THE EELIGIOUS HISTOEY OF INDIA LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODB AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET THE TRIDENT, THE CRESCENT, AND THE CROSS: A VIEW OF THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF INDIA DURING THE HINDU, BUDDHIST, MOHAMMEDAN, AND CHRISTIAN PERIODS. THE EEV. JAMES VAUGHAN, Nineteen Years a Missionary of the C.M.8. in Calcutta ; AUTHOR OP ' FULFILLED PROPHECY, A PILLAR AND GROUKD OF THE TRUTH : 'THE DIVINITY OF JESUS, OR WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?' THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA;' ETC. LONDON : LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 1876. All rights re.iervnl. BL 1/3 lost \ im- PBEFACE. THIS DAY two years ago did I, after an absence of nine- teen years, once more behold the white cliffs and green fields of Old England. That period of banishment was a season of mingled sorrow and joy, but of more joy than sorrow. After so many years of missionary toil I brought back with me two decided convictions ; these were, that, of all lives the Missionary's life is the most happy, and of all work Mission work is the most portant ; and I came home resolved, if God should en- able me, to illustrate these convictions in a treatise which, by His blessing, might help to convey them to other minds. The brightness of returning joy was followed by a dark night of unlooked-for trial. This necessarily delayed the execution of my plan ; but it seemed no sufficient ground for relinquishing it. It is now completed ; and, strange though it may seem, I almost lament that fact. I cannot but look back with a sort of lingering regret to M640559 V vl Preface. the solace and delight which, for some months past, the preparation of this work has afforded me. If it be true that ' much study is a weariness to the flesh] it is not less true that it may prove a singular help to the spirit. My aim has been to stir up among thoughtful and intelligent Christians a deeper interest in India by making its religious history better known. Surely nothing within the whole range of history is more profoundly mysterious and more awfully solemn than the religious history of India. To the antiquarian, the philosopher, the meta- physician, this subject presents a rare field for research and study ; to an earnest Christian it appeals with special force ; in the mind of such an one it awakens sen- timents of tender sympathy and thrilling interest ; to such an one this history suggests far more than a curious study of ancient superstitions and psychological eccentricities ; it reveals to him the struggles of the human mind for thirty centuries to settle momentous questions which the light of Kevelation alone can solve ; it shows a mighty nation, sprung from the same primeval stock with our- selves, for so many ages ' feeling after God if haply it might find Him ;' it shows that same nation, after endless vicissitudes of fruitless search and speculation, provi- dentially brought into the closest alliance with ourselves, and mutely craving the spiritual crumbs which fall from our table. Preface. vii The enforced delay in the prosecution of my design has not been without its advantages ; it has given me more time and increased facilities in preparing materials for the work ; amongst these facilities has been the ap- pearance of several valuable treatises of a cognate cha- racter. It will be seen with how much thankful boldness I have availed myself of these recent sources of informa- tion. 1 To one book in particular I owe an especial debt of gratitude. When, some eighteen months ago, the dis- tinguished Professor of Sanscrit at Oxford gave me some account of a work which he had then in the press, I re- joiced with hope ; but, when the book itself appeared, I found that 'the half had not been told me.' 'Indian. Wisdom ' is a contribution of singular value to the many works of learned interest put forth by our modern San- scrit scholars. I felt that, in citations from the sacred writings of the Hindus, I could not do better than use the simple, terse, and almost literal renderings of Professor Monier Williams. I wish here to state that I have done this in all but some three or four cases which are other- wise accounted for. 1 Very gratefully would I acknowledge the interest and profit which I have derived from the study of Robson's Hinduism and its Relations to Chris- tianity ; Talboys Wheeler's History of India, Mussulman Rule ; and Sher- ring's History of Protestant Missions in India. viii Preface. God knows it is with no overweening confidence that I send this production into the world ; I began it with a trembling sense of my inability for the task, and yet with a hope that I might be helped to accomplish it. How often I have reproached myself with presumption for making the attempt and anticipated failure, I cannot say. The main thought which has given me strength and courage has been the consciousness of a desire to glorify God in this undertaking and to advance His holy cause. May He graciously forgive whatever of a baser kind may have mingled with that higher aspiration ! I think I may say that in everything I have tried to be accurate and honest. I have spared no pains to make sure of those facts which lay beyond my. personal know- ledge, and in the statement of those facts which pertain to my individual experience, I have striven to tell an unvarnished story, to guard against unconscious exaggera- tion no fanciful danger and rather to say too little than too much. 1 1 In passing this work through the press two things have struck me as needing a word of qualification. In a note on page 12 the ordinary treatment and condition of a Hindu widow is described. It is but just and right to acknowledge that this is a rule which has many honourable exceptions in the present day ; many are the instances in which natural affection either ignores the rule altogether or applies it with softened stringency. A similar remark will apply to the usual penalties inflicted on a respectable Hindu convert (see pp. 33, 37). Such penalties undoubtedly threaten him at the outset, and for a time attend him ; but let him only possess his soul in patience, and hold on his way in courage and consistency, and the chances are he will outlive contumely and regain respect. Preface. ix A word of explanation as to the title of this work may not be altogether superfluous. Many a writer has found it almost a less difficulty to write a book than to find a fitting title ; and no title, perhaps, can give other than an imperfect idea of the work itself. In this case, the reader may say, ' I can see the import of the Crescent and the Cross, but what am I to understand by the Tri- dent? 1 The answer is, the Trident is a three-pronged fork which appears on every Siva temple in India. It doubtless indicates the later Hindu Triad. It has thus come to be regarded as a symbol of the Hindu religion. As Buddhism has no specific symbol to mark it, the Trident has to do duty both for Hinduism and for its heretical offshoot ; and, as Indian Buddhism ultimately resolved itself into the system from which it had revolted, the one symbol may, perhaps, by a stretch of charity, be allowed to cover both systems. Such as the work is, I commit it to the grace and mercy of God, and to the kindly and candid consideration of the Christian public. So sensible am I of the many defects of my performance that I shall be most thankful for the friendly criticisms of my readers. Before this year has run its course I shall be on my way back to the glorious land of my adoption ; if, in the midst of my toils and cares, tidings of good should reach me if it should appear that, even in the smallest x Preface. degree, this work has helped to deepen the interest of my countrymen in India and provoke them to greater liberality and zeal in the work of its evangelisation, I shall thank God and go on my way rejoicing. JAMES VAUGHAN. HAMPSTEAD : July 6, 1876. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE EAELY HINDUS. I'AGE The ancestors of the Aryan race Their primitive home in Central Asia They migrate to Europe, Persia, and India Settle on the banks of the Indus, whence the term Hindu They gradually extend them- selves through the country and cultivate it ; also develop commerce and the arts Had for long ages no written records At length their sages commit to writing their stores of intellectual wealth Their veneration of, and passion for, the study of Sanscrit That language now hardly l dead ' It lives and breathes in its lingual descendants The Aryan settlers had no caste No restrictions as .. regards food ; they rejoiced in beef- They were a fair-complexioned - race, quite distinct from the aboriginal races The Hindus in their features akin to ourselves The aborigines of a Turanian type The Dravidians of Southern India far in advance of the aborigines of the hills These latter figure as monkeys, the former as giants, in early Hindu mythology Suttee unknown among early Hindus Poly- gamy discountenanced No infant marriages Re-marriage of widows legal Seclusion of women a thing of later times Women esteemed and trusted then as not now , .... 1 CHAPTER II. THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF CASTE. Social distinctions grew up by degrees among the Aryan settlers The groundwork of these, the various professions of civilised life The Sages elbow their way to the front rank Out of these the Brah- manical order naturally sprung The strong religious instincts of the people foster the development of a sacerdotal order Had no priestly class to begin with, but at length obtained sixteen different xii Contents. PAGE. orders of priests The term Brahman meant prayer, or sacred rite ; hence the class so defined derived it from their functions The KshatriyaSj a military class, called into being by the necessity of warfare with the wild aborigines The Vaisyas, 'settlers/ culti- vators and merchants of the community When caste notions develop, the Brahmans gratify these two needful classes with a sacred thread and the title dwij, ' twice-born ' But a servile class needed This constructed out of the aboriginal races, and called Sudra Fourfold social distinctions common to various branches of the Aryan family Slavery among the Greeks somewhat akin to Hindu caste, yet not like it a religious institution Mythological account of its origin : the Brahman from the mouth of Brahma, the Kshatriyas from his arm, the Vaisyas from his thigh, the Sudra from his feet Hence the Brahman a god to all below him Must be worshipped as a divinity Must be free from taxation and capital punishment whatever his crime Must be amply supported His word infallible The rules for the maintenance of caste so minute and numerous that they became impracticable, and resulted in a vast multiplication of castes Of the four original castes the Brah- mans alone maintain their ground, and these have been subdivided Dire effects of caste on the nation : the heart indurated, sympathy and fellow-feeling destroyed, moral sense darkened, social and political progress barred Caste an external and gross thing, not affected in any degree by mental convictions or religious belief- Depends on outward action alone Belief in Christianity leaves caste intact, baptism destroys it Its approaching dissolution . .16 CHAPTER HI. EARLY HINDUISM. Deep spiritual yearnings of the early Hindus Ever feeling after God, yet wandering further from Him The Rig- Veda compiled about 1200 B.C. Its contents much more ancient The other three Vedas Growing veneration for them Divinity and eternity ascribed to them Monotheism, Polytheism, and Pantheism commingle in them The Aryans once monotheists, then nature-worshippers Lumi- nous objects first reverenced Old Vedic deities Their multiplica- tion Devout addresses to Varuna The supersession of older deities by Indra, Vayu, and Agni Opposing demons Hymns to Indra and Agni Singular notion of a Trinity in Unity The post- Vedic Triad The pre- Vedic Hindus had no notion of transmigration Believed in a threefold state of bliss after death Yama the god of death Impressive funeral rites Their notion of a spiritual body Contents. xiii for the departed spirit One of the earliest hymns of the Rig- Veda monotheistic Remarkable enquiry into the origin of the Universe How Polytheism and Pantheism could coexist among the Hindus The earliest pantheistic ring in the Rig- Veda Pantheistic reasonings of modern pundits, how refuted The institution of sacrifice among the early Hindus Its spontaneous origin incredible The Indian Aryans ever practised it and ever held its divine origin Human sacrifices prevailed The story of Harischandra How animal sacrifices came to supplant human Six noteworthy aspects of the institution among the early Hindus . . . .40 CHAPTER IV. MEDIAEVAL HINDUISM. Chronological difficulty in the religious history of India Various systems of religion and philosophy arose and had their germs in the Vedas Later developments of a more sensuous character Social and religious deterioration The Hindu Triad : Brahma, Vishnu, Siva The principle involved : creation, preservation, destruction The doctrine of emanation All will ultimately be merged into Brahma, the one simple, all-embracing Entity The worship of Brahma well-nigh extinct The ten incarnations of Vishnu Three relate to the Flood In these three Vishnu appears in animal form In the fourth he is half man and half animal From fhejifth and onward his incarnate form is human The story of Rama and Sita Vishnu's eighth incarnation the most popular Krishna's character Though unutterably vile, an object of intense devotion to the masses The obliquity of their moral vision A more ' respectable minority allegorise his worst features Educated natives give up Krishna as a hopeless case Design of the ninth incarnation, to steal a march upon the Buddhists The tenth still future Remarkable predictions relating to it Six schools of philosophy in three pairs All the schools go on the principle ex nihilo nihiljit, and hold the doctrine of transmigration This doctrine not in the Rig-Veda Grecian and Roman philosophy how like and how unlike Hindu philosophy The Sankhya school materialistic The Vedantists held, with two different aspects, a self-existent Entity The Nyaya philosophers taught the existence of the Supreme Soul, yet not as Creator All held the pre-existence of human souls, why P The soul at death passes into a spiritual body Conscious existence involves continued action, continued action creates merit or demerit, these necessitate continued transmigrations Hence release from xiv Contents. conscious existence or absorption the aummum bonum The full tale of births and how curtailed Hinduism shows three ways of salva- tion : works, faith, knowledge Way of knowledge leads to absorption by mental abstraction Striking spectacle of a devout Yogi The Vaishnavas pursue the way of faith, the Saivites the ivay of works Both tainted with sensuality The left-handed sects Kali, the black goddess of Bengal Primitive notions of sacrifice gradually surrendered Transmigration displaced vicarious sacrifices Yet throughout the deepening darkness much religious and moral light survived Examples of devout breathings Specimens of moral sentiments akin to those of Christianity The heathen knew the right and good, but lacked power to do them ; Christianity alone supplies the power . . . . . . . . . .72 CHAPTER V. THE BUDDHIST ERA. Buddhism the offspring of rationalistic speculation and a revolt against Brahmanical tyranny Gautama's birth His early ascetic turn His temporary dissipation At twenty-nine his renunciation of the world His six years' fruitless search after light and truth His solitary musings, his temptations Finds the way of emancipation His terrible creed of three articles His rapture how accounted for His unselfishness and humility He borrowed much from Hinduism His repudiation of caste the great point of divergence His moral code for all More stringent rules for priests Still more rigid observances for religious devotees Hindu absorption and Buddhist nirvana Buddhism pursues the most laudable means to gain its sad end Its world-wide benevolence Buddha's self-sacrifice and missionary toils for forty-five years His success His touching death scene The Buddhist scriptures, how compiled Religious dissensions Asoka made Buddhism the State religion Scheme of foreign missions Marvellous success in China, Thibet, Burmah, and Ceylon Yet whilst the branches spread the parent stem decayed Causes of this decay : revival of Brahmanical zeal and subtlety ; the Puranas; Krishna's influence with the masses; Kumarila-Bhatta and Sankaracharya, two Hindu literary champions; above all, the atheism of Buddha's creed fatal to its success in India Hindus can never be atheists Actual persecution helped to give the death- blow to Buddhism The Jains, their two sections, their probable absorption into the Hindu community 118 Contents. xv CHAPTER VI. THE MOHAMMEDAN ERA. PAGE Hinduism encounters a new and more formidable rival Mohammedan- ism an joutcome of the age, the effect of prevenient mental throes Analogy between the origin of Buddhism and Mohammedanism The Joktanian and Ishmaelite Arabs -The latter gain ascendency Their early creed, sources of light : Abraham, Job, Moses, Jethro Monotheism gave place to nature-worship Grosser idolatry followed The Kaaba, the 360 idols, the black stone Ideas and practices retained by Mohammed The influence of Jews and Christians in awakening religious enquiry Conference of earnest seekers; their resolve Touching story of Zaid Mohammed's chequered history His marriage with Khadija The cave in Mount Hara The angelic visits Mohammed epileptic, believed himself possessed Khadija and Waraka remove this impression Proclaims his divine mission At first only thought of 'Arabia His lenient attitude to Jews and Christians His view of Christ Becomes intolerant with growing power The feature of accommoda- tion in his revelations His matrimonial relations his weakest point The compilation of the Koran 225 texts incorrigible Theory of abrogation Historical and scientific blunders The sources whence Mohammed derived his theology The divine attribute of holiness wanting, no sense of sin as per se a great moral evil The ethics of Buddha in advance of those of Mohammed Moslem devotion simply mechanical The sensual joys of Paradise Islam and Chris- tianity owe their propagation to totally different principles The failure of Mohammed's early mission in Mecca His flight to Medina Converts the tribe of Beni-Sahm His first resort to force Plunders the Meccan caravans With an army of 10,000 takes Mecca At the point of the sword the faith established in Arabia His mandate to foreign potentates His death scene Felt when dying his work was unfinished His prediction of seventy-three sects Only the Sunnis, Shiahs, Sufis, and Wahabees have figured in India The Sunnis orthodox The Shiahs protestant dissenters Sufiism had its origin in Persia Is a reflection of Hindu Vedantism The spiritual aspirations of Sufis Abdul Wahab, founder of the Wahabees Begins as a religious reformer Raises the standard of revolt against the Turkish government The final overthrow of the Wahabees in 1818 The Trident and the Crescent first encounter each other A.D. 705 Heroic resistance of the Hindus Their reli- gious constancy Mahmud of Ghuzni, A.D. 1001, establishes the Moslem rule in India Moslem intolerance The Jezzia Conquest xvi Contents. of Bengal and Bihar The character of the early converts in Bengal Subjugation of the Dekhan by Alla-ud-deen Firuz-Shah an en- '' I lightened ruler and devout Moslem Martyrdom of a Brahman / Hasan Gangu founds the Bahmani kingdom in the south His son, Mohammed Shah, slaughters 100,000 Hindus A religipus blank in the Dekhan for 150 years Mahmud establishes schools and orphan- ages The Hindu Rajah of Vijayanagar enlists Moslem troops Akbar ascends the Imperial throne 1556 Was never a devout Moslem Seeks by intermarriage to gain over the Rajpoots He protects the Shiahs and Sufis Invites Romish priests from Goa Discussions between them and Brahmans Akbar professes con- version to Christianity But will not be baptised Comprehensive views of his friend Abul Fazl Akbar propounds his ' Divine Faith ' Its features : worship of sun and fire, and homage to the Emperor The ' Divine Faith ' perishes with the catastrophe at Lahore, 1597 The religious effect of his rule: general laxity Mohammedanism obtained a strong infusion of Hinduism Jehan- gir's detestable scheme for procuring European women Sir Thomas Roe's sojourn at his court The chaplain's account of the Moslems bf that day Shah Jehan's depravity Aurungzeb's bigotry and intolerance The Hindus retaliate The decay of Moslem rule The success of Islam in India in no sense remarkable, not even as regards numbers But Indian Moslems half Hindus Syud Ahmad's history akin to that of Abdul Wahab In 1826 proclaims his Jihad against Runjeet Singh His convert and disciple in Bengal, Titu Miyan His revolt and overthrow Mohammedan disaffection a grave political difficulty The Church alone can deal efficiently with it Neglect of Mohammedans in our missionary efforts The type of missionary needed for Moslem evangelisation The college at Lahore .... .""* . 135 CHAPTER VII. LATER HINDUISM. Hinduism the true Nile-, throughout Buddhist and Mohammedan times the true channel of native thought and conviction Vaishna- vaism triumphant over the two opposing systems Vaishnava sects during the Mohammedan rule Ramanuja and Ramananda re- formers Kabir & revolutionist in doctrine, yet a time-server He attacks both Hindu and Moslem errors Baba Nanak founds the Sikh religion Guru Govind imparts to it a political and military aspect The Sikhs formed into a kingdom by Runjeet Singh The Dadu Panthis, remarkable extracts from their sacred books The Contents. xvii Bengali Vaishnavas Their brethren elsewhere teach faith as better than works, they teach faith without works Still with them Bhakti has an active aspect Chaitanya, his simplicity and earnest devotion His liberal sentiments His mysterious end The left-handed sects The Karta Bhajas Rammohun Roy, founder of the Brahma Shamaj The Vedas and the New Testament the tfasis of his system Debendra Nath Tagore, the next president, gives up the New Testament and holds to the Vedas The Vedas found to be pan- theistic and abandoned The Book of Nature the next basis This displaced by Intuition Kesab Ohunder Sen The schism of 1865 The old Shamaj conservative, the new society progressive The Reformers adopt Christian phraseology and seem to tend towards Christianity They reach a climax, then recede Sad declension in doctrine and spirit The failure of Brahmaism . . . .192 CHRISTIAN ERA. CHAPTER VIII. DISSOLVING AGENCIES. Various seeds of truth sown in the old system Gradual dissolution Manifold influences tending to the decay of caste : railways, govern- ment employ, medicine and surgery, sanitary regulations, above all English education Native testimony to the process of disintegra- tion The ' Society for the Defence of Hinduism ' helps on its dis- solution Changes within the last forty years .... 223 CHAPTER IX. AGGRESSIVE EFFORTS. Manifold agencies called for Direct preaching Contrast between preaching in cities and villages Three instances illustrating the results of preaching Book distribution Four cases showing the effects of this effort Mission schools Their value and importance A remedial agency in the midst of growing infidelity Bishop Cotton and Dr. Duff Indirect and direct results of missionary education Domiciliary visitation - Educated classes easily reached in this way Their couHiesy^ Their respect for Christ's character- Indian and European infidelity materially differ from each other A morning's talk with the Baboos Endless shades of opinion a xviii Contents. amongst those classes Secret believers Zenana teaching The deterrent influence of the women on the men They the mainstay of Hinduism Their ignorant devotion English education helped to open the Zenana doors Native gentlemen desire some religious teaching for their women Formidable obstacles to an open con- fession in the way of a believing wife Baptism of four Zenana ladies Not a few secret believers in the Zenanas . . 237 CHAPTER X. THE NATIVE CHURCH. The Danes the first Protestant missionaries to India Begin their work in 1706 at Tranquebar The Propagation Society sends them help The Christian Knowledge Society does the same The people of England heartily encourage and aid the Danish mission Schultze in 1726 begins a mission in Madras The Rajah of Tanjore invites the missionaries Schwartz arrives in 1750 His marvellous in- fluence with native princes His missionary devotedness In 1771 mission work begins in Tinnevelley Present flourishing condition of missions in that district Kiernander, the first missionary to Bengal in 1758 Olive his patron and friend Kiernander baptises the first Bengali Brahman and builds the first church in Bengal The ' Mission Church ' and its worthies The dark age of official cowardice and anti-Christian bitterness Strange utterances of a director and proprietor Carey runs the blockade Serampore the refuge-city The London Society's first missionary In 1807 the Church Missionary Society commences its work in Bengal The Propagation Society allot 5,0007. to North India The Church Missionary Society give a similar sum Bishop Middleton in 1820 lays the foundation stone of Bishop's College in Calcutta The Church of Scotland begins work in 1830 The Free Church of Scotland establishes a mission in 1844 American missionaries carry the Gospel to Bombay in 1813 The Church Missionary Society sends its first missionary to that city in 1820, the Church of Scotland in 1823, the Propagation Society in 1859 Official in- tolerance in Madras in 1806 The Church Missionary Society send thither two missionaries in 1815 The Wesleyan mission established there in 181 6, the American mission in 1836, and the Scotch mission in 1837 The visible outcome, nearly 320,000 native Christians The ratio of increase remaining what it is, in less than 150 years the whole of India will be Christianised Mass conversions The story of Krishnaghur Mixed motives The weakness and strength of the native church Martyrs in the Mutiny Two heretical com- Contents. xix munities The inner Church Examples of a high tone of spiritu- ality The rising moral standard of a sincere convert A touching episode, Rarumakal Choke The leper church Two kinds of leprosy Two dying lepers rejoicing in hope The Brahman boy and the Mussulman convert Collateral effects of Christianity Holy Communion among the lepers Dependence on foreign support the weak point of the native Church Contrast between apostolic and modern missions Disadvantages of the modern missionary Two lessons: 1. Begin on a sound principle. 2. With resolute discreetness break up the existing system of dependence The principle of self-support should precede a native pastorate Much has already been done 281 CHAPTER XL THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER. Only one thousandth part of the population Christianised The cry for help Speculations as to the past vain Present duty our concern Other European nations coveted India God gave it to us, why ? The testimony and appeals of India's last three Metropolitans . 328 APPENDIX ... . . . ... . > '"V .335 INDEX . 343 THE TRIDENT, THE CRESCENT, AND THE CROSS. CHAPTER I. THE EARLY HINDUS. ' Grod shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem.' Gen. ix. 27. FOUR thousand years ago there dwelt somewhere in the high- lands of Central Asia, probably near the sources of the Oxus, the ancestors of those mighty nations which, for enlightenment and prowess, have ever been the most distinguished in the world. Those venerable sires, the descendants of Japheth, contrasting themselves with less favoured branches of the human family, with perhaps equal propriety and pride, called themselves Arya^ or noble. Probably not long after the period we speak of, a disposition to wander led large sections of the Aryan family to quit the common homestead. When once the tide of emigration set in, wave rolled upon wave ; those who first left the land of their fathers were pushed forward by others who succeeded them. In this way, one section reached and gradually peopled Europe ; another settled in Persia ; whilst a third made its way to India, and founded the Hindu race. The term India was evidently derived by the Greeks and Romans from the word Hindu, this latter word being formed by the Persians from the name of the - B 2 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. Indus (Sindhu), on the banks of which river the earliest Aryan immigrants established themselves. 1 In process of time the Aryans spread themselves over the rich plains of the Ganges, and thus it came to pass that the whole country between the Punjab and Benares acquired the definition of Hindustan the dwelling-place of the Hindus. The primitive settlers appear to have devoted themselves mainly to pastoral pursuits ; their chief wealth consisted in their flocks and herds. By and bye they betook themselves to agri- culture, and successfully cultivated the smiling provinces which came under their sway. Nor were the higher arts neglected ; they built themselves cities, and constructed ships with which they carried on commerce with other lands. For ages after they reached the land of their adoption they could boast no written records ; but they possessed all the while a vast store of intellectual wealth, which though inscribed only on the tablet of their memories was ever growing in bulk and richness, and which they orally transmitted to their children's children for many generations. At length their sages committed these treasures to writing, and thus an immense impetus was given to the literary tenden- cies of the race ; the hymns and mantras which had so long been stored up in their minds were faithfully recorded ; their memories freed from this burden, those ancient literati, with new-born vigour, set themselves to think and reason and write. In this way grew up that ponderous and deeply interesting accumulation of Sanscrit lore, which in our day is becoming a novel and delightsome study to thoughtful thousands in Europe. But the increase of literature was only one of the results of 1 The term Hindu has therefore, so far as its origin goes, nothing whatever to do with religion. Strictly speaking, any descendant of those primitive Aryan settlers, whatever h:s religion may be, has a perfect right to call himself a Hindu. As a matter of convenience, however, we shall in this treatise use the word in its popular acceptation, as a religious rather than a national definition. The Early Hindus. the discovery of writing ; a longing, amounting almost to a passion, for the cultivation of language rapidly developed itself. It is true everywhere that advancement in literature tends to enrich and improve the language used ; but generally the latter is only cultivated for the sake of the former ; the early Hindus, however, studied language for its own sake ; they threw them- selves heart and soul into the subject, and stayed not until, as it has been well expressed, ' they had subtilised it into an intricate science, fenced around by a bristling barrier of techni- calities.' 1 The . consequence of this, as a matter of course, was the formation of a language which was emphatically a learned, -* and ultimately became a dead language. The lines of separa- tion between that and the colloquial of the unlettered masses grew more and more distinct ; the common people still spoke the tongue which they had brought with them from their an- cestral home, though modified in some degree by their contact with the aboriginal tribes of India. They had no common pro- perty in the intellectual treasures which the Shasters contained ; a halo of sacred exclusiveness grew up around those holy books and the language in which they were written ; the hallowed Sanscrit page was only to be scanned by sacred eyes ; the pundits and the priests thus enjoyed a monopoly of the literary wealth which their genius had created. The language thus elaborated by those ancient grammarians acquired the appropriate but artificial designation of Sanscrit, a term signifying the perfectly constructed speech. The col- loquial form of the Aryan tongue was Hindui, the speech of the Hindus, lln lapse of ages this speech has assumed various peculiarities amongst the scattered branches of the great Hindu family, but its main characteristics still appear in the Hindi, Bengali, Uriya, Marathi, Gujarati and Punjabi vernaculars. These tongues are but offshoots from the great parent stem ; 1 Indian Wisdom, Introduction, p. 29. B 2 4 The Trident, tlie Crescent, and the Cross. they are children of one common parent, though each possesses distinctive features of its own. Their affinity to and ultimate dependence upon Sanscrit is so marked, as to make the expres- sion ' dead language ' hardly applicable to this latter. Without doubt it still in a sense lives and breathes. Nay, it may be regarded as the natural root from which sap and nourishment are continually rising to feed the lingual branches ; in their literary developments all those tongues are still gathering force, ' beauty and strength by accretions from what must be called the mother tongue. The Hindus have reason to be proud of that wondrous form of speech, for therein they note the grand result of centuries of linguistic toil to which their cultured ancestors devoted themselves ; nor will anyone venture to deny that, for power and precision of expression, and also for capability of expansion, the Sanscrit tongue may well claim supremacy among all languages ancient and modern. 1 As regards many of their customs and usages, the primitive Aryan settlers differed widely from their descendants. Especially is it to be noted that nothing corresponding to caste existed amongst them ; social and professional distinctions grew up amongst them, but these do not appear to have differed materially from the same distinctions amongst ourselves ; no inexorable decree prevented an interchange of those distinctions, no iron hand of fate bound the children to all generations in the posi- tion which the fathers had filled. The early Aryans, moreover, appear to have been unfettered by restrictions as regards food ; they seem to have eaten to- gether without scruple, and to have been guided by inclination 1 To ourselves as Europeans Sanscrit has a special interest in addition to the literary treasures which it has been the medium of preserving. It is indeed the i principal bond of affinity which unites us with our Aryan brethren of the East; ' as scholars have clearly demonstrated, the closest feature's of resemblance exist between the sacred language of the Hindus and the Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, Teutonic and Sclavonic languages of Europe ; in fact, it is now universally admitted that all these tongues have sprung from the same common source as the Sanscrit that source being the language spoken by our Aryan ancestors before their dispersion. The Early Hindus. and taste alone as to the articles which they consumed. Nothing more forcibly marks the contrast between them and their de- scendants in this respect, than the fact that they particularly re- joiced in the flesh of the cow. It is well known that amongst modern Hindus, nothing is more abhorrent than the idea of eating beef, and to slaughter a cow for any cause whatever is a crime of far greater turpitude than to take the life of a low caste man. 1 However the present varieties of complexion which charac- terise the Hindu race may be accounted for, it is abundantly clear that when the early Aryans first descended the Himalayan heights, they were a fair-complexioned race ; the contrast be- tween themselves and the aboriginal tribes in this respect is repeatedly alluded to in their sacred books ; these are evei spoken of as dark, or rather as black in comparison with them- selves. In the Eamayan these wild races are described as 6 black, with woolly hair and thick lips.' At the present day it is no difficult matter to find whole families of Aryans as dark as are the descendants of those aborigines, yet it is unquestion- able that, taken as a whole, the former are, by several shades, fairer than the latter. It is also to be noted that, as a rule, the higher the caste of the Hindus, the fairer is their skin ; amongst the Brahmans, in particular, we have repeatedly met with indi- viduals who, as regards their colour, might very well match with Spaniards or Italians. The fact, which is indisputable, that a fairer shade prevails among the high caste ladies than 1 As a rule, respectable Hindu converts never entirely shake off their hereditary prejudice to beef; we have seen a cold shudder come over them at the sight of this dish, though at the very time they have smiled at the senseless and groundless scruple. In some parts of India, if a man accidentally kill a cow, even though it be his own property, the prescribed penance is that he shall make an offering to the Brahmans or to the idol of the full value of five cows ; and this money he must collect by begging from house to house, but not a word must he utter during this painful process. His errand and wants are indicated by his wearing the skin of the slain cow with its horns and hoofs, whilst he passes from door to door imi- tating as nearly as he can the lowing of a cow. 6 The Trident \ the Crescent, and the Cross. marks their lords, when taken in connection with their secluded life, would seem to point to at least one cause of the variety of hue spoken of. As regards the features of the Aryan and abori- ginal race?, respectively, the distinction is very marked. A fine profile, a high forehead, a well-formed mouth, well-set eyes, and a bright, intelligent expression of countenance, are predomi- nant traits of the Hindu family, and of course, of such of the Mahommedans as are of Aryan origin. On the other hand, the prevailing characteristics of the aborigines are a lower fore- head, high cheekbones, an irregular nose with expanded nostrils, a mouth somewhat large with full lips, eyes bright and twink- ling, but rather small and deep set. The expression of their countenance is good-humoured and even mirthful, but neither refined nor intelligent. Indeed, in studying the faces of the Aryans we are compelled to feel that, barring complexion, they in every other feature closely resemble Europeans ; but a mere glance at the aborigines satisfies us that they belong to some remoter branch of the human family. In speaking of the aboriginal tribes, that is, the tribes which were in possession of the land when the Aryans entered India, it must not be assumed that those tribes had entered the country at one given time, or that they had emigrated from one common centre, or that they had previously belonged to one common stock. It is the custom to speak of them all as per- taining to the Turanian branch of our race, but, as it has been well said, ' If the term Turanian is to embrace races so widely separated by language and customs as the Dravidians and various hill tribes of India, the sooner it is expelled from the vocabulary of philologists and ethnologists the better.' l Without doubt a line must be drawn between the great Dravidian races who have peopled the south of India, and the rude half-barbarous tribes which are found dwelling in the 1 Indian Wisdom, note, p. 312. The Early Hindus. jungles and on the hills of India. These latter, comprising the Gonds of Central India, the Bhils of the hills to the west of the Gonds, also the Khonds of the eastern districts of Gondvana and of the south of Orissa, the Kols and Santhals of the hills in western Bengal, the Khasias and Garos of eastern Bengal, are in all probability the descendants of wild Tartar tribes who at different periods swarmed into the country. On the other hand, the Dravidian races had probably their origin in regions not far from the ancestral home of the Aryans ; they evidently pre- ceded the nobler race, and would seem to have established them- selves in the Punjab and parts of northern India ; afterwards, when the Aryan immigrants poured into the country, the Dra- vidians gradually retired before them, and so at length reached their southern home. It is not unlikely that they more or less , amalgamated with the Aryan invaders ; their languages con- tain a large admixture of Sanscrit terms, but the general struc- , ture of those languages shows them to be quite distinct from the sacred tongue of the Hindus. They possess an extensive and important literature in their own vernaculars, and they undeni- ably at an early period acquired a degree of civilisation to which the ruder aborigines have to this day remained strangers. The Aryans, it is true, spoke of the aborigines collectively, as Anaryan, non- Aryan (ignoble) and as Dasyus, natives ; but in their descriptions of their numerous struggles with those tribes, very important distinctions may be noted. Their adversaries are generally depicted as monstrous in form, as furious, cruel and corrupt in disposition ; they are represented as the enemies of the gods and of good men, as eaters of human and horse-flesh, and as disturbers of sacred rites ; but some are set forth as giants, others as dwarfs, some are prodigious heroes, terrible in prowess and mien, others are hordes of monkeys rang- ing themselves under the generalship of mighty leaders. It does not call for a great stretch of the imagination to discern in the nobler specimens of the Anaryans the ancestors of the ; 8 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. superior races of southern India, whilst the monkeys point to the diminutive and agile dwellers in the hills. In a review of the condition and history of the early Hindus the question what was the position of their women ? is one of deep interest and importance. We may state generally, that on this point a degree of uncertainty prevails as to the actual state of things in the pre-Vedic period. By the time their literary tastes had been developed, the Hindus had doubtless, in many respects, modified their primeval traditions and usages ; instead, therefore, of accepting all that their early records say as truly descriptive of their primitive condition, we should rather rely upon the substrata of allusions to an earlier state of things which they contain. Looking at the matter in this light, no one can doubt that, in that primitive period, woman's condition was a more favoured one than it was when the great Hindu lawgiver Manu describes their position, although their condition in his time was much more * felicitous, or rather, much less degrading, than it has been for centuries back. In the first place, it is a matter of absolute certainty that the cruel and inhuman rite of iSuttee the burning of the living wife with the dead husband had no existence amongst the early Aryans ; nay, it is evident also, that at the time of the writing of the Vedas, no such usage prevailed ; there is no allusion to such a practice in those venerable records. 