THE literary records of the religions of India begin with the Veda, which is not, as is sometimes supposed, a body of primitive popular poetry, but rather a collection of artificially composed Hymns, the work, in the main, of a priestly class. Its tone generally is ritualistic, the Hymns being intended for use in connexion with the Soma oblation and the fire-sacrifice. In the Veda the powers and phenomena of Nature are invoked as personified gods, or even as impersonal existences. The ritual to which these Hymns were an accompaniment was by no means of a simple type, though much less highly developed than in the succeeding period.
The Indo-Aryans brought little theology with them from their original home beyond the mountain barriers of India. A few gods already in a state of decadence, the worship of ancestors, and some simple rites are all that they possessed in common with their western kinsfolk, among whom their connexion with the Iranians was most intimate, as is shown by the common knowledge of geography and its nomenclature. Recent study of the Indian dialects indicates at least two successive waves of invasion into India—the older, now represented by the speakers of Kāshmiri, Marāthi, Bengali, and Oriyā; the later by those who use Panjā, Rājasthānī, Gujarāti, and Western Hindi, who came in like a wedge through the earlier tribes, and settled about the Saraswati. Dr. Grierson has ingeniously suggested that the contests between these successive bodies of immigrants are represented in the Veda by the struggle of the rival priests, Visvāmitra and Vasishtha, and by the war of the Kauravas and Pāndavas, which forms the subject of the Mahābhārata. This theory would account for much of the varying character of the cults represented in the older sacred literature.
The Rig-veda, with its supplement, the Sāma-veda, was composed when the Aryans had reached the point of junction of the Punjab rivers with the Indus; the Black and White Yajur-veda when they had reached the neighbourhood of the Sutlej and Jumna; the Atharvan, combining the lower beliefs of Aryans and aborigines, when the new-comers had penetrated as far as Benares.
Theology, as we find it in the Veda, begins with the worship of the things of heaven, and ends with the worship of the things of earth. We have, first, the worship of the sky gods; then of those that rule the atmosphere; lastly, of those that rule on earth. Under the first class comes the worship of the sun in various forms, as Sūrya, ’the glowing one’; Savitar, ’the enlightener’; Bhaga, ’the giver of blessings’; and Vishnu, who, except in the kindliness of his nature, has little in common with his later form as one of the Hindu triad. In another form as Pūshan, god of agriculture, roads, and cattle, who is also known as Kapardin, ‘he of the braided hair,’ he forms a link between the Vedic gods and Siva. Dyaus, the shining sky, the Zeus of the Greeks, receives less special worship than might have been expected. In Varuna as the sky god a higher plane is reached. He sits enthroned in the vault of heaven; the sun and stars are the eyes with which he sees all that passes on earth. He, more than any of his brother gods, realizes the conception of personal holiness as an ideal for mankind.
Among the mid-air gods, Indra gained his ascendancy on Indian soil, where the increasing dependence of an agricultural people on the periodical rains popularized his worship. As a war god he fought in heaven against the demon that dispersed the rain clouds, and was thus adopted by the Kshattriyas to lead them on earth in their campaigns against the aborigines.
Great as are these gods of sky and air, greater still are the earth-born gods: Agni, the fire god, as manifested in the sacrifice, and Soma, the moon-plant (Sarcostemma viminale, or Asclepias acida of botanists), the worship of which is based on its intoxicating qualities. The latter came to be identified with the moon, a theory still farther developed in the post-Vedic mythology.
With Yama we reach a stage of distinct anthropomorphism. He might have lived for ever, but he chose to die, and was the first to point out to his descendants the way to the other world. To his heaven, guarded by two monstrous dogs, the souls of the departed are conveyed, and are adored on earth as the Pitri, or sainted dead. To retain their place in the abodes of the blessed, the souls need constantly to be refreshed by the pious food-offerings of their descendants. Hence arose the Srāddha, or periodical feast of the dead, which has had far-reaching effects in the development of the theory of sacrifice.
Thus the Vedic gods, like those of Homer, were departmental deities, each nominally invested with a special sphere of action; but their offices were constantly being confounded, and the function of one deity was without hesitation attributed to another. The worshipper, in fact, never cared to determine the relative positions of his gods. Swayed by the impulse of the moment, he invokes now one, now another, to relieve him from danger or to confer a blessing. Hence the beginnings of Indian Pantheism, of which the first literary record is the famous Purusha Hymn of the Rig-veda. But, combined with these pantheistic ideas, there was in Vedic times a groping after one Supreme Being. Even at this time the deepest thinkers began to see dimly that the Âtman, or Spirit, pervaded all things, and that the world and even the gods themselves were but manifestations of it. Thus at the close of the Vedic period philosophers had gained the idea of a Father-god, known as Prajāpati, or Visvakarman, names which in the older Hymns are merely epithets applied to particular gods. This theory was farther developed in the next period, that of the Brāhmanas.
A Brâhmana is a digest of the dicta on questions of ritual traditionally ascribed to the earlier teachers, and intended for the guidance of priests. In this period the prevailing tone is in direct contrast to the graceful poetry and naive speculation of the Vedic singers. The atmosphere is now that of religiosity rather than of religion. The Aryans were by this time permanently settled in Madhya-desa, the ‘Middle Land,’ or Upper Gangetic valley. This was the birthplace of the special form of faith known as Brâhmanism, which in this connexion means the ritualistic and philosophical development of Vedism. It had its roots in the older Hymns, but it was a new form of faith with a new philosophy added. The old theory of the Âtman was developed, until all forces and phenomena were identified with one Spiritual Being, which when unmanifested and impersonal is the neuter Brahma; when regarded as a Creator, the masculine Brahma; when manifested in the highest order of men, Brâhmana, the Brâhman Levite class.
This supremacy of the priestly class had its origin in the Purohita (praepositus, ‘he that is placed in front’), the family priest, who, as ritual developed, took the place of the house-father, by whom the earlier and simpler worship had been conducted. The priests of the Rig-veda were not as yet organized into a profession, nor did they claim their office by hereditary right. But the period of the Brâhmanas shows a rapid development of their pretensions. We are told that there are two kinds of gods, the Devas and the Brâhmanas, the latter regarded as deities among men. With this new theology was combined the dogma of the supremacy of sacrifice. ‘The sun would not rise,’ says the Satapatha Brâhmana, ‘if the priest did not make sacrifice.’ When we meet it first in the Indian ritual, sacrifice is merely a thank-offering; then it comes to be regarded as a means of nourishing the Pitri, or the gods; finally, a means of wrestling favours from them. This naturally resulted in the exaltation of sacrificial ritual. Every religious act must be accompanied by its special Mantra, or formula, each word of which is momentous, each tone fraught with mystery.
The writers of this period concern themselves little with theology; what they are interested in is worship. Their gods are much the same as those of the older Hymns, but they extended the pantheon by the admission of allegorical personifications, spirits, demons, and goblins. These, though not specifically referred to in the early Hymns, are not necessarily a new creation. The Atharva-veda is evidence, if evidence be needed, that such beliefs are the stock-in-trade of the hedge-priest among all races at an early stage of culture.
As for eschatology, hell with its torments is well known: ‘or else the wicked man will be re-born in some wretched state of being, metempsychosis appearing in this way under the form of an expiation. The good man goes to Svarga, or the community of some god; the sojourn with Yama is not forgotten 1; but the fate of the dead is nowhere clearly defined. We read of the weighing in a balance of the dead man’s good and evil deeds; or we are told that he has to pass between two raging fires, which consume the evil man and let the good pass by.
One remarkable legend in the Brâhmanas embalms a tradition of human-sacrifice. The tale of Harischandra tells how the king was cured of his leprosy by the purchase of Sunahsephas, who was to be offered as a sacrifice to appease the wrath of Varuna. The boy, when led to the stake, prays to the gods for deliverance; they loose him from his bonds and cure the king’s disease. It is certain that human sacrifice prevailed among the Indo-Aryans. In a more primitive form it existed until quite recent days among the Khonds and other forest tribes of the Central Indian hills, by whom, like the Mexicans before the conquest and many savage races, the Meriah or victim was solemnly immolated, and fragments of the corpse distributed over the fields to promote the fertility of the crops. Even now, in dark corners of the land, occasional sacrifices of human victims to the goddess Kali are recorded.
‘In the Vedic Hymns,’ writes Dr. Hopkins, ‘man fears the gods. In the Brāhmanas man subdues the gods, and fears God. In the Upanishads man ignores the gods and becomes God.’ But, as the same writer goes on to point out, ‘if one took these three strata of thought to be quite independent of each other he would go amiss. Rather, it is true that the Brāhmanas logically continue what the Hymns begin; that the Upanishads logically carry out the thought of the Brāhmanas.’ Nor does this statement rightly define the historical order of the theological development, because, though no definite chronology exists, it seems fairly certain that the date of the earliest Upanishad, or exposition of the hidden spiritual doctrine, is not much later than the most modern additions to the Vedic canon. The speculations of the sages of the Brāhmana period were extended in this way: the Atman, or ‘soul’ of the Brāhmanas, is now identified with Brahma, or the holy principle which animates Nature; in other words, the Atman replaces the personal Prajāpati. True knowledge leads to supreme bliss by absorption into Brahma, and this is combined with the theory of transmigration, which was fully established when Buddha arose, for he accepted it without question. This was not so much a new philosophy as a new religion, a religion without rites and ceremonies, involving existence without pain of desire, life without end, freedom from re-birth. ‘The spirit of the sage becomes one with the Eternal; man becomes God.’2
While, during the period represented by the Brähmanas, priests were engaged in elaborating the cultus, and philosophers in studying the nature and fate of the soul, the mass of the people were little affected by such speculations, and the time was ripe for change. The reformation assumed a twofold shape: first, the rise of the two so-called ‘heretical’ movements, which culminated in Buddhism and Jainism; secondly, the almost contemporaneous evolution of the sectarian gods. The bright and happy life of the early Aryans, as reflected in the Vedas, had been succeeded by a period of priestly ascendancy. The mass of legend, largely framed in the interest of the dominant class, which forms the history of the time, seems to show that the Brähmans, at least in the original seat of their power, had repressed the Kshattriya, or warrior, class. The Vaisyas were regarded as little better than contributors to the funds by which the sacrificial system was maintained; the Südras were quite beyond the pale of salvation. Thus for the majority of the people the future was hopeless. They were told that the misery of this present life was the result of sins committed in some previous birth; though unavoidable now, it might be alleviated in some future state by bribing the priesthood to perform a sacrifice. The Aryan Holy Land was parcelled out among a number of petty chieftains, who waged internecine war, one against the other. The prevailing tone of feeling was as pessimistic as the systems of the philosophers.
