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THE RELIGION OF THE VEDA

Front Matter

TRINITY COLLEGE LIBRARY Barcode: 3 1761 02718264

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THE RELIGION OF THE VEDA

THE ANCIENT RELIGION OF INDIA

(FROM RIG-VEDA TO UPANISHADS)

PREFACE.

THIS volume reproduces with some little amplification six lectures on the Religion of the Veda given before various learned institutions of America during the fall and winter of 1906-07. The period of time and the amount of literature embraced in the term Vedic are large; moreover any discussion of this religion that deserves the name must also include a glance at the prehistoric periods which preceded the religion of the Veda. Consequently my treatment must be selective. It was not difficult to make the selection. I have not thought it necessary to include a complete account of Vedic mythology and legend; nor did the details of priestly ritual and religious folk-practices seem to me to call for elaborate exposition at this time and under the circumstances of a popular treatment of Vedic religion. On the other hand, it seemed both interesting and important to bring out as markedly as possible the development of the religious thought of the Veda in distinction from myth and ceremony. The reader of these pages will, I hope, learn to his satisfaction how the religion of the Veda rests upon a prehistoric foundation which is largely nature myth; how it continues in the Rig-Veda hymns as hieratic ritual worship of polytheistic gods; how this religion grew more and more formal and mechanical in the Yajur-Vedas and Brāhmanas, until it was practically abandoned; how and when arose the germs of higher religious thought; and, finally, how the motives and principles that underlie this entire chain of mental events landed Hindu thought, at a comparatively early period, in the pantheistic and pessimistic religion of the Upanishads which it has never again abandoned.

MAURICE BLOOMFIELD.

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, BALTIMORE, April, 1907.

ANNOUNCEMENT.

THE American Lectures on the History of Religions are delivered under the auspices of the American Committee for Lectures on the History of Religions. This Committee was organised in 1892, for the purpose of instituting “popular courses in the History of Religions, somewhat after the style of the Hibbert Lectures in England, to be delivered annually by the best scholars of Europe and this country, in various cities, such as Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and others.”

The terms of association under which the Committee exist are as follows:

1. The object of this Association shall be to provide courses of lectures on the history of religions, to be delivered in various cities.

2. The Association shall be composed of delegates from Institutions agreeing to co-operate, or from Local Boards organised where such co-operation is not possible.

3. These delegates—one from each Institution or Local Board—shall constitute themselves a Council under the name of the “American Committee for Lectures on the History of Religions.”

4. The Council shall elect out of its number a Chairman, a Secretary, and a Treasurer.

5. All matters of local detail shall be left to the Institutions or Local Boards, under whose auspices the lectures are to be delivered.

6. A course of lectures on some religion, or phase of religion, from an historical point of view, or on a subject germane to the study of religions, shall be delivered annually, or at such intervals as may be found practicable, in the different cities represented by this Association.

7. The Council (a) shall be charged with the selection of the lecturers, (b) shall have charge of the funds, (c) shall assign the time for the lectures in each city, and perform such other functions as may be necessary.

8. Polemical subjects, as well as polemics in the treatment of subjects, shall be positively excluded.

9. The lecturer shall be chosen by the Council at least ten months before the date fixed for the course of lectures.

10. The lectures shall be delivered in the various cities between the months of September and June.

11. The copyright of the lectures shall be the property of the Association.

12. One-half of the lecturer’s compensation shall be paid at the completion of the entire course and the second half upon the publication of the lectures.

13. The compensation to the lecturer shall be fixed in each case by the Council.

14. The lecturer is not to deliver elsewhere any of the lectures for which he is engaged by the Committee, except with the sanction of the Committee.

The Committee as now constituted is as follows:

Prof. Crawford H. Toy, Chairman, 7 Lowell St., Cambridge, Mass.; Rev. Dr. John P. Peters, Treasurer, 225 West 99th St., New York; Prof. Morris Jastrow, Jr., Secretary, 248 South 23d St., Philadelphia, Pa.; Prof. Francis Brown, Union Theological Seminary, New York; Prof. Richard Gottheil, Columbia University, New York; Prof. R. F. Harper, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.; Prof. Paul Haupt, 2511 Madison Avenue, Baltimore, Md.; Prof. F. W. Hooper, Brooklyn Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y.; Prof. E. W. Hopkins, New Haven, Conn.; Prof. Edward Knox Mitchell, Hartford Theological Seminary, Hartford, Conn.; Prof. George F. Moore, Cambridge, Mass.; Rev. F. K. Sanders, Boston, Mass.; Pres. F. C. Southworth, Meadville Theological Seminary, Meadville, Pa.