1 In- deed, Manu himself in his law books, the next in order of time to the Vedas, nowhere mentions that frightful custom. More- over, in the Kamayan, the first of the Indian epics, dating 1 It is true there was found in the Rig- Veda the following passage : ' With- out tears, without sorrow, bedecked with jewels, let the wives go up to the altar fire.' This, the advocates of Suttee contended, bore upon that usage ; and the impression that this rite was really enjoined in the Vedas led the British Govern- ment long to defer its suppression. There is, however, the strongest ground for regarding the last word in the sentence quoted as a corruption of the true reading the word Agni, fire, has there been substituted for the term Agre, first. The Early Hindus. probably from the fifth or sixth century B.C., no case of Suttee is recorded. The Mahabharat, however, the second epic, shows that the rite was then slowly coming into vogue. The testi- mony of Strabo makes it indisputable that, at the time of Alexander's invasion of India, it was a common thing for women to perish on the funeral pile of their departed husbands. So that from, say., 300 B.C. Suttee was an acknowledged reli- gious rite of the Hindus. There is good ground for believing that amongst the early Aryans, polygamy, as an institution, had no legal standing. Even after Brahmanism and the whole system of caste had been evolved, Manu lays it down, as a general principle, that a Brahman should only possess one wife ; though it is not im- plied that he might not legally have more. The following pas- sage is very noteworthy, as giving iis, so to speak, an undesigned glimpse of the primitive state of things. Manu says : Then only is a man a perfect man When he is three himself, his wife, his son For thus have learned men the law declared, * A husband is one person with his wife.' The last line is manifestly a citation of a principle pre- vailing in times anterior to Manu. One can hardly fail to discern herein an echo of that great primeval utterance of Adam, the father of us all, 6 they shall be one flesh.' Manu elsewhere, in speaking of marriage ceremonies com- mon in his day, refers to a peculiar and beautiful rite which had been practised long before his time : the usage consisted in for ever keeping alive the nuptial fire the fire which was kindled at the time when the sacred knot was tied. No other fire than this was to be used in the morning and evening obla- tions which constituted the domestic worship of the early Hindus. The high estimation in which women were held in primitive io The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. times may safely, be inferred from the respectful references to them in times when they were less favoured. Manu, for instance, seems to struggle for terms to express his regard for mothers. ' A mother,' says he, 6 exceeds in value a thousand fathers.' The Mahabharat, in describing a wife, says : A wife is half the man, his truest friend A loving wife is a perpetual spring Of virtue, pleasure, wealth ; a faithful wife Is his best aid in seeking heavenly bliss ; A sweetly- speaking wife is a companion In solitude ; a father in advice ; A mother in all seasons of distress, A rest in passing through life's wilderness. c A wife is half the man : ' one is inclined almost to regard our own beautiful simile, ' the better half,' as, together with that sentence, an echo coming down from early Aryan times. But, contrasting the above charming passage with the present depreciation of women in India, we cannot but cry 'Alas! how has the gold become dim ! how has the most fine gold changed ! ' It is impossible to conceive of more perfect ex- amples of fidelity and devotion than occur in the descriptions of women in the two epic poems above alluded to. Generally speaking, Hindu wives are depicted as models of domestic purity and simplicity. It has been well said, that in all the delineations of female excellence furnished by the Grecian and Roman poets, there is no picture to compare with the lovely and loveable descriptions given by early Hindu writers. Sita, Draupadi, and Damayanti, as women and wives, are painted in all but perfect colours ; indeed we know of no other picture anywhere of surpassing excellence, except it be that of the virtuous wife in the book of Proverbs. (Prov. xxxi.) It will readily be conceded that, when such descriptions of women run through those ancient poems, the presumption is justified that The Early Hindus. 1 1 the females of early Hindu times were noted for domestic virtues and conjugal purity. As regards the matter of female seclusion, it may well be assumed, looking at the tone of the early Shasters on this point, that in primitive times, hardly any restrictions were put upon the movements of women ; in all probability they moved about in society without let or hindrance. But, by the time the Eamayan came to be written, their liberties were being to some extent, circumscribed ; this is clearly implied in the following passage, though it shows they still enjoyed a degree of freedom to which, for long centuries, they have been utter strangers. We read : < Neither houses, nor vestments, nor enclosing walls, nor ceremony, nor regal insignia, are the screen of a woman. Her own virtue alone protects her. In great calamities, at marriages, at the public choice of a hus- band by maidens, at a sacrifice, at assemblies, it is allowable for all the world to look upon women.' The allusion to the choice of a husband brings to view a feature of early custom, than which nothing could present a broader contrast to present usages. It is well known that for ages past, Hindu girls have been married by their parents with- out the slightest reference to their own inclinations ; indeed, seeing the rule has been, and is, to marry them in infancy, the transaction has necessarily been one over which they had no control. 1 But infant marriages were no characteristic of primitive times ; women were then married at a reasonable age, and they held and exercised a power in the matter which, it is to be feared, European damsels might sigh for in vain ; these latter possess the right of veto, but the Aryan sisterhood rejoiced in the privilege of actual choice. It may be doubted whether this privilege, as illustrated in the ceremony we are about to describe, 1 The betrothal, which, in the estimation of the Hindus, is to all intents and purposes a marriage and irrevocable, should take place before the girl is eight years of age ; for a child of nine or ten to be unmarried is looked upon as a grievous calamity and a standing disgrace to the family. 1 2 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. was not confined to the daughters of Kings and Kshatriyas (the warrior caste), but repeated instances are mentioned in which noble maidens selected their lords on the following plan. When a lady of rank reached a marriageable age, her father would in- vite a company of eligible suitors to his palace or court ; generally the eager aspirants were required, by some deed of prowess or skill, to prove themselves worthy of the coveted prize ; in such cases the lady bestowed her hand on the happy victor. On other occasions she took a deliberate survey of the expectant group, and blessed the man of her choice by dropping a garland of flowers around his neck. In another important respect a contrast between primitive and modern ideas must be noted. Perhaps there is no more fruitful source of misery and degradation to the women of India than the prohibition of re-marriage. The infant wife may never have spent one day with her husband, he may die before she has any idea of her relationship to him, but she is doomed to life- long widowhood, with all the horrors and privations which that condition involves. 1 The re-marriage of widows was not pro- hibited in primitive times. It cannot be denied that Manu in certain passages discourages the idea of re-marriage ; he says, for instance, ' A virtuous wife who remains unmarried after the death of her husband goes to heaven, even though she have no son ; ' but this very expression implies her liberty to contract another marriage ; and as a matter of fact, the marriage of widows is spoken of as being practised at that very time. Manu 1 The moment the husband dies the widow becomes a blighted and accursed thing ; she is forthwith stript of her jewels and of her delicate clothing in which she prided herself before ; one coarse cloth is all she must wear ; she is only allowed one meal a day, and twice in the month she must fast entirely. But the moral perils to which she is exposed are far more terrible than her physical discomforts ; a life of secret or public sin too often marks her future history. Is it a matter of surprise that thousands of widows preferred the death of a Suttee to a life of such ignominy and woe? Dying thus, the Brahmans consoled the widow with the assurance that she should spend forty-five millions of years in bliss with her husband ; which number, they said, corresponded to the number of hairs which he had on his body. The Early Hindus. 1 3 on one point seems to have no difficulty ; he distinctly sanctions the re-marriage of a betrothed damsel whose husband may have died before they came together. There can be no doubt that the gradual development of the system of caste materially helped to lower woman's position in the social scale ; strictly speaking, that system excluded and ignored her. As a consequence, her interest in religious exercises and duties was questioned ; indeed, Manu seems plainly to decree that, independently of her husband, she had no religion at all ; he was to be her god, and only in connection with him could she engage in any act of devotion whatever. He puts the matter thus : 6 Women have no business to repeat texts of the Veda ; thus is the law established. No sacrifice is permitted to women separately from their husbands, no religious observance, no fasting. As far as a wife obeys her husband, so far is she exalted in heaven. A husband must continually be revered as a god by a virtuous wife.' The following extracts from the law books of Maou give a sort of bird's-eye view of the whole case ; they show in what estimation women had then come to be regarded, what im- munities and privileges were still left to them, what disabilities marked their position, what rules of absolute dependence on others, and of unreasoning subjection to their husbands, bound them. Surely, though there are pleasing traits in the picture, it must, as a whole, indicate decided declension from that earlier state of things when, as Manu expresses it, the prevailing maxim was, ' A husband is one person with his wife.' In childhood must a father guard his daughter ; In youth the husband shields his wife ; in age A mother is protected by her sons ; Ne'er should a woman lean upon herself. A faithful wife who wishes to attain The heaven of her lord, must serve him here As if he were a god, and ne'er do aught To pain him, whatsoever be his state, And even though devoid of every virtue. r 4 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. She who in mind, speech, body, honours him, Alive or dead, is called a virtuous wife. Be it her duty to preserve with care Her husband's substance ; let her too be trusted With its expenditure, with management Of household property and furniture, Of cooking and purveying daily food. Let her be ever cheerful, skilled in all Domestic work, and not too free in spending. Drink, bad companions, absence from her lord, Rambling about, unseasonable sleep, Dwelling in others' houses, let her shun, These are six things which tarnish woman's fame. Whatever be the character and mind Of him to whom a woman weds herself, Such qnalities her nature must imbibe, E'en as a river blending with the sea. Women united by the marriage tie To men they love, in hope of virtuous offspring, Worthy of honour, eminently blessed, Irradiate the houses of their lords, Like shining lights or goddesses of fortune. Fidelity till death, this is the sum Of mutual duties for a married pair. And if the wife survive, let her remain Constant and true, nor sully her fair fame E'en by the utterance of another's name. As we have said, there are beautiful features in the fore- going picture, there are also suggestive traits expressions indicative of more than is expressed. ' Fidelity till death ' was not to bind the woman only, it was of mutual obligation. The sentiment, indeed, has the same ring with the utterance of our Marriage Service, ' till death us do part,' though that The Early Hindiis. 1 5 sentiment was sounded well-nigh 3000 years ago. It seems, i moreover, to exclude the idea of divorce ; and the words ' a married pair,' most clearly point to monogamy as the pre- vailing usage. The warning against ' drink,' unfortunately settles the point, which some have disputed, that inebriety was a vice to which the early Hindus were not strangers. The good advice to the ladies to avoid fi rambling about,' not only shows that the feminine taste for gossiping marked them in those days, but that no strict rules of seclusion absolutely prevented its gratification. The description of a woman who 4 weds herself to a man she loves,' is another confirmation of the fact before noticed, that women were not only married when they had reached the years of discretion, but that they exercised their discretion in the important proceeding itself. It is evident that, at the period indicated, women held a posi- tion of responsibility and trust in the domestic circle; they seem literally to have ' held the purse strings ; ' though Manu thinks it not superfluous to caution them against being too free in spending an injunction the necessity for which is perhaps hardly obsolete even in our own day. It is a legitimate inference that, if men so far trusted their wives, as to make them ' keepers of their substance,' they consulted them also in all matters relating to domestic interests. It would appear, however, as time advanced, this mutual con- fidence waned : men came to regard their wives as silly children to be pampered and petted, if you please, but by no means to be trusted or consulted. The Pancha-tantra, a collection of ,' stories and fables of a later date than Manu's writings, gives to husbands the following shrewd advice : Give women food, dress, gems, and all that's nice, But tell them not your plans if you are wise. If you have aught to do and want to do it, Don't ask a woman's counsel, or you'll rue it. 1 6 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. CHAPTEE II. THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF CASTE. ' He hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth.' Acts xvii. 26. IT may without doubt be asserted that the Aryans originally knew nothing of caste ; l indeed, it may be questioned whether, at the time of their invasion of India, they had any clearly marked social distinctions at all. The term Aryan, though it came to bear the sense of ' noble,' seems to be derived from a root indicating ' to plough.' Agricultural pursuits, along with pastoral, appear to have been the leading feature in the life of the early Aryans. When, in process of time, they extended their territory over the smiling plains of Hindustan, and found themselves in possession of a soil far more fertile than that which their forefathers had cultivated on the heights of Central Asia, they naturally devoted themselves with increased zest to their favourite avocation ; so that in the early Hindu period, they might well be described as a nation of agriculturists. It is a curious instance of the perverted view of things which caste introduced, that, as that system grew, the once-honoured pro- fession was more and more depreciated, until at length it was regarded as a pursuit in which only an inferior caste would be employed. 2 1 The word caste seems to be derived from the Portuguese term casta, race. The earliest Sanscrit word employed to define the thing signified was varna, colour. The use "of this term would appear to imply that, in the primitive con- ception of caste, the varying lines of complexion were in some way taken into account. As the scheme came to be more fully developed the vrordjati, birth, took the place of varna. 2 According to Manu other considerations ministered to the same result. He The Nature and Orign of Caste. 1 7 The reader will not need to be told that the prodigious system of which we are going to speak did not spring up in a day ; it was a matter of growth and gradual development. Probably the first lineaments of that system consisted of no- thing more than those social distinctions between classes which, as a matter of course, grew up as society assumed an orderly and settled aspect ; the necessities of civilised life would call into being a variety of professions ; some of these would be more noted and influential than the rest ; individual talent also would play its part in furthering those distinctions ; superior mental power would necessarily bestow upon its possessors a primacy amongst their fellows. In this way the sages of the community would naturally elbow their way to the front rank. Especially would this be the case amongst a people with such strong religious instincts as marked the early Hindus ; their very yearnings for guidance and increased spiritual light would incline them readily to concede the prominence which the learned class would not be slow to claim. Herein we may note the germ of the great Brahmanical order which was ultimately to monopolise the power and enjoy the homage of every other class. Probably for some ages after the Aryans settled in India, they governed themselves, and conducted their worship on the patriarchal principle ; no distinct fraternity of priests figured amongst them, but the increase and dispersion of the population, together with the elaboration of their religious observances, which certainly did take place at an early period, would suggest the propriety and convenience of a sacerdotal class. Who then so well fitted for the sacred office as those who already enjoyed intellectual supremacy over their fellows? Thus a portion of the class above described would naturally find their way to the altars, says : ' Some think that agriculture is an excellent thing, but it is a mode of existence blamed by the good, because the iron-mouthed ploughshare wounds the eartih. and the creatures living in it.' C 1 8 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. as naturally would they come to feel their power and set them- selves to advance their order. The already complex system of religion rapidly became more complicated : so intricate and numerous did the prescribed rites become, that not fewer than sixteen different orders of priests were required to perform the necessary offices. 1 The word Brahman comes from a term signifying prayer or sacred rite ; in all probability the functions of the priests suggested the name of the class from which they were drawn. In the caste system which was ultimately developed, the order next in rank to the Brahmans was that of the Kshatriyas, or military caste ; their name is derived from a word implying dominion. Though they follow the Brahmans in the order of caste, it ought not to be inferred that they were second in order of time, or indeed of influence. It is obvious that al- most from the beginning of the Aryan immigration the need of a fighting class would be felt ; if not on the banks of the Indus, yet certainly, as the invaders advanced into the country, they would be opposed by the barbarous hordes then in posses- sion of the land. Eecurring assaults from those wild tribes would lead to the segregation of a body of men with leisure and taste to cultivate the profession of arms. The fact that the existence of all other classes, the peaceful performance of religious ordinances, the protection of agricultural interests, and the prosecution of commercial enterprise depended upon the courage and skill of the Kshatriyas, would necessarily stamp them with dignity and importance. Accordingly in the earliest Vedic hymns we find them described as Rajanya, ' the kingly class.' Anxious as the Brahmans were to establish their supremacy over their fellows a point which in the long run they completely achieved they were obliged to concede * As an illustration of the extremely elaborate character of some of their earliest functions, it may be mentioned that one sacrifice alone the Agnishtoma required the services of sixteen priests, and occupied in its celebration five whole days. The Nature and Origin of Caste. 1 9 the interdependence which bound them and their fighting brethren together. Manu, though speaking as a Brahman, says : * A Kshatriya cannot thrive without a Brahman, nor a Brahman without a Kshatriya. The Brahman and the Kshatriya, when associated together, prosper in this world and the next.' The Vaisyas constituted the third of the four great sections into which caste divided the Hindu family ; yet the Vaisyas existed as a denned class in the social scale long before caste set its brand upon them. They were the cultivators of the soil ; their name implies ' those who settle down.' It is easy to con- ceive how they came to inherit this definition ; those of their brethren who represented the two foregoing classes might indulge their migratory habits, but the pursuit of husbandry necessitates a settled mode of life ; the Vaisyas therefore remained on their homesteads, and no doubt gradually acquired hereditary rights in the lands which they tilled. According to Manu, those of this class who preferred merchandise to agriculture were per- fectly free to follow their taste. Thus this section of the Hindu commonwealth consisted of the great producers, on whom all other classes relied for support. The law of mutual dependence and helpfulness governed in a very especial way the three great classes spoken of ; no one section could say to the other, ' I have no need of you.' Doubtless the Vaisyas might have existed without the Brahmans, but these could not do without the Vaisyas, whilst neither the one nor the other could have main- tained their footing without the Kshatriyas. The Brahmans, with good judgment and sound policy, when they worked out their caste system, administered a pleasant sop to each of the other sections ; they permitted them along with themselves to wear a sacred thread and bear the appellation of Dwija, ' twice- born.' The investiture with that thread was accounted a second birth. The three classes of the Aryan community above described represented three ideas and supplied three wants ; these were c 2 2O The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. instruction, protection, support. But manifestly the need of a fourth and a servile class would be experienced, and in some way or other it had to be supplied ; a variety of menial and domestic offices had to be performed which the 6 twice-born ' would naturally shrink from. Thus came into being the fourth order of society, which afterwards, under the name of Sudra, con- stituted the lowest class in the caste system. Attempts have been made to derive the word Sudra from some Sanscrit root, but they have not been successful ; there can be little doubt that the term describes a pre-Arvan race or races, which, after being subjugated by the Aryans, were pressed into their service. In all probability these were the same as the Hudrakoi spoken of by Herodotus ; and, as in Europe the fact of numbers of the Sclavonic race being reduced to bondage and servitude gave birth to the word slave as descriptive of the whole class of bondmen, so did this word become a generic term for those portions of the conquered aborigines who became in- corporated into the social system of the Hindus. Their ultimate recognition in the caste scheme evolved by the Brahmans was another illustration of the far-seeing policy which ruled the deliberations of the learned class ; the relegation of the van- quished serfs to the position of a distinct though an inferior caste would naturally tend to obliterate their ancestral ties and sympathies, and to attach them to the religion and persons of their rulers. But though they were thus pacified and flattered, the utmost care was taken to perpetuate their condition of servi- tude, for only in this condition could they be useful to their lords. Accordingly no sacred thread was ever allowed to rest on their shoulders ; they were ever to be regarded as the ' once-born ' only ; nor could they ever hope to rise to ' twice-born ' dignities. As a matter of course the natural pride and jealousy of their ' twice-born ' superiors tended more and more to their depression; a very hard and fast line severed between them and their more favoured brethren; for brethren, perhaps, they might call The Nature and Origin of Caste. 2 1 themselves, since they were grafted upon the Hindu stock, and so were infinitely in advance of the outcaste tribes from which they had sprung ; but religious as well as social equality was placed utterly out of their reach. The penalty of death was pronounced against any Sudra who presumed to engage in any of the acts of worship which pertained to the three privileged classes. The Raniayan gives an instance in which Ram, on beholding a Sudra engaged in such illegal worship on the shores of a lake, severed his head from his body, at which act of righteous vengeance, we are told, the gods were delighted, and showered down flowers on the head of the executioner. If, moreover, a Sudra uttered a disrespectful word towards one of the 4 twice-born,' a red-hot iron style was to be thrust into his mouth. 1 The existence of these four classes in the social system of the early Hindus was, as we have seen, in no way remarkable. This circumstance may be very easily accounted for ; in fact, it is a characteristic which they had in common with other branches of the Aryan family. The Persian monarch Jamshid is said to have divided that nation into four classes ; Plato, in his 4 Repub- lic,' speaks of ' four or five classes of men ; ' the Anglo-Saxons 1 It is clear, however, that in early times the Sudras did now and then rise to importance in the social scale and commanded the respect of their religious superiors. The Puranas even speak of Sudras who rose to kingly power ; and Mann, in one place says, ' A believer in Scripture may receive pure knowledge even from a Sudra.' Still, the religious inferiority of a Sudra has ever remained an immutable fact. Very curious illustrations of this may be seen any day in India. You may behold, for instance, a Brahman as poor as a church mouse going along the road : approaching him is a portly, well-dressed, well-to-do Sudra. You may see that Sudra with an air of abject reverence come up to the feet of the Brahman, then, taking off his turban, prostrate himself and put his forehead in the dust, whilst the Brahman gives his benediction by placing his foot on the head of the prostrate man. You may see another Sudra rush up to the Brahman with a dish of water in his hand ; into this the Brahnian dips his foot, and forthwith the other devoutly drinks the holy draught. , In the Native army you may see a Sudra captain drilling his company, which contains, perhaps, several Brahmans. Whilst on parade the Brahman private, of course, obeys and salutes the Sudra captain ; but wait until drill is over, and you may behold the Sudra captain throw himself at the feet of the man who, though his military subordinate, is religiously to him a god. 2 2 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. also originally ranged themselves under four distinct heads artificers, husbandmen, soldiers, and clergy ; nor is it to be ques- tioned that instinctively in the present day we resolve ourselves into four great classes the nobility, the upper middle and lower middle classes, and the working class. The grand feature of distinction between the Indian Aryans and their brethren else- where is seen in the religious crystallisation of these divisions which followed the introduction of caste amongst the former. Without doubt, Indian caste owes its origin to a principle which is characteristic of human nature at all times and in all lands. This principle has obtained different degrees of development among different nations ; the highest degree has been attained in India. Wherever slavery has existed, there has this principle operated. Slavery among the Greeks approached much nearer to Hindu caste than did the same institution among the Romans. l The prevaiJing notion of the Greeks was that the slave was by nature inferior to his lord ; a state of slavery there- fore naturally befitted him. There were, indeed, those who repudiated that doctrine. Aristotle, for instance, speaks of some who maintained that slavery existed vofjiw only ; they regarded it as an artificial thing of man's devising, having no root in nature, but actually Trapa fyva-iV) contrary to the nature of things ; these, however, were evidently a small minority; the majority held that a natural law bound the slave in his position and cut him off from the rights and immunities of the higher order of men. Still Hindu caste is unique in respect of the religious character which has been stamped upon it. The low-caste man in India carries with him, not only the stigma of social degradation, he is to the higher castes a polluted and polluting object, a sort of moral leper, whose touch, breath, shadow, are all contaminating. No parallel to this is to be found, we believe, elsewhere. 1 Seneca, speaking of the slaves of Rome, says, ' Are they not sprung from the (ame origin, do they not breathe the same air, do they not live and die just as we do?' The Nature and Origin of Caste. 23 According to that system, the Brahmans had their origin from the mouth of Brahma, the Kshatriyas from his arm, the Vaisyas from his thigh, and the Sudras from his foot. The Brahmans, as proceeding from the mouth of Deity, claimed not only precedence in rank, but actual pre-eminence by nature over all other castes ; according to Manu's Code, they were to be re- garded as gods in human shape, and divine homage was to be paid to them by all their fellows. The great Lawgiver, besides the superiority of origin which marked the Brahman, ascribes his superhuman excellence to three other considerations to his possessing the Vedas, to his enjoying the right of studying and expounding them, and to a peculiarity in the mode of his inves- titure; it has been remarked above that three of the castes were privileged to wear the sacred thread, but certain solemn rites were made to accompany the bestowal of that symbol on the Brahman which had no counterpart in the investiture of the other ' twice-born ' castes. The following passages from Manu will give a further view of the tremendous assumption of power and dignity which the Brahmans put forth : ' A Brahman, whether learned or unlearned, is a mighty divinity, just as fire is a mighty divinity, whether consecrated or unconsecrated.' * Even. when Brahmans employ themselves in all sorts of inferior occupations, they must under all circumstances be honoured, for they are to be regarded as supreme divinities.' ' From his high birth alone, a Brahman is regarded as a divinity even by the gods. His teaching must be accepted by the rest of the world as an in- fallible authority.' The reader will be prepared to learn that, when the Brahmans on such grounds claimed the homage of all men, they were shrewd enough to gain capital of another kind from these pretensions : they were most solicitous to impress kings and all in authority with a sense of the awful power which inhered in them; they ever pointed to the peril attending 24 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. those who oppressed them ; a terrible vengeance was sure to overtake them ; nay, it was unlawful and dangerous to require them to contribute in any degree to the charges of the state, hence they claimed in the following passage immunity from taxation : ' Let not a king, although fallen into the greatest distress (through a deficiency of revenue), provoke Brahmans to anger (by taking revenue from them), for they, if once en- raged, could instantly destroy him with all his army and re- tinue.' Again : ' What king would gain increase of revenue by oppressing those who, if angry, could create other worlds and guardians of worlds, and could create new gods and mortals ? ' Of course they claimed to be a privileged class as regarded the penal statutes ; for no crime or number of crimes might capital punishment be inflicted on a Brahman ; the worst penalty which could be enforced against him was banishment. Personal violence towards a Brahman would be visited with the most terrible consequences; we are told, 'He who merely assails a Brahman with intent to kill him, will continue in hell for a hundred years, and he who actually slays him, for a thousand years.' ' As many particles of dust as the blood of a Brahman absorbs from the soil, so many thousands of years must the shedder of that blood abide in hell.' The more the organisation of the caste system is studied, the more one is impressed with the subtle contrivances for augmenting and perpetuating JBrahmanical influence which marked it. Viewed in this light, that whole system is a master-piece of ingenuity, a standing evidence of the far-seeing astuteness of the learned and priestly order. As regards the subordinate castes, things were so pleasantly arranged that they should be gratified with seeming privileges and immunities, should believe themselves highly honoured and blessed by having a standing within the charmed circle ; but everything was so sedulously guarded that they were compelled to look to The Nature and Origin of Caste. the Brahman as the centre and source of all their privileges ; he was the sun round which they, as satellites, must ever revolve ; without him they could do nothing could indeed have no exis- tence at all. Moreover, whilst the Brahmans were welded together in one compact and solid fraternity for the maintenance of their mutual rights and dignities, anything like a rebellious compact of the three inferior orders was rendered impossible ; the inexorable rules which severed each from the other the impassable lines of demarcation which ran between them rendered a combination between them for a common object utterly impracticable. More than once indeed did the proud Kshatriyas resent the arrogance of the Brahmans and struggle to cast off the yoke which galled them ; but in vain they strove; the divine sanctions and the superstitious fears on which Brahmanical power was founded proved stronger than weapons of steel and an arm of flesh. At length the great fact came to be understood and conceded, that all lived for the Brahman, and that the Brahman governed all. Human nature being what it is, we can readily conceive how, as the ages rolled along, priestly pride and tyranny at last reached such prodigious proportions that a reaction was inevitable. Such a revolution, however, was only possible outside the caste system; it remained for Buddhism, a system which swept away all caste distinctions, to make the first resolute stand against the intolerable evil ; but we must not anticipate the topic of a subsequent chapter. As regards the Kshatriyas, we have seen that they figured at different periods as temporal rulers in the commonwealth ; as such they were, as it has been remarked, flattered and smiled upon by the Brahmans ; but they were ever instructed to look up to their religious superiors as advisers and guides ; they were to entrust much of their judicial authority to those sacred hands, and in any matter of legal doubt, the Brahmans alone could give an authoritative ruling. In domestic matters 26 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. the whole of the three inferior castes were, throughout life, compelled to realise their dependence on the Brahman ; every- thing was made to hinge 'on this principle; religious duties which he only could perform necessitated his appearance at every turn ; marriage rites, ceremonies in connection with the conception, with the birth of a child, with its first feeding with rice, with sundry purificatory and sacrificial observances, ever brought the Brahman into requisition, so that it might almost be said that, religiously and socially, ' in him the people lived and moved and had their being.' Theoretically the Brahman was poor in this world's wealth, and rich in spiritual treasures ; but even if monastic history had not taught us how such a theory may become an empty fiction, we should be prepared to find that the sagacious and subtle Brahman made it so. He took very good care indeed of his material interests; he not only annexed material re- muneration as a sine qua non to his services, but he very shrewdly made the vitality and efficiency of those services to be proportioned to the amount of liberality which his disci- ples displayed. On this point Manu speaks with no uncertain sound. He says : ' A sacrifice performed with trifling pre- sents destroys the organs of sense, fame, heaven, life, reputation, offspring, cattle ; therefore let no man undertake sacrifice who has not plenty of money to make liberal gifts.' ' Let a man, according to his ability, give wealth to Brahmans who know the Vedas and keep apart from the world ; by so doing, he obtains heaven when he dies.' 