The leader of one of these movements of reform was Gautama, the son of a petty prince, or headman, of a group of villages occupied by the Sakyas, one of the many Kshattriya clans in the tarai, or swampy lowlands at the foot of the Lower Himālayas. The story of his life, which can only with difficulty be disentangled from the legends which have grown round the real facts, has been often told. He is said to have enjoyed in his early years all that a life of sensuous ease could provide. Suddenly his conscience was stirred by a profound sense of the vanity of human life. Self-mortification was at this time taking the place of sacrifice, and he embraced the only course open to men of his class, which might lead to a higher spirituality—in other words, he became a Yogi, or wandering ascetic. Thereby, at the very outset of his career, he accepted the current philosophy, that a man’s object should be to avoid reincarnation, and that it is Karma, ‘action,’ the control of passion, in short, the building up of character, which conditions any future birth. So far his hope was, as is the aim of the Hindu ascetic, merely to win salvation for himself, not to save his fellow men. Suddenly, after a course of mortification he is ’enlightened,’ a view quite foreign to the thought of his day, which regarded the mechanical use of cultus and formula, uninterrupted from birth to death, as the road to salvation. Then he announced the Fourfold Truth—that life is the vanity of vanities; that birth and re-birth, the cycle of reincarnation, are the result of passion and desire; that to escape these evils desire must be destroyed by what he called the Eightfold Path—right belief, right resolve, right word, right act, right life, right effort, right thinking, right meditation. This was the Gospel which the Master, now become Buddha, ’the Enlightened One,’ preached during some five-and-forty years’ wanderings in Magadha, the modern Bihār, and the neighbourhood of Benares. The chronology of his life is most uncertain. He is said to have reached the age of eighty-eight years, and the date of his death is fixed by the last critic, Mr. V. A. Smith, about 508 B.C.
The religion thus founded, like Jainism, is not a religion in the common sense of the term. Both are rather, in their earliest form, monastic organizations, orders of begging fraternities, like the Dominicans and Franciscans. The monastic system was not an innovation. It was a development of the last four successive stages (āsrama) of the Brāhmanical schools, that of the Sannyāsi, or ascetic, the only difference being that the Brāhmanic mendicants never formed themselves into such large organizations as the Buddhists and Jains. The similarity, in fact, between the practices of the two sects arose from the circumstance that both followed the same model. On the rise of Brāhman ascendancy it seems that a tendency prevailed to restrict the entry into the stage of an ascetic to members of the priestly classes. This probably led to the growth of non-Brāhmanic orders, originally intended for members of the warrior class, to which the founders of Buddhism and Jainism both belonged. Eventually persons of other castes were admitted. It is easy to understand that these movements had their origin, not in the upper Ganges valley, the Holy Land of Brāhmanism, but in the east country, Magadha, where Brāhman influence was less predominant, and where the Kshattriya class was regarded as superior to that of the priest. Antagonism would naturally arise between the old and the new orders, and would ultimately compel the new-comers not only to discard the Brāhmanic sacrificial cultus, but even to question the authority of the Vedas. When this stage was reached, their exclusion from the pale of Brāhmanism was inevitable.
It would be a mistake to suppose that Buddhism and Jainism were directed from the outset consciously in opposition to the caste system. Caste, in fact, at the time of the rise of Buddhism was only beginning to develop; and in later days, when Buddhism commenced its missionary career, it took caste with it into regions where up to that time the institution had not penetrated. It must also be said that the lay members of these new orders, though they looked for spiritual guidance to their own teachers, retained the services of their Brāhman priests to perform the domestic services at birth, marriage, and death. Even at the present day many Jains permit connubium with a family which follows the Brāhmanic rule. Such a woman during her married life continues the religious rites amid which she was born.
The ethics of Buddhism, again, were not the invention of the Master. Even so early as the time of the Satapatha Brāhmana, which had its origin in the same part of the country as Buddhism, we find a forecast of the teaching of Buddha. Much of the terminology is the same, without, of course, the technical Buddhist connotation; and among the teachers special mention is made of the Gautamas, a family name of the Sākyas, Buddha’s tribe. The rules which the Master announced as the Truths and the Paths were in a large measure common to Brāhmanical ethical writers. The sanctity of animal life (ahīnsa), for instance, is an old Hindu belief, arising directly from the principle of metempsychosis, which links together in one chain all living creatures, gods and demons, men and animals.
In its theology and psychology Buddhism ignored the speculations of the priestly thinkers. Buddha does not deny the existence of the gods; he simply declines to discuss the question. He leaves it to the priests to avert the vengeance of the gods, or to win from them boons which in his view are valueless. His standpoint in such matters is the indifference of the layman. In his metaphysics, again, he does not concern himself with the origin of things; rather he takes them for granted. He is more concerned with the practical matter of salvation. He evades the question of a supernatural Creator by explaining the Universe as Will and Idea, and placing Karma, or the ethical doctrine of retribution, in the place of a divine controlling Intelligence.
His way of salvation is different alike from that of the Brāhman or the Jain. ‘Knowledge,’ writes Dr. Hopkins3, ‘is wisdom to the Brāhman; asceticism is wisdom to the Jain; purity and love is the first wisdom to the Buddhist.’ Nor, again, was his faith in conflict with the other religions of his time. The two systems, Buddhism and Brāhmanism, coexisted for some fourteen centuries after the death of the Master. Certain kings and certain eras were specially Buddhistic, but the historical evidence for the continuous existence of Brāhmanism side by side with Buddhism after the period of Alexander (327 B.C.) is conclusive.
The question may then be asked—How did a creed so pessimistic as Buddhism win the enthusiasm of the people? All it seemed to offer was the denial of the existence of the soul; and ignoring the question of the extinction of being, it fixed the aim of the believer in Nirvāna, which meant to the Master release from that sinful condition of mind which would otherwise, according to the mystery of Karma, be the cause of renewed individual existence. What the new creed brought was the message of freedom from the Brāhmanic law of sacrifice, and it enjoined the observance of a high moral code. It was a rule of practical benevolence, gradually displacing the early ideal of mere personal salvation, and extending its blessings to all who accepted its teaching. Slowly the message spread from the Kshattriya class, to which it was first given, to the man in search of peace, whatever his race or caste might be. Most of all, perhaps, its popularity rested on the magnetic personality of the Master, whose life was spent in active benevolence, and round whom by degrees centred a body of most entrancing legend. As the faith came to be influenced by foreign beliefs, such as Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity, the Buddha was regarded as a divine being, on whose perfections the believer might meditate, a personal Saviour whom he might adore. These were beliefs quite opposed to the sentiment of the age, which in later times the reformed Brāhmanism was likewise forced to adopt as one of the distinctive notes of its teaching.
Again, the strength of Buddhism largely depended on the Sangha, or Congregation of the Monastic Order. This was an institution quite alien to Brāhmanism, which, even to this day, has never dreamed of forming a Convocation. Its constitution was probably of gradual growth. At any rate, by the time of Asoka we find it a well-organized body, in possession of canonical books. The primary object of this Convocation was to frame a code of discipline for the monastic communities. But, as so often happens in similar organizations, it fell more and more under the control of precisians, and the simple rules which provided for the discipline of the monks in the period immediately succeeding the death of its founder became burdensome. By degrees the rule of life came to be even more restrictive than the Brāhmanical caste system, and ended by being a formidable barrier against spiritual independence.
The history of the Buddhist Councils by which Church government was founded rests mostly on legend. All that seems well established is that about this time a profound change occurred in the politics of Northern India, which led to the formation of a great military monarchy, that of the Mauryas, which by the time of Asoka (c. 269–232 B.C.) had extended its limits much beyond the bounds of Brāhmanism. This monarchy was the creation of an adventurer, who is said to have been of Südra origin, and his dynasty was thus disposed to ally itself with a non-Brāhmanic order, whose aims were cosmopolitan, in contrast to the exclusiveness of Hinduism. Buddhism under Asoka thus became the state religion of the Mauryas; but it is doubtful if it really gained by its absorption into political life. The accession of worldly influence was naturally accompanied by a falling off in spirituality. To all appearance, in the period between 200 B.C. and 100 A.D. the propaganda seemed successful. It was at this time that the great ecclesiastical buildings, like the monasteries and the Stūpas at Sānchi and Bharhut, with which the history of Indian architecture begins, were erected, and the inscriptions with their records of donations by believers attest the influence of the faith. Another important development in this period was the production of images of the Buddha, an art probably originating in the Punjab under Greek influence, later on to be adopted by Hindus and Jains for the adornment of their myriad temples.
The transformation of a local cult into a world-wide religion was the work of Asoka alone. In Ceylon the faith introduced in the time of his contemporary, King Devanâmpriya Tisya, made rapid progress, and its adherents now number more than two millions. Thence it spread to Burma and Siam, the conversion of the former dating from the middle of the fifth century A.D. The farther progress of the faith to China and Japan lies outside the limits of the present sketch.
Returning to its fortunes in India—Buddhism secured the support of the great King Kanishka, under whom a Council was held at Jullundur about 100 A.D., or a little later. In this Council the Sinhalese branch was not represented. About this time the Mahāyāna school, which in an incipient stage was already in existence, came into prominence. In fact, the period of Kanishka marks the beginning of the decay of Indian Buddhism. ‘The point of divergence of the two schools,’ writes Dr. Waddell4, ‘was the theistic Mahāyāna doctrine, which substituted for the agnostic idealism and simple morality of Buddha a speculative theistic system with a mysticism of sophistic nihilism in the background. Primitive Buddhism practically confined salvation to the few; the Mahāyāna extended salvation to the entire universe. Hence the new faith was called the Great Vehicle, Mahāyāna; the other, in contempt, the Hinayāna, or Imperfect Vehicle, which could carry few to Nīrvāna, and which they alleged was fit only for low intellects. This, the modern Tibetan form of the faith, represents the influences of the Bhagavad-gitā and Sivaism, with much more from a still lower order of belief.
What we know of the later history of Indian Buddhism is derived from the abundant sculpture and epigraphical records, and an extensive Nepalese, Tibetan, and Chinese literature. Of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, Fa Hian (399-413 A.D.) found the two religions working side by side, and Brahman priests honoured equally with Buddhist monks. Hiuen Tsiang (629-45 A.D.) describes how Brāhmanism was gaining the ascendancy over the rival faith. Buddhism was most flourishing in the Ganges-Jumma Doab, then ruled by the powerful monarch Harshavardhana, or Siladitya. The actual decay of Buddhism seems to have set in from about 750 A.D. In the eleventh century it still held its ground in outlying provinces, like Kashmir and Orissa, and the Pāl kings of Bihār remained true to the faith till the conquest of the province by Bakhtiyar Khilji in 1199 A.D. The final establishment of Muslim power led to its complete disappearance from Northern India. In Western India Buddhism was in the ninth century a living religion, favoured by the authorities, and it seems to have survived till the middle of the twelfth century, when the Saiva revival was directed against both Buddhists and Jains.
We can only speculate on the causes which led to the almost complete disappearance of this once dominant religion from the land of its birth. One fact seems certain, that although in some places its adherents may have suffered from active persecution, Buddhism died chiefly by reason of natural decay, and from the competition of new sects which arose under the influence of the reformed Brāhmanism. The original creed was perhaps too simple and, once the immediate pressure of Brāhmanism was removed, not sensuous enough to satisfy a people to whom a form of worship like that of Krishna was more attractive. It demanded from its followers a standard of morality much in advance of their stage of culture. It involved the discontinuance of sacrifice, and of the myriad methods by which the Hindu has ever tried to win the favour or avert the hostility of his gods. It abolished such a vague entity as Brahma, into whom every Hindu hopes to be absorbed, and it substituted Nirvāna, or extinction, as the end of all things. Jainism, as we shall see, by its democratic constitution, retained a hold on the people which Buddhism failed to secure.
