ARTICLE IV.-THE HISTORIC RELIGIONS OF INDIA. I. BRAHMANISM. COUSIN. History of Philosophy. MAX MÜLLER. Lectures and others Papers. J. F. CLARKE. Ten Great Religions. THE lately awakened interest in Comparative Religion is a legitimate movement of the human mind, under the conditions of the present age. It is no more possible that Christianity should continue to be viewed only in the partial lights and relations recognized in past ages, than that government, or social order, or chemistry, or geology should rest in similar immobility. And why should not the vast theme,-the response of humanity to the silent claims of conscience, and of God upon it,-engage the attention of men, as one of the noblest realms of natural science? The works named above, and others, have awakened such. interest in the mind of the writer in the Historic Religions of India, that he has thought that a brief abstract of their history, and character, might be of service to some whose attention has been occupied in other directions. No attempt will be made at original investigation, but simply to collate, and digest, and sometimes to reflect, I quote so freely from the writers named, especially Müller and Clarke, that specific acknowledgments would be cumbersome. To trace the stream of Aryan migration, from the plains of India back, through the valley of the Indus, and over the mountains of Cabul, to the earliest known seats of the race-the elevated pastures of Central Asia; and especially to notice the methods of study, by which, from linguistic sources, the dim, unwritten history of those primeval ages has been partially constructed, would be a tale of fascinating interest, but exceeding the limits of the present undertaking. Suffice it to say, the ancestors of the Aryan family,—the Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Latins, Kelts, Teutons, and Slavs,three thousand years before the Christian era, living, as yet undivided, in the regions of the Oxus, and the Jaxartes, were a pastoral, though a settled people; the grade of their civiliza tion appearing in the use of such words as, the names of various domestic animals, cereals, with instruments for growing and grinding them, several metals, spinning, weaving, and pottery, doors, windows, and fire-places, cloaks, boiled and roasted meat, and soup, swords, lances, bows, arrows, and shields, laws, games, wind instruments of music, the dance, and many others indicating the same general manner of life. These names being the same in all the daughter languages above mentioned, must have been derived from the speech of the parents before the separation of the children, that is, were in use in the ancient Asiatic home, and indicate the mode of life then prevailing. These people had also a decimal numeration. a year of three hundred and sixty days, a community of herds and pastures, with stables in the center of the village; and the words for daughter and dairy-maid were the same. The chief powers of nature were worshiped. but as yet without an official priesthood. Migrating southward, the race separated into two, one continuing into the valley of the Indus, and so into India; the other turning westward, and overspreading the sandy plains of Persia. Perhaps the ancestors of the Greek, and other western branches of the family, were already on their way north of the Caspian and the Euxine, toward Europe. India was already inhabited; but by whom, we know little more than that they belonged to the Turanian family. They were driven by the invaders southward, where Turanian tongues,—Tamil, Telegu, Canarese, etc., still prevail, spoken by people of darker skin, smaller but wiry frame, and restless eye, congeners of whom may be found in out-of-the-way places, throughout India to-day. The language of the Aryan Hindus was the Sanskrit; of which, itself no longer a living but a learned and sacred tongue, the Hindi, Bengali, Mahratti, etc., are modern dialects, and Prakrit a vulgar one. The Hindustani is a dialect formed in the camps of the Mohammedan conquerors of India, centuries ago, and since used as an official language by their English successors. The Pali is the sacred dialect of the Buddhists of later date. Numerous subdivisions of the dialects here named also exist. The ancient literature of the Sanskrit is all religious, or semi-religious. The earliest is the Vedas,-immense masses of hymns of worship, legends, theology, philosophy, cosmogony, rules of life and of religious observance, etc., mostly poetic, and covering in their composition the period from twelve or fifteen hundred to two hundred years before the Christian era, during which the Aryan Hindus were changing from warlike herdsmen of the Punjaub, to builders of cities on the upper waters of the Ganges. The earliest Vedas are preeminently the sacred books of the Hindus; though the later, partly from the less absolute forms of the language, and partly from their less pure, lofty, uncompromising simplicity of thought and style, yielding, like most inferior religions, to the deteriorating influence of time, are better known, more influential, and indeed almost the only ones now read. The Khandos, Mantras, Brahmanos, and Upanishads are divisions of the Vedas, named in the descending order of age and sacredness; while the Sutras are a later class, forming a transition from the Vedas proper, to lower and later writings yet to be mentioned. It is believed that the Vedas were composed before the age of letters, and transmitted for several generations by oral tradition. The chief labor of the twelve years of student