'All that exists in this universe is the Brahman's property.' In matters of diet, the Brahman had to submit to certain restrictions ; on no account was he to drink spirituous liquor this was included amongst the five great crimes of the Hindu Code ; * he was also forbidden to eat garlic, onions, leeks, mush- 1 The other four are killing a Brahman, stealing gold from a Brahman, adultery with the wife of a Gum or spiritual teacher, and associating with one who has been guilty of any of these crimes. The Nature and Origin of Caste. 27 rooms, and carnivorous birds. As a general rule, the eating of animal food was discountenanced ; yet it is curious to note the contrast between the utterances of Manu on this subject and the teachings of later times. It is well known that, gradually, the eating of flesh meat came to be regarded as a mortal sin. That in Manu's time no such rigid notion prevailed is perfectly clear from the following passages : ' Never let a Brahman eat the flesh of cattle unconsecrated with mantras, but let him eat it only when hallowed with texts of the Vedas.' ' In eating meat, and in drinking wine, 1 there is no crime (provided it be on a lawful occasion).' Although, in its original conception, the caste system only embraced four grand divisions, it could hardly fail in lapse of time to admit of modification and expansion in this particular ; however stringent the rules for maintaining the integrity of the system, these were sure, amid the exigencies of social life, to be at times transgressed. These rules are all but innumerable, yet they all hinge upon three leading principles ; they relate to 1. Food and its preparation, 2. Intermarriage, and 3. Professional pursuits. For a high-caste man to eat with one of low caste, or even to eat food cooked by one lower in the scale than himself, caused defilement and prejudiced his caste. Food cooked on board a boat or ship was pronounced to be destructive of caste. So rigidly do some of the Brahmans to this day uphold the principle involved in these restrictions, that they will on no account eat in the presence of a low-caste man ; and if, during the process of cooking, the mere shadow of such a man in pass- ing should fall upon the food, or should the hem of his garment touch the vessel which contains it, in either case the whole of the viands are thrown away, and the vessel, if of earthenware, is broken. But it is obvious that the very elaboration of these restrictive regulations ensured their failure ; in ten thousand 1 Doubtless, unfermented wine is here implied. 28 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. unavoidable conjunctures such minute rules were sure to be infringed. In the same way the prohibitory laws governing the intercourse of the sexes of different castes presented no such barrier as human nature was not sure to surmount. So also with regard to professional pursuits : a craving for wealth or distinction or convenience would be certain to urge indivi- duals, and ultimately whole classes, to cross the prescribed boundary. The actual consequence of these inevitable tendencies has been practically to destroy and obliterate the two middle castes ; the Kshatriyas and Vaisyas have really at the present time no lineal descendants. It is true the Eajpoots do claim to be the true representatives of the ancient military caste, but the Brahrnans generally refuse their claim, that is, they do so in every other province of India but Eajpootana, where the Rajpoots rule ; that the Brahmans concede the claim when they happen to dwell within the district indicated is a feature quite in keep- ing with their usual address and policy. Some of the mercantile castes of the present day also try to trace their pedigree up to the old Vaisya caste, but with very dubious success. It might seem at first sight that the Brahmans, by institut- ing such impracticable rules for the maintenance of caste, really overreached themselves, and helped to abolish what they were so eager to uphold. This may be so as regards the in- ferior orders, but that nothing of a suicidal character mingled with the blunder, if blunder it was, is clear from the fact that the priestly order alone has survived the general wreck.' The subordinate castes have, by force of circumstances, faded away into endless subdivisions ; in the present day every separate trade represents a separate caste, and the same strict rules of isola- tion as prevailed in early days divide these one from the other; the Brahmans, however, have throughout all these transmuta- tions, not only maintained their position, but have continued The Nature and Origin of Caste. 29 to enjoy the veneration and fatten on the bounty of every other section of the community. It must not be supposed that no change of any kind has passed over them. The Brahmanical order is no longer an undivided family ; its members have felt the disintegrating effects of those influences which tended to the subversion of the inferior castes ; they have been divided into numerous branches ; these varying sections have varying degrees of rank and importance, and amongst many of them so real is the division, that intermarriage and eating in common are considered unlawful ; but, in their case, division has not resulted in sub- version or obliteration a Brahman is a Brahman still to all below him ; he is still, whatever may be his status amongst his fellows, a being to be worshipped and propitiated by all his in- feriors. Yet though every Brahman receives the homage of all below him, each Brahmanical subdivision is allied to and finds its support from some one or more of the subdivisions of the inferior castes. 1 1 In the Dekkan there are several distinct sections of the Brahmanical race. The one which occupies the first place in the list is called Chittapavana, meaning ' heart-purifiers.' It is a singular fact that the notorious Nana Sahib of Bithoor belonged to this class strange irony for such a monster to bear such a title ! In no part of India has the Brahman order passed through so many and great changes as in Bengal. History tells of a time when in that province religion fell to such a low ebb that a king named Adisura sent to the King of Kan ouj, begging him to send a number of high-caste Brahmans to aid in restoring it. Accordingly the Brahman missionaries were sent ; it may be inferred that they succeeded in resuscitating the dying devotion of the people, but it was at the cost of their own unity ; for in process of time their descendants actually resolved themselves into no fewer than one hundred and fifty-six separate families. One hundred of these were called Varendra; the rest, from living in the district of Eadha, in Western Bengal, took the name of that locality. Altogether fourteen families of the whole number r?joice in the rank of Kulin, ' noble.' One of the privileges of the Kulins is a very dubious one ; they are entitled to marry as many wives as they please without being bound to support any of them. A Kulin may have, say, fifty wives, all living with their parents ; he has, it may be, no certain dwelling-place, but pleasantly migrates from family to family on periodical visits to his wives, he, of course, being well entertained on those occasions. Some years ago, as a matter of curiosity, the domestic relationships of twenty-seven Kulin Brahmans were traced and it was discovered that these twenty-seven men rejoiced in a grand total of 850 wives ! The great honour attaching to union with a Kulin Brahman accounts for 30 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. It would be an error to suppose that the manifold changes which have come over the caste system have reduced its aggre- gate force or lessened its hold upon the people; rather might it be said that the multiplication of subdivisions has tended to extend and consolidate the principle of caste in the Hindu family. That in our days caste is becoming less potent, less real, more shadowy than it was, is what no one can doubt who has studied the phases of modern Hindu society ; that mighty engine of tyranny is every year relaxing its iron grasp upon the millions who own its sway, but this grateful fact is owing to the operation of a variety of agencies and influences altogether ex- ternal to and distinct from the tribal or caste changes above described. An account of these agencies will be given in a later chapter. Looking to the moral influence of caste on the Hindu nation, it is impossible to deprecate the system too strongly ; its tendency has been to eat out human sympathy, to annihilate fellow-feeling, to render the heart callous, cruel, and selfish. No one who has not dwelt in India can understand the extent to which this terrible induration of the national heart has gone ; it is hard to make untravelled Europeans grasp the astounding reality, for Christianity, apart from its deeper and more vital effects, has undoubtedly impregnated society within its wide the existence of this extraordinary state of things. "Within the last few years, however, two or three decisions in the High Court of Calcutta have sorely dis- turbed the peace of the Kulin, for they have taught him that he, like any other man, may be compelled to support not only a wife, but any number of wives he may choose to marry. The six Kulin families best known in Bengal are called Banerjea, Mukherjea, Chatterjea, Gangooli, Grhoshala, Kanjalala. The Kanouj Brahmans brought with them into Bengal a number of Kayasthas or ' writers ; * their descendants are now divided into numerous families, who all bear in common the definition of Kayastha. Their leading names are Ghose, Bose, Mitra, Dey, Dutta, Palita, Dass, Sen. It is a singular fact that amongst the many outcasts tribes who hang upon the outskirts of Hindu society, the Chandalas are accounted the most unclean, although these are the offspring of a union between a Brahman's daughter and a Sudra. Formerly they were precluded from entering towns or villages in which the caste races dwelt, and they were only allowed to wear dead men's clothes. The Natiire and Origin of Caste. 3 1 domain, with much of its kindly and compassionate tone ; the milk of human kindness, fed from that sacred, heaven-born source, is ever kept flowing, so that a brotherhood of sympathy more or less intense binds merely nominal Christians together. It is far otherwise in India ; caste has not destroyed the power to feel and to love, but it has dammed up the stream of affection within such narrow and selfish limits that it cannot spare one drop of its genial waters to refresh the arid region beyond its own confined boundary. No people in the world is more marked for domestic tenderness than the Hindus ; a kindly regard for their outer circle of acquaintances too may be seen this is diluted into a respectful recognition of all the members of their particular caste ; but anything in the shape of active and general benevolence for even their own caste-folk is never thought of. 1 Outside their own caste the weal and woe of their fellows affect them in no degree whatever. We have again and again witnessed along the great pilgrim routes of India harrow- ing illustrations of this sad truth ; we have seen poor creatures, smitten with disease, lying on the road side passed by hundreds of their co-religionists with no more concern than as if they were dying dogs ; we have seen the poor parched sufferers with folded hands and pleading voice crave a drop of water to moisten their lips, but all in vain. Hundreds thus perish, untended, unpitied, unaided ; perhaps even before death does its work, the vultures and jackals begin theirs, and thus lines of whitened bones and bleached skulls border the roads leading to the sacred shrines ; and whence this worse- than -brutal callousness ? What 1 "We do not deny that very many acts of public utility as the digging of wells or tanks, or the building of Ghauts are performed by wealthy families or individuals. For centuries back have such good deeds been executed all over the country. In the same way, on the occasion of certain religious ceremonies, especially at the funeral rites for a deceased father, hundreds, or even thousands of poor people of all castes or no caste are feasted, but all this is a confirmation of the hard, selfish principle we speak of; for no such Hindu benefactor will deny that his highest motive in these acts is to procure personal merit for himself, or to facilitate the repose of the departed ; beyond these he has no other aim. 32 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. has dried up the springs of human sympathy ? it is Caste. This first of all taught the peo'ple to look upon differing castes as different species, it next taught the lesson of defilement by con- tact ; thus utter isolation and heartless selfishness account for the whole of the sickening scenes described. Either the dying man is known to be of low caste or his caste is unknown ; to approach him, to touch him, might result in pollution ; hence he is left to his fate. 1 Nor is it to be doubted that caste has been as prejudicial to the moral and religious sense of the people as to their natural sympathies ; it has indeed drawn a death-like pall of gloom over their moral perceptions, so that multitudes seem to have lost the power of discerning things that differ, and, as it were, instinc- tively, ' put darkness for light, and light for darkness, call good evil, and evil good.' Perhaps the seed from which this deadly crop of perverseness has sprung has been passages like the following, which appear in the ' Institutes ' of Manu. ' A Brahman, by retaining the Rig- Veda in his memory, incurs no guilt, though he should destroy the three worlds.' What are the things which jeopardise caste ? not moral delinquency. Theoretically, no doubt, certain moral offences are prejudicial to caste, but practically all moral considerations are ignored ; a Brahman may be known to be a monster of wickedness, a thief, liar, adulterer, murderer, but his sanctity as a Brahman remains unaffected by these crimes : he will still be worshipped by his disciples, and still will they drink the water of his feet as a \ We do not remember in connection with such distressing scenes ever seeing a sign or hearing a word of pity expressed by the passers-by. This may appear still more unaccountable, for we could conceive of a religious dread of pollution deterring a person from actively aiding the sufferer, though he really felt for his sufferings. Here, however, another consideration comes in to complete, so to speak, the ossification of the feelings the doctrine of transmigration teaches that all our sufferings and enjoyments in the present life are merely the natural and necessary consequences of our good or evil doings in a previous life. Hence the Hindu reasons ' That poor wretch is only suffering the due recompense of his former misdeeds. Fate decrees it; why should I interfere with Fate in giving him his just desert?' The N attire and Origin of Caste. 33 holy thing ; but let that Brahman, even by accident, eat for- bidden food or touch an unlawful object, and the curse of un- cleanness at once falls upon him. Further, let the Brahman who is branded with the black list of crimes we have just enume- rated, repent of his evil ways and become a meek and holy follower of Christ, and then, from the very moment of his baptism to his death, he is regarded as a fallen and degraded wretch, and the very abjects who before worshipped him in his defilement, would shrink with horror from contact with him. Strange and anomalous, moreover, as it may seem, a man's belief or disbelief has nothing whatever to do with his caste. This is not a peculiarity of modern times ; it was true 2,500 years ago ; numbers of Brahman Sages not only imbibed un- Hindu and Atheistic notions, but they fearlessly avowed them, yet their caste dignities and privileges remained intact. In the present day, not hundreds, but tens of thousands of educated natives have lost all faith in and reverence for Hinduism ; caste itself they do not believe in, except as a part of that vast system of superstition which in heart they repudiate ; yet, passing strange though it seems, it is an undoubted fact, that all this does not in any degree prejudice their caste standing ; every- body may be perfectly aware that they do thus repudiate the national creed, do thus laugh at caste notions, yet everybody accords to them, notwithstanding, all the honours and immuni- ties of the caste to which they belong. Nay, further, the persons we speak of may have assumed more than a negative position with regard to Hinduism ; they may not only disbelieve in that system, but they may thoroughly and unreservedly embrace the doctrines of Christianity : they may avow their convictions to all around them, they may say to all, ' I am a Christian in heart,' but they stand as regards caste, on the very same foot- ing with the most devout and orthodox Hindu in the country. We are acquainted with not a few educated natives at the present time who answer to this description. 34 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. The above considerations are important to be borne in mind by those who would rightly understand and duly estimate the institution of caste. It is thus clearly seen that,, tenacious of life and mighty in influence as caste may be, it is after all a superficial and a gross thing; moral character and religious convictions are neither disturbing nor supporting elements in * that system ; they are, in short, outside its sphere. The things which prejudice caste are, as has been stated before, intermar- riage with one of inferior caste, eating food with such an one, and contact with unclean objects. It is thus obvious that mere Christian teaching will neither terrify Hindus nor imperil their standing in society : the Sepoy troops which, in 1857, broke into revolt might have been preached to every day of their lives, and they would have viewed that as an innocuous proceeding ; but the touch of a so-called greased cartridge aroused their worst fears and bitterest resentments ; that, and not teaching, endangered their caste. In the same way, were the Bible, as a matter of routine, to be read in every class in every Government school or college throughout the country, no Hindu pupil or parent would think that a cause of contamina- tion ; but let a boy eat one mouthful of food at the hand of the European principal or professor, and dire damage is done, and the vials of wrath would assuredly be poured out. 1 We have said in an early part of this chapter that the laws of caste are immutable, its lines impassable. As regards the present life they are so; the members of one caste cannot effect a transition into another ; no amount of merit, no degree of asceticism, not ' all the wealth of the Indies,' could con- vert a Sudra into a Brahman. But, though impossible in the 1 "We are not in this illustration reflecting on the existing state of things in Government schools and colleges. The whole question of religious instruction in those institutions is one so encompassed with difficulty one in which the desirable and the practicable are so hard to harmonise, that we maintain for the present a discreet silence on the subject. We use the above remark as an illustration and nothing more. The Nature and Origin of Caste. 35 present life, such a change is not beyond the bounds of possibility in a future birth. Here again we are brought face to face with the amazing versatility of resource and adroitness of management which have ever characterised the Brahmans. The doctrine of transmigration of souls very early gained a firm footing in the country ; the Brahmans very discreetly absorbed it into their system, and so dovetailed it with their caste organisation as to impart additional strength and im- portance to that scheme ; they taught their disciples the lesson of caste gradation in future births ; they impressed upon the Brahman the need of strict attention to the present duties of his caste, by holding before him the dread prospect of his being born a Sudra in the next life as a penalty for remissness ; they prompted the Sudra to redoubled zeal in the performance of his obligations a main feature of which was the liberal feeding and feeing of Brahmans by an assur- ance that he might in his next birth be recompensed by ' twice- born ' dignities. In connection with the worship of Juggernath (Lord of the world) a very remarkable tradition exists ; its date and origin are, we believe, lost in obscurity the theory is, that within the sacred enclosure of the temple of that deity caste has no recognition ; in the presence of ' the Lord of the world,' all men are equal. Accordingly there is, within that limited area, nothing to prevent the Brahman and the Sudra shaking hands as brothers, and sitting down to partake of one common meal. They may do this in the sight of Juggernath and with his ap- proval ; they may do it also without prejudice to their caste- standing amongst their fellows, but the instant they have recrossed the privileged boundary, their respective caste dis- tinctions bind them with all their wonted stringency. Such, as we have said, is the theory ; but this is a case in which practice belies theory, for, we believe, such commingling of castes is never actually witnessed within the precincts of Juggernath at D 2 36 The Trident, the Crescent \ and the Cross. the present day. Yet it is a point of some practical impor- tance that such a theory exists ; it is one of many instances in which Hinduism furnishes arguments whereby the system itself may be assailed. On a review of this whole subject certain convictions force themselves upon us. The first impression is, that caste is a thing positively unique ; there is nothing in any country with whose history we are familiar, ancient or modern, with which it can be compared : it has a social element, but it is not a* social distinction ; it has a religious element, but it is hardly a religious institution ; it finds its sanction in a religious idea, inasmuch as Brahma is said to have been its author, but it lives on irrespective of religious faith or observance. Another impression must have struck the reader that such an institution must necessarily constitute a formidable draw- back to those who are trammeled by it. It operates as a deterrent to progress of every kind ; it dissipates all aspira- tions to rise in the lower ranks of society and fosters a spirit of selfish arrogance in the upper ; l it destroys mutual sympathy, and renders impossible a healthy combination of classes for the common weal ; it sets its ban upon commercial enterprise and foreign travel ; no Hindu can cross the sea without imperilling his caste. Not very long ago a native judge was asked by the Bombay Government to proceed to England at the public expense, to give evidence before the Finance Committee of the House of Commons. His reply was, c I think it would be a farce in me to appear as a witness and at the expense of the public, when a considerable and intelligent part of that public not only disapproves of my doing so, but is sure to persecute me by excommunication, against which no human ingenuity 1 Practically, the prospect of retribution or recompense in a future birth is inoperative : we believe you might search in vain for a Brahman or Sudra who modifies his present conduct in any degree from a regard to the degradation or elevation which may ensue in a future state of existence. The Nature and Origin of Caste. 3 7 in India has yet devised a remedy, and no law of the land or earthly power can give any protection.' 1 Of all the obstacles to the evangelisation of India, this is by far the most formidable. The subtlety of the Pundits, the philosophy of the Sages, the hereditary attachment of the people to their ancient creed, though real and serious difficulties, are trifling compared with this terrible obstruction ; all these may be overborne, these, as the outworks, may be effectually stormed and carried, but the dread form of caste, like an ail-but invul- nerable barrier, rises to the view, and arrests the tide of con- quest. The judgment may be convinced, the heart impressed, but the fearful consequences of decision stare the individual in the face, and no wonder that he falters. The higher his caste, the heavier the cross which threatens him. To be loathed by all who once loved him, to be mourned for as dead by her who bore him, to have the finger of scorn pointed at him by all his associates, to be doomed for life to social ostracism as a polluted thing, is the penalty of conversion which caste inflicts ; truly the marvel is not that so few, but that so many, have had strength and courage to avow their convictions at such a cost. It is an undoubted fact, that although, as we have said, a mere belief in Christianity leaves caste unaffected, the event of a man's baptism brings upon him the dire penalty above speci- fied ; he is, ipso facto, outcasted. This is curious when we bear 1 The Indu ProJcash, a Hindu organ, in commenting on the above Case, gives vent to its indignation in the following burning words : ' The tyranny of caste extends from the most trifling to the most important affairs of Hindu life. It cripples the independent action of individuals, sows the seed of bitter discord between the different sections of society, encourages the most abominable practices, and dries up all the springs of that social, moral, and intellectual freedom which alone can secure greatness, whether to individuals or nations. It has pampered the pride and insolence of the Brahmans, by teaching them to look upon them- selves, notwithstanding all their weaknesses, as the favourites of gods, nay, the very gods on earth who are to keep the lower orders in a state of utter degrada- tion and illiterate servitude. Such is our caste system ; so unjustifiable in prin- ciple, so unfair in organisation, and so baneful in its consequences to the highest interests of the country.' Strange protest from the pen of a Hindu ! but this is only the articulate breathing of a growing repugnance felt by the educated classes towards such an unnatural and monstrous system ; multitudes who lack courage thus to denounce the evil do in their heart of hearts long for its overthrow. 38 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. in mind that this act does not in itself involve any transgression of caste rules ; the convert may never eat forbidden food, may contract no forbidden marriage or any ceremonial uncleanness, but the water of baptism is, by common consent, regarded as destructive of caste. 1 Consequently it is no uncommon thing for a Hindu father to be utterly unmoved by his son's hetero- doxy so long as he keeps aloof from that ordinance ; but let the son determine to avow his faith in that solemn rite, and imme- diately, not the father only, but all that belong to him are frantic with excitement, and move heaven and earth to prevent the execution of the design. If fair means will not suffice, then too often foul means are resorted to ; forced confinement, and cruel stripes are tried. Should these fail, then alas ! we speak of the things which we know too well a diabolical attempt to deprave the morals of the youth may follow, for it is quite understood that sensuality and Christianity have nothing in common, and that a victory on the side of the former is likely to ensure a breach with the latter. 2 Should this foul scheme fail, then it is quite within the bounds of possibility that, to save the family from the dire disgrace foreboded, the victim of this persecution may be drugged so as to destroy his intellect, if not his life. 1 This is at least the case in North India. We have repeatedly seen illustra- tions of this kind. It has been our rule to keep back enquirers from any overt transgression of caste rules up to the time of their baptism ; our object has been, to remove any ground for their repudiation by their friends ; we have then, immediately after baptism, sent them back to their families ; in no single instance, however, have they been received. In one case a father, an educated and liberal- minded man, was wishful to retain his baptised son in his house, but the prejudices of his friends and neighbours were too strong. for him ; he had to accept the pain- ful alternative of casting out hjs Christian eon or of being outcasted with his whole family. With bitter tears he made the former, as the least terrible sacrifice. 2 This kind of involuntary homage to the superior morality of Christianity is shown in many ways by the people of India ; there can be no doubt that an im- pression is all but universal that Christianity is a holier thing than Hinduism. Such an impression, even on a darkened conscience, must have a certain moral weight. Those who are familiar with early Church history will at once recall parallel instances to the above revolting form of temptation and trial. The Nature and Origin of Caste. 39 Such is caste ! What more terrible source of evil, what more formidable deterrent of good could be conceived of ? No wonder that Sir William Jones, three quarters of a century ago, avowed his conviction that no Brahman would ever be converted ; that great Orientalist formed this opinion from a view of the caste difficulty. It is an assuring 1 and comforting circumstance that we have lived to see the day when converted Brahman s may be reckoned by scores ; we are privileged moreover to discern what that great man never dreamt of, the slow but certain disinte- gration of that mighty system of thraldom ; as we shall see here- after, not one or two, but manifold agencies are working together for its dissolution. He who is wonderful in operation and wise in counsel is smiting it, as it were, with an unseen hand. Already one short but telling account may be given of it it is dying, yet it lives ; lives on the credulity of the ignorant and the sufferance of the educated ; but knowledge is power, and know- ledge is spreading; ignorance is darkness, and darkness is receding ergo^ its days are numbered. 4O The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. CHAPTEE III. EAKLT HINDUISM. ' Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways ; neverthe- less He left not himself without witness.' Acts xiv. 16, 17. OUR last chapter may be regarded as in some degree proleptical, for, chronologically, the development of caste falls within the era of the present chapter ; still, as that institution cannot fairly be regarded as a necessary outcome of early Hinduism, but rather as a huge excrescence which grew up side by side with it, it seemed desirable, considering its surpassing and peculiar importance, to accord to itan independent and separate discussion. It has been said with great truth that the early history of the Hindus is a religious history; religion is a more prominent feature in their early records than is the case with any other nation ; nor will it be denied by those who have compared the people of India in this respect with other peoples, that they are pre-eminent for the religious instinct whieh has at all times marked them. It has often struck us that if St. Paul had preached in India, he would .have applied to the Hindus with especial emphasis the commendatory epithet which he addressed to the Athenians ; indeed, if he declared -the latter to be ' very religious 51 he would probably have described the former as 1 The rendering of the word used by St. Paul (Acts xvii. -22),s 'too super- stitious,' is certainly unfortunate ; SenriSaip-wv simply means ' reverencing the gods.' Paul uses the comparative 6f the word because, as he goes on to argue, the Athenians had not been content to worship their known gods, but had set up an altar to an unknown god besides. This felicitous adaptation of a local object, this skilful and conciliatory mode of address, are thoroughly in keeping with the Apostle's ordinary mode of speaking and writing, and may furnish an example which modern missionaries will do well to copy. Early Hinduism. 4 r most religious. Nothing to our mind is more touching, more solemnly interesting, than this characteristic of the Hindu race. Of no nation on the face of the earth may it be said with greater or perhaps with equal truth, that they have ever been ' feel- ing after Grod, if haply they might find him.' Erroneous as their conceptions of Him have been, still it cannot be doubted that they have approached nearer the true ideal than any other people unblessed with the light of Eevelation. Hinduism in its earlier development stands out distinct, not only from the Fetichism of barbarous races, but from the re- ligious systems of civilised nations of antiquity. Their hero- worship, which indeed constitutes their main aspect, had no counterpart in early Hinduism ; it was only after ages of effort to see the Unseen, to know the Unknowable, to grasp the Infi- nite, that the Hindus at length betook themselves to deify mortals and to worship the objects by which they were surrounded. So, too, as regards the spiritual aspirations and yearnings expressed by the religious systems we speak of. It is indisputable that Hinduism transcends them all in this particular feature ; it reveals a profounder sense of sin and need, deeper longings after things unearthly and divine; it shows more clearly the working of the inner springs of Ihe human mind and conscience, than do the systems of other races. That Hinduism, nevertheless, utterly failed of leading its votaries to a right perception of God, and ultimately lapsed into a system of degraded polytheism and idolatry, in many respects little better than the fetichism of savage tribes, is only a confirmation of the great truth involved in the enquiry, ' Canst thou by searching find out God ? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection ? It is high as heaven ; what canst thou do ? deeper than hell ; what canst thou know?' (Job xi. 7, 8.) l The feature of gradual deterioration just 1 Again and again d the Indian sages seem, like Plato in his ' Alcibiades,' to yearn for supernatural teaching ; that earnest seeker after truth says : ' We must wait patiently until some one, either a god or some inspired man, teach us our moral and religious duties ; and, as Pallas in Homer did to Diomede, remove the 42 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. alluded to, Hinduism has in common with every other uninspired form of religious belief ; this is a noteworthy circumstance, and naturally suggests the enquiry how it is to be accounted for how, for instance, it comes to pass that the history of mankind, outside the pale of revealed religion, should show intellectual and religious light advancing along parallel lines, but in an in- verse ratio, the former steadily increasing, the latter as steadily waning. 1 Such a fact seems hard to be reconciled with the notion, either that man's religious knowledge is intuitive, or that it is a legitimate outcome of his intellectual and reasoning powers ; in the former ease, how could he have lost that know- ledge ? in the other case, how could he have helped increasing it ? If, however, we take in the idea of some grand primeval revelation to the progenitors of our race, which, as a sort of central sun, shed its rays upon the different branches of the human family .before their separation and dispersion, a natural and probable solution of the whole problem meets us. We can thus account for the gradual attenuation of the rays of light as they receded farther and farther from their source ; we can see how great and holy truths, which for long ages depended for their preservation and transmission on rnemory and oral teach- ing, would naturally be endangered and even distorted, es- pecially those which clashed with men's natural tastes. This supposition, too, goes far to account for the undeniable fact that darkness from our eyes.' Xenophanes, too, sums up his work on Nature with a similar acknowledgment of darkness and doubt. ' No man has discovered any certainty, or will discover it, concerning the gods, and what I say of the Universe ; for, if he uttered even what is most perfect, still he does not know it, but con- jecture hangs over all.' Such ingenuous confessions of ignorance on the part of those ancient worthies contrast favourably with the singular boldness wherewith certain speculators in our day put forth their untried theories. 1 This remark is made with reference to the tendencies of men in their national and collective capacity. That from time to time individuals have risen far above the level of their fellows, and have, by their loftier sonceptions and teachings, shed a meteoric brightness on the age in which they lived, we do not deny ; but the popular deterioration has gone on nevertheless, so that we may say such cases are really ' the exceptions which prove the rule.' Early Hinduism, 43 analogous fragments of truth are traceable amidst the debris of popular faiths held by nations which for decades of centuries have been totally isolated from each other. It is impossible accurately to fix the period in which the religious traditions of the Indian Aryans found a stereotyped expression in the composition of the Vedas ; there seems strong ground to suppose that the oldest of those four sacred records, the Kig-Veda, cannot be assigned to an earlier date than 1200 B.C. In all probability the Aryans found their way to India some centuries before that, so that no doubt many of the hymns and prayers and sentiments contained in that remarkable book had been orally conveyed for generations before that period. Some of those utterances were probably brought from the ancestral homestead in Central Asia; though doubtless the greater part originated in India. It is pretty certain that the art of writing had existed for a considerable time before the Rig- Veda was composed ; but it is evident that the early Hindus had conscientious scruples on the subject of inscribing their holy sayings ; for a long time, no doubt, these feelings prevailed, and deferred the compilation which was afterwards made. The ground of the objection was singular; those ancient sages seem to have regarded their oral treasures as literally divine breathings expressed by articulate sound, which they called Shabda. 1 They appeared to think the writing of these sounds or words as almost a sacrilegious proceeding ; but the vast accumulation of their literary treasures was at length felt to necessitate and to justify this measure. The .word Veda simply means knowledge ; by the early Hindus it was applied to divine unwritten knowledge. After the composition of the sacred books, this title was naturally 1 It is impossible not to note the fact that the very word used by St. Paul as depicting the divine origin of the Scriptures is a word (6f6irvevffTos) which means divinely-breathed (2 Tim. iii. 16). In the same way the Hindu notion of an j eternally-existent Shabda, sound or word, naturally carries our thoughts back to i the glorious doctrine of the eternal \6yos, the true and divine Word. 44 '-The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. bestowed upon them, as being the repository of their sacred knowledge ; as a matter of course, sentiments of intense venera- tion began to cluster around them, until at last the attributes of divinity and eternity were ascribed to them. The following eulogy of these holy books will show to what a pitch the feeling of reverence for them had grown in the days of Manu : The Veda is of patriarchs and men, And e'en of gods, a very eye eternal, Giving unerring light ; it is beyond All finite faculties, nor can be proved By force of human argument this is A positive conclusion Whatever doctrine rests not on the Veda, Must pass away as recent, false, and fruitless. By this eternal Veda are sustained All creatures ; hence we hold it as supreme Chief instrument of happiness to man. Various, and indeed very contradictory, accounts are given of the origin of the Vedas ; but whatever the story may be, the principle of divine inspiration is ever assumed as an attribute of those sacred records. The names of the four Vedas are Rig, Sam a, Yajur, Atharva. Manu, indeed, only speaks of three Vedas ; it is evident that, though the Atharva existed in his day, it had not been elevated to the exalted rank which was afterwards accorded to it. Prac- tically, the Eig-Veda reigns alone and supreme ; as it is the most ancient, so is it by far the most important of all. It strikes the key-note for the strains poured forth by the rest, it furnishes the text on which they enlarge ; the second and third attempt little more than a reproduction and reiteration of its contents. By far the most interesting portion of the Rig- Veda consists of what are called the mantras, the prayers, invocations, and Early Hinduism. 