Out of nearly nine and a half million Buddhists enumerated at the last Census, all but about 300,000 are in Burma. They exist in small numbers along the north and north-east frontiers of Bengal, and in the Punjab districts of Spiti, Lahul, and Kanāwar, on the lower slope of the Himālayas, where there is a considerable Tibetan element in the population. All along the Bengal frontier Buddhism is being gradually pushed back by Brāhmanism. In Nepál it is still a powerful element, in spite of the steady opposition exercised against it by the Hindu ruling dynasty. The Burmese Buddhists are generally regarded as belonging to the Southern School, but the influence of the Northern School has contributed to mould the religion of the province in its present form. Here, though active and well organized, and educating in a somewhat imperfect way a large proportion of its youths, it is in the main of a debased type. While some sympathetic observers have found much to praise, others describe it as ‘a thin veneer of philosophy laid over the main structure of Shamanistic belief. Nāt, or demon worship, supplies the solid constituents that hold the faith together; Buddhism supplies the superficial polish. In the hour of great heart-searchings the Burman falls back on his primaeval beliefs.’ Attempts have been made to minimize the hostility shown to us by the priesthood during the rebellion which followed our occupation of the Upper Province. But, considering the close relations that existed between the monks and the royal Court, it is safe to accept the opinion of Mr. Lowis, that ’there were few more pertinacious and dogged opponents to the British rule in the new territory than the wearers of the yellow robe.’
Some attention has been recently given to a supposed survival of Buddhism among the Saraks of Bengal. Their name is said to be derived from the Sanskrit Sravaka, ‘a hearer,’ a term used by the Jains to define a layman, by the Buddhists for the second order of monks residing in monasteries. In Orissa the Saraks worship Chaturbhuja, ’the four-armed one,’ a title now applied by Hindus to Vishnu, but said to be identified by the Saraks with Buddha. A similar origin has been assigned to the Dharma worship in Western Bengal. These beliefs have clearly some affinity to Buddhism or Jainism. How far they may have been transmitted through a Vaishnava medium is not clear.
Jainism is the second of the ‘heretical’ movements which led to the establishment of the non-Brāhmanic orders, organized as a protest against the exclusion of all but Brāhmans from the ascetic fraternities. Like Buddhism, it had its rise in Magadha, and its founder, like Gautama, was drawn from the warrior class. The two teachers were contemporaries, the life of Vardhamāna extending from about 599 to 527 B.C. He is said to have been the disciple of an earlier saint, Pārsvanātha, the rules of whose order did not satisfy his ideas of stringency, one of the cardinal points of which was the custom of absolute nudity. The natural inference is that Vardhamāna, who on the establishment of his order gained the name of Mahāvira, ’the great hero,’ was only the reformer of a sect which had its origin in a still earlier protest against Brāhman monopoly of the ascetic order. The title which he afterwards assumed, Jina, ’the victorious,’ gave a name to the order which he founded.
The resemblances between Jainism and Buddhism are due, not to imitation, but to the fact that the basis of both was the same. In both the goal is Nirvāna, but the term has a somewhat different connotation in the two beliefs. With the Buddhist it implies extinction; with the Jain, escape from the body, not from existence. The moral rules imposed upon neophytes are much the same in both orders. The fivefold vow of the Jains prescribes sanctity of animal life; renunciation of lying, which proceeds from anger, greed, fear, or mirth; refusal to take things not given; chastity; renunciation of worldly attachments. In its metaphysics Jainism is more closely allied to the Sankhya philosophy than is Buddhism, the former recognizing a duality, eternal matter being opposed to eternal spirit. The Jain is more careful of animal life even than is the Buddhist, and to him are due those curious institutions, known as Pinjrapols, or animal hospitals, in which creatures of all kinds, even vermin, are protected and fed. Buddha, as we have seen, laid no stress on asceticism, while among the Jains it survives in a repulsive form.
The most important event in the history of the order is the schism, which led to the separation, maintained to this day, of the Svetambara, or ‘white-clothed’ faction, who are found in the north and west of India, from the Digambara, or ’those clothed with the sky’—in other words, the naked ascetics of the south, who are probably the older. The literatures of the two factions are quite distinct, the older sacred books, the Angas and Pūrvas, being possessed only by the Svetambaras. The first Jain Council, held at Pātaliputra, the modern Patna, about 310 B.C., is said to have framed the Jain canon, and from this time was laid the foundation of the schism, which did not finally occur till early in the first century A.D. During the mediaeval period, Jainism secured much political influence. It became the state religion of the Chālukya princes of Gujarat and Mārwār, and of the kings of the Coromandel Coast. Many of its adherents held office as prime ministers in the Courts of Western, Central, and Southern India, and to this time are due the splendid series of Jain temples, such as those on Mount Abu and Girnār. On the Muhammadan conquest many of the stately Jain shrines were demolished, and their carved pillars utilized in building great mosques, such as that near the Kutb Minār of Delhi, at Ajmer and Ahmadabād.
Jainism is the only one of the early monastic orders which has survived to the present day in India. It escaped the disasters which overcame Buddhism, partly because its severance from Brāhmanism was never so complete; partly because it never adopted an active missionary policy, but preferred to practise its peculiar rites in a quiet, unobtrusive fashion. But the main reason is that, unlike Buddhism, it admitted to its Sangha, or Convocation, not only monks and nuns, but laybrothers and lay-sisters. These lay brethren secured a well-established rank side by side with the monastic members, and thus among the Jains there was none of the rivalry between monk and layman which deprived Buddhism, in the later stage, of the support of the congregation at large.
It is only in recent years that the vast and intricate literature of Jainism has been partially explored, and there is still much to be done in the way of translation and investigation before the history of the order can be written. This ignorance of the real nature of its teaching is perhaps one cause of the contempt which the order has excited among some Western scholars. A recent writer5 denies the right of existence to a faith whose principles are ’to deny God, worship man, and nourish vermin.’
The Jain pantheon consists of a body of deified saints, the Jain Tirthankara, ‘creating a passage through the circuit of life,’ or Jina, ’those who have won the victory,’ twenty-four of whom are assigned to the three ages, past, present, and future. Of these the chief are the deified founders of the order, Pārsvanātha and Mahāvīra. The ascetic members of the order are known as Jati, ’the continent,’ who hold no property, and never quit their dwellings except to beg for food. They carry a fan of goat’s hair with which they remove every living creature from the path on which they tread, or the ground on which they sit. They wear a screen of cloth before their mouths, lest they should unwittingly inhale and destroy animal life. Their bodies and clothes are filthy and covered with vermin. The lay brethren are known as Sravaka, ‘hearers,’ a title which has given rise to the name Saraogi, by which they are commonly known in Northern India. The images of the saints, statues of black or white marble, are represented as nude, in contrast to the fully-dressed figures in Buddhist shrines; but they present none of the indecencies which disfigure the modern Hindu temple. Jains choose for their sanctuaries wooded hills surrounded by lovely scenery; and in conformity with the retiring character of their creed, the older and most famous shrines are generally distant from the main centres of civilization. Such are the hill of Parasnath in Bengal, Paliāna in Kāthiāwār, and Mount Abu, ‘which rises with its gems of architecture like a jewelled island from the Rājputāna plains.’ The piety of modern Jains in these days of toleration has adorned many of the larger mercantile cities with splendid temples, marvels of delicate carving and artistic decoration.
The numerical strength of the Jains is now 1½ millions, and it shows a tendency to decrease; but this is perhaps more nominal than real, as there seems to be a growing disposition among them to describe themselves as Hindus. The line, in fact, which divides them from Hindus is narrow. They employ Brāhmans in their domestic rites; venerate the cow; often worship in Hindu temples; follow the Hindu law of inheritance, with the reservation that heirship is not dependent on the performance of funeral rites; are more than Hindu in the strictness of their caste exclusiveness; permit connubium with Hindus; visit Hindu places of pilgrimage. Their main difference from Hindus consists in their ‘heretical’ views regarding the sanctity of the Vedas, their omission of Hindu funeral rites, and their regard for special sacred places and for rites peculiar to the order. But there are Hindu sects which differ as widely from orthodox tenets without being excluded from Hinduism.
The chief seats of Jain influence are the cities and trading marts of Western India, and the order is largely recruited from the merchants of Gujarat and Mārwār, and cultivators in the Carnatic District of Belgaum. ‘Their sudden disappearance from the population in the direction of Sind is somewhat remarkable, and so is the fact that there are no Jains among the indigenous inhabitants of Bengal, which includes Bihar, where the religion had its origin, and Orissa, where the caves of Udayagiri and Khandagiri bear witness to its popularity in the early centuries of our era. The faith in Northern India commends itself to the mercantile classes, because trade is the only vocation in which the rule against taking animal life can be fully observed. Even the soil cannot be ploughed without the risk of killing a worm. In Western India three sects are recognized at the present day—the Digambaras, who worship naked idols, and revere their Gurus, or spiritual teachers; the Svetāmbaras, who dress their idols in robes, and adorn them in various ways; the Dhondiyas, who worship their Gurus, wear white apparel, and a strip of white cloth over their lips. These last never worship idols. The Digambaras assert that their women do not attain salvation, a view which the Svetāmbaras reject. The lay members of the order are united by a close tie of mutual support, and their charity is boundless.
These movements in opposition to Brāhmanism, combined with the extension of Aryan supremacy, which involved the absorption of increasing masses of the aboriginal races, led to a modification of the primitive belief. The result of this was the Hinduism of the present day, which with more or less variance of practice is now the creed of the vast majority of the people, and, like Christianity in mediaeval Europe, maintains a certain general conformity by the use of one sacred language, the veneration paid to holy places, and the predominance of a priesthood. It has hitherto been usual to date this movement within Brāhmanism as late as the eleventh century of our era; but it has recently been shown that the Purānic literature goes back to the sixth or eighth century. Thus the reform of Brāhmanism went on side by side with the growth of Buddhism and Jainism, and the three movements are but differing phases in the evolution of modern Hinduism. The means by which this evolution was accomplished were in the case of Brāhmanism twofold: first, the creation of a national ideal of worship; secondly, the combination of non-Aryan forms of belief with the older creed. The first movement finds its record in the epics, with some information to be gathered from the law literature, and a few sidelights from the inscriptions. The second is to be traced in the body of sacred writings known as the Purāṇas.
During the Epic period, which may be roughly defined as lasting from about 500 to 50 B.C., or practically contemporaneous with the spread of Buddhism in its original form, two collections of popular legends were combined into the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana. The first and more important of these poems was composed probably in the fifth century B.C., and reached its final stage, after a series of redactions in the interest of one sect or the other, as a didactic compendium before the beginning of our era. The original Rāmāyana may have been completed at a time when, according to Professor Macdonell, ’the epic kernel of the Mahābhārata had not yet assumed definite shape,’ that is, before 500 B.C., while recent additions date from the second century B.C. or later.
The Mahābhārata brings together the western body of legends, that centring round the Brāhman Holy Land in the Upper Ganges valley, and deals mainly with the Kaurava-Pandava war, in which some authorities see a tradition of the contest between two successive bodies of Aryan invaders. The transition from the earlier Brāhmanism is indicated in various ways throughout the epic. We find excessive stress laid on Yoga, or asceticism, which, with the use of Mantras, or formulae, replaces sacrifice as a means of coercing the gods. Caste distinctions are now found clearly established. The old Vedic deities have fallen from their high estate, and are now included among the Lokapālas, or ‘world-guardians.’ Those that still retain some measure of dignity have lost their connexion with Nature, and have become anthropomorphous. New gods, like Kubera, god of riches, Dharma Vaivasvata, who took his title from an old name of Yama, and Kāma, god of love, who in name is as old as the Atharvan, but was perhaps developed under the influence of Greek female slaves, take the place of the older gods, and with priests and the Pitri, or sainted dead, form the pantheon. The reverence paid to mountains, rivers, and holy trees reflects the older Nature-worship, reinforced by beliefs adopted from the aboriginal tribes. Hanumān, the monkey god, who appears in both epics, has been supposed to be a guardian of the village and its crops; more probably he is a loan from the local theriolatry. The reverence paid to the serpent, which, except as the dragon Ahi, does not occur in the Veda, is here associated with the Nāgāṣ, a semi-divine snake race. The people of the same name seem to have ruled many parts of Northern India in the prehistoric period.