The lecturers in the course of American Lectures on the History of Religions and the titles of their volumes are as follows:

The present course of lectures, the seventh in the series, was delivered by Professor Maurice Bloomfield, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at the Johns Hopkins University, and one of the leading authorities on Vedic Literature. His latest work, a Concordance of the Vedic hymns and prayer formulae, covering 1100 pages, the embodiment of a life’s study, published as Vol. 10 of the Harvard Oriental Series, will ensure Professor Bloomfield a permanent place in the history of Vedic studies. Besides this he has edited from the manuscripts the Vedic ritual book, known as the Kauçika-Sutra; published a translation of the Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, included in Professor Max Müller’s Sacred Books of the East (Oxford, 1897); written a volume on the Literature and History of the Atharva-Veda, entitled: “The Atharva-Veda and the Gopatha-Brahmana” (Strassburg, 1889); and edited, in collaboration with Professor Richard Garbe of Tübingen, a chromophotographic reproduction of the unique birch-bark manuscript of the Kashmirian Atharva-Veda (3 vols., Baltimore, 1901). He has also contributed to the technical journals of this country and Europe numerous papers on linguistic, mythological, and ethnological topics in general, in addition to a large number of contributions on the interpretation, textual restoration, and religion of the Veda in particular.

The lectures in this course were delivered before the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Union Theological Seminary, New York; Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, Brooklyn; Drexel Institute, Philadelphia; Meadville Theological Seminary, Meadville; University of Chicago, Chicago; and Hartford Theological Seminary, Hartford.

JOHN P. PETERS,

C. H. TOY,

MORRIS JASTROW,

Committee on Publication.

January, 1908.

CONTENTS.

LECTURE THE FIRST.

INDIA THE LAND OF RELIGIONS.—THE VEDA.

Multiplicity of Hindu religions — Brahmanism — Buddhism — Profound hold of religion upon the Hindu mind — Hindu life dominated by religious institutions — The four stages of life — The institution of caste — Caste then and now — Symptoms of revulsion against caste — Other pernicious religious institutions — Continuity of India’s religious history — Date of the conception of rta, or “cosmic order” — Close relationship of the religions of India and Persia — Slight connection between India and Persia in secular history — The Parsis in India — Close relation between Veda and Avesta — The Veda and the Indo-European period — The Veda as a whole — The date of the Veda — Its great uncertainty — Nature of Vedic tradition — The Çrotriyas, or “Oral Traditionalists”— Uncertain character of Vedic life and institutions — Origin of the Veda — Contents of Vedic literature as a whole — The four Vedas — The Rig-Veda — The books of the Rig-Veda — Theme and character of the Rig-Veda — A hymn to Goddess Dawn — The Yajur-Veda — Character of the yajus-formulas — The Sama-Veda — Origin and purpose of the Sama-Veda — The Atharva-Veda — Contents of the Atharva-Veda — Religious Quality of the Atharva-Veda — Two Atharvan hymns — The Brahmana Texts — Some legends of the Brahmanas — The Aranyakas, or “Forest Treatises” — The Upanishads — Literary history of the Upanishads — The Upanishads in the West — Critical estimate of the Upanishads | 1-59

LECTURE THE SECOND.

THE HIERATIC RELIGION.—THE PANTHEON OF THE VEDA.

Fundamental traits of early Vedic religion — False view of the nature of Vedic poetry — The Rig-Veda as sacrificial poetry — Difficulty of understanding the ritual character of the Rig-Veda — Poetry addressed to the Goddess Dawn — A hymn to the sacrifice post — The Goddess Dawn as the symbol of liberality at the sacrifice — Some erroneous estimates of Goddess Dawn — Agni the son of “Baksheesh” — Practical purposes of Vedic poetry — The Rig-Veda contains the religion of the upper classes — The ritual of the Rig-Veda — The apri-hymns — Nature-worship the keynote of the Rig-Veda — India’s climate and nature-worship — Vedic and Hellenic mythology compared — Arrested anthropomorphism — Definition of the word Pantheon as applied to the Veda — Faulty classifications of the Vedic gods — Chronology of the gods — Different degrees of certainty about the origin of the gods — Classification of the gods in these lectures | 60-98

LECTURE THE THIRD

THE PREHISTORIC GODS.