45 hymns, in which the early Hindus were wont to express their devotional feelings. 1 These are invaluable as giving us an insight into the theological and moral ideas which they held, and the outgoings of their souls in connection with them. The compilation of those devout breathings took place, we may say, some two hundred years after Moses wrote the Pentateuch, but the breathings themselves carry us back, at least many of them do, to a period long anterior to Moses. Probably at the very time that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were rearing their altars for the worship of Jehovah, devout Hindus were standing by corresponding altars in India and offering up some of the very prayers and praises which we now read in the Rig- Veda. Of the 1017 hymns and prayers contained in the Eig-Veda, probably not one had been handed down in its primitive purity ; all had been more or less affected by the uncertain medium of their transmission ; doubtless here and there, in passing through successive generations, they caught and reflected a tinge from current ideas. This would be especially the case with the oldest of those compositions. This circumstance should be borne in mind in studying those venerable records ; we shall thus be led, not so much to regard them as faithfully depicting the religious sentiments which the Aryans brought with them into India, but as including those sentiments with many later accretions. We shall expect to find those sacred utterances a sort of theological mosaic, in which varied forms and hues strike the eye in a some- what confused and irregular order ; we shall not be surprised, for instance, to find monotheistic, polytheistic, and pantheistic elements commingling in rather a chaotic style ; we shall not wonder at finding conceptions the most sublime and truthful standing in juxtaposition with puerilities the most ridiculous 1 The contents of the Vedas maybe ranged under three distinct heads. 1. Mantra, prayer and praise expressed in texts and metrical hymns ; 2. Brakmana, ritualistic directions written in prose ; 3. Upanishad, mystical teaching appended to the Brahmana, the greater part being in prose, the rest in metre. 46 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. and fanciful. This is really a picture of the contents of the Vedas ; they contain religious and moral sentiments so exalted in tone, that they command our esteem and even astonishment. We wonder whence such pure rays of light were derived ; we are inclined to say, Surely these must have come down from above ; but anon we come upon other passages so grovelling and degraded, that we are compelled to cry, These are of the earth, earthy. Who will say that the inference in either case is not the right one ? It is not our intention to dwell on the darker features ; our concern is rather to see how much of pure light and truth the ancestors of the Hindu nation possessed. We apprehend our readers will see sufficient ground to acknow- ledge that verily God ' did not leave Himself without witness ' among them. Could we carry our researches backward to the time when the great Aryan family dwelt together in unbroken fellowship and primitive simplicity, we should probably find them in some sort worshipping the one true and living God. Abun- dant traces of some such a primeval condition are to be found in the records with which we are dealing. The very oldest of the mantras, however, relate to a subsequent stage, and one of deterioration; these indicate an unmistakable tendency to physiolatry. The early Hindus, with certain ideas of a Supreme Being, but without a divine revelation to guide them, natu- rally cast about for some fitting expression of their ideal of the Deity ; they as naturally fixed their attention on the visible phenomena of the universe ; the most glorious of these were the first to arrest their thoughts and call forth their veneration. In the first instance they doubtless regarded and honoured those objects as works of the great Author of all ; they ' looked through Nature up to Nature's God ; ' but, as time advanced and their religious system and ordinances of worship gained ex- pansion and consolidation, they naturally glided into idolatry ; idolatry not indeed of the grosser kind for the Eig-Veda Early Hinduism. 47 contains, we believe, not a single instance of image-worship but the objects and forces of Nature'gradually became deified, and, as this tendency developed, in the same proportion did the earlier and more worthy conceptions of the deity fall into the shade, so that, long before the Veda was drawn up, the fathers of the Hindu race were c worshipping and serving the creature more than the Creator ; ' not that they entirely lost sight of Him, for it is a singular fact, that their devotional outpourings now and again sparkle with a bright thought indicating a latent consciousness of a High and Holy One, distinct from and above Nature. The Indian Aryans seem from the earliest times to have had some inkling of the great truth that ' God is light.' They regarded light of every description as in some sense a mani- festation of the Divine Being. Accordingly, luminous objects were the first to command their reverence : they saw the Deity in the shining firmanent of the heavens ; they saw Him also in fire on the earth and in the clouds. It would appear indeed that the Aryans before their dis- persion had begun to reverence I)yaus 9 the sky or heaven. The Sanscrit root of the word is Dyu ; the Greek and Latin branches of the Aryan family seem to have preserved the same roots in the words Zeus and Jttpiter. The same appears also in the old German Tiu or Ziu. 1 This Dyaus, by the time the earliest of the Vedic mantras were composed, had become personified, and was represented as the husband of Prithivi, the earth. All things are said to have originated from this marriage of heaven and earth. But this is only one of many and various accounts of the Creation. Dyaus means the visible heavens, or the firmament. But when man had once begun to seek God in His works, the area v < 1 Our Tuesday evidently bears the same feature. In the same way no one can \ help connecting the Sanscrit Deva (God), with the Latin Deus and the Grraek j Thcos. The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. of his researches was sure to go on expanding. The Aryans next enquired what might exist beyond the azure canopy ; the vast regions of illimitable space suggested to them the idea of infinity. This idea found its expression in the worship of Aditi, as representing the boundless fields of space. The very capaciousness of the idea in time led to the identification of this deity with everything ; Aditi was accordingly honoured as a goddess whose womb contained every other object. Of her it is sung : ' Aditi is the sky, Aditi is the air, Aditi is the mother, father, son ; Aditi is the collective gods ; Aditi is the five persons ; Aditi is whatever has been born ; Aditi is what- ever is to be born.' Thus early and thus naturally were the seeds of Pantheism sown in the Hindu system. Next in order appear Mitra and Varuna. These are repre- sented as the sons of Aditi ; the one is said to rule the heavens by day, the other by night. The extreme beauty and sugges- tiveness of the nightly firmament no doubt accounts for the superior attention bestowed upon Varuna (Greek, Ouranos) ; the homage paid to him far eclipsed the honours of Mitra. The following extract from the Atharva-Veda will illustrate the devotion rendered to this deity, and also show the attributes with which his devotees invested him : The mighty Varuna, who rules above, looks down Upon these worlds, his kingdom, as if close at hand. When men imagine they do aught by stealth, he knows it. No one can stand or walk or softly glide along, Or hide in dark recess, or lurk in secret cell, But Yaruna detects him and his movement spies. Whoe'er should flee Far, far beyond the sky, would not escape the grasp Of Varnna the King. His messengers descend Countless from his abode for ever traversing This world, and scanning with a thousand eyes its inmates. Whate'er exists within this earth, and all within the sky, Yea, all that is beyond, King Varuna perceives. The winking of men's eyes are numbered all by him. Early Hinduism. 49 It is an interesting and suggestive thought that at the very time the royal psalmist of Israel was composing his eighth and nineteenth songs of praise to Jehovah beholding Him in the glories of the star-lit firmament, thousands of Hindu sages, gazing on the same firmament, were pouring forth the above strains in adoration of the deity which they saw therein. How forcibly do those devout breathings remind one of another psalm of David (139th), in which he ascribes to Jehovah the same attributes of omniscience and omnipresence, and in almost the same language as the Hindu sages applied to Varuna. Thou knowest my downsitting and uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art ac- quainted with all -my ways. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? and whither shall I flee from thy presence ? [f I ascend into heaven, thou art there ; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall thy hand lead and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say the darkness shall cover me ; even the night shall be light about me. Possibly the thought has occurred to the reader that such lofty conceptions as are expressed in the above hymn to Varuna must indicate a latent perception, shadowy and clouded though it may be, of a mightier Being than was involved in the personi- fied firmament. Certainly we are not disposed to question this inference. Other still more solemn and touching addresses to this deity may well strengthen such an impression. The study of the heavens manifestly awakened in the mind of the Hebrew sage above referred to a deep sense of helplessness and need ; the very same feelings seem to have wrought in the minds of E 50 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. the Indian sages when they drew up their ascriptions to Varuna. The Kig-Veda contains the following remarkable Litany used in the worship of this god : Let me not yet. Vanina, enter the house of clay ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! If I go trembling like a cloud driven by the wind, have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! Through want of strength, thou strong and bright Grod, have I gone to the wrong shore; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the midst of the waters ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offence before the heavenly host, whenever we break thy law through forgetfulness ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! In another address to Varuna the idea of spiritual longing is expressed by a pastoral figure which compels one to think of another utterance of the sweet singer of Israel. ( As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, God' Psalm xlii. 1. The passage runs thus : Yearning for him, the Farseeing, my thoughts move onward as kine moving to their pastures. As nature-worship advanced the above impersonations of the sky and celestial sphere were felt to be too vague and indefinite ; the various physical forces of the heavens and of the atmosphere began to assume the character of distinct and separate deities. In this way Indra, the dispenser of rain and dew ; Vayu, the wind- god ; and Agni, the god of fire, as seen in the sun and lightning, not only gained a footing amongst the older deities, but gradu- ally superseded them. Even Varuna was stripped of his dignities and relegated to a secondary position in the divine hierarchy. In all this it is not only easy to discern the process of declen- sion and deterioration, but the principle upon which it advanced ; self-interest, a regard to temporal well-being, took the place of Early Hinduism. 5 1 higher and more spiritual aspirations. The Aryans were pushing their way in the country ; the broad plains of Hindustan were coming into their possession ; this gave an immense impetus . to the pursuits of husbandry and agriculture, this again com- pelled the Hindus to realise more than heretofore their depen- dence on atmospheric and solar influences, and ultimately led to the deification of those influences. Of the three last-named deities Indra became by far the most popular object of worship. 1 The absolute dependence of a country like India on the usual rainfall, and the terrible con- sequences of a drought, would necessarily bring this god into special prominence ; he was indeed the Jupiter Pluvius of the early Hindus, and the greater number of their hymns and prayers were offered up to him. Indra is represented as main- taining a conflict with certain demons who oppose him in his efforts to pour down the fructifying showers. These are Sushna, the drier ; Vrittra, the coverer, who strives to retain the rain in the clouds ; and two others, named Pani and Ahi, who in different ways labour to frustrate the beneficent designs of Indra. Prayers and sacrifices go up from men with the purpose of strengthening the hands of the god in his conflict on their behalf and confirm- ing him in his benevolent intentions. The peculiar idea connected with these devotional suffrages is important and well worthy of note ; it is an idea which runs throughout the whole system of Vedic worship, and indeed remains to this very day ; it is that, in the exercise of his devotions, man puts forth a power to which even the gods must succumb ; man, 1 It must not be supposed that what has been called ' the process of decentrali- sation ' rested content with the substitution of these three deities for the essentially celestial Varuna ; the centrifugal tendency necessarily went on extending the area of superstition and multiplying the objects of adoration. Vayu, for instance, the god of wind, soon had in his train a host of subordinate deities called Maruts, the storm-gods, and Budra himself, who was emphatically the god of storms. There grew up also a body of secondary deities, called Adityas ; these numbered twelve, and answered to the varied influences of the sun during the twelve months of the year. 52 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. by the intensity of his asceticism, the number or value of his sacrifices, and the earnestness of his petitions, may compel the favourable regard of the deities. In a later stage of Hinduism the gods are represented as at times oppressed and distressed by this power of devotion, and as endeavouring to prevent the execution of those omnipotent exercises ; but in the Vedic scheme of religion the gods are shown to be friendly to men, willing and wishful to bless them, but requiring to be strengthened and encouraged in subduing opposing powers. The very same notion of the force of prayer exists among uncivilised and bar- barous nations, only in their case its power is seen in compelling reluctant deities to bless, or preventing hostile deities from in- juring their worshippers. Modern Hinduism has clothed many of its deities with malevolent attributes, and these are approached in a spirit similar to that just described. It cannot be denied that there is something suggestive and also true in the impression of the early Hindus as to the mightiness of prayer. It would be no difficult matter to illustrate this idea from our own holy Book, in which (rod seems to teach us that it is a law of His spiritual kingdom that His acting is, to a great extent, dependent on our praying. The following extract will give some idea of the early homage paid to Indra : . Thou wast born Without a rival, king of gods and men The eye of living and terrestrial things. Immortal Indra, unrelenting foe Of drought and darkness, infinitely wise. Terrific crusher of thy enemies, Heroic, irresistible in might, Wall of defence to us thy worshippers, We sing thy praises, and our ardent hymns Embrace thee as a loving wife her lord. Thou art our guardian, advocate, and friend, A brother, father, mother, all combined. Most fatherly of fathers, we are thine Early Hinduism. 53 And thou art ours. Oh ! let thy pitying soul Turn to us in compassion when we praise thee, And slay us not for one sin or for many. Deliver us to-day, to-morrow, every day. Vainly the demons dare thy might ; in vain Strive to deprive us of thy watery treasures, Earth quakes beneath the crashing of thy bolts. Pierced, shattered, lies the foe his cities crushed, His armies overthrown, his fortresses Shivered to fragments ; then the pent-up waters, Released from long imprisonment, descend In torrents to the earth, and swollen rivers, Foaming and rolling to their ocean home, Proclaim the triumph of the Thunderer. No one who has witnessed a tornado, commonly called a north-wester in India, can fail to be struck with the justness of the poetic imagery here employed to depict such an event. For days, it may be for weeJcs, the sky has been burdened with clouds charged with the needful watery stores ; millions of longing eyes have watched their shifting course and changing forms ; ever and anon it has seemed as though the refreshing streams were about to descend, but, as if pent up and restrained by an invisible hand, the clouds have refused to pour down the desired blessing ; at length one point of the sky gathers blackness, a deep inky hue spreads over one half the heavens, the wild birds begin to shriek and betake themselves to the shelter ; for a few moments an ominous, death-like calm nearest seems to reign; nature appears to be listening in awful ex- pectation of the coming outburst ; in another instant a dazzling flash of lightning is seen, followed by terrific rolls of thunder ; at the same moment a hurricane sweeps across the plains, sometimes uprooting massive trees in its course, and darkening the air with clouds of sand and dust ; a deadly conflict seems to rage amongst the elements, the lightning is more brilliant, 54 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. the crashes of thunder more awful, yet the rain does not come. But the strife does not last long ; now isolated big drops begin to fall, then torrents of water pour down from the bursting clouds ; driven along the wings of the storm the rain sometimes appears like drifting cataracts or oblique sheets of water. Speedily parched fields are inundated, and empty rivers swollen. All this takes place in less than an hour ; then the storm abates, the darkness passes away, the sun once more shines forth, the atmosphere is cooled and purified, thirsty nature is satisfied, and all creation seems to rejoice. Is it matter of surprise that a scene such as this should, to a people at once imaginative and devout, suggest the religious ideas which found their expression in the worship of Indra ? Next in importance to Indra was the god of fire, Agni (Latin, Ignis}. This deity included the sun as the manifestation of fire in the firmament, though the orb of day, as Surja, re- ceived separate and distinct homage. Agni embraced within his domain lightning, fire on the earth, indeed fire in every form. He was especially recognised in the sacrificial fire which ascended heavenward from the blazing holocaust. 1 The following address to Agni will be read with special interest, as it brings to view an aspect of the deity which we would hardly have expected to find in heathen mythology : Giver of life and immortality, One in thy essence but to mortals three ; Displaying thine eternal triple-form, As fire on earth, as lightning in the air, As sun in heaven. Thou art a cherished guest In every household father, brother, son, Friend, benefactor, guardian, all in one. 1 There is every reason to believe that the early Hindus reared their altars and conducted their worship under the open canopy of heaven, just as did the patriarchs of the Bible. Indeed, they seem to have been strangers to anything like public or congregational services; their worship was chiefly of a domestic cha- racter, and their priests figured more as domestic chaplains than as public ministers of religion-. Early Hinduism. 55 Bright, seven-rayed god ! how manifold thy shapes Revealed to us thy votaries ! . . , Deliver, mighty Lord, thy worshippers ; Purge us from tain^of sin, and, when we die, Deal mercifully with us on the pyre, Burning our bodies with their load of guilt, But bearing our eternal part on high, To luminous abodes and realms of bliss, For ever there to jdwell with righteous men. It is impossible to read the above touching and beautiful address without the query again forcing itself on the mind - did not the devout souls who breathed such sentiments invoke under the term Agni a Being higher and holier and mightier than material fire. Very affecting is it to note the trembling sense of sin, the solemn anticipation of the dying hour, the clear discernment of the soul's immortality, and the yearning desire for admission to the blissful rewards of an eternal state, which find expression in this remarkable prayer. But the one point to which we would specially call atten- tion is the singular idea of a Trinity in unity which comes out in this address. Were this an isolated and solitary in- stance of the kind we should not lay much stress upon it ; it might in that case be explained by a speciality in the nature of the fire-god which suggested this notion to his own wor- shippers. But what are we to say when the very same idea confronts us in manifold aspects, in various eras and in connec- tion with different deities. One thing is indisputable a singular sacredness and importance ever attached to the number Three ; and another thing is equally clear, that, in the sacred literature of the Hindus, the notion of unity of person or essence, with a triple manifestation, is a prominent feature. In the above passage we see Agni described as ' One in essence but to mortals three,' and as displaying an c eternal triple-form.' These ideas are afterwards reiterated in the post-Vedic Triad, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; these deities are described as 56 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. ' three in one, and one in three.' In the Eaghu-Vansa a striking passage occurs in which the inferior gods are address- ing Vishnu as the Supreme Being ; they accordingly ascribe to him the attribute in question : Hail to thee, mighty Lord, the world's creator, Supporter and destroyer, Three-in-One One in thy essence, tripartite in action. In the Kumara-Sambhava the following is addressed to Brahma : 6 Hail to thee of triple form, who before creation wast simple soul, and afterwards underwent partition for the distri- bution of the three Ghmas (qualities).' Nor can it be doubted that the awful sacredness attaching to the triliteral syllable, Om, as indicating the deity, involved the same idea three in one, one in three. Manu speaks of the three Vedas as being included in this mysterious word. 1 The ceremonies likewise practised in the consecration of a Brahman clearly point to the same profound verity. The sacred cord with which he was invested was to consist of three threads ; before receiving the cord he had to walk three times round the sacred fire ; then, wearing the cord he was initiated by the officiating priest into the use of the Savitri or holy prayer in the three- metred Gayatri ; this was said after three suppressions of -the breath and the pronunciation of the sacred syllable Om. After this he was authorised to repeat the three Vedas and perform the religious rites of his order. We are fully aware that not a few good and able men refuse to see in all this the remotest reference to the glorious doctrine of the Triune Jehovah so plainly taught in the Bible. We cannot help thinking that, in rejecting the idea of all reference to that 1 This sacred monosyllable is supposed to include the three letters A. U. M., and signifies the later Hindu triad, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva. There can be little doubt that the Trident, the three-pronged fork which appears on every Siva, temple, is to the Hindus what the Triangle is to us it symbolises their notion of Three in One. Early Hinduism. 5 7 revealed verity, those persons ought to furnish at least some plausible or probable theory as to the origin of such ideas, and the use of such language, among the early Hindus. Suppose the ideas to bear an actual relation to the revealed doctrine of the Trinity, and to have been derived from some primitive tradition, or from intercourse with those blessed with a truer and purer faith, and a natural and sufficient solution of a peculiar pheno- menon is at once found ; but reject this solution, and, so far as we can see, the phenomenon is inexplicable. We do not need to be reminded that the Hindu notion of a Trinity in unity clashes in certain important particulars with that doctrine as held by the Christian Church ; but surely no one would expect to find in the Hindu Shaeters an accurate delineation of that sacred dogma ; it is enough if there be a fundamental outline of resemblance to the glorious truth in question. No one denies, or attempts to deny, that there is such a resemblance, and our- convictions go with those who trace herein an adumbration of the great and solemn verity on which the church of Christ is grounded, and a further illustration of the great truth before adverted to, that Grod has not left himself without witness even among those who lack the perfect teaching of a divine revelation. 1 The celebrated Gayatri already spoken of was used in an address to Surja, the sun ; he is therein invoked in his charac- ter of the c Vivifier.' This has ever been regarded as the most sacred text of the Rig-Veda ; it is used to this day by every Brahman in his daily devotions. It runs thus : ' Let us meditate on that excellent glory of the divine Vivifier. May he enlighten 1 We regard it as no slight confirmation of the view we adopt that the Eev. Professor Banerjea, of Calcutta, has all along consistently held this opinion. "When we find such an eminent scholar as this distinguished convert, a Brahman of the Brahmans when a Hindu, and now confessedly the leading member of the native church in Bengal, second to none in Sanscrit learning and Vedic lore j when we find such a man unhesitatingly declare his conviction that his venerable ! ancestors did, in the way specified, foreshadow the glorious doctrine of the Trinity, \ it cannot be said that such a view is crude or Utopian. 5 8 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. our understanding ! ' Surely the impression that the more de- vout and enlightened of the Hindus sought spiritual illumina- tion from a truer and better Light than the material sun may well be entertained. The Hindus of the pre-Vedic period seem to have had no idea of transmigration ; this doctrine was a conception of a later era. Their notion of the condition of the departed seems to be this : they regarded the spirits of the righteous as dwelling in bliss, but as occupying three distinct localities or states ; the highest order dwelt in the upper sky, the next inhabited the intermediate air, the lowest rank possessed the atmosphere immediately surrounding the earth. These were all presided over by the god of death, Yama. He is generally spoken of as death itself, at other times death is said to be his messenger. Yama is said to have been the first of the human race who died ; after his death he obtained the supreme control of the spirit- world ; he is spoken of as in some way winning that control, and as welcoming the righteous to the bright home which he has secured for them. The following remarkable language is addressed to this deity : He was the first of men that died, the first to brave Death's rapid rushing stream, the first to point the road To heaven, and welcome others to that bright abode. No power can rob us of the home thus won by thee. king, we come ; the born must die, must tread the path That thou hast trod the path by which each race of men, In long succession, and our fathers too, have passed. Then follows this striking apostrophe to a departed spirit : Soul of the dead, depart ! fear not to take the road The ancient road by which thy ancestors have gone ; Ascend to meet the god to meet thy happy fathers, Who dwell in bliss with him. .... Thy sin and shame Leave thou on earth : assume a shining form Thy ancient shape refined and from all taint set free. Early Hinduism. 59 Very solemn and impressive were the funeral rites practised by the early Hindus. First of all a piece of ground was set apart and consecrated ; then the corpse was borne to the sacred spot, the relations carrying with them fire, the animal for sacri- fice, and the sacrificial implements. The most advanced in years followed the bier in single file the men on one side, the women on the other. After the body was deposited upon the funeral pile the widow lay down by its side, and so remained until her husband's brother came and removed her with the address, 'Rise up, woman ; come back to the world of life ; thou art lying by a dead man ; come back ; thou hast sufficiently fulfilled the duty of a wife and mother to the husband who wooed thee and took thee by the hand.' After the sacrifice was offered, the pile was kindled at three points, representing the three states of the departed above referred to ; whichever of the three fires first reached the body, the spirit was supposed to depart to the corresponding region in the spirit-world. After the cremation the bones and ashes were collected in an urn and buried, the following touching address accompanying the act of interment: Open thy arms, earth, receive the dead With gentle pressure and with loving welcome. Enshroud him tenderly, e'en as a mother Folds her soft vestment round the child she loves. Lastly a mound of earth was raised over the grave, the following words marking this final act : ( I raise up the earth around thee for a support, placing this cover on thee without causing injury. May the fathers guard this funeral monument for thee ! May Yarna establish for thee a habitation there I ' It is a singular fact that, though the Hindus had no idea of a resurrection of the body, they still believed that the soul had a covering provided for it ; they seem to have had no conception of a world of naked spirits ; they held that a subtile and spiritual body invisible to mortal eyes awaited each soul as it 60 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. ,; quitted its grosser tenement. Invested in this ethereal form, the , spirit rose to heaven in the smoke which ascended from the / funeral pile. We have already more than once adventured the conjecture that the nature-worship of Vedic times did not exclude an ulti- mate recognition of a great Author of nature. As a confirmation of this inference, and as a specimen of several passages in the Kig-Veda couched in monotheistic language, we cite the follow- ing. The Being spoken of is described as distinct from nature and the gods, and is said to be The one sole Lord of all that is who made The earth, and formed the sky, who giveth life, Who giveth strength, whose bidding gods revere, Whose hiding-place is immortality, Whose shadow, death : who by his might is king Of all the breathing, sleeping, waking world ; Who governs men and beasts, whose majesty These snowy hills, this ocean with its rivers, Declare ; of whom these spreading regions form The arms ; by whom the firmament is strong, Earth firmly planted, and the highest heavens Supported, and the clouds that fill the air Distributed and measured out ; to whom Both earth and heaven, established by His will, Look up with trembling mind ; in whom revealed The rising sun shines forth above the world. Where'er let loose in space, the mighty waters Have gone, depositing a fruitful seed And generating fire, there he arose Who is the breath and life of all the gods, Whose mighty glance looks round the vast expanse Of watery vapour source of energy, Cause of the sacrifice the only God Above the gods. May he not injure us ! He the Creator of the earth the righteous Creator of the sky, Creator too Of oceans bright, and far-extending waters. Early Hinduism. 61 Such sublime and noble sentiments read almost like an echo of some of the inspired utterances of the Hebrew prophets, albeit they were conceived long before one of those prophets was born. This hymn was probably one of the earliest drawn up by the pre-Vedic sages ; it may therefore be regarded as giving us a view of the theology of the Aryans in its primitive and purest stage. It will be observed that the above hymn speaks in unhesi- tating terms of the Almighty Being described as the Creator of all things. Another remarkable hymn attempts to explain the process of creation. The striking feature in this composition is a singular admixture of certainty and doubt, speculation and assumed fact ; it breathes a cry of ignorance and at the same time a declaration of knowledge. In the beginning there was neither naught nor aught, Then there was neither sky nor atmosphere above. What then enshrouded all this teeming universe ? In the receptacle of what was it contained ? Was it enveloped in the gulph profound of water ? I Then there was neither death nor immortality, : Then there was neither day, nor night, nor light, nor darkness, Only the existent One breathed calmly, self-contained. Naught else than He there was naught else above, beyond Then first came darkness hid in darkness, gloom in gloom. Next all was water, all a chaos indiscreet, In which the One lay void, shrouded in nothingness : Then turning inwards he by self-developed force Of inner fervonr and intense abstraction, grew. And now in him Desire, the primal germ of mind, Arose ; which learned men, profoundly searching, say Is the first subtle bond, connecting Entity With Nullity. This ray that kindled dormant life, Where was it then ? before ? or was it found above ? Were there parturient powers and latent qualities, And fecund principles beneath, and active forces That energized aloft ? Who knows ? Who can declare ? How and from what has sprung this Universe ? the gods Themselves are subsequent to its development. 62 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. Who, then, can penetrate the secret of its rise ? Whether 'twas framed or not, made or not made. He knows Who in the highest heaven sits ; the omniscient Lord Assuredly knows all or haply he knows not. Such are the dim conjectures and vague guesses by which the early Hindus sought to solve the great problem of creation a problem which the light of revelation alone can solve. Not very unlike these, and certainly not more probable and satisfac- tory, are some of the speculations with which certain philosophers amuse themselves and their readers in the present day. It is to be noted, however, that in the above hymn certain great facts are assumed as resting on a basis of actual know- ledge. The first point taken for granted is that, prior to the existence of the gods and of the universe as we know it, there was a self-existent Being. The other fact, about which no doubt is expressed, relates to the state of the universe or world when the work of creation began ; the picture drawn is one of watery chaos, and profound, unbroken darkness. That these leading points are put forth as settled facts, whilst the details of the work of creation are dealt with as matters of pure speculation, would certainly seem to indicate a groundwork of tradition as supporting the former. This, at least, is a most natural infer- ence ; and it is not a little remarkable how literally the tra- ditional account of the early Hindus as to a state of primeval chaos corresponds to the opening sentences of the Bible : ' And the earth was without form, and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep,' Gen. i. 2. Though there is no reasonable doubt that the ancestors of the Hindu race held a monotheistic creed, it is quite clear that at a very early period the seeds of Pantheism were sown in that primitive faith ; the poisonous germ slowly but surely struck its roots into the venerable system, and ultimately changed its character and aim. It could hardly be otherwise ; indeed, we Early Hinduism. 63 see herein the natural and necessary issue of physiolatry among a people with a metaphysical turn of mind. As we have before stated, the Aryans in the first instance, feeling after some con- crete conception of the Deity, began to approach Him through the medium of His works ; nature was to them the Deity sym- bolised. But necessarily in time a divine halo gathered around the symbols ; they, as the nearer objects, were discerned without effort by the bodily eye, whilst the glorious Being typified could only be traced by a mental process of reflection. The great truth that ' the eye affects the heart,' thus operated most prejudicially ; the more earnest the realisation of the objects honoured, the more thorough the homage paid to them, the more surely did they supplant and obscure the great Object of man's adoration. The very endeavour to trace God in His works, by those who cannot study Him in the mirror of divine revelation, thus inevitably leads to nature-worship ; the one supreme Grod becomes many separate and local deities ; an indefinite multiplication of these follows as a matter of course. In the earlier stages of poly- theism the objects and forces of nature which were most helpful to man attracted his chief attention ; these were worshipped, and their assistance sought, as friendly and beneficent deities ; but the denial of blessings craved, and the recurrence of evils de- precated, naturally suggested the idea of malevolent influences as limiting the power and nullifying the gracious intentions of the good gods. This again led to the conception of hostile deities ; these had to be propitiated by servile homage, whilst those had to be strengthened and encouraged by sacrifice and devout adoration. Such, in the main, seems to have been the history of physiolatry in the world. Amongst the Hindus, however, side by side with this tendency to Polytheism, a corresponding tendency towards Pantheism has ever been discernible. But, indeed, it is hardly correct to speak of these as two separate tendencies running in parallel lines ; they actually intermingle.. 64 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross, and intersect each other in a way that is most puzzling, and all but unaccountable. This feature would be unaccountable were we to leave out the consideration of one great fact the fact that a monotheistic conviction seems to have resolutely clung to the Hindus and to have struggled for life and expres- sion throughout all the changing vicissitudes of their mythology. Through their whole religious history, a voice which they could not silence, seems to have ever cried, ( Though we may make gods many and lords many, yet God is one ! ' l Along with this im- pression of the unity of God was an idea of the infinity of His attributes ; accordingly, with logical inconsistency, but quite in accordance with these convictions, we find each deity invoked in turn as if he were supreme. Obviously such instincts and convictions only needed a little more expansion and development to bring Pantheism to the birth ; gradually the feeling after the Infinite led to the denial of the Finite. What had been con- sidered separate entities came to be regarded as parts of the great whole, and all other beings to be merged in the one All-per- vading, All-comprising Being ; all other existences but the one Self-existent, came to be viewed as visionary and unreal. The following extract from one of the later hymns of the Eig-Veda is a specimen of the pantheistic ring which now and then may be heard in those venerable records. Speaking of God it says He is himself this very universe, He is what ever is, has been, and shall be. He is the Lord of immortality. All creatures are one-fourth of him, three-fourths Are that which is immortal in the sky. 1 Even in the present day, when Hindus, without blushing, tell of their 330 millions of gods, you ever hear them, in their common converse, speak of God as one. Probably no people in the world bring the divine name into such prominent and frequent use as the Hindus. They will not, for instance, write the smallest note without heading it with the name of a deity ; so, in conversation, they constantly (never irreverently or profanely) mention the holy name ; but when they do so, they ever speak in the singular \ it is Ishwara, God, or Parameskwara, the Supreme God. Early Hinduism. 