The second epic, the Rāmāyana, is less interesting from the religious point of view than the Mahābhārata. It does the same service to the eastern body of legends, those of Kosala and Magadha, as the earlier epic did for the western folk-lore. Here the veneration paid to saintly ascetics is farther intensified. It is generally supposed to mark the extension of Brāhmanism into Southern India, but is more probably an amplification of a Vedic Nature-myth.
The effect of these epics was to form a gallery of heroic personages drawn from local tradition, who have been revered by Hindus of succeeding times. Thus, in lieu of vague abstractions and the shadowy Vedic gods, now in a state of decadence, the Mahābhārata provides a series of heroic men and women—the knightly Pāndavas and their common spouse, Draupadī, as in the Rāmāyana Rāma and Sātā have formed models of the life of holiness to later generations. To this day the latter epic, transmuted into the old Eastern Hindi of Northern India by the genius of Tulsi Dāṣ (died 1624 A.D.), is the Vaishnava Bible, and episodes from it form the subject of the most popular village drama.
It is much more difficult to trace the stages of the evolution which led to the sectarian worship of Siva and Vishnu.
Vishnu in the Rig-veda plays only a subordinate part. Though included in the solar cultus, he is less frequently invoked than his brother gods, Sūrya and Pūshan. In the Grihya Sūtras he is adored in connexion with Vāk, or the Logos; Manu names him only once. In the Mahābhārata Vishnu and Siva are separate gods, but each in turn is identified with the All-God, and consequently each represents the other.
Siva, again, is the natural descendant of the Vedic Rudra combined with Pūshan; the name Siva, ’the auspicious one,’ was apparently assigned to him through a feeling of euphemism, to veil the more ruthless side of his personality. The Greek Megasthenes (306–298 B.C.) identifies him with Dionysos, and speaks of him as a god worshipped in the mountains. About the end of the first century of our era, as recorded in the Periplus, the cult of his consort, Durgā, had reached and given a name to Cape Comorin. The records of the Buddhist pilgrims show that he was worshipped in Northern India five centuries later. In his earliest form, then, the Aryan origin of Siva is undoubtedly, and this is recognized by the Brāhmans of to-day, who specially worship him. But this does not imply that in his later forms non-Aryan elements may not have been added to his cultus. By some this non-Aryan side of his worship has been connected with the Deccan; by others with the lower slopes of the Himālayas. Dr. Muir comes to the conclusion that, while there are not sufficient grounds for regarding the non-Aryan tribes of Southern India as specially devoted to his worship, his cultus may have owed its coarser elements to the Dravidian stock common to the whole Peninsula.
The elevation of Brahma, the third member of the triad, to the position of chief of the gods is characteristic of the Epic period; but even here, to quote Dr. Hopkins6, ‘his character is that of a shadowy, fatherly, beneficent adviser to the gods, his children; all his activity is due to Vishnu. Brahma is in his place merely because to the preceding age he was the highest god; for the epic regards Creator, Prajāpati, Brahma as synonymous.’ But he is already in process of subordination to the sectarian gods. This process has continued until, in modern times, the leader of the triad has become a roi fainéant, and only four shrines, those of Pushkar in Rājputāna, Khed Brahma in the State of Idar, Dudahi in Bundelkhand, and Kodakkal in Malabar, are known to be specially devoted to his worship. The view of modern Hinduism is that his functions are interchangeable with those of Vishnu and Siva, either of whom may be worshipped as his representative.
To the Hindu of to-day Vishnu and Siva form the two poles of his religion. Siva, to use the words of Sir A. Lyall7, represents the earliest and universal impression of Nature upon man—the impression of endless and pitiless change. He is the destroyer and rebuilder of various forms of life; he has charge of the whole circle of animated creation, the incessant round of birth and death in which all Nature eternally revolves. His attributes are indicated by symbols emblematic of death and man’s desire. These symbols represent the male and female creative energy, an idea perhaps borrowed from the non-Aryan races, and appearing already well established in the Mahābhārata. Less human and more mystical than Vishnu, anthropomorphic image-worship has little place in his cultus. Manifold are the forms in which he manifests himself. He is the typical Yogi, or self-mortifier, the philosopher and sage, the wild and jovial mountaineer, surrounded by a train of dancing revellers. How much of this is the result of syncretism it is difficult to say; but his worship was obviously well adapted to attract two very different classes of votaries—the Brāhman philosopher, who sees in him the All-God, from whom the universe is evolved; and the villager, who associates him with the mysteries of reproduction. Hence, as Visvesvara, ‘Lord of the Universe,’ his plain, uncarved lingam is the chief object of worship at Benares, the headquarters of Brāhman orthodoxy, and few of the smallest villages lack a modest shrine erected in his honour. Possibly in the latter case the preference for his worship is due to its cheapness. He needs none of the gorgeous ceremonial which is provided for Vishnu. A few flowers, an oblation of water, are all that his worshipper needs to dedicate.
The Extension of Sivaism
The extension of Sivaism was the work of two great missionary preachers. The first was Kumârila Bhatta, a Brâhman of Bihâr, who is said to have instigated the persecution of Buddhists and Jains in Southern India. He taught the latter Mimânsa philosophy, and his mantle fell on his more famous disciple, Sankarachârya, who in the eighth century moulded the tenets of the Mimânsa into its final form. The result of his teaching was the foundation of the Smârta sect of Brâhmans, while among the lower classes he popularized the worship of Siva. To him is attributed the foundation of monasteries from Sringeri in Mysore to Badrinâth in Kumaun, which last is still served by Nambûri Brâhman priests from Malabar. Much of his life was spent in wandering along the hill country from Kashmir to Nepâl, where he reorganized the temple services in the interest of his sect. His missionary work largely contributed to the downfall of Buddhism in Northern India, and the Saivas have deified him as an incarnation of Siva himself.
The Saivas represent the conservative force in the history of Hinduism. It was from their struggles with Buddhism in the centre and south of the Peninsula that the order of the Sannyâsi ascetics, who took their title from one of the stages (âsrama) in the life of a Brâhman, arose. In the same way, the contest between the Sannyâsis and the innovating Bhagats of Northern India gave rise to the Jogi order. Saivism has blossomed out into sects with less luxuriance than Vaishnavism. Some of those which have been formed exhibit asceticism in its highest and most repulsive form. Such, for instance, are the loathsome Aghoris, eaters of filth and of corpses; the Urdhvabâhus, who extend the arms over the head till the muscles wither from non-use; the âkâsamukhins, who keep the neck bent back looking up to the sky; the Kapâlikas, who use a human skull for a drinking-cup.
The Smârtas and the Lingâyats
Two of the Saiva sects, the Smârtas and the Lingâyats, deserve special mention. The Smârtas, ’those who follow tradition (smriti),’ are Brâhmans of the South Deccan and Madras. Though they refer their origin to the teaching of the Saiva missionary, Sankaracharya, they are not exclusively Saivite in their beliefs. They teach the identity of man’s spirit with the One Spirit (Âtman, Brahma), which is cognizable only through meditation. They recognize the orthodox triad—Brahma, Vishnu, Siva—as coequal manifestations of the one Eternal Spirit, and destined ultimately to be reabsorbed into this Spirit. They thus represent the highest form of Brâhmanic pantheism. Brâhmanism in Southern India has always claimed to preserve a higher standard of orthodoxy than that which prevails in other parts of the country. Its activity is shown by the fact that the reforming mission of Sankaracharya had its origin there, and at the present day the Brâhman of Madras exercises an influence much greater than that of his brethren in the North. The explanation of this is that the South was not involved in the struggle with the Kshattriyas and Buddhism, and was beyond the reach of the persecution which accompanied the early Muslim invasions.
On a much lower level are the Lingâyats, ‘wearers of the lingam or phallus.’ The founder of the sect was Basava, the southern form of the Sanskrit Vrishabha, a title of Nandi, the bull on which Siva rides. He was a Brâhman of Bijâpur, and prime minister of Bijjala, one of the Kalachurya kings of Kalyâni (circa 1145–67 A.D.). The story of his career is overlaid with a mass of legend, the Lingâyat account being embodied in the Basava Purâna, while the Jain narrative contained in the Bijalarâya Charita is very different. From the Lingâyat account it would seem that Basava and his nephew took advantage of their official position to persecute the Jains and other enemies of the new faith. But Bijjala himself was a Jain, and a reaction occurred, which culminated in the death or abdication of the king and the murder of Basava.
The sect is chiefly found in the Southern Deccan, where they call themselves Vira-Saivas, ‘brave or fierce Saivas,’ but are popularly known as Lingâyats or Lingavants. The chief characteristics of the sect in its early days were adoration of the lingam and of Nandi, Siva’s bull, and disbelief in the transmigration of the soul. They rejected infant marriage, and permitted widows to remarry. Their chief seat is in the Kanarese country, and it is mainly due to their influence that this powerful and polished language has been preserved. The main body of the community, who are initiated by what is known as the ’eightfold sacrament’ (ashtavarna), are known as Panchamsâlis, descendants of the original Brâhman converts.
To these has been added a group of later converts. At the outset caste distinctions were abolished, but, as is so often the case with religious movements of this kind, a reaction set in. The original, or high-caste section, introduced a more elaborate form of worship, framed on the Brâhmanic model. The new converts were forced to take a lower place, and only the Jangamas, or priests, being a privileged class, deigned to share their food. This schism, which began at the close of the seventeenth century, has continued, until at the last Census the higher group claimed to be recorded as Vîra-Saiva Brâhmans, and proposed that the others should be placed in three classes according as they sprang from castes ranking as Kshattriyas, Vaisyas, or Sûdras.
Saiva and Vaishnava Beliefs
According to the view of most foreign students of Hinduism a sharp line is to be drawn between the beliefs of the Saiva and Vaishnava sectarians. But Hinduism is wonderfully eclectic, and the two sects are regarded as complementary, rather than antagonistic. While Siva, the god of destruction and reproduction, is associated with many practices at once grotesque and repellent, the faith of the worshippers of Vishnu is more human, impersonating the ‘higher evolution,’ the upward tendency of the human spirit. It leads the believer back to the graceful worship of the early gods, while it has included in its pantheon the forms of national heroes, who live among men, and furnish an ideal of manliness, beauty, and the delights of love. In his highest form Vishnu is in a state of repose, not activity, which is the note of Saiva beliefs. He occasionally deigns to revisit the earth in human or animal shape by a succession of Avatâras or incarnations. This theory of successive divine embodiments is one of the most effective doctrines of the later Hinduism. In it the eclecticism and adaptability of the faith are most fully realized. In the animal incarnations we may see either an indication of the absorption of the totemistic or beast gods of the lower races, or, from the esoteric point of view, the pantheistic idea of the divine spirit immanent in all the forms of creation. In the deification of heroes we have a development of one of the main principles of the Hindu renaissance, which first begins to show itself in the Mahâbhârata.
The forms of Vishnu are manifold. In Travancore, where he is the state deity, he is worshipped as Padmanabha, ’the one from whose navel springs the lotus.’ But, as popular gods, his most important incarnations are Krishna and Râma.