Two prehistoric periods bearing upon Hindu religion — Scepticism about Comparative Mythology — Difficulties in the way of Comparative Mythology — Comparative Mythology and Ethnology — The myth of Cerberus — The Indo-European period — Prehistoric words for god — Father Sky and Mother Earth — The Thunderer — The Vedic Açvins, or “Horsemen,” the two Sons of Heaven — The Dioscuri in Greek mythology — The Lettish myth of the two “Sons of God” — Common kernel of the myth of the two “Sons of Heaven” — The Aryan, or Indo-Iranian period — Important religious ideas common to the two peoples — The dual gods Varuna and Mitra — Ahura Mazda and Varuna — The conception of rta, or “cosmic order” — The Adityas — Aditi, the mother of the Adityas — Mitra, a sun god — The sun, the moon, and the planets — The Adityas and Amesha Spentas — Early ethical concepts among the Indo-Europeans — Varuna and Greek Ouranos (Uranus) — The origin of man — Sundry parents of man — “Father Manu” — Yama and Yami, the “Twins” — Interlacing of the myths of the first man — The human character of Manu and Yama — Yama, the god of the dead — Soma, the sacrificial drink of the gods — The myth of Soma and the Heavenly Eagle — Value of the preceding reconstructions | 99-149

LECTURE THE FOURTH

THE TRANSPARENT, TRANSLUCENT, AND OPAQUE GODS— RELIGIOUS CONCEPTIONS AND RELIGIOUS FEELING IN THE VEDA.

The transparent gods: their importance for the study of religion — Father Sky and Daughter Dawn — Surya, a god of the sun — Vata and Vayu, gods of wind — The most transparent god: Agni, Fire — Agni as the sacrifice fire — Prehistoric gods of fire — Birth and youth of Agni — Agni as god of the morning — New births of Agni — Agni on the altar, the agent of the gods — Priesthood and divinity of Agni — A hymn to Agni — Other myths of the Fire God — The translucent gods: definition of the term — God Vishnu — God Pushan — God Indra, as an example of an opaque god — Traditional explanation of the myth of Indra and Vritra — Professor Hillebrandt’s interpretation of the same myth — Renewed definition of the religion of the Rig-Veda — Renewed definition of Vedic practicalities — Conflicting prayers and sacrifices — The conception of faith — Faith related to Truth and Wisdom — Faith personified — Faith and works — The reward for faith postponed to heaven — Contrast between early “faith” (sraddha) and later “devotion” (bhakti) — “Gift praises,” another sop to the sacrificer — The religious feeling of the Rig-Veda — The utilitarian sense — The glory of the gods — Absence of real sentiment towards the gods — Poetic inspiration the true religious feeling — The complacent master-singers — The poets’ own estimate of their work — The divine quality of devotion | 150-207

LECTURE THE FIFTH

THE BEGINNINGS OF HINDU THEOSOPHY.

Statement of the problem — Time when theosophy originated — Metempsychosis and pessimism unknown in the earlier Vedic records — Place where the higher religion originated — Priest philosophy at the sacrifice — The theosophic charade — Specimens of the theosophic charade — The riddle hymn of Dirghatamas — Interrelation between the sacrifice and theosophy — On the supposed origin of theosophy with the royal caste — Criticism of this view — Transition from ritualistic polytheism to theosophy — Early scepticism — “Gotterdammerung” — Failure of God Varuna — Monism, or the idea of unity — The creation hymn — Translation and analysis of the creation hymn — Attempts at Monotheism — Prajapati, the Lord of Creatures — Vicvakarman, creator of the universe, and kindred conceptions — Purusha, the world man — Brihaspati, the Lord of Devotion — Transcendental monotheistic conceptions: “Time,” “Love,” etc. — Defects of the earlier monotheistic and monistic attempts | 208-248

LECTURE THE SIXTH

THE FINAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDA.

Death and future life in paradise — Early notions of Hell — The idea of retribution — Limit of reward for good deeds — The notion of “death-anew,” or “redeath” — How comes the belief in transmigration — Hindu doctrine of transmigration — The method of transmigration — The doctrine of karma, or spiritual evolution — How transmigration and karma appear to Western minds — The pessimist theory of life — Cause of Hindu pessimism — Pessimism and the perfect principle (Brahma) — Dualistic pessimism — Salvation through realisation of one’s own Brahmahood — The conception of the atman, “breath,” as life principle — Atman, the soul of the Universe — Brahma, the spiritual essence of the Universe — Fusion of Atman and Brahma — Maya, or the world an illusion — The unknowableness of Brahma — Emerson’s poem on the Brahma — The fulness of Brahma: a story of Yajnavalkya and his wife Maitreyi — Transition from philosophy to piety — Hindu asceticism — Professor Huxley’s critique of asceticism — Pilgrim’s progress under the religion of Brahma — Investiture and disciplehood — The life of the householder — The life of the forest-dweller and wandering ascetic — Ultima Thule | 249-289

INDEX | 291