65 All that we have said above as to the commingling of polytheistic and pantheistic notions strictly applies to the state of orthodox Hindu opinion at the present day. After labouring for years amongst natives of all classes, we are prone to confess our utter inability to define the extent to which these opposite views relatively affect the people ; without doubt, the Pundits, the learned class, gravitate more towards pantheism than do the common people ; to these latter polytheism must ever be more comprehensible and more popular than the abstruse conception which teaches them to ignore their own individuality. Yet, it is strange but true, that you ever and anon hear from the lips of illiterate persons persons steeped in polytheistic superstition, a remark which shows that they, in some rude way, do really grasp and apply the principles of pantheism. On the other hand, the pundits feel no difficulty in openly and theoretically propounding a pantheistic creed, whilst they rigidly and by no means hypocritically conform to polytheistic worship. Eepeatedly have we been accosted by a pundit in the following strain : ' But, Sahib, why speak to us as though we were what we seem to be ? don't you know that it is all maya, illusion ? Of course we seem to ourselves to be men and women with independent powers and existence, but so does the dreamer feel all to be real that passes through his mind in his sleep ; it is, however, all illusion nevertheless : in the same way you and I and all we seem to say, to do, to enjoy, to suffer, is unreal ; our supposed existence is visionary, for nothing and no one exists but He who is the one All-pervading Entity.' Perhaps some- one asks, ' How do you refute such a wild statement ? ' Echo responds, How ? for it is obvious that, if everything else be illusory, the refutation itself must be so too ; your speaking, arguing, thinking, all partake of the great unreality ; nay, the very statement itself, with the pundit who seems to make it, and yourself who seem to hear it, are all maya, illusion I 66 The Trident, tJie Crescent, and the Cross. which, it will be admitted, is a tolerably perplexing and difficult aspect to deal with. 1 A few observations on the law of sacrifice amongst the early Hindus will interest our readers. No fact is more evident than that, in some way or other, this institution has been of all but world-wide prevalence ; and, probably, to those who repudiate the idea of the divine origin of this institution, no fact is more difficult to account for. The prevalence of human sacrifices amongst barbarous races, whose deities are represented as demons of ferocity and cruelty, admits more readily of solution ; the great difficulty is to show how on what grounds with what object, bloody sacrifices obtained amongst a people like the early Hindus, refined, civilised and kindly disposed, their deities being objects of love and veneration and full of benevolence to their worshippers. The ideas of justice and equity came out clearly in the conceptions of those early worshippers and in the attributes of their gods ; how then, it is natural to ask, came they, in the first place, to grasp the improbable notion that an innocent animal could in any sense represent a guilty man ? and, in the next place, to suppose that the shedding of its blood could be pleasing to the deity and beneficial to the sinner ? But the difficulty reaches a climax when we bear in mind the strong repugnance of the Hindu race to the taking of life : 2 for decades of centuries has this been 1 Perhaps the best way of dealing with such uncommon sense as this, is to appeal to the common sense of the people around, and, indeed, of the pundit him- self; a practical application of the theory in a way which shows its practical untruth is doubtless the best answer. On one occasion a missionary brother, after quietly listening to the above style of argument, without saying a word in reply, snatched the pundit's umbrella out of his hand and walked off with it ; the learned pantheist immediately pursued the missionary and demanded the restora- tion of his property. It was in vain the missionary argued that the whole thing the umbrella and its abduction was an illusion ; the pundit, amidst the jeers of the crowd, dealt with the case as a stern reality. 2 More than 2,500 years ago Manu said, ' As many hairs as grow on any animal, so many similar deaths shall one who slays it unnecessarily endure here- after from birth to birth.' Early Hinduism. 67 regarded as a mortal sin ; yet side by side with this impression has sacrificial blood been flowing. 1 Put aside the notion of some primaeval and authoritative enactment of the institution, and its existence and practice become simply inexplicable ; entertain that notion, and no further mystery remains ; suppose the ancestors of our race to have been taught, not only the institution, but its design and aim, and we see at once how naturally it gained a footing in the world ; then, its retention and transmission, even after its grand design was lost sight of, is only one of ten thousand illustrations of the force of custom and usage in perpetuating meaningless practices. Certain it is that, so long as we can trace back the religious history of the Indian Aryans, so long do we find the institution of sacrifice amongst them ; and it is equally certain that they ever regarded it as of divine origin; this idea was with them an assumed and settled principle. Manu, expressing the universal conviction, says, ' By the Self-existent himself were animals created for sacrifice, which was ordained for the welfare of all this universe.' There is no denying the fact that human sacrifice was practised in pre-Vedic times. A peculiar story as illustrating that practice is contained in the Aitareya-brahmana of the Kig- Veda. It runs thus : King Harischandra had no son ; he asked Great Narada, the sage, ' What benefit Comes from a son ? ' Then Narada replied, ' A father by a son clears off a debt, In him a self is born from self. The pleasure A father has in his own son exceeds 1 It is true Manu strives to explain the anomaly and meet the difficulty which he clearly felt, by suggesting that, as the institution of sacrifice was from the deity ' therefore the slaughter of animals for sacrifice is no slaughter.' But it is doubt- ful whether, after all, Manu was satisfied with his own suggestion ; it. is certain, as, from intercourse with thoughtful Hindus, we are able to certify, that this ex- planation of the difficulty by no means removes it ; repeatedly have they confessed the whole thing to be an enigma which completely puzzles them. F 2 68 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. All other pleasures. Food is life, apparel Is a protection, gold an ornament, A loving wife the best of friends, a daughter An object of compassion ; but a son Is like a light sent from the highest heaven. Go, then, to Varuna, the god, and say, " Let a son be born, King, to me, And I will sacrifice that son to thee." ' This Harischandra did, and thereupon A son was born to him, called Rohita. One day the father thus addressed his son : * I have devoted thee, my son, to him Who granted thee to me, prepare thyself For sacrifice to him.' The son said, ' No,' Then took his bow and left his father's home. For six long years did Harischandra's son Roam in the forest ; there one day he met A famished Brahman hermit, Ajigartha, Half dead with hunger in the wilderness. The hermit was attended by his wife And three young sons ; then Rohita addressed him : * Brahman, I will give a hundred cows For one of these thy sons.' The father answered, Folding his arms arou jd his eldest boy, ' I cannot part with him.' The mother then Clung to her youngest child, and, weeping, said, ' I cannot part with him.' Then Sunahsepha, Their second son, said, ' Father, I will go.' So he was purchased for a hundred cows By Rohita, who forthwith left the forest, And, taking him to Harischandra, said, ' Father, this boy shall be my substitute.' Then Harischandra went to Varuna. And prayed, ' Accept this ransom for my son.' The god replied, ' Let him be sacrificed, A Brahman is more worthy than a Kshatriya.' The story goes on to relate how the father of the boy him- self bound the intended victim ; he then whetted his knife for the execution of the dread deed ; before the deadly blow was Earfy Hinduism. 69 struck, the boy called loudly for deliverance to the gods ; his prayers prevailed, a divine message granted him a reprieve, and Varuna remitted all further claim on King Harischandra. That this remarkable story should forcibly bring to mind the Scriptural narrative of the offering of Isaac is but natural ; but those who see in the two accounts more than accidental resemblance certainly indent largely on their imagination, for there is not a vestige of evidence to show that the two stories have the remotest connection with each other. Two interesting points, however, are fairly deducible from this story of Sunahsepha : first, the date of the event must be carried back to a very early period, for it manifestly relates to a time when Varuna still commanded undiminished homage; the later eclipse of his glory, of which we spoke before, had not then commenced. The other interesting fact verified by the narrative is that in those primitive times the idea of substitu- tion and vicarious suffering was clearly recognised understood by men and approved by the Deity. This leads us to mention other features of the institution of sacrifice as it existed amongst the early Hindus. There seems ground to suppose that human sacrifice was the primitive cha- racteristic of the institution ; after a time animals were substi- tuted for men ; these were the horse, the ox, the sheep, and the goat. 1 So prevalent was the practice of sacrifice, that it has been said and with probable accuracy that the institution be- came a more prominent feature of Hinduism than of Judaism. Yet, though the practice of sacrifice pervaded early Hinduism, the theory of the thing the ideas connected with the usage 1 A curious legend in the Aitareya-brahmana gives the history of the trans- ition. It states that, as a man was being slain for sacrifice, the part which alone was fit for sacrifice passed from the man into a horse ; the horse was then slain, but the essential part again passed from it into an ox ; hereupon the ox was killed, when the important part passed into a sheep ; from the sheep it passed into a goat. As it remained the longest time in the goat, this animal was regarded as pre-emi- nently fitted for sacrifice. At the present time thousands of goats are yearly sacrificed at the great shrine of Kali in the city of Calcutta. 70 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. obtained a somewhat later development. It is not easy to say how far the Brahmans elaborated new ideas, and how far they gave expression to old views; but certainly by the time the Aitareya-brahmana was composed (say B.C. 750) the following sentiments prevailed as to the character, design, and effects of the institution : 1. The victim represented and ransomed the offerer. 2. The sacrifice was the means of deliverance from sin and propitiated the gods. 3. It ensured admission to the bliss of heaven. 4. It was important to the success of the sacrifice that it should be offered in faith. 5. By a singular fiction of conception it was assumed that identity existed be- tween the victim and the offerer, so that, as it were, it offered itself, being both victim and priest. The following passages illustrate these several points : ' The sacrificer ransomed himself by it.' ' Those who sacrifice remove their sin.' ' He who sacri- fices propitiates the gods.' ' Let him who desires heaven sacri- fice.' ' By faith the sacrifice is kindled ; by faith the offering is offered.' ( The sacrificer is the animal.' Another important feature might be added to the foregoing. It would seem that the difficulty of supposing an animal to do all that is above expressed suggested the idea of the presence of the deity with or in the victim, and this was supposed to render its offering efficacious. Iri^ some sense God was offered up to God. 1 We leave our readers to their own reflections ; we shall be greatly surprised if they do not see in all this fresh traces of primaeval light and more than glimmerings of great truths. At any rate, few will deny that the existence of such teachings in the sacred books of the Hindus is an encouraging and helpful feature for those whose office it is to proclaim the higher teach- 1 Vishnu, the second person in the later Triad, is repeatedly spoken oi as being present in, and offered up with, the sacrificial victim ; he is also said, through the virtue of his sacrifice, to have obtained pre-eminence amongst the gods. Early Hindinsm. 71 ings of the Grospel in India. Missionaries, if they are wise in their generation, will not fail to turn to valuable account the facts and sentiments above described ; they will, as it has been well expressed, f convert into a fulcrum, for the upheaving of the whole mass of surrounding error,' such fragments of the rock of truth as may be found imbedded in the mythological strata. 1 1 Indian Wisdom, 4. 72 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. CHAPTER IV. MEDIAEVAL HINDUISM. ' When they knew God they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful ; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened ; pro- fessing themselves to be wise, they became fools . . . who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.' Eom. i. 21, 22, 25, NOTHING is more difficult than to fix the chronology of the religious history of India. Certain great facts, certain changing phases of conviction and sentiment, are sufficiently discernible ; but the difficulty is to relegate those facts and phases to their proper periods, and so illustrate their natural sequence and mutual dependence. The truth of the matter seems to be that, various and numerous as have been the systems which have flourished in different eras, none of them came suddenly to the birth ; instead of sharply- defined steps of transition, you rather find system fading into system as do the colours of the rainbow ; as in that natural phenomenon you perceive several rays in- dividually distinct, yet strangely blending one with another, so is it with the systems we speak of; in certain features they may differ materially, but in other respects they blend and harmonise ; some of them may seem to be mutually antagonistic, but on a closer observation you find that they are really supple- mental one to the other. They all, moreover, have a common parentage ; it may probably be said with truth that every system of religion or philosophy which has figured in India for the last twenty-five centuries has had its germ or seed-plant in the teaching of the Vedas. Mediaval Hinduism. 73 We have already seen abundant evidence of deep religious feeling in the early Hindus ; a sense of need and helplessness, a consciousness of sin, and an undefined dread of its consequences, a yearning after knowledge of the unseen and eternal, a desire to account for the origin and tendency of things these prin- ciples, operating differently on different minds, gave rise to various currents of thought and speculation which ultimately found their expression in the varied systems of succeeding ages. In every case some devout breathing or some doctrinal enunci- ation of the Vedas formed the basis of the conception. It cannot be denied that the later developments of Hindu- ism bore a more sensuous aspect than its earliest characteristics ; in this respect we may trace undoubted evidences of declension and deterioration ; but, at the same time, a higher and deeper principle was at work was not that principle an effort to get nearer to God, and to bring God nearer to man ? Already in Vedic times the Hindus had striven to realise God in His works they had ended in deifying and worshipping nature. But no idea of divine incarnation seems to have occurred to them ; this was the next step ; it was something to see God in illimitable space and the starry heavens, better still to discern Him in the fructifying showers and the genial heat of the sun, but best of all to trace Him as one with ourselves able to share our joys and sorrows, and sympathise with our infirmities. That unen- lightened man, though prompted by a true instinct in seeking after closer union with God, was all the while receding further and further from Him, affords one of the strongest evidences of human helplessness and ignorance and of the need of a divine revelation. Man could conceive the idea of a divine incarnation, but when he set himself to realise the idea, he produced deities more sensual and depraved than himself. The conception of God manifest in the flesh, in some form or other, meets one everywhere ; but, outside the pages of the New Testament, we search in vain for a worthy illustration of the grand idea an 74 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. illustration, that is, which is honouring to (rod and helpful to man. In our last chapter we assumed B.C. 1200 to be about the date of the compilation of the Rig-Veda ; we may now suppose four or five centuries to have passed over since that ; all the while, changes social, religious, and philosophical have been slowly developing. Caste distinctions have been gathering strength and consolidation ; the lordly Brahmans have been growing in power and importance ; through their influence a wide-spread sacerdotalism and a complicated ritual have supplanted the simpler aspects of primitive Hinduism. Old Vedic deities are lapsing into oblivion, whilst new and strange gods take their place ; a tendency to hero-worship is beginning to show itself; pantheistic thought and polytheistic practice are increasing on every hand ; although the infallibility of Vedic teaching is universally held, yet rationalistic speculations are beginning to be heard speculations which, in their very nature, struck at the authority of the holy books and prepared the way for the Atheistic revolt of Buddhism. It was about this period that the later Hindu Triad, to which reference has already been made, came into prominence. Of the three deities, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, only the second is men- tioned in the Big- Veda ; Vishnu appears in the Vedic system as an inferior deity, but as in some way connected with or representing the sun. The name of Siva occurs, but only as an adjective ; the meaning of the word is ' auspicious ' or ' gracious,' and it is applied as an epithet of Eudra, the god of storms ; there is very little doubt this Vedic deity furnished the ideal of Siva, the Destroyer. It is less easy to trace the origin of the first name in the Triad. Some think it originated from the word ( Brahman,' which means prayer or religious ordinance ; this idea was actually deified under the term Brahrnanaspati, the lord or god of prayer. The -name of Brahma may have been thus derived ; and, as he was the deity principally worshipped Medieval Hinduism. 75 by the Brahmans, it is highly probable they called themselves after him. The root, however, from which this word comes is brih, to expand or increase. It is important to note this circumstance, as it really involves the primordial conception out of which this later form of Hinduism took its rise. Pantheism had already permeated the notions of Hindu sages ; they had come to con- ceive of Grod as an all-pervading Essence, a universally-diffused Substance. They spoke of his Being or Substance in the neuter as Brahman (nom. Brahma). This denoted ( simple infinite being,' or the f one eternal Essence.' This Brahma, this sole- existing Entity, ultimately assumed the quality of activity ; he became the personal, masculine Brahma ; in this character he created the phenomena of the universe ; thus, Brahma, the first person of the Triad, appears as the Creator. The progress of self-evolution next resulted in the appearance of Vishnu, as the Preserver of the new creation. The third manifestation of Brahma was in the character of Siva, the Destroyer. The per- vading idea of this whole conception is evidently this for certain reasons the one universal Spirit has assumed this triple manifestation ; but, as he is the only real existing essence, so those temporary manifestations will ultimately yield to the law of dissolution, and be merged again into Brahma, the one simple, all-embracing Entity. Our readers may be curious to know how the ideas of evolu- tion, creation, preservation, and destruction could co-exist with the doctrine of pantheism ; the natural impression is that if all being be identical with the one great Unity, and if there be nothing external to him, then those ideas must be excluded. The Hindu sages found a solution of this problem in the theory of emanation. They maintained that everything which exists or seems to exist is but an outgoing of the Great Self-existent a peculiar form or development of his existence. The Upani- shads contain several ingenious illustrations of this idea ; we 76 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. read, 6 As the web issues from the spider ; as from a living man the hairs of his head and body spring forth, and as little sparks shoot forth from the fire, so from the One Soul proceed all breathing animals, all worlds, all the gods, and all beings.' Similarly, as the spider can at pleasure receive back the threads which he has given out, so will the great Spirit finally gather up into himself all the elements of which his various manifest- ations consist. Such is the philosophy of the thing ; but our readers will be quite prepared to learn that the common people left such meta- physical conceptions to the pundits and insisted upon grasping as substantial and abiding realities what their teachers regarded as visionary and transient appearances. In truth, not in India only, but in all civilised nations of antiquity, religion has ever borne two aspects it has been one thing to the learned few, another thing to the illiterate many ; the learned classes have ever claimed a monopoly of the deeper truths, whilst the ignorant have been left to amuse themselves with their popular errors. Christianity alone presents but one aspect to all classes alike, it alone is the same thing to Jew and Grentile, Greek and barbarian, bond and free. Still, it must not be imagined that the learned classes in India were heedless of and unaffected by the popular aspect of Hinduism ; nay, they actually helped forward and supported the popular developments of the national creed, and this, not necessarily on sinister grounds. Intellectually they were philoso- phers, metaphysicians, pantheists ; but they were not could not be, coldly speculative; the strong religious instinct, the deep spiritual yearnings, which constitute such a marked characteristic of their whole race, breathed within them struggled for expression and sought for satisfaction. It was a case in which the heart was better, or stronger, than the head ; what the logic of the latter avowed was fanciful and vain ? the hunger of the former was fain to devour as real and substantial. Medieval Hinduism. 77 We are convinced that this consideration furnishes the only clue to a right understanding of the seeming anomaly, the con- temporaneous development of pantheism and polytheism. Logically these were mutually destructive, but viewed psycho- logically, they were correlative and equally necessary. The theological systems which grew out of and clustered around the above conception of the divine Triad abundantly illustrate this remark. The first person of the Trinity, Brahma, though originally the favourite deity of the Brahmans, gradually fell into the shade ; his work as the Creator was accomplished when he called all things into being; henceforth he was felt to have little to do with the world, or the world with him. Accordingly, his worship fell into desuetude. 1 On the other hand, Vishnu, to whom the work of preserving the new creation had been dele- gated, naturally rose into prominence and became the main object of national homage and devotion. It is in his character of Vishnu that the supreme Being draws nearest to man, and evinces his tenderest sympathies with man's sorrows, woes, and wants ; it is as Vishnu the one great Spirit assumes a visible embodiment becomes incarnate, first in the lower animals, but ultimately in human form, and always with some beneficent design, always to bring some good or banish some evil. Vishnu was to pass through ten incarnations ; nine of these have already been accomplished, the tenth is still an event of the future. The following is a brief sketch of the past incarnations : 1 . The first opens with the picture of a universal deluge. This Flood had swept away all mankind excepting eight persons ; these were the seventh Manu, 2 the progenitor of the human race, 1 At the present day there is only one spot in India where any traces of the worship of Brahma are to be found ; that is at Pushkara in Ajmir. 2 This is not the Manu who is the reputed author of the Code. The compiler of the Institutes is spoken of as the grandson of Brahma ; he is clearly a myth- ical personage ; the probabilities are that, not one, but many learned hands were employed in the compilation of those literary treasures which go by the title of the ' Institutes of Manu.' 78 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. and seven holy sages. Manu had conciliated the Supreme Being by his austerities and devotion in an age of universal depravity. To save him and his friends Vishnu took the form of fish, and instructed Manu to build a ship; he was to take on board this ship the seven sages, and the seeds of all existing I things. During the prevalence of the Flood, the divine fish ever directed the course of the ship, nor left it until the vessel was safely moored to the peak of a lofty mountain. The follow- ing extract from the Satapalha-brahmana illustrates the story: Along the ocean in that stately ship was borne the lord of men, and through Its dancing, tumbling billows, and its roaring waters ; and the bark, Tossed to and fro by violent winds, reeled on the surface of the deep, Staggering and trembling like a drunken woman. Land was seen no more, Nor far horizon, nor the space between ; for everywhere around Spread the wild waste of waters, reeking atmosphere, and bound- less sky. And now, when all the world was deluged, nought appeared above the waves But Manu and the seven sages, and the fish that drew the bark. Unwearied thus for years on years the fish propelled the ship across The heaped-up waters, till at length it bore the vessel to the peak Of Himavan ; then, softly smiling, thus the fish addressed the sage : ' Haste now to bind thy ship to this high crag. Know me Lord of all, The Great Creator Brahma, 1 mightier than all might omnipotent. By me in fish-like shape hast thou been saved in dire emergency.' 2 1 In the Bhagavata-purana the fish is described as an incarnatien of Vishnu ; such he really was ; that it is here spoken of as an appearance of Brahma may perhaps be explained by the fact that in the Shasters, not unfrequently, an inter- change both of offices and names takes place among the several members of the divine Triad. 2 The resemblance between the above story and the narrative of the Flood in the Book of Genesis can hardly be called fanciful or accidental. As there is no ground whatever for supposing that the Mosaic account ever found its way to India, the most reasonable hypothesis must surely be that each account is an in- dependent narrative describing a real historical event. This inference is all the Medieval Hinduism. 79 2. The next incarnation of Vishnu represents him as as- suming the form of a tortoise. Amrita (nectar) had been lost in the Flood along with a number of other sacked things ; the design of this incarnation was the recovery of these objects. 3. The third incarnation also relates to the Flood. A terrible demon, called Hiranyaksha, had seized the world and submerged it. Vishnu, on this occasion, took the form of a boar ; he de- scended to the abyss ; for a thousand years he was engaged in a deadly conflict with the monster ; at length he slew him, and uplifted the earth above the waters. Other accounts say that the Vedas were lost in the Flood, and Vishnu, as the divine boar, sought for and recovered them. 4. Another formidable demon, named Hiranya-Kasipu, tyrannised over the world ; his power was almost unbounded ; he had appropriated all the sacrifices made to the gods. He had, however, a pious son, called Prahlada, who was a devoted worshipper of Vishnu ; the tyrant resolved to slay his son on account of his devotion ; but, as he was attempting to destroy him, Vishnu appeared in the form of a man-lion half man and half lion and tore the monster to pieces. more reasonable when we find traditions of the Flood amongst almost all nations, whether civilised or barbarous, whether holding intercourse with other races, or utterly shut up within themselves. Thus we find that not only the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Hindus possess these traditions ; you trace them everywhere even where you would least expect to find them. "We find, for instance, the Chinese telling of a flood which occurred in the days of Fah-He, the founder of Chinese civilisation ; the story states that he alone, with his three sons and three daughters, escaped, and that from them the world was repeopled. The natives of the South Sea Islands tell how Taarsa, the chief god, submerged the world, when a man escaped in a canoe to Tiatarpua, and there erected an altar in honour of the god. The Fiji islanders also tell of a flood from which only eight persons escaped. "When we go to the New World the same feature presents itself. The Cherotte Indians speak of the destruction of mankind by a flood, from which but one family was saved by taking refuge in a boat. The ancient Mexicans left paintings in which a flood is" seen; a man and woman are observed in a boat near a mountain, whilst a dove is hovering about them. Indeed, it has been ascertained that, in putting together the various traditions on the subject, every particular in the history given by Moses is reproduced. It is no wonder, therefore, that even sceptics are coming to admit that, after all, there must have been a historical basis for such world-wide traditions. So The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. 5. The next time Vishnu descended for the deliverance of the world was during the reign of the demon Bali. He had gained control ^over the three worlds (heaven, earth, and hell). On this occasion Vishnu triumphed by a trick ; he very literally ' stole a march ' upon Bali. He presented himself before that powerful oppressor in the form of a dwarf, and humbly begged as much land as he could pass over at three steps. Bali no sooner granted his request than he enlarged his form to such dimensions that at two steps alone he embraced the whole of heaven and earth ; he, however, left Patala, hell, in the demon's possession. There is little doubt that the germ of this concep- tion is to be found in the Kig-Veda. As has been said, Vishnu there figures as the sun ; and as such he is spoken of as striding over the universe in three steps. 6. The sixth incarnation clearly points to a fact which has been before alluded to, that struggles for power and dominion took place between the Brahmans and Kshatriyas. Vishnu ap- peared as Parasu-Eama, armed with an axe ; he came as the hero of the Brahmans, and is said to have swept off their foes on twenty-one occasions. 7. The last incarnation clearly rests on some historical basis ; such is the case with the one we are now going to de- scribe. The earliest of the two Indian epics, the Eamayan, contains the story of this incarnation. The date of this popular and interesting poem has been variously estimated. Professor Monier Williams fixes, on "very strong internal evi- dence, the period of its composition as not later than 500 B.C. 1 The substratum of history on which the legendary superstruc- ture has been reared may readily be traced ; the Aryans, after possessing themselves of the Gangetic valley, began to urge their way southwards into the peninsula of India. 2 As they 1 Indian Wisdom, p. 315. 2 There seems reason to believe that, long before the Aryans undertook military operations against the south, Hinduism had been introduced to that part of the Mediceval Hinduism. 8 1 advanced, they naturally encountered much opposition from the powerful pre- Aryan tribes who were in possession of the land. The chief obstacle to their success was the existence of a chief- tain of extraordinary courage and prowess, named Ravana ; this tyrant, as king of Ceylon, not only ruled over that island, but spread devastation far and wide on the continent of India. This circumstance naturally gave scope to and evoked the heroism of the Aryan invaders. They formed alliances with some of the oppressed rulers of southern India ; especially did they allure to their ranks vast hordes of wild aborigines inhabiting the Vindhya and neighbouring hills. Amongst the Aryan leaders, Rama, the son of Dasaratha, king of Ayodhya (Oude), stood forth pre-eminent for manly virtue and dauntless courage. After a terrific and prolonged struggle he succeeded in over- throwing and slaying his formidable opponent. Gratitude for deliverance, admiration of heroism, self-sacrifice, and en- durance, amongst a race of ardent temperament and lively re- ligious instincts, would be sure to exaggerate the simple story ; ere long the arts of the Muse were displayed in adorning the country. A number of religious devotees seem to have wandered southwards and there settled down as hermits; the example of their asceticism and devotion doubtless impressed their less civilised neighbours. In this way the Hindu element found an entrance into South India; in its progress it, to a great extent, obliterated the ruder systems which had preceded it, though it also made some important accretions from them. It is a very common, but an erroneous opinion that missionary zeal and aggressive enterprise are utterly foreign to Hinduism. In point of fact, the Brahmans have carried on missionary operations from time immemorial, and with very marked success too ; they are still propagating their creed amongst the descendants of the aborigines. Self-interest may probably be the leading motive of the Brahman missionary ; his chief aim is to make disciples, who, as a matter of course, contribute to his support. A Brahman will thus turn up at some out-of-the-way village ; he will settle down at the place, erect a simple shrine, and with an air of great sanctity and devotion go through his rites from day to day. All the while he is getting a name ; the simpl villagers look upon him as ' some great one ; ' he distributes among them charms and spells, makes for them astrological calculations, tells them their village god is only another form of the greater deities of the Hindus; he offers to teach them the 'more excellent way,' he ultimately divides the community into different castes, and forthwith stands confessed their spiritual lord and guide. G 8 2 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. narrative ; rapidly the skeleton of fact was filled up with legen- dary marvels, until the whole account passed into the region of the supernatural ; Ravana became a demon stronger than the gods, Rama an incarnation of the omnipotent Vishnu ; whilst the diminutive and active hill-men who formed his auxiliaries, appear in the scene as veritable monkeys. 1 The following is a sketch of the story as it is told in the Ramayan. King Dasaratha had three wives, but none of them had borne him a son ; in his anxiety to procure this most de- sirable boon, he had recourse to the most solemn and potent of all religious rites the sacrifice of a ho?se. The ceremony is successful, and Dasaratha obtains from Brahma, Vishnu and Siva a promise of four sons. In the meantime a deputation of the inferior deities wait upon Brahma and crave his assistance against the ruthless Ravana ; they complain that this monster menaces the universe with destruction, and none of them are able to cope with him. Ravana had, in fact, through the virtue of his austerities, received from Brahma an assurance that neither gods, genii, nor demons of any kind should be able to overcome him. He had, however, never dreamed that danger could accrue to him from man ; he therefore scorned to ask protection from mankind. This left him vulnerable on 1 Nothing is more singular than the A-aried aspects which hero-worship has assumed in India. Two of the most curious instances have occurred within our own time, and in each case the deity honoured is a departed European. Some 60 or 70 years ago an Englishman in South India gained a dubious reputation as being something more than human on the ground of his intemperate habits ; this, combined with his violence towards the natives, impressed them with the idea that he was an incarnate demon. We believe to this day numbers of people perform propitiatory rites at his tomb ; the emblems of the deceased hero are a brandy bottle and a tobacco pipe ! The other case is that of the brave and noble Brig;idier Nicholson. This excellent officer held a civil appointment before the Mutiny broke out; he after- wards fell at the storming of Delhi ; but when the tidings reached the simple people over whom he had before ruled they refused to believe in his death. By his urbane and genial and Christian deportment, he had so won upon their affection and veneration that they declared lie was a god and not a man, and so, seeing him no more, they began to worship him as tlu- g-nl Xikkil Scyn. Medi&va I Hinduism . 8 3 one side ; pride thus proved his ruin he had despised man ; by a Divine man was he to be vanquished. Vishnu, at the request of the gods, consented to become incarnate in the family of Dasaratha. According to promise, four sons were born to this monarch ; Vishnu distributed himself in unequal portions amongst them. The eldest, Eama, possessed half the nature of Vishnu, Bharata inherited one quarter, whilst the remaining quarter was divided between the twins, Lakshmana and Satru- ghna. Rama was married to the beautiful and devoted Sita, and, some time after, King Dasaratha made preparations for the inauguration of Rama as his successor. Kaikeyi, the mother of Bharata, had all along been jealous of the preference shown by her husband for Rama ; she determined to frustrate the purpose of the king as to the succession of his firstborn, and to secure the throne for her own son. Some years before, the King had, in accordance with a well-known Eastern custom, re- warded an act of devotion on her part by promising to fulfil any request she might make. She had deferred the request until a seasonable opportunity should present itself; such an opportunity had come; accordingly she demanded the fulfil- ment of the royal pledge. Her petition was that Rama should be banished for fourteen years, and that Bharata should succeed to the throne. This strange request fell like a thunder-bolt upon King Dasaratha ; indeed, it may be said to have broken his heart, for from that moment he pined away and never again rallied ; but the sanctity of the pledge was inviolable, the dread sentence was given, and steps were at once taken for carrying it into effect. From this point onward, some of the brightest and loveliest traits of character that we ever met with are depicted. We know of no other story in which filial, fraternal, and conjugal affection stand forth in such charming and bold relief. It is impossible to read the narrative of such pure and unselfish love without being touched and impressed thereby impossible, o 2 84 The Trident, tha Crescent, and the Cross. moreover, not to feel that such beautiful conceptions, so ad- mirably expressed, are indicative alike of a high moral tone and great poetic talent. The picture shows us the crushing grief of Dasaratha as he communicates the terrible story to his darling child ; but, strange to say, it shows the son much less moved than the father ; Rama's cause of distress is, not that he has lost a thrtme, not for the personal privation and suffering which await him, but for the misery which all this will entail upon those he will leave behind him. He contemplates with agonising tenderness the woes of his bereaved parents and his deserted wife ; but he controls his own emotions, and becomes the soothing counsellor of the distressed family ; he reminds them of the duty of calmly submitting to the decrees of fate ; he even exonerates Kaikeyi from all blame, and reverently salutes her at the time of leaving. But Rama was not to go into exile unattended ; the gentle, the pure, the devoted Sita resolves at any cost to accompany her lord ; in vain does Rama entreat her to remain ; in vain does he point to her soft and delicate frame, and depict the hardships and horrors of a wandering life in the forests. Sita is unmoved nay, the tale of woe only makes her more resolute to share her husband's peril, and minister to his consolation. She says : A wife must share her husband's fate, my duty is to follow tliee Where'er thou goest. Apart from thee, I would not dwell in heaven itself. Deserted by her lord, a wife is like a miserable corpse. Close as thy shadow would I cleave to thee in this life and hereafter. Thou art my king, my guide, my only refuge, my divinity. It is my fixed resolve to follow thee. If thou must wander forth Through thorny trackless forest, I will go before thee, treading down The prickly brambles to make smooth thy path. Walking before thee, I Shall feel no weariness; the forest-thorns will seem like silken robes ; Medieval Hinduism. 