Krishna and Râma
Both Krishna and Râma may, in their earliest conception, be embodiments of local deities of the herd or cornfield, but to the Hindu they are glorified men, who once lived on earth. Krishna, whose name first appears in one of the Upanishads as a scholar, is a prominent personage in the Mahabhârata, but always invested with some degree of mysticism. The head-quarters of his cult are at Muttra, on the upper Jumna, which, as shown by a recent important discovery of inscriptions, was an early seat of Jainism. The suggestion has been made that there was some alliance between the two faiths, and that one cause of the immunity of Jainism from persecution in Western India was the protection it received from the new Vaishnavism. But this is improbable. Krishna, in the early form of his cult, may be regarded as the local god of some Râjput clan settled near the Jumna; and his titles, Govinda and Gopâla, ’the herdsman,’ suggest a connexion of his worship with that of a god of flocks and herds. He is also the hero of the Pândava tribe, who seem to have been newcomers, opponents of the orthodox Brâhmanism of the Holy Land. The mention of polyandry among them in the case of Draupadî has been supposed to connect them with the Himâlayas, where this custom still prevails. In the cult of Krishna we have that form of Vaishnavism which, by its luxurious ceremonial and lax standard of morality, shares with Jainism the respect of the moneyed middle class.
In Râma, the god of the orthodox Brâhman, there is no erotic suggestion. He, like Krishna, seems to have been a local Râjput hero of Kosala, and in his personality are embodied the legends and folk-lore of the east country. Here, in the birthplace of Buddhism, his cult arose, and it is clear that it was largely indebted to the older faith. Or perhaps it might be a more correct statement of the case to say that both alike were dependent upon the earlier Brâhmanic tradition. At any rate Vaishnavism, as it appears in the cult of Râma, preserves the kindliness and charity of Buddhism, as well as its tenderness for animal life.
The Vaishnava Reformers
The foundations of the Vaishnava beliefs were laid in the Vishnu Purâna, a work which was formerly supposed to date from the eleventh century, but has now been proved to be some five centuries older. We thus naturally find in it much of the old caste exclusiveness, which the Institutes of Manu representing probably the conditions of the second century most fully display. There is in the Purâna one God, but he is the God of the Brâhman, and the writer does not dream of the message of salvation being extended to the lower races.
The popularization of the creed was the work of a line of reformers, of whom the first was Râmânuja, a South Indian Brâhman, who is said to have lived between 1017 and 1137 A.D. In the case of Vaishnavism, as with Saivism, the inspiration for reform came from the south. Râmânuja, in opposition to Sankaracharya, maintained that there was one supreme Spirit; that individual beings are separate spirits, and the universe non-Spirit. Fifth in succession to him was Râmânand, who lived during the fourteenth century, and was the missionary of popular Vaishnavism in Northern India. He preached the worship of Vishnu under the form of Râma, either singly, or conjointly with his consort, Sitâ. But his chief innovation was the introduction of low-caste disciples into the communion.
One of his twelve disciples was Kabir (1380-1420 A.D.), who carried on and extended the work of his master. His teaching is specially remarkable inasmuch as in later times it inspired the founders of Sikhism. Its chief note is to link Hinduism with Islam. A weaver by caste, Kabir taught the spiritual equality of all men. Ali or Râma, said he, are only different names for the same God. So we are told that on his death both Hindus and Musalmâns claimed his corpse. But when they raised the shroud they found nothing but a heap of flowers. The Hindus took half and cremated them at Benares; the Muslims buried the other half near Gorakhpur. Kabir, in accepting the equality of all men before the Supreme, added to his doctrine the spiritual application, that difference in caste, rank, or religion, the changes and chances of this mortal life, are but Mâya, or Illusion. Emancipation and peace are to be gained by recognizing the Divine Spirit under these manifold illusions. The way to happiness is not by formula or sacrifice, but by fervent faith (bhakti) and meditation on the Godhead. A large sect, known to the present day as Kabirpanthis, follow his teaching. Their special principle is the duty of obeying the Guru, or spiritual guide, though at the same time Kabir recognized freedom of individual judgement. The use of meat and liquor and the worship of idols were prohibited. But nowadays practice lags behind precept, and many members are said to show a tendency to revert to idolatry. It is perhaps more as a writer than as a religious reformer that Kabir has left his mark on the beliefs of Northern India. His apothegms are ever on the lips of the educated man, whether Hindu or Musalmân, and have been largely incorporated into Granth or Sikh Scripture.
Chaitanya and the Bengal Movement
The preaching of the new creed in the Bengal delta was undertaken by Chaitanya (1485-1527 A.D.), who was, writes Mr. Gait, ‘a Baidik Brâhman. He preached mainly in Central Bengal and Orissa, and his doctrine found ready acceptance amongst large numbers of the people, especially amongst those who were still, or had only recently ceased to be, Buddhists. This was mainly due to the fact that he drew his followers from all sources, so much so that even Muhammadans followed him. He preached vehemently against the immolation of animals in sacrifice, and the use of animal food and stimulants, and taught that the true road to salvation lay in Bhakti, or fervent devotion to God. He recommended Râdhâ worship, and taught that the love felt by her for Krishna was the highest form of devotion. The acceptable offerings were flowers, money, and the like; but the great form of worship was the Sankirtan, or procession of worshippers playing and singing. A peculiarity of Chaitanya’s cult is that the post of spiritual guide, or Gosain, is not confined to Brâhman, and several of those best-known belong to the Baidya caste.
Teaching of this kind, in which special regard is paid to the erotic side of the Krishna cult, inevitably led to abuse. The lowest form of such teaching is found among the Vallabhâchârya sect, which has its chief seats in Western India and at Gokul near Muttra. They have been called the Epicureans of the East, and the Gosain, or leader of the sect, is regarded as a divinity, and his votaries are at his disposal—body, soul, and substance. The licentious practices of this community were exposed in the famous Mahârâja suit at Bombay in 1862.
Sikhism
Sikhism is one of those movements which started as a religious reform and ended in becoming a political organization. Founded in the Punjab by the Guru Nânak (1469-1538 A.D.), it was farther developed by succeeding Gurus, notably by Guru Govind Singh (1675-1708 A.D.). ‘The Sikh creed,’ writes Mr. Rose, ‘involves belief in one God, condemning the worship of other deities; it prohibits idolatry, pilgrimage to the great shrines of Hinduism, faith in omens, charms, or witchcraft; and does not recognize ceremonial impurity at birth and death. As a social system it abolishes caste distinctions, and, as a necessary consequence, the Brâhmanic supremacy and usages in all ceremonies, at birth, marriage, death, and so on. But this creed is probably accepted and acted upon by a very small number even of those who call themselves true Sikhs. The main object of the early Gurus was to distinguish their disciples from the Hindus among whom they lived. Hence Guru Govind prescribed that every Sikh should bear the five marks, known as the five ka—the hair uncut (kes), the short drawers (kachh), the kara, or iron bangle, the khanda, or steel knife, the kangha, or comb; that he should abstain from tobacco, and eat no meat save that of animals decapitated by a single blow at the back of the neck. In later times a tendency to assimilate themselves more and more to Hindus began to prevail, and many Sikhs accepted the ministrations of Brâhmans, and made pilgrimages, especially to Hardwâr, where the Ganges leaves the lower hills. This tendency is now being opposed by the orthodox teachers, who have their head-quarters at Amritsar, and the principles of the Granth, or Sikh Bible, are more stringently enforced. The teaching of the Gurus in matters of faith was little more than an exposition of the principles of Kabir. The formula of Nânak was the Unity of God and the Brotherhood of Man. The strength of Sikhism lay not in the novelty of its message, but in the social observances, which were designed to stimulate the local patriotism of its members and to make the followers of the Guru a peculiar people.
The Saktas
The third great sect which shares with Saivas and Vaishnavas the allegiance of Hindus is that of the Saktas. It is based on the worship of the active female principle (prâkriti), as manifested in one or other of the forms of the consort of Siva—Durgâ, Kâlî, or Pârvati. The forces of Nature are here deified under separate personalities, known as Divine Mothers, an old idea, now revived with fresh and more impure associations. The ritual of the sect, which prescribes blood-offerings and other abominable libidinous rites, is found in the Tantras, embodying cruder forms of belief, which are as old as the Atharva-veda, but have been farther developed subsequently. The cultus seems to have arisen in Eastern Bengal or Assam about the fifth century A.D., and was opposed by the Vaishnava reformers. It has left its mark in the later Buddhism, and unhappily seems to be spreading in Upper India under the encouragement of Bengali clerks.
Modern Vaishnava Sects
The most interesting phase of the reformed Vaishnava movement appears in the modern sects, which owe their inspiration to Kabir. Thus, in the United Provinces the Râdhâswâmis, founded by Shiu Dayâl Singh, a Khattrî of Agra (1818-78 A.D.), recognize the separate existence of God, the soul, and matter. According to them the universe is divided into three spheres—the first, the abode of the Supreme Being, about whom nothing can be predicated; the second, presided over by a Spirit, who is curiously described as ’the Lord God of the Bible, the Sat of the Vedantists, and the Lahaul of the Muhammadan Saints.’ The ruler of the third sphere, in which matter predominates over Spirit, is compared to the ‘Brahm, or Paramâtma, or God of most religions in the world.’ By resignation to the will of the Supreme transmigration is avoided, and the end of the series of re-births comes when the purified souls, after passing from plants through the lower created forms to man, reach the presence of the Supreme Being, and remain there, but without losing individuality. The sect has no temples and no priests, but the spiritual head of the community is highly revered. Contemplation of his image is held to be the contemplation of the Supreme Being, and is one of the chief ordinances of the faith.
In many cases these dissenting sects have taken the form of social rather than religious revolts. They were efforts on the part of the lower castes to free themselves from the tyranny of the caste system and the Brâhmans who stood at its head. It is significant that many of the reformers sprang from the lower ranks. Râmânand, himself a Brâhman, had among his disciples who founded separate schools Nâmdeo the cotton-printer, Sena the barber, Kabîr the weaver, Nâbhaji the Dom.
The Satnâmis
One of the most important of these movements was that of the Satnâmis, founded in the beginning of the seventeenth century by an Oudh Râjput, Jagjîvandâs, and extended among his own caste by the Chamâr Ghâsidâs, between 1820 and 1830 A.D. The seven principles prescribed by Ghâsidâs included abstinence from spirituous liquor and certain vegetables, like lentils and tomatoes, whose juice resembles blood; the abolition of idol worship; the prohibition of the use of cows for ploughing (an old Gond custom, now tabooed as a sop to the Brâhmans), or of working oxen after midday, a rule designed for the prevention of cruelty to animals. ‘This creed,’ writes Mr. Russell, ‘was marked by a creditable simplicity and purity of too elevated a nature for the Gonds of Chhattisgarh. The crude myths which are now associated with the story of Ghâsidâs, and the obscenity which distinguishes the ritual of the sect, furnish a good instance of the way in which a religion, originally of a high order of morality, will be rapidly debased to their own level when adopted by people who are incapable of living up to it.’
