215, 219; time of its appearance, 209 ff., 221; place where it originated, 212 ff.; its authors, 219, 227; chronology of, 233 Thor (Donar), 111 Thrita and Athwya, 146 Thugs, sect of, 9 Thunder, god of, 111, 148 “Time,” “Father Time,” personified, 245 Totemism, 138 ff., 256 Transcendental gods, 244 Translucent gods, 96, 166 ff. Transmigration of souls, 3, 57, 211 ff., 224, 247; origin and explanation of, 254 ff.; date of, 257; Western estimate of, 261 ff.; release from, 258 Transparent gods, 93-96, 151 ff. Trita Aptya, 146 Truth and untruth, 128 Tuisto, father of Mannus, 140 Tuladhara, a low-caste theosopher, 225 Tvashtar, 91, 141, 240 “Twilight of the gods,” 98, 230

U

Uddalaka Aruni, a theosopher, 221 Unity, idea of. See Monism Universe, threefold division of, 91, 169 Upanishads, 2, 52 ff., 209, 215, 222, 257 ff., 274, 287; discovery of, 52; critical estimate of, 57, 58; Hindu estimate of, 57; influence of, on Western philosophy, 55; relation of to ritual, 35, 209 Uranos, 84; identical with Varuna, 136 Urvaci, an Apsaras, 46 Ushas, “Dawn,” a goddess, 30, 66 ff., 71 ff., 78, 90 ff., 110, 127, 152 ff., 251 Utilitarianism, 61, 183, 198

V

Vac, Vac Sarasvati, “Holy Speech,” personified, 191, 243 Vajacravasa, a zealous Brahman, 192 Vala and the cows, myth of, 180 Varuna, 92, 94, 119, 121, 128 ff., 153, 162, 167, 174, 200, 250; identical with Uranos, 136; collapse of, 232 Vasishthas, a family of Vedic authors, 28, 123, 186 Vata, and Vayu, “Wind,” personified, 87, 92, 155, 181 Veda, 17 ff.; date of, 18, 209; canon of, 17; oral tradition of, 21; unhistorical character of its tradition, 20, 23; date of its manuscripts, 21; literary beginnings of, 24; character of its literature, 25, 65, 76, 80; its composers, 27, 28, 61; its metres, 24, 80; mode of acquiring it in school, 188, 286. See Rig-Veda Veda and Avesta, mutual relations of, 13, 15, 24, 118 Veda and Mahabharata, 16 Vedanta philosophy, 2, 51, 229 Vedas, Concordance of, 18, 35 Vicpala, a racing mare, 113 Vifvakarman, “Fabricator of universe,” 242 Vidhatar, “Arranger,” 242 Vishnu, 92, 168 ff., 195 Vivasvant (Vivanhvant), father of Yama and Manu, 120, 139, 141 ff., 146 Vivekananda, Svami, a religious reformer, 9, 225, 229 Vrishakapayi, 91 Vritra, a demon, 175 ff. Vritrahan (Verethraghna, Vahagn), epithet of Indra, 176

W

Wagner, Richard, 59, 156 Warrior caste, its relation to theosophy, 219, 220 ff. Whitney, William D., 18, 234 Woman’s incantation against rival, 43 Women as theosophers, 233, 279 Wotan, a Teutonic god, 155

Y

Yajnavalkya, a theosopher, 214, 221, 223, 227, 287, 261, 277, 279, 284, 290 Yajur-Veda, 25 ff., 31 ff., 127 Yama, king of paradise and hell, 105, 140, 144, 145, 162, 210, 250, 251 Yama and Yami, the first pair, 48, 120, 129, 140, 144 Yaska, author of Nirukta, 90 Yima, Yima Khshaeta, 143. See Yama Ymir, cosmic man in the Edda, 242 “Yodels” in Sama-Veda, 37

Z

Zarathushtra (Zoroaster), 118 Zeus, Zeus Pater, 83, 95, 110, 152. See Dyaus Zeus Bagaios, 109 Zoroastrian angels (Amesha Spentas), 133 ff. Zoroastrian (Parsi) religion, 11, 13, 118 ff.

Footnotes