85 The bed of leaves, a couch of down. To me the shelter of thy presence Is better far than stately palaces, and paradise itself. Protected by thyiarm, gods, demons, men shall have no power to harm me. With thee I'll live contentedly on roots and fruits ; sweet or not sweet, If given by thy hand, they will be to me like the food of life. Roaming with thee in desert wastes, a thousand years will be a day ; Dwelling with thee, e'en hell itself would be to me a heaven of bliss. Kama at length yields to Sita's importunity and takes her along with him. Lakshmana, one of his brothers, with noble self-sacrifice and singular fraternal devotion, insists upon sharing their trials and aiding in the protection of Sita, whom he reverenced as deeply as he earnestly loved. Soon after, the broken-hearted Dasaratha died, and th-e Ministers of State assembled to instal Bharata in the vacant throne. Here again a charming picture of unselfish virtue presents itself. Bharata had all along deplored the conduct of bis mother, and had quietly resolved never to accept the dignity she had, in so exceptionable a way, procured for him. He assured the ministers his purpose was to set forth with a body of troops in search of Rama; having found him, he would send him back to the capital ; whilst he himself, as his substitute, would fulfil the fourteen years of exile. Bharata is successful in his search, but utterly fails in his object ; Rama is touched by the generous devotion of his brother, but un- shaken in his determination to complete his period of banish- ment. Hereupon a Brahman, named Javali, follows up Bharata's entreaties by a train of reasoning designed to con- vince Rama that he might comply with his brother's request with a good conscience. Rama returned to the Brahman's arguments the following noble reply : ' There is nothing greater than truth ; and truth should be esteemed the most sacred of all things. The Vedas have their sole foundation in 86 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. truth. Having promised obedience to my father's commands, I will neither through covetousness, nor forgetfulness, nor blind ignorance, break down the barrier of truth.' Eama dismissed his brother with his blessing, he especially urged him to guard against a feeling of anger towards her who had been the cause of these troubles. ' Cherish,' said he, ; thy mol her Kaikeyi ; show no resentment towards her.' For ten years Eama had no certain dwelling-place, with his wife and brother he wandered about in the forests, subsist- ing on the fruits and roots which they found and the deer which they shot ; the bark of the trees supplied them with clothing. When they travelled, Eama led the way, Sita followed, and Lakshmana brought up the rear. Very beauti- ful and simple is the story of their daily life ; and one feature runs throughout it their morning and evening devotions were never omitted. After ten years had passed over, they made their way to the hermitage of the Sage Agastya, near the Vindhya mountains. On his advice they betook themselves to the neighbourhood of the Godavari. This Whole district was in- fested with evil spirits ; here it was that Eama came in con- tact with Surpa-nakha, the sister of Eavana, the demon-king of Ceylon. Surpa-nakha conceived an ardent passion for Eama, and strove by various arts to captivate his affections ; Eama repelled her approaches and turned to his beloved Sita. En- raged at this disappointment, the sister of Eavana sought an opportunity to revenge herself on Sita ; but the faithful Lakshmana came to the rescue, and, in his ire, cut off the ears and nose of Surpa-nakha. This circumstance brings Eavana into the field ; his sister lays before him the story of her in- juries and claims vengeance at his hands; in order to add zest to his movements and inflame his desire, she informed her brother of the matchless beauty of Sita. Eavana sets forth fully resolved to possess himself of the lovely prize ; by a skilful device, he comes upon Sita at a moment when she is alone, and forcibly carries her off to his island home. Once Medieval Hinduism. 87 there, he tries to charm her with the glories of his capital and the prospect of boundless luxury and bliss, if only she will be his queen. She indignantly spurns him, and is, accordingly, handed over to the charge of a body of female furies, who al- ternately cajole and torment her in order to subjugate her to Havana's wishes. She is ready to perish in an agony of despair ; but Brahma sends her sleep and celestial refreshment. Then follows the story of the arduous toils and terrific conflict undertaken by Kama for the deliverance of his beloved wife. Victory crowns his efforts ; the monster is slain, and he once more looks on the face of Sita. Here the narrative assumes a strange and peculiar aspect; Rama, instead of clasping his wife to his bosom, regards her with an air of coldness ; Sita bursts into tears and exclaims : * Alas ! my husband ! ' Eama then tells her that he had avenged his honour by slaying the demon, but that, contaminated as she must be, he cannot again receive her as his wife. Hereupon, Sita, in a touching and dignified manner, asserts her purity, and calls upon Lakshmana to prepare for her the fiery test which would prove her innocence ; she passes unscathed through the flames ; Agni, the god of fire, presents her to Rama, who, on his part, joyfully embraces her, and declares that he never doubted her innocence, and only allowed her to pass through the ordeal so as for ever to silence the suspicions of the world. Shortly after, Rama, having completed the period of his exile, proceeds in a flying chariot through the air to Ayodhya ; on the way, he points out to Sita the different scenes of their adventures as they pass over them, and recounts the strange story of their sufferings and trials. But happy thought ! the trials are over, the glory and bliss are to come. Rama is crowned with grandeur and pomp amidst the universal acclamations of his subjects, and hence- forth he commences a glorious and beneficent reign. 1 1 We feel the later chapters of the Ramayan, which bring another cloud over 88 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. 8. Vishnu became incarnate the eighth time as Krishna. This is said to have taken place at the end of the Dvapara, or third age of the world. 1 The object of this incarnation was the destruction of Kansa, King of Mathura, a tyrant corresponding in malevolence and power to the formidable King of Ceylon who was vanquished by Rama. The story of Krishna is con- tained in the Mahabharat, the second epic, and in certain Puranas. There can be no doubt* that this is by far the most popular of all the incarnations ; Krishna's exploits, his miracles, his amours, his tricks, are household words throughout the length and breadth of India. ' 'Tis pity and pity 'tis 'tis true ' but there is no disguising the fact that the one incarnation of Vishnu which shows that deity as revelling in boundless licentiousness is dearer to the millions of India than any other. No more saddening thought than this can be dwelt upon, and Kama and Sita may well be omitted ; they are undoubtedly additions to the primitive story, and rather detract from than increase its*beauty and symmetry. Should any of our readers be given to allegorising, they may probably find ample scope for their talents in the above story. For their encouragement we may state that there are intelligent and well-educated native Christians in India who see in this whole narrative an outline of the Gospel story. They behold in Dasaratha the Father of all ; in Kama, the Son of His love ; in the exile, the sojourn of Jesus in this wilderness of sin ; in Ravana, the enemy of God and man ; in Sita, the Church ; in Kama's struggles on her behalf, the bitter conflict of the Redeemer for the deliverance of his spouse ; in the final triumph and glorious reign of Rama, the coming triumph of Christ's spiritual kingdom. We mention this view rather as a curiosity than to endorse it ; those who are strong enough in faith or fancy may receive it ; we are more than doubtful on the subject. If, as we assume, the story above was current in India long before the advent of Christ, one has to make believe very hard indeed to suppose it contains such a marvellous anticipation of the whole scheme of man's redemption. 1 This is really no guide as to the actual chronology of Krishna's history ; as, however, the incarnation of Rama is said to have token place in the Treta or second age of the world, it is clear that a considerable interval is assumed as having existed between the seventh and eighth incarnations of Visbnu. As the Romans spoke of the golden, silver, brazen, and iron ages of the world, so have the Hindus divided time into four mundane periods. The first, or the Satya-Yuga, was .in age of innocence and happiness ; throughout the second and third ages the world is said to have been gradually deteriorating ; the latest and the worst age is the one in which we are living ; it is the Kali-Yuga, or the dark ace. It is reckoned to have commenced 3102 B.C. Medieval Hinduism. 89 nothing more is needed to show the terrible declension in tone which, in the lapse of ages, has come over the people. It is a shame even to speak of the things which Krishna unblushingly practised ; yet Hindoos of both sexes recount the foul narrative not only without shame, but with positive fervour and devotion. The study of Krishna's character has, doubtless, accelerated the moral deterioration which prepared the way for its conception. The effect has been to extinguish, to a great extent, the moral sense. The people will not deny that if a mere man were to do the deeds attributed to Krishna he would be an object of aversion, but as Krishna is a god he could do no wrong, indeed his debaucheries do but illustrate his liberty and might ! So say those who accept his history in all its literal grossness ; multitudes, however, it is refreshing to state, shrink from the literal interpretation ; they see in the most indelicate details deep spiritual metaphors and profound mysteries. It is hardly necessary to state that among that large body of educated natives who by various influences have lost their faith in the national creed, no apologist of Krishna is .to be met with. He is given up as hopelessly bad, even as a historical character. But, in truth, the worst parts of his character are comparatively modern additions to the original story. In the Mahabharat he merely appears as a great chief aiding the Pandavas in their struggle with the Kurus ; his claims to deification in that great epic are very dubious. The prurient portions of his history grew up like sickly excrescences around his true story, and as these gratified the popular taste of a degenerate age, they were ultimately incorporated with the narrative of the incarnation. 1 > A The famous Juggernath (Lord of the World), whose temple at Pcorea in Orissa is the shrine to which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims yearly wend their weary way, is another form of Krishna. Nothing could be more hideous than this uncouth, armless idol, seated on his huge car ; yet millions of hearts beat with devotion towards this Indian Moloch ; and to gain a sight of him countless multi- tudes will travel hundreds of miles, thousands of them dying unpitied and unaided on the road-side. go The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. 9. In the next incarnation Vishnu appeared as Buddha. This took place in the fourth age of the world the present dispensation. It might seem strange that Vishnu should be re- presented as appearing in the form of the deadly enemy of the Brahmans, the atheistical opponent of Hinduism. Some think the Brahmans, seeing the immense popularity which Buddhism obtained in India, hit upon this conception as a likely mode of conciliating, and bringing about a reconciliation with, their ad- versaries. The Brahmans themselves say that Vishnu's object was, by assuming a heretical form, to delude the demons to destruc- tion ; they would be led by means of this incarnation to desist from worshipping the true gods,, and would perish in conse- quence. 10. The tenth incarnation is still in the future. It is to take place when the world has become hopelessly depraved. Its object will be the final destruction of wickedness and the re- > establishment of righteousness and peace in the earth. The Satya-Yuga, the age of purity and innocence, will be restored. Some accounts, singularly enough, state that Vishnu will on this last occasion appear in the sky, seated on a white horse, resplendent as a comet, with a drawn sword in his hand. The character and worship of Siva, the third person in the Hindu Triad, present features totally distinct from those of Vishnu ; indeed, as we shall see hereafter, each of these deities represents a separate and distinct principle, they illustrate lines of thought and religious feeling, mutually opposed, yet severally necessary, each having its origin and support in the pantheistic element which pervades every Hindu system. Before pointing out these distinctive features and principles, it will materially help the reader if we give some idea of the schools of philosophy which grew up, side by side, with the post-Vedic theology of which we are treating. There were six of those schools, exemplifying as many philo- sophical systems ; though in reality these may be resolved into Medieval Hinduism. . 9 1 three pairs, the Nyaya, the Sankhya, and the Vedanta. Any reader who is curious to see the principles of logic on which those ancient sages reasoned, the metaphysical disputations in which they engaged, and the speculations in which they indulged speculations which, in many respects, are closely akin to those put forth by certain European philosophers in our own day may at his leisure study these interesting points. As our object is to deal only with the religious side of the question, we will merely give an epitome of those great leading principles which were evolved or upheld by the several schools, and which ulti- mately reflected themselves in the religious systems of the country. On two important points all the schools were agreed first, that ' nothing comes from nothing,' ex nihilo nihilfit, or, as a Hindu philosopher would put it, ' an entity cannot be produced out of a nonentity.' The other point of agreement was the doctrine of transmigration of souls. This idea is not found in the Rig-Veda ; the early Hindus believed in the immortality of the soul, and looked to an eternal state in whieh rewards or punishments would be distributed. The later Hindus retained a belief in heaven and hell Manu, indeed, speaks of twenty-one hells but they maintained that, at some period or other, the soul must return to earth and be again clothed with a mortal body ; its condition being one of suffering or of enjoyment according to the proportion of merit or demerit which marked it in its previous births. The first of those two important axioms the Hindus held in common with the ancient Grecian and Koman philosophers ; but it is curious to note the- different inferences which the Indian and European sages respectively grounded upon it. The latter, for the most part, seem to have reasoned out the origin of the universe thus ; there is some Being, or intelligent Essence, by whose power and volition things have come into their present' shape ; but He could not form the universe out of nothing, 92 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. therefore there must have been a pre-existent, primordial sub- stance, a sort of raw material, out of which he evolved the present order of things ; some affirmed this primitive substance to be water, others air, others fire, others again said it con- sisted of all these elements together. Whether they actually believed in the eternal existence of this substance or not is doubtful. As regards the Hindu sages the pantheistic leaven had already moulded their conceptions ; accordingly, the pre- vailing idea of their philosophy is that the primordial substance and the Creator are one and the same. Some of them, indeed, (those of the Sankhya school) seem hardly to have recognised a sentient and intelligent Author of nature ; they did not deny the existence of soul (Purusha) but with them Prakriti, eternally- existent matter (or element), non-sentient yet prolific, was at once the source and the author of the present state of things. Their views appear to be reiterated in the theories of certain materialists of the present day. Others again those of the Vedanta school taught the doctrine that the One Great Soul, the self-existent Entity, alone existed, that he had eternally existed, and that out of him and by him the universe had come into being. This school comprised two sections ; one of these held the reality of the visible universe, they said it was a real emanation of the substance of the Deity ; the other maintained that the universe was merely an illusory appearance (maya), without any real and substantial existence at all. This latter theory was ever the more prevalent of the two, and it is at the present day the most popular with the learned class. The Nyaya philosophy seems to have taught the actual existence of the Supreme Soul; but it does not represent him as the Creator; it attributes the present order of things to a fortuitous concur- rence of innumerable eternal atoms. Arising out of the above conceptions of the Great Entity or the Supreme Soul, the eternity of human souls was a point of universal agreement. This followed as a matter of course. We* Medieval Hinduism* 93 as Christians, hold the soul of man to be immortal and ever- lasting, but not eternal, because it was created ; but to the Hindu philosopher human souls were but portions or emana- tions of the One Supreme and All-pervading Soul : they were never called into being, accordingly the attribute of eternity belonged to them equally with their great Source. But, it was argued, pure soul can only exercise thought, and realise consciousness, sensation, volition, when endued with some bodily form and joined to mind. It needs these as instruments for the conveyance of impressions as food for thought and sense. 1 Thus the Supreme Soul has allied itself through successive ages to various objects and forms, now becoming the masculine Brahma as Creator, then Vishnu and Siva; anon appearing. in the shape of inferior deities or in the form of man. The soul at the hour of death, though severed from the body, is not merged into the Supreme Soul, for it actually retains a bodily covering. This is an interior and subtle body, quite dis- tinct from the gross material body which death dissolves. This invisible body attends the soul during its sojourn in heaven and hell and accompanies it throughout the numerous transmigra- tions which await it. This continued conscious existence of the soul involves on its part continued action ; these actions, as they.are good or bad, involve merit or demerit ; this again involves reward or punish- ment ; but, as a due proportion of these are not awarded in the heaven or hell to which the soul may go, its return to earth in other bodies becomes necessary ; all the while a debtor and creditor account is registered ; thus the sufferings of the present life are the inevitable penalty of the demerit of a former life, on the other hand, the enjoyments of life are a recompense for previous good desert. 2 1 Accordingly, mind is often spoken of as Antah-Karana, internal organ or instrument. 2 The practical developments of this theory among the people of India are curious and often painful to behold. As we elsewhere remarked, this notion goes 94 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. Were the moral account entered in the ledger of Fate a stationary one, its liquidation would be a simple matter of time ; Imt the soul, so long as it is endued with the body, must go on performing fresh actions, these again accumulate fresh merit and demerit, and thus, prolonged existence and manifold trans- migrations follow as a matter of course. But the constitution of things being what it is, continued existence means continuous disquiet and suffering ; rest, satis- faction, and security can never be enjoyed ; on the one hand, all evil action is sure to entail its due punishment in the miseries of life ; on the other, a person who, by persistence in well-doing, has merited a reward, may by some moral slip again be plunged into misery and degradation. Consequently emancipation from all conscious existence is the summum bonum to which every individual should aspire ; the release of his soul from all con- tact with body and mind should be his constant effort. The soul, thus released, loses at once its consciousness and in- dividuality, and is merged into the one Supreme Soul of the universe. Such is the ultimate prospect of rest which Hinduism far towards destroying sympathy and fellow-feeling ; whatever distresses a p?rson may endure, they are regarded as the just and necessary consequence of his mis- conduct in a former birth. * Why,' says the Hindu, ' should I disconcert myself about the inevitable ? and why should I, by trying to lessen suffering, interfere with Fate's stern and just decrees ? ' In the same way no credit is accorded to the man who, by a course of industry and virtue, improves his position and raises his social standing ; this, again, is merely the inevitable recompense of the virtues of a previous birth. But this theory exercises a pernicious moral influence too ; a man may be ever so vicious a thief, a murderer, but why censure him ? he was fated to be what he is : he may be ever so moral and upright, ever so kind and benevolent ; but why commend him? he was doomed to be such ; it was written beforehand on the forehead of each by Adrishta, the Unseen or Fate, what each should be, and so each is merely carrying out what was inevitable and unavoidable ! The reader will observe that the Hindu fatalist differs from his brethren elsewhere ; these regard Fate as a blind and arbitrary decree, without any reference to good or bad deseit; with the Hindu the decrees of Fate go on the principle of rigid and impartinl justice meting out the righteous consequences of past good or evil desert. As, how- ever, the individual can neither realise his past identity or be conscious of his p;ist conduct, the practical bearing of this view is much the same as that of the other. ,,; 7 IT- j ' Mediczval Hinduism. 95 " presents to its votaries a rest of personal extinction, a repose of lost individuality ! As has been implied, it would seem logically to follow that the same principle which necessitates transmigration at all would ensure its eternal succession. An essential feature, however, of Hindu philosophy, as we have before shown, is the final absorp- tion of all forms of existence into Brahma, the One All-pervad- ing Essence. It was necessary, therefore, to fix some limit to transmigration. The notion prevails on what grounds it rests is not evident that the full tale of births allotted to any par- ticular soul is eighty-four lakhs eight millions, four hundred thousand ! These accomplished, absorption into deity follows as a matter of course. But the grand aim and object of all reli- gious exercises is to reduce the prescribed number of births, to get rid of conscious being before the whole course of transmi- gration is completed. The above brief sketch of the deductions of Hindu philoso- phy will prepare us to comprehend the better the principles of Hindu worship. It must be borne in mind, then, that Hinduism presents three ways or means of salvation or absorption 'into deity. These are : (1) the way of works, (2) the way of faith, (3) the way of spiritual knowledge or perception. These three methods of deliverance, again, illustrate two leading aspects of Hinduism ; it has its exoteric or popular aspect, the aspect which suits the masses, this embraces the first and second methods ; it has also its esoteric aspect, a mystical and spiritual side suited to minds of a superior order, this is represented by the third method. Let us consider the last first. He who is able to grasp and act out this higher principle salvation by knowledge (G-yan) need not trouble himself with popular theology ; he has found the surest, the safest, arid the shortest road to emancipation. His one duty is to train his soul to such habits of abstraction, to be so wrapt in contemplation of the Supreme Being, that 96 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. he shall gradually cease from action, from all such action as necessitates future births. The more he can bring himself into a state of mental abstraction, so that he shall be dead to eense, to passion, to desire, to self and the surrounding world, the nearer does he approach the glorious consummation ; if at length, he succeed in realising the identity of his own soul with the One Great Soul, so that he can say and feel, c / am Brahma,' his end is attained ; all action ceases, and, as a river after meandering through the country for hundreds of miles, at last falls into the ocean and is lost, so will his soul merge into the ocean of Deity and thus gain eternal repose. The following passage from the Bhagavad-gita forcibly illustrates this pro- cess : That lowly man who stands immovable, As if erect upon a pinnacle, Hi a appetites and organs all subdued, Sated with knowledge secular and sacred, To whom a lump of earth, a stone, or gold, To whom friends, relatives, acquaintances, Neutrals and enemies, the good and bad, Are all alike, is called, ' one yoked with God.' The man who aims at that supreme condition Of perfect yoking with the Deity, Must first of all be moderate in all things. In food, in sleep, in vigilance, in action, In exercise and recreation. Then Let him, if seeking God by deep abstraction, Abandon his possessions and his hopes, Betake himself to some secluded spot, And fix his heart and thoughts on God alone ; .let him sit Firm and erect, his body, head, and neck Straight and immovable, his eyes directed Towards a single point, not looking round, Devoid of passion, free from anxious thought, His heart restrained and deep in meditation. E'en as a tortoise draws its head and feeb Within its shell, so must he keep his organs Mediceval Hinduism. 97 Withdrawn from sensual objects. He whose senses Are well controlled attains to sacred knowledge, And thence obtains tranquillity of thought. Without quiescence there can be no bliss. Quiescence is the state of the Supreme. He who, intent on meditation, joins His soul with the Supreme, is like a flame That flickers not when sheltered from the wind. Those who have once beheld the sight of a religious devotee, sitting as above described, seeking union with deity, will not readily forget the scene. We know full well that there are multitudes in India who under the garb of an ascetic practise every conceivable abomination, these are the hypocrites of their order, and they predominate ; but we know also that there are many earnest souls, with strange unearthly longings, who, know- ing no better way and having no better hope, do, with the deepest devotion, seek union with God in the mode above de- scribed. We have seen such persons sitting for hours and days like motionless, lifeless statues, striving after utter self-forgetful- ness and identification with the Deity ; we have watched the ex- pression of their marble features, always calm and passionless^ sometimes sublime and spiritual, and we have turned away solemnised and saddened, and yearning for the speedy dawn of a brighter light on those who are thus painfully ' feeling after God if haply they may find Him.' Well do we remember the account which an eminent convert gave us of his father, who was one such a seeker after God. He said he never saw earnest- ness and devotion more intense, self-abnegation and deadness to the "things of sense more complete, than his father evinced. ( Indeed,' said he, ' remembering what my father was and longed to be, I feel that he might well be termed a holy man.' L 1 We remember a case in which a brother missionary seated himself by one such a religious devotee ; he spoke to the man as he might have spoken to a tree or a stone ; not a responsive word or sign was elicited, the man appeared to be lost H 9 8 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. The above extract from the Bhagavad-gita prescribes the modus operandi for those who seek salvation through ' the way of knowledge.' A passage from a Vedantic tract called the Atma-bodha, ' knowledge of soul,' shows the grand result flow- ing from this system of devout contemplation. The saint who has attained to full perfection Of contemplation, sees the universe Existing in himself, and with the eye Of knowledge sees the All as the One Soul. When bodily disguises are dissolved, The perfect saint becomes completely blended With the One Soul, as water blends with water, As air unites with air, as fire with fire. That gain, than which there is no greater gain, That joy than which there is no greater joy, That lore than which there is no greater lore, Is the one Brahma this is certain truth. It is very obvious that ' the way of knowledge ' could only be trodden by the favoured few ; it was the narrow path of Hinduism, and comparatively few and select have been those who have journeyed along it. Not only did its pursuit necessitate a higher order of mind than the masses possess, it was simply impossible for all men to sever themselves from social ties and the active duties of life ; death to society and extinction of the race must have followed. A broader path for the millions was needed. The worship of Vishnu and Siva supplied the need. But it was needful, moreover, that popular Hinduism should wear a dual aspect, answering to two distinct currents of religious thought and feeling. These are expressed by the two in profound contemplation. The missionary, however, delivered his message of grace and love, and then went his way, leaving the Yogi as he found him ; at least, so it seemed ; but it was not so ; it proved that the foreigner's words had been like cold water to a thirsty soul ; that anxious soul found therein an unwonted topic of reflection : as he pondered the fire burned, he quitted his retreat, sought out the missionary, and at length found a better and truer union with God than he had ever dreamt of before. Medi&val Hinduism. 99 words, faith and works. These indicate the two sections into which religious communities resolve themselves the two channels by which the devotion of human souls finds an outlet. The volatile, the self-indulgent, the sympathetic, may be power- fully impressed by religious influences ; tltey may also be ar- dently devout ; but they must have a genial. religion a religion which combines the maximum of satisfaction with the minimum of sacrifice. Others, again, have a colder nature, they have an austere, moody, severe cast of mind ; such persons instinctively affect a sterner form of religion, with these salvation is a matter, not of grace, but of merit, and merit accrues from self-denial and voluntary mortification. The worshippers of Vishnu come under the first, the votaries of Siva under the second denomination. The Vaishnavas see in the incarnations of their deity, (rod descending to man, making himself one with man, sharing not only human woes but human defects. A true instinct prompted the conception of a Divine incarnation, but what a hideous form did that true idea assume ! In Krishna every human vice was deified, and Krishna is the loathsome- object at whose feet millions fall. As we have before stated, one class of Krishna's worshippers accept the grossest features of his history in their naked literality, another class allegorise those features till they make them deep spiritual mysteries ; but the one essential characteristic of all Vaishnavas is faith or devotion (Bhakti). Grod is pleased with the entire consecration of the soul, with its simple, unreasoning trust, with the outpouring of its love and affection ; he asks not for painful sacrifices, for self-mortification ; how could he, when he himself has set such an example of self- indulgence ? All he requires is the faith and love of the heart ; the life may be loose, the passions uncurbed ; but if, through it all, the deity be loved and honoured, he is pleased, and the soul is helped forward towards the goal of emancipation absorption into the Supreme Deity. Any number of inferior deities may H 2 I oo The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. be worshipped ; all that is needed to make such worship effectual is to have Bhakti, faith to see Vishnu in them all, to honour him through all. In this way, as a drop of water may fall into a river, and so be materially hastened in its progress to the ocean, so may the souls of the worshippers find absorption in the inferior deities,.and thus expedite their journey towards the mighty ocean of Brahma, the final goal. Thus have the Vaish- navas become the Antinomians of India, and so justified the taunt of the Saivas, that theirs is the ' self-indulgent way of salvation.' The Saivas represent the opposite pole of religious senti- ment ; their principle is, not to bring down God to man, but to raise man to God ; not to abase the Deity to share man's defects, but, by mortifying their natural frailties, to raise themselves to communion with divine perfections. Here, again, an element of truth a nugget of pure gold is discernible in the conception ; but, alas ! in the manipulation the fine gold again becomes dim, or rather vile dross. Siva himself is depicted as the imper- sonation of asceticism and austerity. In Krishna we behold the deity assume a sensual human garb. In Siva we see God pre- senting a type of imhuman severity. He is depicted as sitting on a mountain, lost in meditation ; he wears a necklace of human skulls, he holds in his hand a rosary of the same ghastly character ; his hair is interlaced with serpents, which harg around his neck. Such as is the god, such must his worship- pers be ; theirs is the religion of works, Karma ; the greater their self-denial, the more excruciating their self-torture, the greater the merit. The subjugation of their passions, the re- pression of the animal, and the elevation of the spiritual side of their nature, is not the thing desiderated ; the only essential feature is the voluntary enduring of pain and misery. To hold up an arm till it is withered and fixed, to be scorched by five fires, to lie on a bed of spikes, to gaze on the midday sun till the organ of vision is utterly destroyed these are so many Mediceva I Hinduism. i o i means of accumulating merit, and hastening the desired eman- cipation absorption into the Supreme. The reader will not fail to observe a degree of affinity between Saivaism and the Gryan-marga, ' the way of knowledge.' Each method involved the feature of asceticism : and, as a matter of fact, considerable numbers of the travellers along the path of knowledge pay their devotions at the shrine of Siva. Yet the principles of the two systems are essentially distinct ; in the one case, union with Deity is the result of contemplation, complete mental abstraction ; in the other, self-mortification is practised as a means of laying the Deity under obligation ; the grand total of suffering is credited to the worshipper's account ; he thus gets power with Grod, and makes God his debtor. The recompense of his austerities is absorption into the Deity at the end of this life, and consequent deliverance from future births. 