Modern Theistic Sects
The latest stage of these efforts to reform Hinduism is found in the modern Theistic sects, which had their origin in Bengal. ‘Brahmoism,’ writes Sir A. Lyall1, ‘as propagated by its latest expounders, seems to be Unitarianism of a European type, and as far as one can understand its argument, appears to have no logical stability or locus standi between revelation and pure rationalism; it propounds either too much or too little to its hearers.’ Its founder was the celebrated Râm Mohan Roy (1774-1833), and his successors, Debendranâth Tagore, Keshub Chunder Sen, and Pratâp Chunder Mozûmdâr. As at present constituted, the Brahmo Church is divided into three sections, all alike believing in the unity of the Godhead, the brotherhood of man, and direct communion with God in spirit, without the intervention of any mediator. The differences which exist are ritualistic and social, rather than religious. The Adi Samâj, or oldest section, is also the most conservative. While discarding all idolatrous forms, it follows as closely as possible the rites of Hinduism, and draws its inspiration solely from the religious books of the Hindus, especially the Upanishads, and not from the Bible or Korân. It has only once allowed a non-Brahman to officiate as its minister. Inter-caste marriages are not allowed, and a considerable agitation was raised when one of its Brahman members recently married the daughter of the Maharâja of Cooch Behâr. The Nabibidhan Samâj, or Church of the New Dispensation, was founded by Keshub Chunder Sen. It is more eclectic, and has assimilated what it considers true, not only from the holy books of Hinduism, but also from the teaching of Christianity, Buddhism, and Islâm. The Sadhâran Brahmo Samâj is the most advanced of these Churches. It rejects caste and seclusion of women, freely permits inter-caste marriage, and is uncompromising in its rejection of what is commonly called Hinduism. Though as yet a small body, it attracts Hindus who have received their education in England, as they are thus absolved from the trammels of caste, and spared the necessity of undergoing any rite of purification on their return to India.
Another of these societies, the Arya Samaj, has gained considerable influence in North-western India. Founded by Dayânand Saraswati (1827–53), it regards the Vedas as the only Scripture, professes a pure monotheism, repudiates idol worship, and largely devotes itself to the social amelioration of the race. One of the publications of the founder had some effect in promoting the agitation against cattle-slaughter, which led in recent years to serious popular disturbances. The Samaj has suffered from internal dissensions, and is at present divided on the question of the lawfulness of animal food.
Sectarianism in Modern Hinduism
In considering the practical effect of sectarianism on modern Hinduism, it may be said that, while the lines of cleavage between the manifold sects are clearly marked, it would be an error to suppose that Hinduism is divided into so many watertight compartments, between which no communion is possible. Such a result would be quite alien to the eclectic spirit of the system. There may be a certain amount of hostility felt by the leaders and inner circle of believers against the adherents of a rival sect; but beyond these lies the great mass of the people, who are, as a rule, ignorant to which sect they belong. The majority of high-caste Hindus in North India worship all the gods of the Hindu pantheon, each man, according to his fancy, paying special respect to Siva, or to one of his consorts, or to Vishnu in one or other of his many incarnations. The Brâhman will keep in his private chapel the Salagrâma, or ammonite representing Vishnu, as well as the phallic emblem of Siva. At the great places of pilgrimage he will worship the sectarian gods as he meets their images in his tour round the holy site; he will attend the popular celebrations in honour of either god, such as the Durgâ-pûjâ or the miracle play of Râma. The continuity of religious life is seen in its sacred places. Their sanctity has come down from a time probably antecedent to the rise of the historical religions, and each creed in succession has consecrated some holy site to the needs of its culture. Thus, Benares and Muttra were centres respectively of Buddhism and Jainism. The cult of Siva has accepted the one and that of Krishna the other, the new faith often erecting its temple on the very spot consecrated to that which preceded it. Even the more modern religions have adopted the old sacred places. For example, at Sakhi Sarwar, at the foot of the Sulaimân range, Hindus perform their rites of prayer and ablution, Sikhs venerate a shrine of Nânak, and Musalmânns the tomb of a Muhammadan saint.
Animism
Up to this point we have dealt with the historical, literary, and what may be termed the official, development of Hinduism. But below the upper crust of observances which Brâhmanism and Buddhism enforce, there is a mass of more primitive beliefs, which form the real faith of the majority of the people. This jungle of diverse beliefs and cults has been classed under the unsatisfactory title of Animism, by which is meant the belief which explains to primitive man the constant movements and changes in the world of things by the theory that every object which has activity enough to affect him in any way is animated by a life and will like his own. The leading features of Animism, as summarized by Mr. Risley, are: ‘It conceives of man as passing through life surrounded by a ghostly company of powers, elements, tendencies, mostly impersonal in their character, shapeless phantasms of which no image can be made and no definite idea can be formed. Some of these have departments or spheres of influence of their own: one presides over cholera, another over small-pox, another over cattle disease; some dwell in rocks, others haunt trees, others, again, are associated with rivers, whirlpools, waterfalls, or strange pools hidden in the depths of the hills. All of them require to be diligently propitiated by reason of the ills which proceed from them, and usually the land of the village provides the means for their propitiation.’ Some rude stones piled under a sacred tree, a mud platform where a tiger has killed a man, a curiously shaped rock which is supposed to have assumed its present shape from some supernatural agency, are the shrines of the Animist. His priest is not drawn from the Brâhman order, and the office is often not hereditary.
Animism in its purest form shows itself among the forest races in the centre and south of the Peninsula, and on the lower slopes of the Himâlayas. Some of these founded kingdoms of their own, like the Gond princes of Garhâ Mandlâ, Deogarh, and Chânda in the Central Provinces, the Koch of North-east Bengal and Assam, the main line of whose dynasty is now represented by the Mahârâja of Cooch Behâr. The tribes whose beliefs are Animism of this kind are in many cases falling rapidly under Hindu influence. Such is the case with the Santâls, Gonds, and Bhils, who occupy the hills south of the Gangetic valley. Over such people the yoke of the Brâhman missionary is easy. He enforces no hard moral code; he asks but that the convert should employ a faithful priest, and conform to the ordinances of a more respectable religion than that which he believes in common with the semi-savages around him. The tribes occupying the southern hill country, like the Badagas, Irulas, and Kurumbas, and the fierce races, like the Nâgâs, who inhabit the lower ranges on the Assam frontier, have remained comparatively free from Brâhman influence. The missionary influence likely to affect the races of the Madras hill country will probably be Christian rather than Hindu.
The Census returns of 1901 reckon the number of Animists at about 8½ millions. The method employed was to class as Hindus or Muhammadans persons who named these as their religions; the remainder, or those who classed their religion as tribal, say that of Gonds or Bhils, were recorded as Animists. Such a classification is of no practical value, simply because it ignores the fact that the fundamental religion of the majority of the people—Hindu, Buddhist, or even Musalman—is mainly animistic. The peasant may nominally worship the greater gods; but when trouble comes in the shape of disease, drought, or famine, it is from the older gods that he seeks relief. The greater gods are in his mind busied about the more important affairs of the universe, and have no time to listen to him when his ox is stolen, or when he desires a son to succeed him.
Animism of the kind we now see in India is no doubt largely derived from the non-Aryan races, among whom it flourishes with the greatest vigour. But, in the absence of literary evidence, we may suspect that the animistic current runs through the whole course of Indian religious history, that the Vedas may have been confined to the priestly class, and that from the beginning of things the common folk may have adored the monkey and snake, or the stone which they supposed to embody their gods. Indeed the Vedic religion was Animism of the higher kind, as is shown by the worship of the heavenly bodies and the powers of Nature, each of which was believed to be controlled by some indwelling spirit.
Such being the basis of the religion of the peasant, it may be added that there is at the present day a tendency to believe in one supreme God, whose relations with the other objects of popular belief are not clearly defined. The rustic hopes to be carried after death to meet his fathers, who have gone before, in a heaven where he will enjoy a similar but a higher life than that of earth. Hell awaits the man who neglects the ordinances of his creed rather than the evil-doer. His religious duties are performed not so much with a view to improve his prospects of the life to come, as to avert the malignity of the evil influences by which he believes himself to be surrounded, or to gain some temporal blessing. With this object he visits holy places, and in particular bathes in holy rivers, that he may absorb some of the benign influence of the spirits which reside there. With morality his religion is little concerned, except so far as he may follow the precepts of some Guru, or religious teacher, whose position is quite distinct from that of the Purohita, or family priest. The latter, in an orthodox Hindu family, is always a Brâhman, and to him is entrusted the performance of the domestic rites at birth, marriage, and death. The Guru is usually a member of one of the ascetic orders. He whispers into the ear of the initiate a Mantra or formula, which is to guide him to holiness, and at his periodical visits he instructs and admonishes his disciples. But, for the ordinary rustic, it is caste and the Panchâyat or caste-council that enforce the only moral code which he understands. He is charitable, but is seldom influenced by altruistic motives, his sympathies hardly extending beyond the members of his own family, clan, or village. In his general beliefs he is eclectic. He will worship any new gods whom he deems powerful for good or evil; hence he shows little intolerance of other forms of belief, except when the fundamental principles of his own faith are endangered. If he be a Musalmân, he knows little beyond the formal usages of his creed, and though he addresses Allah in the mosque, it is to the old village gods that he resorts when trouble befalls him.
Islam in India
Passing on to the other religions, we need not attempt to trace their progress except so far as it was influenced by their Indian environment. If we dismiss the early trading settlements on the west coast and military operations in Sind, the first real contact of Islam with Hinduism occurred just at the close of the tenth century of our era. The invasions of Mahmûd of Ghazni, though they resulted in the occupation of the Punjab, were raids with the demolition of an idol or the plunder of a temple city as their object, rather than serious attempts at conquest. It was not till the end of the twelfth century that Muhammad Ghori overthrew the Hindu dynasties of Delhi and Kanauj, and opened the way to Muslim domination. To the historian of religion the most important result of this conquest was that the temporary overthrow of the Rajput powers resulted in the dispersion of the clans, some of whom emigrated to Rajputana, which became the stronghold of Hinduism in North India, as Travancore is in the south. Others were driven down the Ganges valley, and became the headmen of villages occupied to this day by their descendants in Oudh, Bihar, and along the lower reaches of the river. It was not till early in the sixteenth century that the Mughal power was established under Bâbar and his successors. During the five centuries which intervened between the raids of Mahmûd and the final establishment of Muslim power in India, Buddhism and Brâhmanism suffered the grievous stress of war and rapine at the hands of rude troopers from Central Asia, who believed that they earned the favour of God by slaying the priests and demolishing the temples of the infidel. But forcible proselytism was probably uncommon, except at the hands of some soldier bigot like Sikandar Lodi. The position of the early Muhammadan dynasties was too precarious to admit of any general propaganda. Even in the time of the early Mughals, the emperors were too indifferent towards spiritual affairs, too much engrossed in schemes of conquest and administration, to undertake the task of conversion in earnest. Their power was in a large measure dependent on alliances with the Rajput princes; the native princesses whom they married brought a strain of Hindu blood into the royal line, and promoted tolerance of Hinduism. It was only in the later years of the Empire, when it fell into the hands of the fanatical Aurangzeb, that we hear much of persecution and forcible conversion. In Southern India the Muhammadan rulers seem generally to have been tolerant, with the signal exception of Típû Sultan, but his policy had little effect on the religion of his kingdom, where at present only about five per cent. are Muhammadans. The Marâthâs seem to have followed the tradition of the Muslim dynasty of Bijâpur, and in their turn to have treated the rival faith with tolerance.