life of the Brahmans was, and is, the committing to memory of the Vedas, conducted in a manner so thorough, and systematic, as to impart to the memory the utmost discipline and strength. The gods of the Vedas are the powers of nature; Indra, the atmosphere; Varuna, light; Agni, fire; Savitri, the sun; Soma, the moon, etc. A dim and uncertain idea of preëmi nence attaches to Indra, perhaps because the atmosphere, identifying itself to simple minds with space, seems to contain or enground all else; yet each at times seems to be regarded as supreme, theological ideas being as yet too indefinite to bind the spirit of worship by consistent thinking; while occasional glimpses appear of the conception that all these are but phases, or manifestations of the One Supreme Being, or substance, the absolute, and all-containing,-a conception which reminds us of the Christian Trinity, but without its clearness and uniformity. The hymns of which the earliest Veda (the Rig Veda) consists, are mostly of simple adoration, with prayers for temporal blessings, and occasional allusions to libations and sacrifices. Some of the hymns, were the name Jehovah substituted for a heathen one, would appear not out of place among the Hebrew psalms. The following is a portion of a hymn to Varuna. "Let me not, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy! If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind: have mercy, Almighty, have mercy! Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone to the wrong shore; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy! Thirst came upon the worshiper, though he stood in the midst of the waters; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy! Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offense before the heavenly host, whenever we break thy law through thoughtlessness; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!" The lesser powers, or phenomena of nature, did not always want for homage. The following, addressed to the Dawn, will charm by its sweet simplicity. "She shines upon us, like a young wife, rousing every living being to go to his work. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. She the fortunate, who brings the eye of the god; who leads the white and lovely steeds (of the sun), the Dawn, was seen, revealed by her rays. Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright dawn; thou who lengthenest our life; thou the love of all; who givest us food; who givest us wealth in cows, and horses, and chariots." If it be thought that the charm of the poetic element throws that of devotion into the shade in these stanzas, the same will not be said of what Müller calls the oldest prayer of the world, offered by a Brahman when he lights the fire on his simple altar, at sunrise, "May the sun quicken our minds." Indeed, the sweetness and beauty of the earliest conception of Divinity revealed in Hindu literature must thrill every heart and mind. From the primitive root, Dive (bright), came Deva, a general name for all the "bright gods" who were supposed to animate nature. The Hindu mind struggled, somewhat bunglingly, with the idea of creation, seeming to feel the necessity of ascribing it to the Absolute Being, but unable to grasp clearly the notion of origination. "Then there was no entity, nor nonentity; no world, no sky, nor aught above it. Death was not, therefore, no immortality, nor distinction of day or night. But that One breathed calmly, alone with nature, her who is sustained within him. First desire was formed in his mind; and that became the original productive seed. Then the self-existing power, undiscovered himself, but making the world discernible, with the five elements and other principles, appeared in undiminished glory, dispelling the gloom. The seed became an egg, bright as gold, blazing like the luminary with a thousand beams, and in that egg he was born himself, in the form of Brahma." With the lapse of time the philosophical mind of India struggled upward to a somewhat clearer conception of the nature of Deity. "Let every Brahman, with fixed attention, consider all nature as existing in the Divine Spirit; all worlds as seated in Him; He alone as the whole assemblage of gods; and He the author of all human actions. Let him consider the supreme, omnipresent intelligence as the sovereign Lord of the universe, by whom alone it exists, an incomprehensible spirit." The Upanishads speak of the Divine Self; the Eternal Word; the Heaven from which the hymns came. The Divine Self is not to be grasped by reason, revelation, nor tradition; but by him whom He himself grasps. The idea of absoluteness as attaching to the Supreme existence sometimes proceeds to lengths so remote and abstruse, that he is called not only the real existence, but the undeveloped One, and even the Not Being, whatever in this connection that title may mean. Yet it must mean that remote realm where absoluteness shades off into a kind of general ground of all existence, rather than existence itself. The Laws of Manu, a great religious teacher some centuries later than the earlier Vedas, are the basis of a sort of second stage of religious development-Brahmanism proper-seven hundred or one thousand years before the time of Christ. The Indus and the Punjaub are now forgotten; the Ganges takes their place. A different strain of thought and feeling prevails; less of simple worship, more of legend, more of details, sometimes frivolous, of the creation, the acts of the gods, and the like, but more also of rules of life. The supreme Deity is |