1 It must not be imagined that the severity of Siva never relaxed ; the brand of sensuality rests upon him no less than upon Krishna. In his history the story of lust strangely blends with the narrative of self-torture; the object which represents this god in all his temples throughout India (linga) commemorates a passage in his history far too corrupt for re- cital. It is no wonder, therefore, that multitudes of the disciples of the Siva cult have imitated their god in this respect. Several secret communities calling themselves Bahm^margis, left-handed sects, connect with the self-denying ordinances of Siva the celebration of rites of the most revolting and sensual 1 This whole subject of penance (tapas) in India is a puzzling feature, the difficulty is to trace its rationale ; the idea seems to be that, irrespective of moral character or moral aim, the mere fact of voluntary suffering prevails with God ; it prevails with him often in spite of himself and against his own inclinations ; he cannot help himself, he must succumb to the force of tapas; a mortal or an inferior deity or a demon may carry on his self-inflicted tortures to such a pitch and for such a length of time, as shall actually subjugate the Supreme Being to his will. The reader will remember that it was in this way Eavana, the demon-king of Ceylon, achieved his allrbut-irresistible might. IO2 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. character. This is especially true of those called Shaktas, the worshippers of Shakti, the female principle. Parvati, the wife of Siva, is represented by goddesses of immense popularity at the present day. In Bengal, Durga and Kali may be said to monopolise the devotion of the masses. The latter of these has her principal shrine in the city of Calcutta ; that city derives its name from the bloody goddess which sits therein. No object more frightful than Kali could well be looked upon ; her character is as dark as her name (Kali, black) and her person. Her delight is in blood ; under her protection and blessing the Thugs of India carried out their diabolical system of treachery and murder ; human blood is to her most grateful of all ; in former days children used to be slaughtered before her shrine ; at the present time she has to content herself with the blood of animals alone. Eepeatedly have we in passing her temple seen the sacrificial stream flow- ing ; as many as two hundred animals, chiefly goats, are some- times slain there in one day. This leads us to notice an important feature of what we may call mediaeval Hinduism. Declension and deterioration were to be traced everywhere ; caste, which in Vedic times could hardly be said to have any existence, had gradually hardened into a stern and rigid institution, separating man from man, smiting at the roots of fellowship and human sympathy. All the while had Brahmanical pride and tyranny been growing, until at length the priestly caste had its foot upon the neck of every other class of the community. The key of knowledge the Brahmans held with a firm grasp ; they were to dispense light for the millions, but not the light which they had received from their Aryan forefathers. They set themselves to improve the ancestral faith, to invent new doctrines, to develop unheard- of theories. The Vedas they accepted as inspired, but they added to them the Brahmanas and Upanishads, and for these compositions of their own they claimed a divine authority no Medieval H^nd^dsm. 103 less than that which attached to the Vedas themselves. Under their tutelage the people receded from the simplicity of the primitive faith and worship ; old Vedic deities and usages and ideas gradually faded into oblivion, or had grafted upon them ' entirely new features. The elaboration of the Darshanas, the six schools of philosophy, introduced fresh elements of change and expansion. The primitive doctrine of sacrifice was one of the first to yield to the principle of development. The original idea of vicarious atonement, of the deliverance of man by the transfer of his sin and punishment to an innocent animal, had long been a stumbling-block to reason. It was encumbered with a second difficulty which had to be surmounted ; admitting that, by some inconceivable process, animal sacrifices might secure the sinner's pardon and future bliss, still what account was to be given of the irregularities of the present state of things ? how was this existing scene of confusion suffering virtue and triumphant vice to be explained ? The sacrifices might affect the unseen state, but they touched not the present inequalities ; how could these be reconciled with the notion of divine justice and equity ? Let us not wonder at their perplexity, let us not chide their rationalistic efforts at a solution ; the difficulties were real, the attempts at solution natural ; but the utter failure of their endeavours to solve the problem forcibly illustrates human helplessness and the need of divine light. The doctrine of transmigration was evolved to meet the difficulty; this was supposed to cover the whole ^ase; it justified the ways of Grod, for it represented Him as meting out a righteous award to every human soul ; it cleared up the confusion of life, for it made the present condition of every man a just retribution for his con- duct in previous births. But the conception was, of course, fatal to the idea of vicarious atonement ; no room was left for that if every individual had to bear his own punishment. IO4 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. Thus the primitive institution of sacrifice was virtually super- seded, it was reasoned out of existence. Offerings were still made to the gods ; and animals were still sacrificed in their temples, but the original idea of sacrifice was well-nigh obli- terated ; the offerings were the food of the gods, and the sacri- fices were to appease their thirst for blood. Primaeval traditions were being overclouded, primitive faith weakened, primitive simplicity corrupted. Seeds of error in Vedic theology were germinating in a rationalistic soil, and an abundant crop of dubious speculations followed. Thus Hinduism grew less and less like its Aryan original, and man wandered further and further from Grod. The Hindus were ever feeling after (rod ; but it is an affecting and suggestive fact that, in their very efforts to find Grod by the light of reason alone, they were receding further from Him. ' Canst thou by searching find out Grod ? canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection ? It is high as heaven, what canst thou do ? deeper than hell, what canst thou know?' (Job xi. 7, 8). Of those seeds of error which inhered in the primitive system none has been more potent and prolific than the pantheistic element. It has literally permeated Hinduism, and saturated the Hindus ; it enters into every conception of the sages, and it is burnt into the very nature of the people. Yet, though Hinduism as a system had lost much of its pri- mitive simplicity and purity, though its religious teaching and moral force had sadly deteriorated, it still retained much that was admirable ; the lamp of devotion still burnt brightly in many a soul, and sublime sentiments breathed in many a fervid page. The literature of the era of which we are speaking is a remark- able medley ; its ' wood, hay, stubble ' greatly preponderate, but there are nuggets of the gold of Ophir, ' and gems of purest ray serene,' to be met with ; elaborate nonsense and childish imbeci- lity may characterise the greater part of what was written, but sentiments of sober truth and profound wisdom ever and anon Medieval Hinduism. 105 appear. Perhaps we might even safely state that, though theo- logically Hinduism degenerated in the period spoken of, ethically it advanced ; the code of morals we will not say was raised higher than that of the Vedic era but it certainly obtained a development and force of enunciation which it had formerly lacked ; the duty of man to man was made more plain to the eye and ear. All this may seem somewhat anomalous ; for logi- cally, it would seem to follow that pantheistic teaching lays the axe to the root of moral perception. May not the solution of the anomaly be found in the supposition that the people were really better than their system ? At no period could it be said that their practical morality was of a high order, *but they ever discerned and approved the right. Pantheism could neither silence the voice of conscience nor quench the fire of devotion ; theoretically they were pantheists, practically they were theists or polytheists. According to their theory all was may a, illu- sion, all portions of the one great Entity, but they worshipped and acted as though they disbelieved this doctrine ; or, at least, they seem to have felt that, though it might be theoretically true, it was practically false. We will conclude this chapter with a few extracts from the Shasters in confirmation of these remarks. We have already quoted a passage from the Bhagavad-gita, in which the mode of attaining absorption into the Deity is illustrated ; we will add another in which Krishna, speaking as the Supreme Being, gives expression to sentiments of singular beauty and sublimity. 1 I am the cause of the whole universe, Through me it is created and dissolved ; 1 The Bhagavad-gita is one of the most interesting works that Sanscrit literature can boast of ; it deals with the mystical doctrines of the Upanishads, and illustrates the efforts of the Eclectic School of Indian philosophy to reconcile and harmonise the conflicting doctrines of the different systems ; it labours to show how a devout and intelligent Hindu may consistently embrace all that is taught, and practise all that is enjoined in those varying systems. The Eclectic Philosophers were evidently the 'Broad-Churchmen' of Mediaeval Hinduism. io6 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. On me all things within it hang suspended, Like pearls upon a string. I am the light In sun and moon, far, far removed from darkness ; I am the brilliancy in flame, the radiance In all that's radiant, and the light of lights. I watch the universe With eyes and face in all directions turned. I dwell as wisdom in the heart of all ; I am the goodness of the good, I am Beginning, middle, end, eternal Time, The Birth, the Death of all. I am the symbol A Among the characters. I have created all Out of one portion of myself. .... Then'be not sorrowful ; from all thy sins I will deliver thee. Think thou on me, Have faith in me, adore and worship me, And join thyself in meditation unto me ; Thus shalt thou come to me, O Arjuna ; Thus shalt thou rise to my supreme abode. Where neither sun nor moon have need to shine ; For know that all the lustre they possess is mine. Then follows the devout response of the hero Arjuna to this divine communication : Have mercy, God of gods ; the universe Is fitly dazzled by thy majesty, Fitly to thee alone devotes its homage. At thy approach the evil demons flee, Scattered in terror to the winds of heaven. The multitude of holy saints adore thee Thee, first Creator, Lord of all the gods, The Ancient One, supreme Receptacle Of all that is and is not, knowing all, And to be known by all. Immensely vast, Thou comprehendest all, thou art the All. To thee be sung a thousand hymns of praise By every creature aud from every quarter, Before, above, behind. Hail ! hail ! thou All ! Again and yet again I worship thee. Medieval Hinduism. 107 No subject seems to have weighed more upon the minds of thoughtful Hindus than the transitoriness and the vanity of life ; repeatedly do they dilate on this topic, and often with deep and touching emphasis. The following is an example of the kind from the Upanishad, called the Maitrayani : The universe is tending to decay ; Grass, trees, and animals spring up and die. But what are they ? Beings greater still than these, Gods, demigods, and demons, all have gone; But what are they ? for others greater still Have passed away, vast oceans have been dried, Mountains thrown down, the polar star displaced, The cords that bind the planets rent asunder, The whole earth deluged with a flood of water, E'en highest angels driven from their stations. In such a world what relish can there be For true enjoyment ? Deign to rescue us ; Thou only art our Refuge, holy Lord. The following lines from the Bhagavad-gita is a clear and decided enunciation of the immortality of the soul : These bodies that enclose the everlasting soul, inscrutable, Immortal, have an end ; but he who thinks the soul can be de- stroyed, And he who deems it a destroyer, are alike mistaken ; it Kills not, and is not killed ; it is not born, nor doth it ever die. Of course, the pervading idea is that the soul of man is a portion of the One Supreme Soul, and therefore, is immortal. We have spoken before of the endeavour of the philosophers to solve the riddle of life's inequalities by the doctrine of transmigration. We are about to cite a beautiful passage from the Mahabharat, which apparently ignores that doctrine, and offers a solution of the problem in language which, if it had not been composed more than two thousand years ago, we might have been tempted to say was borrowed from our Christian Scriptures : io8 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. Who in this world is able to distinguish The virtuons from the wicked ? both alike The fruitful earth supports, on both alike Refreshing breezes blow, and both alike The waters purify. 1 Not so hereafter Then shall the good be severed from the bad ; 2 Then in a region bright with golden lustre, Centre of light and immortality, The righteous after death shall dwell in bliss. Then a terrific hell awaits the wicked ; Profound abyss of utter misery, Into the depths of which bad men shall fall Headlong, and mourn their doom for countless years. We will now furnish a few specimens of the moral sentiments which, like sparkling gems, every now and then illumine the pages of the sacred books of the Hindus. Not many, perhaps, of our readers would expect to gaze upon such a string of pearls as we are about to present. Doubtless, all will agree that? though for centuries the shades of error had been falling upon the people, the light which was in them had not become utter darkness ; a softened twilight relieved their moral gloom. Alas ! there is too much ground to suspect that hardly the faintest glimmer of this light reached the outer circle of the population ; for it is a noteworthy fact, of which every missionary is aware, that, as regards the mass of the people, they are familiar with the worst and ignorant of the best portions of their sacred literature. Still the existence of such sentiments as we are about to cite affords additional confirmation of the great truth that God ' left not himself without witness ' in the land. 3 1 'He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust ' (Matt. v. 45). 2 The angels shall come forth, and shall sever the wicked from among the just ' (Matt. xiii. 49). The passages following are selected from Manu's Achora (' Rules of Conduct '), the Mahabharat, the Pancha-tantra, and the Hitopodesha. Medieval Hinduism. 1 09 We begin with the following epitome of the moral and reli- gious duty of man : Contentment, patience under injury, Self-subjugation, honesty, restraint Of all the sensual organs, purity, Devotion, knowledge of the Deity, Veracity, and abstinence from anger ; These form the tenfold summary of duty. The following sentences bear upon divine omniscience and the human conscience : .''*' Thou thinkest, good friend, 4 1 am alone,' but there resides within thee A Being who inspects thy every act, Knows all thy goodness and thy wickedness. The soul is its own witness ; yea, the soul Itself is its own refuge ; grieve not, man, thy soul, the great internal witness. The next passage enforces the necessity of purity of heart, and the futility of outward observances apart from that. When thou hast sinned, think not to hide thy guilt Under a cloak of penance and austerity. No study of the Veda, nor oblation, Nor gift of alms, nor round of strict observance Can lead the inwardly depraved to heaven. The following exhortation to trust in Grod reminds one of how Jesus taught the same lesson, and in a similar strain : Strive not too anxiously for a subsistence, Thy Maker will provide thee sustenance ; No sooner is a human being born Than milk for his support streams from the breast. He by whose hand the swans were painted white, And parrots green, and peacocks many-hued, Will make provision for thy maintenance. Another passage glances from earthly to heavenly treasure ; 1 10 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. again a sound strikes the ear, strangely analogous to another utterance of the Great Master : Lay up the only treasure ; . . Amass that wealth which thieves cannot abstract, Nor tyrants seize, which follows thee at death, Which never wastes away, nor is corrupted. ( Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way,' said Jesus ; the Mahabharat says : Heaven's gate is very narrow and minute, It cannot be perceived by foolish men, Blinded by vain illusions of the world. E'en the clear-sighted, who discern the way And seek to enter, find the portal barred And hard to be unlocked. 1 Its massive bolts Are pride and passion, avarice and lust. 6 Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth ' is a precept enforced in the following lines : Pride not thyself on thy religious works ; Give to the poor, but talk not of thy gifts. By pride religious merit melts away, The merit of thy alms by ostentation. ' Overcome evil with good ' is a familiar sound in our ears, but we should hardly have looked for such a precept amongst the Hindus ; yet here it is : Conquer a man who never gives by gifts, Subdue untruthful men by truthfulness ; Vanquish an angry man by gentleness ; And overcome the evil man by goodness. Who would have expected to find the great lesson ' Blessing for cursing ' taught by Hindu sages more than two thousand years ago ? Yet it was taught in these words : i 1 ' Strive to enter in at the strait gate, for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in and shall not be able ' (Luke xiii. 24). Meditzval Hinduism. 1 1 1 Treat no one with disdain, with patience bear Reviling language ; with an angry man Be never angry; blessings give for curses. Bear railing words with patience ; never meet An angry man with anger, nor return Reviling for reviling, 1 smite not him Who smiteth thee, 2 let thy speech and acts be gentle. ' And who is my neighbour ? ' was the heartless query of the selfish lawyer, Luke x. 29. Jesus answered him by the beautiful parable of the Samaritan. The Pancha-tantra would answer him thus : The little-minded ask, * Belongs this man To our own family ? ' The noble-hearted Regard the human race as all akin. The golden rule, ' to do to all men as we would they should do to us,' and the beautiful precept, ' to love our neighbour as ourselves,' were similarly known, and taught centuries before the birth of our Lord. The Mahabharat says : Do nought to others which, if done to thee, Would cause thee pain ; this is the sum of duty. This is the sum of all true righteousness Treat others as thou would' st thyself be treated. Do nothing to thy neighbour which hereafter Thou would'st not have thy neighbour do to thee. In causing pleasure, or in giving pain, In doing good or injury to others, In granting or refusing a request, A man obtains a proper rule of action By looking on his neighbour as himself. 3 1 ' When he was reviled, he reviled not again ' (1 Peter ii. 23). 2 ' Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also ' (Matt. v. 39). 3 It is an interesting and noteworthy circumstance that the Golden Eule was taught by Confucius in China (B.C. 500) somewhere about the time that the chief portions of the Mahabharat were composed. A disciple of the Chinese sage asked him tor a single sentence which would comprise the whole duty of man ; he 1 1 2 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. It would be easy to multiply striking and beautiful senti- ments of a 'similar kind ; but we forbear. The selections we have made are enough to show that, in India, as elsewhere, amidst much theological gloom, the light of conscience and of the moral sense still survived. Neither pantheism nor polytheism could effectually extinguish the moral and religious torch which God and not man had lighted. We can well imagine that, with some of our readers, other feelings than those of surprise and interest may have attended the perusal of the foregoing extracts. Some may be even dis- concerted and troubled by the discovery that they were wrong in supposing the Bible absolutely unique in its moral teaching. They have, it may be, all along inferred that no parallel to its sublime enunciations could anywhere be found ; it almost startles them to find that some of the loftiest precepts of Christianity were taught in heathen lands ages before its Divine Author appeared in the world. Yet there is no denying tLis fact ; it is a truth which we must accept and admit. It has been well said that ' Half the errors in the world replied, ' Do nothing to any man which you would not wish him to do to you.' This precept occurs five times in the writings of Confucius. The following lines from the Mahabharat remind one of the familiar simile of the ' beam' and the ' mote' (Matt. vii. 3) : : An evil-minded man is quick to see His neighbour's faults, though small as mustard-seed; But when he turns his eyes towards his own, Though large as Bilva fruit, he none descries.' The following are a few of the striking utterances of Seneca, the Eoman philosopher, and others ' Expect from another what you do to another.' ' Other men's sins are before our eyes, our own behind our back.' ' Let him who hath conferred a favour hold his tongue.' ' God comes to men ; nay, what is nearer, comes into men.' 'A good man is God's disciple and imitator and his true offspring.' ' Temples are not to be built for God with stones piled on high. He is to be consecrated in the breast of each.' Epictetus also says, ' If you always remember that in all you do, in soul or body, God stands by as a witness, in all your prayers and your actions you will not err ; and you shall have God dwelling with you.' An Arabian maxim, quoted by the Persian poet Sadi, says, ' Confer benefits on him who has injured thee.' Mediceval Hinduism. 1 1 3 have originated in taking things for granted.' The volume of inspiration has been sorely wronged on this very principle ; in this way has it been ' wounded in the house of its friends,' and gratuitously assailed by its numerous foes. For instance, ' the men of the Book ' have, in past days, taken it for granted that the science of the Bible chimed in with the science of that period it was, perhaps, quite natural that they should assume, and without very deep searching decide, that such harmony did really exist; but when, as time went on, their science was proved to be defective or erroneous, their wisdom clearly was to review their position, and readjust their stand- point. On the other hand, the enemies of the Book have all too eagerly taken it for granted that the interpretations of its friends were tenable, and so have recklessly hurled against the venerable record the shafts of ridicule and scorn. * Down with it ! down with it, even to the ground ! it must perish along with its exploded science ! ' such has been their boastful and too hasty cry. The voice of wisdom replies, 6 Wait a while ; first- prove beyond a doubt that your science is right, and then honestly search and see if, rightly understood, the Book is at variance with your scientific demonstrations.' Will any candid reader deny that, so far as wisdom's voice has been obeyed, the result has been eminently satisfactory ? Crudities in science have been remedied, errors of Biblical interpretation have been rectified, and the upshot tends to show that the -Bible need not fear science, nor science the Bible. There is a close parallel between modern scientific discovery and the ' unearthing ' of the religious and moral treasures of ancient nations by students of our own day. These have dug down into the literary strata long hidden from human eyes, and, as the reward of their toil, have brought to light mines of moral wealth of whose existence our forefathers never dreamt. Our forefathers ' took it for granted ' that the Bible was the sole repertory of Divine truth, the solitary mine of moral I 114 Tlie Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. wealth. As they drew the moral map of the world, they saw themselves occupying a sphere of hallowed radiance, whilst the surrounding region was one of unrelieved, unbroken gloom the blackness of darkness. When the inner rim of the dark circle showed certain luminous streaks (as in the utterances of a Seneca, an Epictetus, and a Marcus Aurelius) the phenomenon ' was readily accounted for 'these were but gleams borrowed from the bright centre.' But what shall we say now, when it is clear that the outermost boundary of the dark circle was inter- sected by lustrous beams strangely akin to the brilliancy of the favoured centre ? What shall we say ? Why, what can we say ? The thing is true, it is incontrovertible, and if our foregone conclusions clash with the fact, the error is in them, and not in it. Clearly we are again driven to readjust our stand-point. The question then is does the Bible itself go on the assumption indicated ? does it claim for itself a monopoly of divine light and moral truth ? does it depict the outer circle, the heathen world, as a region of unmitigated gloom ? The only answer to these queries is a full and decided negative. Take, as an example of Biblical teaching on this subject, the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. No doubt, the picture is sombre enough when it portrays the condition into which the heathen had sunk ; but it shows the dark cloud of human depravity tinged throughout with Heaven-sent light. As regards theological knowledge, we read, * That which may be known of God is manifest in them (the heathen), for God hath showed it unto them.' ; When they knew God, they glorified him not as God' expressions which certainly imply that God, in some way, made divine knowledge accessible to the heathen, and that they, in some sense, possessed that knowledge. The same is involved in the saying that ' they held the truth in un- righteousness.' As regards their moral status, we are distinctly assured that they were ' a law unto themselves,' having ' the Medieval Hinduism. 1 1 5 work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another' (Kom. ii. 14, 15). Now all this strictly accords with the actual condition of the heathen world. As we have seen, the Hindus have ever had precious fragments of divine truth in their various systems, whilst their code of morals in great part reads as an echo of Christian ethics. The unbeliever lays his finger on this fact and says, e After all, then, Christianity taught no new truth, its moral teaching had long been anticipated.' The obvious answer is Christianity never professed to propound a new moral code ; Jesus never said that the great moral lessons which he taught had never been listened to before. The Apostles never hinted this ; St. Paul disdained not to enforce Christian truth by truth borrowed from heathen poets : the following texts are instances of the kind ( As certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring' (Acts xvii. 28); and 'Evil communications corrupt good manners 1 (1 Cor. xv. 33). 'People sometimes write and talk as if Pagan truth were one thing and Christian truth another ; but truth comes only from Him who is the Truth, and neither Jewish prophet nor heathen philosopher can attain to it, or act up to it, save by His aid.' 2 Even so , all light comes down from ' the Father of lights,' and of Him who was the True Light it has with literal truth been said, ' He lighbeth every man that cometh into the world ' (John i. 9). What advantage, then, hath Christianity ? much every way ; but chiefly in this, that it, and it alone, supplies the missing link. Man has ever known his duty, but he has ever lacked the power to fulfil it ; Christianity alone has supplied the power. The world has been like a well-constructed but motionless ma- chine, it needed steam ; Christianity has supplied motive power. Call it conscience, moral sense, natural religion what you will, 1 From Menander's 'Thais.' 2 Preface to Farrar's ' Seekers after God.' i 2 1 1 6 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. man has ever had a sacred witness and a faithful monitor ; but what has that availed ? the bitter cry of human helplessness has ever been going up : Ah ! if he give not arms as well as rules, What can he more than tell us we are fools ? Christianity has given ' arms,' whilst every other system merely furnished ' rules.' By its wondrous display of divine compassion, by the presentation of its marvellous scheme of vicarious atonement, by its matchless example of redeeming love, by the glorious hopes which it inspires, it electrifies the dormant affections and energies of the human mind ; it satisfies its deepest yearnings, it pours a stream of living vigour into dead souls, and brings to a beautiful and glorious realisation man's moral sense ; it enables him not only to appreciate and approve, but to do the things which are ' lovely, honest, pure, and of good report.' In this sense, emphatically, Christianity is unique and incomparable. However beautiful the moral pre- cepts of the heathen may be, it is the beauty of a corpse hasten- ing to decay ; Christianity breathes life into the corpse and arrests its decomposition. Was not Europe such a putrescent corpse at the advent of Christianity ? l 1 No one, be he friend or foe, would deny the vast superiority of Christianity (viewed merely as a system of ethics) over every other system ; its code of morals has a -wider and a loftier range than has any other that the world has known. But. Christian ethics rest upon Christian principles, and these are sui generis. Viewed in this light, the words of a writer already quoted from are no less true than beautiful. " A Seneca, a Musonius Rufus, an Epictetus, a Marcus Aurelius, might have been taught by the humblest Christian child about a Comfort, an Example, a llope, which were capable of gilding their lives with unknown bright- ness and happiness capable of soothing the anguish of every sorrow, of breaking the violence of every temptation, of lightening the burden of every care ' (Farrar's Seekers after God'). It has often struck us that those who insist upon regarding the Bible and Christianity as a natural outcome and uninspired conception of the Jewish race, overlook a feature of singular difficulty. It must be admitted, indeed it is admitted, that this moral and religious outcome is not only in advance of every other system, but that, whilst every other system has evinced a tendency to decay and dograda- Medieval Hinamsm. H 7 tion, its course has been an upward and improving one ; every other system has moved along an inclined plane passing from greater to lesser light ; why, in one case alone should the gradient be reversed? why should its course be exceptional passing from lesser to greater light? The difficulty becomes all the more inexplic- able (that is, on merely natural grounds) when we take into account the relative inferiority of the Jewish race in point of literature, science, and philosophy, to most of the nations of antiquity. "Whence, then, their superior moral elevation? lowest in the intellectual scale, how have they evolved a system of such moral and religious excellence? Here is clearly a case in which 'the last has become first and the first last.' Is this from Heaven, or is it of men ? 1 1 8 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. CHAPTER V. THE BUDDHIST ERA. ' Having no hope, and without God (Atheists') in the world ' (Ephes. ii. 12). WE coine now to a crisis in the religious history of India, of the most solemn and momentous kind; momentous, not merely, nor chiefly, because of its effects upon India, but because of its tremendous consequences to countless millions in other lands. We feel almost awe-struck as we contemplate the origin of that mighty system of religion which for 2>400 years has maintained a dominant sway in the East, and is at this moment the faith of 450 millions of men one third the population of the globe ! Reason is paralysed, and the mind overwhelmed by the thought that such a system was permitted to arise and prevail, a system which teaches every third man in the world to declare, as the first article of his creed ' There is no GodS We can only bow to the mysterious fact, whilst reason is hushed to silence by a still small voice, ' Be still and know that I am God ! ' The thoughtful reader needs not to be told that Buddhism, in its evolution, followed the ordinary law of cause and effect ; it succeeded, in short, as a natural sequence to facts and move- ments which had preceded it ; its way had been prepared, its seed sown, before it appeared as a visible and stern reality. Decadence and decay had long characterised Hinduism ; prim- itive sincerity and simplicity had yielded to growing formality ; the objects of worship had been greatly multiplied, the forms of worship had become complicated and mysterious ; sacerdotal influence had been immensely developed ; the institution of The Buddhist Era. 119 caste had become a powerful engine of tyranny and wrong ; Brahmanical domination had reached its hated climax. Side by side with all this, rationalistic speculations had been sapping the foundations of primitive belief and trust ; systems of philo- sophy were growing up which, while they intensely exercised the intellect, left the soul dark and dubious and sad ; an atmo- sphere of hazy unreality pervaded everything present or future. Such was the state of things when, somewhere about 550 B.C., the founder of Buddhism was born. 1 He was a Kshatriya by caste, and of royal blood. His father was the sovereign of a principality at the foot of the mountains of Nepaul. His family name was Gautama ; he afterwards added to that name the appellation Sramana (ascetic). He was also called Sakya, to which definition the term Muni (saint) was appended. In after life, i.e. when he evolved his religious system, he took the name of Buddha (the enlightened one). Another name by which he 1 It is a singular and deeply interesting fact that about this very time did other leaders of thought and founders of systems appear in other parts of the world . At this period was Pythagoras propounding in Greece many weighty truths and the strange doctrine of transmigration, whilst Zoroaster in Persia and Confucius in China were searching for light and labouring for the moral elevat : on of their fellows. The era indicated seems to have been remarkable for a sort of simultaneous movement of master-minds anxious to solve deep and awful mysteries. It is due to our readers and ourselves to observe that, in adopting the substantial truth of the following history of Buddha, we by no means vouch for the absolute veracity of all the particulars of that history. It is a history pertain- ing to, what may be almost termed, ' the pre-historic period.' We do not sav that imagination and tradition may not have contributed a touch or a twist to the original facts of that history ; but we unhesitatingly accept the general truthfulness of the story. In answer to those who would repudiate the whole history as a myth and invention, it is enough to say that the ablest Orientalists are against them ; nor is it too much to aver that an overwhelming preponderance of probability is against them too. Buddhism is a fact ; it had an origin ; it possessed an elevated morality ; that it owed its origin and its morality to some one master-mind is what few persons would dispute. The story of Buddha accounts for the phenomenon of the system which bears his name ; viewing the conditions of Hindu society at the period referred to, the story of the Keformer is natural and probable. On the other hand, if we reject the story we have the great fact of the origin of the system absolutely unaccounted for. Besides which, so peculiar are the features of this story so unlike a mere creation of fancy that, we may venture to say, it woidd fiave taken a genuine Buddha to have concciied a fictitious one. 1 20 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. is sometimes spoken of is Siddhartha (desired-object-attained) ; a legend states that this name was given him by his parents, who regarded the child as bestowed upon them in answer to prayer. He was born at Kapila-Vastu, the capital of the kingdom. From his very childhood he appears to have been of a thoughtful and studious turn, insomuch that the wise men of his father's Court predicted that he would at some time forsake the world and become a religious devotee. His father was sorely distressed at this ascetic tendency in the boy, and resolutely set himself to arrest and divert it. Accordingly, Gautama was early married, and the allurements and dissipations of an Eastern Court were skilfully spread out before him. There seems little reason to doubt that he actually yielded to these seductions, and for years revelled in the dubious pleasures- which, without stint, were provided for him ; tradition states that he had three wives .and some thousands of concubines. So he lived up to his twenty-ninth year ; probably the king consoled himself with the thought that his son was cured of his moody turn, and, it may be, Gautama himself thought so too. But it proved otherwise ; deep down in his soul there was a sense of disquiet which nothing could stifle, there were longings which nothing could satisfy ; the shouts of revelry might silence for a time the inward tumult, but it was still there ; and, doubtless, not unfrequently bitter moments of disgust and restlessness succeeded to scenes of reckless indulgence. It is easy to under- stand how, when an anxious mind is oscillating between two courses, a little thing may decide its choice. The story runs that, when Gautama was in this state of mind, he incidentally witnessed, in succession, four sights which powerfully affected him, and actually decided his future course. The first object was a decrepit old man ; this led him to reflect on the miseries of old age. He next passed a wretched leper, covered with sores ; here Gautama's thoughts glanced off to the manifold The Buddhist Era. 121 forms of disease and suffering with which the world abounds. The next object which crossed his path was a dead body; 'And this,' said he, ' is the end to which I and all must come I ' The picture was truly dark for him; the present was a gloomy enigma, and the future was unbroken night. A mind differently constituted to his might have adopted the Epicurean remedy : ' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' Gautama could no longer rest without seeking some solution of the dark problem. Anon, another object presented itself to him ; he beheld a recluse sitting wrapt in deep meditation. ' That,' said he to himself, ' is the only course for me to pursue.' The die was cast, his resolve was taken ; he would turn his back upon the world he would leave all that were dear to him ; he would bury himself in solitude, and seek, by a life of austerity and reflection, to unravel the deep mystery which oppressed and distracted his soul. That very night did he quit his home, de- termined no more to visit the haunts of men till he had found out a way of deliverance for himself and others. As it proved, he was not to be alone in his retirement ; five Brahman s joined him, sharing his privations, and emulating him in seeking light by meditation. Efforts were not spared to divert him from his purpose ; King Bimbisara of Maghada strove hard to wean him from what seemed so senseless a pur- suit ; the king offered him half his kingdom if he would give up his design ; the answer of Gautama was pointed and striking. ' I seek not,' said he, * an earthly kingdom ; I wish to become a Buddha ' (an enlightened person). Six years passed over, during which he practised the utmost severities, following with rigorous strictness the Brahmanical rule for the observance of ascetics. He thus honestly tested the beaten 6 way of knowledge,' but experience taught him the futility of this method ; he got no light for his soul, and his body was sinking under his rigid mortifications. He changed his plan ; he began to take more nourishment, that with a body J22 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. more vigorous he might obtain a higher degree of mental concentration. His Brahman friends now forsook him ; he was left utterly alone. He went to the neighbourhood of Gaya, there he seated himself under a mimosa tree (Ficus religiosa), and recommenced in solitude his meditations. The legend states that Mara, the devil, and other evil spirits at this time fiercely assailed him ; he, however, successfully battled with these temptations, and at length obtained the desire of his soul he found out the source of evil, and the way of eman- cipation. The conclusions he arrived at may be thus expressed : 1 . There is no supreme intelligent Author of nature. 2. Matter and individual souls have existed from eternity. 3. Animated being involves desire, and desire (a craving for supposed good) involves suffering. 4. Deliverance from suffering involves deliverance from desire, nirvana, extinction. Keduced to the form of a creed this theory propounds three articles of faith singularly brief and strangely appalling ! 