Islâm is most powerful in those parts of the country where the invaders settled down, not only as conquering rulers, but as proprietors of the conquered soil. Its numbers are not so large in the neighbourhood of the capital cities of Agra and Delhi, because it was here met by well-organized Hindu tribes. Thus, in the Punjab, setting aside the special ethical conditions of the north-western frontier, Muhammadans are in excess, not in the eastern districts dominated by Delhi, but in the region of the west and south, drained by the Indus and its tributaries. In Kashmir a large body of the people embraced the faith, probably because from the time of its introduction in the fourteenth century until the end of the sixteenth the country was ruled by its own Musaliyan princes, and after the Mughal conquest by Akbar it became the favourite summer residence of the Court. After the downfall of the Empire it fell under the control of the Afghans, bigoted adherents of the faith, until the establishment of a Hindu dynasty in 1819. Going farther east, the Mughal armies never occupied the slopes of the Himalayas, and here Hinduism remained undisturbed, as was the case in the country south of the Jumna ruled by the intractable Bundelas and along the Râjputâna frontier where it was confronted by the most powerful and united Râjput clans. It was in Oudh and the eastern districts of the United Provinces that Islâm made more rapid progress, because it here met a newly established population, which was readily influenced by the powerful Musalmân colonies founded in its midst. But, in the main, Islâm has progressed not so much by direct conversion as by its own vitality. In Eastern Bengal, where its numbers have increased during the last twenty years from eight to eleven and a quarter millions, the Muhammadan has gained ground because he is better able to contend with the unhealthiness of the climate. He eats meat and other more nourishing food than his Hindu neighbours; he encourages the remarriage of widows; he sets his face against the marriage of infants. The result is that his family is larger and longer-lived. Again, generally throughout the country the Musalmân is a dweller in cities. He is on the whole better fed and less exposed to famine and disease than the Hindu, who is often a landless field labourer, the hardest and worst-paid occupation in India.
In the rural districts Islâm has been largely affected by its Hindu environment. If it has gained some converts from Hinduism, it has borrowed from it many of those practices which distinguish it from the original faith of Arabia. By degrees the fervid enthusiasm of the early raiders was softened down; the two religions learned to live side by side; and if the Muhammadan of the later days could never conceal his contempt for the faith of his ‘pagan’ neighbours, he came to understand that it could not be destroyed by persecution. From the Hindus Islâm derived much of its demonology, the belief in witchcraft, and the veneration of departed Pirs, or saints. The village Musalmân of the present day employs the Hindu astrologer to fix a lucky day for a marriage, or will pray to the village god to grant a son to his wife. This is the more natural because conversion to Islâm, whenever it does occur, is largely from the lower castes. It is one of the most democratic religions in the world, and welcomes to full franchise the low-caste man groaning under the contempt which meets him at the hands of his haughtier neighbours.
The Pachpiriyas
The most remarkable instance of the fusion of Islâm and Animism is found among the Pachpiriyas of Bengal and the United Provinces. They take their name from the worship of the Pânch Pîr, or Five Saints. Some have traced the cult to the five Pândava heroes of the Mahâbhârata; but the five deities usually worshipped reckon as their leader Ghâzî Mîyân, who is said to have been a nephew of Sultan Mahmûd of Ghazni, and to have fallen as a martyr to the faith at Bahaich in Oudh in 1034 A.D. With him are sometimes joined four of his fellow martyrs. But the list changes almost from District to District, and displays a remarkable compound of Muslim hagiology grafted on Animism. Thus, one of the five saints is Aminâ Sati, the ghost of some faithful widow who died on her husband’s pyre; or Bhairon, who in name at least represents Siva in one of his terrible forms, Bhairava, ’the ruthless,’ but is probably a village god imported into Brâhmanism. Five small clay mounds in a corner of the house, or under the holy village tree, form the shrine of this quintette of divinities, and the officiant is always a member of one of the lowest castes.
The Main Sects of Islam
The main sects of Islâm are the Sunnis and the Shiahs. The schism arose within the first century after the death of the Prophet, the Sunnis, or Traditionalists, accepting the Sunnat, or collected body of usage, as possessing authority concurrent with or supplementary to the Korân, a view which the Shiahs reject. Shiahs maintain that the Imâmate, or temporal and spiritual headship of the faithful, was by divine right vested in Ali and his descendants through Hasan and Husain, the ill-fated grandsons of the Prophet. They necessarily reject as usurpers the first three Imâmes—Abu Bakr, Umar, and Usmân—whom the Sunnis respect. The former observe the annual feast of the Muharram in memory of the martyrdom of Ali and his two sons, while the Sunnis celebrate only the tenth day of Muharram, and abhor the taziâs, or representations of the tombs of the martyrs, which the Shiahs parade in procession. Sunnis are largely in excess in Turkey and India; Shiahs in Persia and Afghânistan, their chief seats in India being Lucknow and Hyderâbâd. The Shiah movement, in fact, is strongest where there is least Arab intermixture in the population. Hence some have defined it as an Aryan protest against Semite domination.
The well-defined, clear-cut monotheism of Islâm is much less favourable to the growth of sects than is polytheistic, eclectic Hinduism. In Islâm the sectarian movement usually follows one of two lines: it is either puritanical or pietistic.
The Wahâbis
A type of the first class of sect is that of the Wahâbis, founded by Ibn Abdul Wahâb, at Nejd in Arabia, early in the eighteenth century. It was an attempt to restore the primitive practices of Islâm, which, in the view of the founder, had become corrupted during its world-wide career of conquest. The new doctrine was introduced into India by Sayid Ahmad Shâh, who proclaimed a Jihâd, or holy war, against the Sikhs in 1826, and founded the colony of fanatics on our north-western frontier, which has been a constant source of trouble to the Indian Government. Wahâbis accept the six books of traditions as collected by the Sunnis, but reject the glosses of the Church theologians, and claim liberty of conscience and the right of private interpretation. They insist strongly on the Unity of God, which, they say, has been endangered by the reverence paid to the person of the Prophet, to the Imâms, and to saints. Hence they condemn pilgrimages to shrines. In their view ordinary Musalmânis are Mushrik, or those who associate others with God. They discountenance the use of rosaries, and regard tobacco as unlawful. From a political point of view the most dangerous doctrine of the sect was to assert that India is dâru-l-harb, i.e. ’the land of warfare,’ against the rulers of which to wage war is a religious duty. Much controversy has arisen regarding this doctrine. While some members of the sect undoubtedly accept it, it would seem that the fanatical element in the movement has for the present died out in many parts; and in Bengal the efforts of the reformers, who now prefer to call themselves Muhammadi, or Ahl-i-hadis, ‘followers of tradition,’ are specially directed to the eradication of superstitious practices not sanctioned by the Korân, and to the inculcation of the true principles of the faith.
Sufiism
The second sectarian movement in Islâm tends in the direction of Sufiism. This is, to quote Professor Palmer, ‘a strange combination of the pantheism of the Aryan race and of the severe monotheism of their Semitic conquerors, and aims at leading men to the contemplation of spiritual things by appealing to their emotions. The keynote of the system is that the human soul is an emanation from God, and that it is always seeking and yearning to rejoin the source from which it sprung. Ecstasy is the means by which a nearer intercourse is obtained, and absorption in the divinity is the ultimate object to be attained.’ These doctrines, with more or less variance of practice, are accepted by the leading Sunni orders, such as the Chistiyas and Kâdiriyyas. Outside these are the Be-shara, or non-orthodox orders, who, while calling themselves Musalmâns, do not accommodate their lives to the principles of any definite creed. These furnish the most desperate Musalmân fanatics.
The Ahmadiya Sect
The wildest development of recent sectarianism in Islam is furnished by the Ahmadiya sect, which has its head quarters in the Punjab. Its leader, Mullâ Ghulam Ahmad, in a recent manifesto claims to be the counterpart of the Saviour of Christianity, and to be the Mahdi or Messiah expected by Musalmânâns and Christians alike. The Korân is to him the repository of all knowledge. The resurrection is at hand. While discouraging religious war, he is said to preach strongly against Christianity, Hinduism, the Shiah doctrines, and the movement in favour of English education.
The Moplahs, Bohras, and Khojas
Three notable phases of Muhammadan religious life are illustrated by the Moplahs, the Bohras, and the Khojas. The Moplahs (Mâppilla) are found to the number of nearly a million in Malabar. They are believed to be in a large measure descended from Arab immigrants, who landed on the western coast in the third century after the Hijra. This tribe is remarkable for the savage fanaticism displayed in successive revolts against Hindus. They have several times resisted the bayonets of English troops. The Bohras, or ’traders’ of Western India, fall into two groups—the mercantile branch, originally Shiahs of the Ismailiya sect, and the landholding section, who are generally Sunnis. Both are mainly converts from Hinduism, disciples of Abdullah, an Arab missionary, who landed in the eleventh century. In the trading branch the Dâudi Bohras are fierce sectarians, strongly opposed to Sunnis and other Musalmânis not belonging to their sect; while the land-holding branch has in recent years been much influenced by Wahâbi teaching. The Khojas, or Kwâjas, ‘honourable converts,’ also of the Ismailiya sect, owe their origin to Hasan Sabah, an Ismailiyan teacher of the eleventh century, known to the Crusaders as the Old Man of the Mountain, about whom many strange legends are told. His present representative is the well-known Agha Khân of Bombay. They are active traders on the west coast of the Peninsula and in East Africa.
Modern Islamic Reform
In Northern India Islam displays a genuine deepening of religious life, in the direction of increased religious instruction for the young, and translations of the sacred books into the local dialects, of which cheap copies are widely circulated in the country districts. Combined with this, a desire for education has spread among the higher classes, of which the most noteworthy result has been the foundation of the Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, which represents the progressive party in Islam, opposed to fanaticism, and welcoming the science of the West.
Mazdaïsm
The second of the foreign religions is Mazdaïsm, the Pârsi faith, which takes its name from Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), the spirit of good, who, according to the dualistic hypothesis, contends with Angro Mainyûsh (Ahriman), the spirit of evil. It is also known as Zoroastrianism, from Zoroaster, the Greek rendering of the old Iranian Zarathushtra, the modern Persian Zardusht. Mazdaïsm appears to have its roots in the common faith of the Aryan peoples before their separation into the Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches. But the fission occurred before the religion had been organized, and the elements common to the two are difficult to trace. What is most striking in the relations of the two faiths is that in the Avesta the evil spirits are known as Daeva (modern Persian Div), a term which the Indo-Aryans applied, in the form Deva, to the spirits of light. By a similar inversion, Asura, the name of the gods in the Rig-veda, suffered degradation, and at a later date was applied to evil spirits; but in Iran, Ahura was consistently applied in the higher sense to the deity, especially as Ahura Mazda, ’the wise,’ to the Supreme God. Later on the two faiths came in contact again under Darius, when he occupied the countries to the north-west of India; but this intercourse led to little positive result, and meanwhile the Iranian creed had assumed a form quite different from that of the Indo-Aryans.
This was the work of Zoroaster, whose date is quite uncertain, authorities variously assigning him to the fourteenth or the eleventh century B.C. It was apparently to him that the inverted use of the terms Daeva and Ahura is due. When he comes on the scene we find a contest proceeding between two cults, the higher classes being represented by that of the Ahura, who were cattle-breeders, and venerated the cow. Below them were the Daeva worshippers; and the success of Zoroaster marks the degradation of the Daeva, and the belief in the dualistic system of the universe, in which Druj, ‘falsehood,’ or Ahriman (Angro Mainyûsh), the spirit enemy, contends with Ahura Mazda. This faith received much of its new elements from Mesopotamia. Submerged for a time by the Greek invasion, it gained a temporary revival under the Sassanid dynasty, and finally was overthrown by Islam, which directed its energies to the suppression of the worship of fire.
At this stage many of the survivors were forced to emigrate to India. Ormuz formed an intermediate stage in their wanderings. Finally, in 717 A.D., they arrived at the little port of Sanjân, sixty miles north of Bombay. There they re-established the sacred fire, the seeds of which they are said to have brought with them from Persia, and came to be known as Pârsis, or Persians. They gained the favour of the local chieftains, increased and multiplied, until finally they established relations with the Mughal Court, some of their priests even visiting the Emperor Akbar, who, in his spirit of eclecticism, dallied in turn with Brâhman Pandits, Portuguese missionaries, and Pârsi fire-worshippers. Up to the middle or end of the eighteenth century Surat, Navaṣṭî, and the neighbouring parts of Gujarat were their head-quarters. The commercial predominance of Bombay attracted large numbers to that city, from which they have now spread all over India and the emporia of the East in quest of trade.
At first their weakness and their Hindu environment reacted on their faith, and their creed became hardly distinguishable from the lower Hinduism by which they were surrounded. Their isolation checked the development of their religion, and the sacred Canon was already finally closed. But their prosperity and immunity from persecution attracted fresh immigration from Iran. The patriotic feeling of the race aroused fresh interest in the national faith, and in recent years the old sacred language has been diligently studied, and the sacred books have been edited and translated. This revival of national feeling has also encouraged the renewal of intercourse with the oppressed remnant who still live under Persian rule, in whose interest the open-handed liberality and political influence of the powerful Bombay houses have been vigorously exercised.
The Pârsis number at present on Indian soil 94,000, of whom all but 7,000 are found in Bombay and Baroda. They are divided into factions: Kadimi, ’the older,’ and Shenshâi, ‘royal,’ the point of difference being the mode of reckoning the sacred year. The former, as their name implies, assert that they follow the more primitive practice. The modern Pârsi retains the dualistic theory of the two spirits contending for mastery. The soul after death passes to a place of reward (Bihisht), or of punishment (Dozakh). Conduct in life conditions the fate of each man after death, and the duly performed rites of descendants help the soul to happiness. Fire, water, the sun, moon, and stars are the creation of Ahura Mazda, and are revered. Zarathushtra, the Prophet, is venerated; Soshios, his son, will, they believe, be reincarnated, destroy evil, purify the world, and make Mazdaism supreme. Among their rites the most remarkable is the exposure of the dead on the so-called Towers of Silence.
From the statistics it appears that the number of Indian Jews has increased within the last twenty years from 12,000 to 18,000. This increase cannot be attributed to immigration, because India with its astute native mercantile races and low wages of labour offers little attraction to the foreign Jew. There are two well-established Jewish colonies, one at Kolaba in Bombay, the other at Cochin on the Malabar coast. The Bombay Jews, known as Ben-i-Israil, ‘sons of Israel,’ are believed to have reached India from Yemen about the sixth century A.D.; some authorities, however, assign their immigration to the time of the Dispersion, others to the fifteenth century A.D., while local tradition fixes their arrival in the second century of our era. The Cochin Jews assign their arrival to the first century, and there seems little doubt that they were on the Malabar coast in the eighth century. Ancient copperplate grants in their favour, and their partial amalgamation with the native races, indicate their early origin. Both Jewish colonies recognize a white and a black section, the latter being those who have more completely coalesced with the native population.
The history of Christianity in India begins with the establishment of the Syrian Church in Malabar, which claims, on authority now generally discredited, to have been founded by the Apostle St. Thomas, whose missionary labours seem to have ended in the dominions of Gondophares, apparently in Lower Sind. This Church was certainly in existence as early as the beginning of the sixth century. When it first emerges into history it formed a branch of the Nestorian community, which, expelled in the fifth century from Europe and Africa, became the leader of the Asiatic Church, with the Patriarch of Babylon as its spiritual head. He supplied the Nestorians with bishops of the Chaldean or Syrian rite, the existence of which at the present day on the Malabar coast is thus explained. It was, however, when Nestorianism prevailed in Persia that it spread thence to India. The life of this Church in India was troublous, due to the efforts of the Portuguese to bring it under the control of Rome. This was nominally effected at the Synod of Diamper (Udayamperür, near Cochin) in 1599. The result was that the Syrian rite, purged of its Nestorianism, was retained. In 1653 many of its members revolted from Papal control. A schism then occurred. A Carmelite Mission in 1660 succeeded in bringing back most of the Indian Christians to the fold of Rome. The independence of the remnant of the Syrian community was secured by the support of the Dutch, then masters of the coast. In this way arose the two branches which still exist: the Old Church, or Syrian Catholics, owning allegiance to their own bishops under the Patriarch of Antioch, and retaining the use of the Syrian tongue in their services; and the New Church, or Jacobites, who maintain some dogmas and rites of their own, but are affiliated to Rome.
The first regular Portuguese Mission, under brethren of the Franciscan Order, arrived in 1500 A.D. Its progress was slow, and its work was mainly confined to the Portuguese settlements, till the advent of St. Francis Xavier in 1542. The Malabar coast and the southern districts of Madras were the scene of his labours. After ten years’ constant exertions, he sailed for the Further East in 1552, and died soon after on the coast of China, whence his remains were removed, and now rest under a gorgeous shrine in the Church of Bom Jesus at Goa. The Church which he founded adopted missionary work under principles less polemic than those of the earlier Portuguese preachers. Its missionaries, like the celebrated Abbé Dubois in much later times, assumed the habits, dress, and often the titles of Brâhmanic ascetics. They laboured to found an indigenous Church, with a priesthood recruited from the native races, and with this object in view they recognized caste among their converts, a concession which was a cause of much controversy in after-times. The Jesuit Mission in Madura dates from 1606, and with it are associated the names of Robert de Nobili, its founder, who died in 1656, and John de Britto, martyred at Madura in 1693. The parochial organization and industrial schools founded by the Jesuits still survive. These Catholic Churches came under the control of the Inquisition, founded at Goa in 1560, and surviving until its dissolution in 1812. The work of the Jesuit Mission was much impeded by the action taken in Europe against the Order, and it suffered grievous persecution, particularly at the hands of Tipu Sultan, who about 1784 forcibly converted to Islam and deported above the Ghāts a large number of Christians. Meanwhile the tolerance, or indifference, of Akbar and his successors permitted the foundation of Catholic Missions in Northern India, which, if less successful than those of the South, led to the establishment of a Church which survives to the present day.
The first Protestant Mission was established in 1705 by the Lutherans Ziegenbalg and Plutschau, who started their work at Tranquebar under Danish protection. To the former and his successor, Schultze, is due the first Protestant version of the Scriptures in an Indian vernacular. The devoted Swartz (1750-98), the founder of the famous Tinnevelly Mission, succeeded to their labours. The work of the Lutheran Missions has now, to a great extent, passed into the hands of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The Mission to Calcutta was founded by Kiernander, a Swede, who reached India in 1758. Carey, in spite of opposition from the East India Company, established himself at Serampore in 1799, and founded the Baptist Mission, famous through the literary labours of Marshman and Ward. It was not till 1814 that the Company consented to the foundation of the episcopal see of Calcutta under Bishop Middleton, who succeeded to the work of the devoted Henry Martyn (1806-11), one of the chaplains of the Company. The missionary work of the Church was stimulated by the journeys, recorded in his valuable Diary, of the second Bishop of Calcutta, Heber. The first missionary of the Church of Scotland was Dr. Duff, one of the pioneers of higher education in India.
The Christian community now numbers nearly three millions, of whom more than two and a half millions are native converts, and the remainder Europeans or Eurasians. Of the Native Christians about two-fifths are Roman Catholics, and one-eighth Romo-Syrians; one-ninth belong to the Anglican body, one-eleventh are Jacobite Syrians, one-twelfth Baptists. Of the other sects the best represented are the Lutherans and allied denominations, who claim 6 per cent. of the total, the Methodists 2½, the Presbyterians 1½ per cent.
Nearly two-thirds of the total Christian population are found in Madras, including the Native States of Cochin and Travancore. In these States, where the Syrian Church is strongest, nearly a quarter of the entire native population profess Christianity. In British territory, it is in the eight southern Districts, the scene of the labours of St. Francis Xavier and Swartz, that Christians are most numerous. Then come the Districts of the Telugu country—Kistna, where they are mainly Baptists and Lutherans; Nellore, nearly all Baptists; and Kurnool, Baptists with a respectable minority of Anglicans.
Next comes Bengal with 278,000 Christians, of whom 228,000 are natives; and of these about half are found at Rānchi, in Chotā Nāgpur, where Missions of the Lutheran, Anglican, and Roman Catholic bodies are busily engaged among the forest tribes. Oraons, Mundās, and Khariās supply the majority of converts, those from Hinduism being few, and these do not come from the higher ranks of Hindu society.
Farther north, at Champâran in Bihâr, the Roman Catholic Mission has an interesting history. The work of the missionaries began in Nepâl and Tibet, but they were expelled from Nepâl by the newly established Gurkha dynasty. They fled with many of their converts to Bihâr, where some of the present Christians are descendants of the original fugitives, still speak their own language, but have intermarried with the Native Christians of the land of their exile.
In the United Provinces the Christians number 103,000, of whom 69,000 are native converts, or nearly treble the numbers at the last decennial Census. The increase appears chiefly in the three western Divisions, where the American Methodist Church ‘devoted its efforts chiefly to the very lowest castes, and consequently has to be satisfied with a lower standard of appreciation of the tenets of Christianity than many other Missions require from their converts.’
As regards the other Provinces of the Empire, in the Punjab out of 72,000 Christians, 39,000 are natives. Here, again, the increase has been startling; they numbered only 4,000 in 1881, and are now nearly twice as numerous as they were ten years ago. Delhi, with the Cambridge Mission under the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and a Baptist Mission, shows the largest increase; but with this exception the progress of Christianity is confined to the western part of the area, where Sikhism has been most powerful. In Bombay Native Christians have increased during the last ten years from 130,000 to 181,000. Of these 105,000 are Roman Catholics, ‘descendants of converts made by the Portuguese several centuries ago, who at the present day are ignorant and unprogressive.’ The remainder is made up of recent converts to a variety of sects, among which the Salvation Army and the Anglican Church take precedence. The figures show a large increase in the number of children, and ’the secret of many of the conversions is to be sought more in the relations which the missionary bodies have been able to establish with the famine waifs in their orphanages, than in any general movement in the adult members of non-Christian communities towards accepting the revelation of the Gospel.’ In Assam the Christian population, which now numbers 36,000, has more than doubled in the last ten years, largely the result of efforts of the Welsh and Baptist Missions among the hill tribes. In Burma, where converts have increased in ten years from 71,000 to 129,000, progress has been most rapid among the Karens, who are more amenable to missionary effort than the Buddhist population. It is only since the annexation that missionaries have enjoyed free opportunities in Upper Burma, and the full harvest of their work is still to be reaped.
Throughout the Empire the progress of Christianity in the period between 1872 and 1901 has been remarkable. It has about doubled its numbers in thirty years, rising from an aggregate of one and a half to nearly three millions. Naturally Native Christians are most largely recruited from the classes outside the Hindu system. The missionary view lays stress on the labours of the early missionaries, the efficiency of the present body of workers, the dissemination of translations of the Scriptures, the improved status of Christians won by their own exertions, the spread of education, benevolence in seasons of famine, and lastly, the impartiality and disinterestedness of the British Government, which has conferred so many benefits upon the people, and is known to be influenced by Christian principles. The question of the large increase in Madras has been discussed from another point of view by Mr. Francis, who points to the improved social position enjoyed by the low-caste man who embraces Christianity. He sums up by saying: ‘The remarkable growth in the numbers of Native Christians thus largely proceeds from the natural and laudable discontent with their lot which possesses the lower classes of the Hindus; and so well do the converts, as a class, use their opportunities, that the community is earning for itself a constantly improving position in the public estimation.’
W. CROOKE.