1 . There is no God. 1 2. Conscious existence is the worst possible evil. 3. Annihilation is the highest possible good. Such was the outcome of so many years of painful, persistent research ; such the only answer which nature or intuition gave to the plaintive cry for knowledge which rose from an anxious and earnest soul ! To our minds the result seems terribly unsatisfying and painfully chilling; strange to say, it did not thus strike the mind of Gautama ; probably it was but one of many speculations which had preceded it in the mind of the enquirer. As these in succession had been discarded as untenable, we can well understand that the shadows of de- spair began to gather thick around him ; at length, out of his 1 Gautama virtually, though not expressly, taught this terrible negation, for, in accounting for the origin of things and in constructing his system, he entirely ignored and set aside all idea of a God. The Btiddhist Era. 123 very despair, he evolved the conception which we have de- scribed. All his efforts had been to pierce the dark cloud of human suffering ; his efforts had failed ; unaided by revelation and faith he could not discern the bright sunshine which lay beyond that cloud. What then could he do ? the cloud would neither rend nor remove ; he tinged it with the lurid gleam of atheism and hopelessness ; better, as it seemed to him, to have no God than a god of imperfection, darkness, and wrath, and better to cease to be, than continue to Jive in the life that is. There is truth in the axiom, 4 Anything better than sus- pense,' and this doubtless accounts for the ecstasy of Grautama when he had once reached a definite conclusion. He had at least become a Buddha ; he would be no more tossed about on the sea of uncertainty, he now knew the best and knew the ivorst of all that had troubled him. The following effusion denotes his rapturous joy at his achievement : See what true knowledge has effected here ! The lust and anger which infest the world, Arising from delusion, are destroyed Like thieves condemned to perish. Ignorance And worldly longings, working only evil, By the great fire of knowledge are burnt up With all their mass of tangled roots. The cords And knots of lands, of houses, and possessions, And selfishness which talks of ' self and ' mine,' Are severed by the weapon of my knowledge. .,**. The raging stream of lust which has its source In evil thoughts, fed by concupiscence, And swollen by sight's waters, is dried up By the bright sun of knowledge ; and the forest Of trouble, slander, envy, and delusion, Is by the flame of discipline consumed. Now I have gained release, and this world's bonds Are cut asunder by the knife of knowledge. Thus I have crossed the ocean of the world, Filled with the shark-like monsters of desire, And agitated by the waves of passion 1 24 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. Borne onward by the boat of stern resolve. Now I have tasted the immortal trnth Known also to unnumbered saints of yore That frees mankind from sorrow, pain, and death. Of the many pleasing traits in the character of Buddha, not the least remarkable is his humility ; this is indicated in the last line but one of the above extract ; he never claimed the homage of his fellow-men, he never arrogated to himself a monopoly of spiritual light ; he ever taught that he was but one of many Buddhas who had preceded him. His system, as he further elaborated it, reveals very clearly a strong infusion of Hindu notions. He firmly maintained the doctrine of transmigration of souls ; he recognised also the feature of retributive justice in the varying conditions of life ; he taught, moreover, that, between the intervals of transmigra- tion, human souls sojourned for definite periods in heaven or hell according to his theory there were many heavens and not fewer than 136 hells. So far the views of Buddha accorded with the doctrines of Hinduism. As regards 'his conception of the origin of things, his repudiation of a personal Deity and his idea of final emanicipation, he held much in common with the philosophers of the Sankhya school; their absolution was with him extinction ; but, as it may be questioned whether they really believed in an intelligent, living God, it is possible that the idea involved in both cases was much the same. Another point of distinction was also more apparent than real. Buddha rejected all notion of a divine revelation, and conse- quently ignored the authority of the Vedas; the orthodox philosophers, in terms, admitted the inspiration of those sacred books, but in their speculations they practically set them aside ; reason alone ruled them. The grand point of divergence between Buddhism and Hinduism was with regard to caste. There is little doubt that Gautama had long abhorred that monstrous institution, and it The Buddhist Era. 125 is the chief glory of his system that it utterly ignores all caste distinctions. On this point the great reformer spoke in no faltering accents : * According to my doctrine,' said he, ' there is no difference of caste ; redemption from the evils of existence will be obtained by all, even by the lowest in caste, if they take the path trodden by me. No person is hindered by his birth from escaping transmigration, even already after the present life.' The moral duties enforced by Buddha are admirable. The moral code which he propounded comprises eleven articles : five of these are negative, and six are positive injunctions. These are : 1, Kill not ; 2, Steal not ; 3, Lie not ; 4, Commit not adultery ; 5, Drink no strong drink ; 6, Exercise charity and benevolence ; 7, Be pure and virtuous ; 8, Be patient and forbearing; 9, Be courageous; 10, Be contemplative; 11, Seek after knowledge. 1 These injunctions were of universal obligation, they bound every follower of Buddha, every aspirant to nirvana, no matter what his position might be. In ad- dition to these, others of greater stringency were enjoined for the observance of priests ; they were to avoid eating at im- proper times, not to frequent dances or theatres, not to wear ornaments or use perfumes, not to lie on too comfortable beds, not to receive from anyone gold or silver. Still more rigid observances were allotted to those who adopted the life of a religious devotee ; they must wear only garments made of rags sewn with their own hands, covered with a yellow cloak ; they must live on charity, but ask for nothing ; must never eat more than one meal a day, and that before noon ; must live in 1 A variety of precepts are also given exemplifying the due scope of the moral code ; thus the prohibition against falsehood also prohibits all coarse and offensive ' language ; so, too, not only is patience enjoined, but meek endurance of injuries, resignation under trial, humility, penitence, confession of sin. It even appears as though some idea of expiation went with the acknowledgment of guilt. After the time of Buddha a royal edict, given, as it is thought, by Asoka, a Buddhist king of j Magadha in the third century B.C., commanded the people publicly to confess their sins every five years. 126 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. the woods, with no shelter but that of the trees ; must never sleep in a recumbent posture ; once a month they must visit a burning or burial ground, and there reflect on the vanity of all things. Of course, the idea was that, the greater the austerity the more rapid the progress towards the stage of nirvana, extinc- tion. Here, again, a marked feature of resemblance between Buddhism and Hinduism appears ; in each case meditation and mortification were enjoined as the highway to emancipation, i The Buddhist sought thereby to kill desire, and, desire gone, an- j nihilation would ensue ; the Hindu aimed at utter abstraction, forgetfulness of his personal identity, and, that attained, he / would lapse into the all-pervading Brahma. But a noteworthy ! difference also appears the devout Hindu said, ' All action, ! good and bad, necessitates future births and defers absorption, therefore I must cease from good deeds as well as bad ; I must "do nothing, I must think nothing.' The devout Buddhist said, 6 1 must cease from all evil action, but I must exercise myself to the utmost in charity, benevolence, and virtue, and thus I shall be hastened onwards towards nirvana.'* This brings before us the one great feature in which Buddhism stands out in striking and beautiful contrast to its more ancient rival. Hinduism the later Hinduism which was depicted in the preceding chapter, was essentially a selfish system, the development of caste made it such. However devout the Hindu might be, and however zealous in his religious exercises, his one thought centred upon self; his own sole emancipation was the thing he cared for. Buddhism, on the contrary, enjoined a world-wide benevolence ; it enforced universal charity ; it set forth the common brotherhood of all mankind, it breathed kindness to every living thing not to man only but to the meanest animal. Passing strange that a , system which ignored God could be so excellent !_womlrous that I the fabric of morality could tower so high with no divine basis The Buddhist Era. 127 to rest upon ! But, however we may admire and wonder at the structure, experience has proved it to be, what Godless morality must ever be, a veritable ' castle in the air.' Buddhism has utterly failed in making its followers virtuous, benevolent, and unselfish. The moral excellences enjoined by Buddha are no- where more conspicuous by their absence than in those lands where his religion most abounds. In speaking of the good points of Buddha's system we must not overlook two important considerations. It would be un- generous to Hinduism to deny that the reformer had learnt much that was morally excellent and true from the religion which he forsook ; indeed, he seems not to have professed that he evolved his moral code out of his inner consciousness. The other point to be borne in mind is the natural beauty and amiability of his character; he was just one of those men to whom the path of virtue is neither rugged nor steep, who are generous and benevolent, not because they have acquired such a disposition, but because it is natural to them. With Gautama active charity was less a duty than a pleasure, and from being a pleasure it grew by cultivation to an actual passion. Throughout the painful ordeal of his search after light, he ever had the benefit of others before him ; accordingly, no sooner had he attained his object than he commenced a life of active missionary labour. He returned to his home ; he instructed his father and all the members of his family in the new faith ; they became his earliest disciples ; but he left them, to carry the glad tidings to others ; he betook himself to his former Brahman friends and communicated to them his discovery. He was sorely grieved to find that some of those whom he had loved and honoured had, during the years of his seclusion, passed away strangers to the way of deliverance. He knew no distinctions of persons ; he proclaimed his doctrines to rich and poor, to the Sudra and the Brahman alike. Marvellous success rewarded his toil and diligence. It was but 128 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. natural that the Brahmans should oppose his levelling theory ; but the message of actual equality was sweet and grateful to their 1 despised and down-trodden inferiors ; no doubt, this was the I grand secret of Buddha's triumph ; moreover the very spectacle of the man a king's son, traversing the country in a mendicant's garb, eschewing honours, wealth, and ease, meekly enduring re- proach and contumely, consorting freely with the lowest of the , low, denying himself to instruct and benefit all must have ; deeply impressed his auditors and have aided their faith. The / superior moral tone of his teaching must also have commended itself to the consciences of myriads to whom the learned dis- quisitions of Hindu philosophers were a meaningless puzzle. But his success was not confined to the common people ; a number of petty sovereigns were led to embrace and further his ; religion. At length, after forty-five years of unwearied toil, he passed away. The closing scene of his life was touching and re- - mark able; it is said that he, on a preaching tour, had walked a greater distance than he had strength for he was eighty years of age ; he had also partaken of some unwholesome food ; the conse- quence was that he died of dysentery. He expired at Kusinagara, and his dying words were, ' All things are transient.' Can we but admire the goodness of the man, and the zeal of the missionary, with so little in his creed to foster virtue or inspire enthusiasm ? May we not venture to add, with truth, that, to modern missionaries, ' he being dead yet speaketh ' ? It does not appear that Buddha left any writings behind him. After his death a council was called by the King of Magadha and a collection was made of all the teachings and sayings of the reformer ; these were arranged into three sets of books, which record the doctrines, moral maxims, and metaphy- sical utterances of Buddha. These constitute the sacred scrip- tures of the Buddhists. The new religion in the meantime continued to spread, though its pi ogress was, no doubt, retarded by divisions and dis- The Buddhist Era. 129 sensions which arose in the Buddhist community. Asoka (the grandson of Chandragupta who, after the invasion of Alexander the Great, became King of Hindustan proper) embraced Buddhism, and made it the religion of the State. This sovereign , , displayed the utmost zeal and devotion in furthering his adopted faith. In the eighteenth year of his reign (about 246 B.C.) he summoned a general Council; its principal objects were the ' improvement of religious discipline, the repression of sectarian , tendencies, and a scheme for sending messengers to propagate : the Buddhist creed in foreign lands. Thus the missionary character which, by his teaching and \ example, the Founder of this religion had impressed upon it was developed into a scheme of foreign missionary enterprise ; not } only did Buddhism ignore caste distinctions in the land of his I $ birth, it overleaped the limits of nationality, and sought to / L, embrace the whole world. No other religion had till then ap-/ peared with cosmopolitan sympathies. Judaism had preceded Buddhism by eight centuries or more ; it had lit its lamp at a heavenly source, and had embodied divine truths to which the latter system was a stranger, but surely it is one of the strange problems of the comparison, that Judaism was less liberal of its light than was Buddhism, and that, in expansive philanthropy and world-wide charity, the latter outstript the former. It is a~~j deeply interesting fact that nearly three centuries before the divine commission was heard, ' Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature' (Mark xvi. 15), Buddhism was sending forth its heralds to proclaim in strange lands its P , { admirable morality, and its lifeless, godless creed. In this way, whilst this system, like a mighty Banian tree, flourished in its native soil, it shot forth its branches into Burmah, China, Thibet, and Ceylon ; in those lands the descending tendrils rapidly took root, branch after branch again spread; root after root descended, until at length the vast populations of those regions sheltered themselves under its shade. Little did K 1 30 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. Asoka and his council little did the zealous bands of mission- aries sent forth, imagine that, the system which they were so anxious to propagate in foreign parts was doomed utterly to perish in the land of its birth ; yet so it proved ; rapidly as the parent stem had developed, its roots had never struck very deep into the mother soil, and so, when the storm arose, it yielded to the strain, and fell prostrate, never to rise again. V J In accounting for the collapse of Buddhism in India and its triumph in other lands, various considerations must be weighed. f A Political changes in India helped towards the grand result. Fifty years after the death of Asoka the reins of power fell into the hands of a new dynasty inimical to the Reformer's faith. About the period of Christ's birth a Buddhist dynasty again en- couraged and helped it forward. In the third century of the Christian era a Hindu dynasty rose to power; again the fortunes (\ of Buddhism waned. In the meantime Brahmanism was mar- shalling its forces ; for centuries had controversy raged between the two hostile systems ; the Brahmans, with their usual adroitness, had tried cajolery and conciliation in the period of Buddhist predominance (Buddha, they said, was, after all, an in- carnation of Vishnu) ; in the season of its depression they had assailed it with bitterness and spleen ; they had fiercely attacked it in its most vulnerable aspect its atheistic character. In order to popularise Hinduism they created a new literature in the Puranas, and multiplied commentaries on the Vedic ritual ; they charmed the common people by the stories of Rama and Krishna. It is true the morality of Krishna and that of Buddha differed as widely as the poles ; the popular conscience could tot but admit that Buddha's rule was the best, but popular taste pronounced Krishna's the easiest, and most natural. Then stood out to fullest view the inherent weakness of Buddhism if there be no Grod, no eternal recompense, then where are the sanctions or encouragements for well-doing? Why exercise self-restraint and forego present enjoyment if nought but anni- hilation face us in the future ? The Buddhist Era. It is clear that, about A.D. 700, Buddhism had lost its power and prestige in India. 1 About the period of which we are speaking, two distinguished champions appeared on the Hindu side; these were Kumarila-Bhatta and Sankaracharya. / The former of these wrote an able commentary on Vedic cere- monial. The latter was one of the great lights of the eclectic school of philosophy ; he founded the Smartas, a sect of the Vedantists, and wrote numerous works of great ability in support of the old system. Sankaracharya also, apparently out of regard to the prevalence of monasticism amongst the Buddhists, established a number of Hindu monasteries. Thus new life was being infused into the old system, whilst the vitality of its once vigorous rival was oozing out. Buddhism as a religious revolution as a manly and virtuous protest against caste tyranny and priestly assumption gained an easy victory, and carried with it the acclamations of the masses ; but Buddhism as a godless creed could never find a permanent footing in India. The Hindus may be frivolous, fickle, changeful; in their religious conceptions they may be grossly inconsistent and strangely illogical; they may propound a pure morality whilst they bow down to deities who have outraged every moral principle ; they may present the anomaly of being at the same time pantheists and polytheists but if their religious history proves anything, it proves beyond a doubt that Hindus must \ have a God ; this is neither more nor less than a psychological " necessity of their being. They may even bring themselves, as we have before shown, to doubt their own existence ; but the existence of the Deity they cannot doubt : they may make Grod everything and everything Grod, but the Hindus, as a race, can 1 It is recorded that, about A.D. 400, Fa-hian, a Chinese Buddhist convert, paid a visit to India ; his account shows that atthatperiod Buddhism was in a prosperous ^ condition. He was followed by another pilgrim, Sung-Gung, in the sixth_century, and by a third, named Hiuen-thsang, a century later. Hiuen-thsang bewails the declension of Buddhism at that time; he declares that he found his Indian co- ~J religionists hardly a whit in advance of the heretics by whom they were surrounded. K 2 j (f /V 132 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. never tolerate the cry, ' There is no God.' A natural recoil from this cry really explains the phenomenon of the decadence ! A and death of Buddhism in India. 1 There is no doubt that actual and fierce persecution helped to give the death-blow to Buddhism. As the Brahmans re- gained political power in the country they hesitated not to employ other than polemical weapons against their adversaries ; history, or perhaps legend, seems to show that in Southern India some thousands of Buddhists were put to death. At length, in the twelfth century, the struggle culminated in the extirpation of Buddhism, and the re-establishment of Hinduism throughout the country. Thus had the ancient religion of India victoriously surmounted the most formidable peril to which it had ever been exposed. For a time its supremacy had gone, its glory was eclipsed ; but it merely bent its head to the storm and then arose from the dust erect, unscathed and vigorous as ever. The battle had been fierce and long ; surely the fact that Hinduism survived the arduous struggle must indicate the singular vitality of that system must show that 1 The fact that, though Buddhism has been expelled from the land of its birth, it has found a home in an empire like China and elsewhere, is no doubt remarkable, but two things help to account for this. In the first place, as regards the Chinese, no one can have visited China, after sojourning in India, without feeling that he has passed at once into a new atmosphere ; it is impossible to conceive a greater contrast than appears between the characteristics of the two peoples; and you are compelled to feel that the differences are essential, not accidental, that they are not so much the consequences of differing morafand religious training, but natural and constitutional differences. You find the Chinese in all matters of business, keen, intelligent, ingenious, plodding ; in these respects they cast the Hindus into the ^j shade ; but you search in vain in China for the deep spiritual yearnings and the contemplative tone which so strongly mark the people of India, Those are of the earth, earthy ; these at least pant after something higher and better. Thus a godless faith was a possibility in China. But it is a singular illustration of the truth that even the least religious of human kind must have some object of worship, that in China and other Buddhist countries gods of various kinds are honoured ; religious homage is paid to them and temporal benefits are sought at their hands ; relics too are kept aud worshipped all \\hich is, of course, opposed to primitive Buddhist teaching. The Buddhist Era. 133 its earth-born adversary had utterly failed to pierce the joints of that armour which so effectually shielded its hidden life. Necessarily the banished system left certain traces of its influence behind ; Hinduism was not exactly the same thing that it had been ; the ancient institution of sacrifice was never restored to its primitive ideal; the dogma of transmigration was strengthened and expanded ; and in connection with this dogma, which teaches the possibility of human souls inhabiting the bodies of animals, Buddhism inculcated and left behind it a habit of kindly regard for the whole brute creation. The small sect called Jains is the sole relic of the Buddhist community in India. Their original founder was a royal prince called Parswanath. t They first appeared in South Behar (Magadha), in the second century of the Christian era. 1 Some two hundred and fifty years later Mahavira was born of the same stock. He taught a more rigid discipline than had be- fore prevailed ; his followers, like himself, are ascetics ; they are called Digambaras, ' clad in space,' or ' naked.' The followers of Parswanath are called Svetambaras, ' clothed in white.' These, according to their founder's practice, should always wear but one white cloth ; the others, if they copied their teacher's example, would wear no clothing at all ; at the present day neither the one party nor the other strictly observes the prescribed rule. The term Jain comes from the word Jina, which means ( a conquering saint,' one who has vanquished self and desire. The Jains say there have been, in all, twenty- four Jin as ; Parswanath and Mahavira were the two last of these. They agree with the Buddhists in rejecting the Hindu Vedas ; but they have a sacred literature of their own, dis- tinct from that which records the teachings of Buddha. They 1 The Jains claim for themselves a much higher antiquity ; indeed, they maintain that they were anterior to Buddhism ; their chronology, however, is throughout unreliable. The precise period of their origin cannot be determined, but the burden of evidence seems to point to the era specified. 134 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. believe in the eternity of matter and mind, and, like the Buddhists, ignore the idea of a Supreme Being. The chief points of their difference from the Buddhists consist in their worshipping the Jinas and in according a sort of inferior homage to certain Hindu deities, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, and Gronesa. Their object in adoring the twenty-four Jinas is to obtain their help in attaining to emancipation ; they consider that, in addition to their individual efforts, the mediation of the Jinas may greatly facilitate their ultimate deliverance. There is no doubt that the Jains have been gradually receding from the Buddhist type ; they are drawing nearer their Hindu brethren in their sympathies and practices. Al- ready the Brahmans exercise a growing influence over them ; they uphold certain caste distinctions, and in many of their temples employ Brahmans to perform their religious ceremonies. It is not, therefore, unreasonable to suppose that Jainism will, in time, be absorbed into the orthodox Hindu system. It is estimated that at the present time the members of this sect in the whole of the Bengal provinces do not amount to one hundred thousand. The Mohammedan Era. 135 CHAPTER VI. THE MOHAMMEDAN ERA. ' And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle ; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men . . . and they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails' (Rer. ix. 7, 10). ISLAM followed in the wake of Buddhism. Hinduism, after cen- turies of bitter strife, had crushed and banished its atheistic rival ; but the shouts of triumph and the songs of victory had not died out before another formidable foe appeared on the field. Another religious duel was to be fought ; the ancient creed of India had vanquished a heretical offshoot of its own, could it as successfully cope with a foreign faith ? a faith which, like itself abhorred atheism, but which, unlike itself, denounced all idolatry a faith which, like its vanquished foe, denied caste distinctions, but which, unlike that foe, permitted present, and promised eternal, gratification a gratification as sensuous and sensual as human nature could well desire? Hinduism was evidently to pass through a more trying ordeal than that which she had just survived. It will be the aim of this chapter to describe the struggle which ensued and to trace its issue. How it may be with the reader we know not, but, as we enter on this subject, we cannot but experience a rush of solemn and weighty reflections, akin to those which occupied our minds when we contemplated the rise and progress of the mighty system treated of in the last chapter. Inscrutable are Thy ways, most mighty God ! inscrutable in what Thou permittest no less than in what Thou doest ! Taking Calvary as our' stand- 136 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. point, what a marvellous panorama spreads out behind us 'and before us ! what a strange retrospect ! what an amazing prospect ! The glorious transaction on that mount a transaction on which the world's salvation depends, appears midway between the two. Six centuries before that event we see an anxious, troubled soul retiring to the gloomy solitude of a forest in search of light and peace ; after years of painful thought we behold him issue forth with his dreary, cheerless creed a creed professed in our day by one third of the human race. Six centuries after the grand event spoken of, we see another doubting, restless soul, retiring to a cave in an Arabian mountain. After five years of strange experiences he too burst upon the world as the propounder of a new faith, and that faith now numbers 160 millions of followers. How the mind yearns, but yearns in vain, to look behind the veil, to trace out, not only those wondrous and momentous events, but the position they occupy in the providential scheme -of Him who is the righteous King of the whole earth ! Again are we hushed to silence. ' Be still and know that I am God.' In dealing with the contact of Hinduism with Mohamme- danism it will give interest and perspicuity to the view pre- sented if we first briefly sketch the origin and character of the religion of the Arabian prophet. It seems desirable, moreover, that some account should be given of such of the sects of Islam as have figured in that part of Indian history to which the present chapter relates. What we said as to the origin of Buddhism may be averred with equal truth of Mohammedanism it was the outcome of the age rather than the evolution of an individual ; it was the legitimate upshot of influences and tendencies which had been operating long before they assumed that concrete shape which Mohammed gave them. Different as the two religions are, they came to the birth under very similar circumstances. In the one case primitive Hinduism had been corrupted ; the prevalence of superstition, priestcraft, caste tyranny, and rationalistic specula- The Mohammedan Era. 137 tion, had unsettled the minds of thoughtful men ; a more or less audible cry for reform was rising from many an anxious breast Buddhism __was the response to that cry. In the other case, the once pure and simple monotheism of Arabia had gradually faded away into nature-worship ; that, again, had lapsed into gross idolatry ; the eclipse of religious truth and faith was attended by a deteriorating standard of morals ; infanticide and polyan- dry were results and evidences of the downward tendency ; then it was that a cry for light and deliverance began to be heard. Mohammed himself was one of the nobler spirits who groaned under the national apostasy, and longed for some mode of emancipation some scheme of religious and moral elevation. And as Buddhism, though a revolt against Hinduism, derived many of its leading features from that system, so did Moham- medanism gather up into itself and reflect the various hues of religious thought which prevailed in the land of its birth. As an eclectic system of religion Mohammedanism was infinitely more successful than was its predecessor in India. Buddhism appropriated several important elements of Hinduism, but it rejected the one which was vital faith in a personal God, and thus it sealed its own doom. Mohammedanism formed an in- genious amalgamation of the three prevailing systems of Arabia Paganism, Judaism, and Christianity ; the former constituted the basis for its institutions and observances, the two latter were the repertory from which its doctrines were mainly derived. Unhappily for himself and unfortunately for the world, Moham- med drew his waters from a poisoned stream ; he encountered a Judaism debased by Talmudic puerilities and a Christianity degraded and overlaid by human inventions. One cannot but ask how different the upshot might have been had Christian truth presented itself to the enquiring mind of Mohammed in its pristine truth and beauty. The Arabian nation traces its origin to two sources ; the Joktanian Arabs look back to Joktan, the great-great-grandson frfctUU'i tfi 138 The Trident^ the Crescent, and the Cross. of Shem, as their forefather ; the Ishmaelite Arabs date their origin from Ishmael, the son of Abraham by the Egyptian hand- maid Hagar. Amongst the former branch we find the ancient kingdom of the Sabseans. Tradition states that the Queen of Sheba who went to test the wisdom of Solomon was a ruler of that kingdom. But divine promises had pointed to the supremacy of the later branch (Gren. xvi. 10; xvii. 20; xxi. 18). Accordingly we find the Ishmaelites commingling with surrounding races and gradually impressing their character upon them. In this way they seem in time to have comprehended not only the Joktanian Arabs, but the Midianites and the Idumseans, and to have established an undisputed ascendency in the land. There can be little doubt that, as with the earliest Aryan settlers in India, so with the early Arabs, they had ideas of the Deity comparatively pure and simple and true. This cir- cumstance is less remarkable in the case of the Arabians than in that of the Aryans ; we can more readily indicate the sources of light in that case than in this. How much independent light the Joktanians possessed we know not, but the Ishmaelites sprang from Abraham ' the friend of Grod,' and their accession, we can well imagine, brought with it decided traces of light and truth. If we bear in mind too, what there is no reason to doubt, that the inspired book of Job was written in Arabia, and that Moses spent the second forty years of his life in that country, we see that the ancestors of Mohammed enjoyed special religious advantages. The sojourn of the Israelites in the wilderness must have been marked by intercourse with the people of the land, and though that intercourse would not be an unmixed good, stoill the wondrous miracles which God wrought for His people at that time, the public worship of Jehovah in the tabernacle surmounted with the abiding pillar of glory, the presence of 'Moses and Aaron among His saints' these and other influences must have been salutary and instructive to the The Mohammedan Era. 139 Arabians. Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, a prince and priest of the country, was doubtless one of many who profited by those advantages. The testimony borne in the Bible to the piety and zeal of the Eechabites, one of the tribes of Arabia, shows that the true God was known and worshipped among that people. There can be little doubt that, as in India so in Arabia, the first step in the downward course was the worship of the heavenly bodies. From regarding these objects as symbols of the true God, the Arabians as well as the Aryans, by a natural transition, came to honour them as actual deities. In each case, in all probability, the transition was accomplished by almost imperceptible degrees, an idea of a Supreme Deity remaining long after the people had come to fall down to ' gods many and lords many.' A remarkable passage in the Book of Job shows that even in the days of that patriarch the leaven of physiolatry was working : ' If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness ; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand ; this also were an iniquity to be punished by the Judge ; for I should have denied the God that is above' (Job xxxi. 2628). That Job herein indicates and censures the growing evil, few will doubt ; but the allusion to the action of the Judge implies that nature-worship was at that period more or less an illicit practice ; it only required time to make that and much grosser forms of worship universal in the land. Idol temples and altars were set up in all parts of the country. The principal sanctuary, called the Kaaba, was in the city of Mecca. This famous temple, which was the grand centre of Pagan worship, and which maintained its pre-eminence after the conversion of the nation to Islam, was a simple square edifice, with little adornment. It contained, however, no fewer than 360 idols ; it had also an object of remarkable virtue and sanctity this was a black stone, to which the Pagan Arabs showed special devotion ; every pilgrim kissed it and believed 140 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. that contact with it in some way relieved him of his sins. The simple worshippers asserted that the stone was originally white, but that it had become black by absorbing the sins of men. Tradition attributed the building of the Kaaba to Abraham himself, and it was said to stand near the spot where the patriarch had gone to offer up his son, that son not being Isaac, but Ishmael. Ishmael is said to have introduced the sacred stone. The adjoining well of Zamzen was likewise said to have been the fountain from which Hagar and her son had quenched their thirst l (Gen. xxi. 19). Mecca was thus to the Pagan Arabs the holiest place on earth ; pilgrims flocked to it from all parts of the country ; an important feature of the worship prescribed consisted in com- passing again and again the holy Kaaba. The rite of circum- cision was universally practised, abstinence from wine was en- joined, oaths were made in the name of the national religion ; amongst colours, green was ever the favourite with the Pagan Arabs. These and many more features of the olden times Mohammed sagaciously imported into his own system. The 360 idols of the Kaaba were demolished, truly ; but the sacred stone still remains an object of intense veneration to the thou- sands of Mussulman pilgrims, who, from all parts of the world, wend their way to the holy city. The mosque which is built over the Kaaba is compassed by the pilgrims as was done of 1 These traditions sufficiently account for the superior sanctity which attached to the temple at Mecca a sanctity which it still retains in the eyes of all good Mussulmans. One of the most curious instances of legendary localisation extant is furnished by the notions of the Samaritans of the present day. They believe that Paradise stood on the summit of Mount Gerizim, that out of its dust Adam was formed ; places are indicated on which the holy Seth erected altars ; Gerizim, moreover, is the Ararat of Genesis on which the Ark rested ; there too are the remains of Nfah's altar shown with seven steps, on each of which they say he offered a sacrifice ; nor is the very altar on which Isaac was bound wanting; yea, the very thicket in which the ransoming ram was caught is pointed out ; and the marvellous aggregation is completed by the presence of the very spot on which Jacob slept and wir the ladder reaching up to heaven! so that doubtless much more than appears was involved in tho utterance of the woman of Samaria, ' Our fathers worshipped in this mountain ' (John iv. 20). The Mohammedan Era. 141 yore, and the pilgrim of to-day believes he receives spiritual benefits by a visit to Mecca quite analogous to those which the Pagan Arabs looked for. In a former chapter we noted a peculiar feature of the Hindus in their present polytheistic state ; it is that, in ordi- nary conversation, they ever speak as monotheists ; although they acknowledge countless deities, they speak as though God were one. The same feature seems to have obtained amongst the Arabs of old ; at the very time when they were bowing down to hundreds of gods of wood and stone, there was the following form of prayer common amongst them : 'I dedicate myself to Thy service, Grod ! Thou hast no companion, except Thy companion, of whom Thou art absolute Master, and of whatever is his.' 1 It is thus evident that the famous formula of Moham- medan faith was but the antitype and almost a re-echo of the confession used long before Mohammed appeared. The Kalima put forth by the prophet, the repetition of which is enforced by the most awful obligations and encouraged by the most important promises, runs thus : ' There is no other Grod but Gfod, and Mohammed is fche messenger of Grod.' It cannot be doubted that, over and above the dissatisfac- tion felt by numbers of thoughtful Arabs towards the national idolatry, the presence of numerous bodies of Jews and Chris- tians in the country would be a disturbing and unsettling ele- ment. The descendants of Ishmael found themselves in daily contact with persons professing two creeds mutually antagonistic, yet each agreeing with their own as to certain great religious facts of history ; each creed claimed to be divine, whilst each denounced the other, and both united in condemning the pre- vailing Pagan worship. The Jewish and Christian sections of the community were not only numerous, but possessed con- siderable political power. At times, indeed, their respective 1 Quoted by Dr. Arnold in his Islam and Christianity, from the writings of Abulfarag. 142 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. influence overpowered that of the Pagan section ; and instances actually occurred of, now a Jew and now a Christian, attaining to regal dignity. All these things must be taken into the ac- count if we would estimate the various agencies which oper- ated in calling into being and giving a complexion to the creed of Islam. ' What is truth ? ' was the enquiry of many a perplexed and troubled soul ; a general impression was felt by such persons that each of the rival creeds contained the ele- ments of truth largely commingled with and obscured by error ; who was to separate the gold from the dross ? who would restore the pure and simple faith of their father Abraham ? Some years before Mohammed appeared, a large meeting of the Koreishites, the tribe to which he belonged, was held. 1 At that gathering some of the earnest souls spoken of were present ; four of them held a private conference, and found that they thought and felt alike. ' Our fellow-countrymen,' said tliey, ' are in a wrong path, they are far astray from the religion of Abraham. What is this pretended divinity, to which they immolate victims, and around which they make solemn pro- cessions ? a dumb and senseless block of stone, incapable of good and evil. It is all a mistake ; seek we the pure religion of our father Abraham ; to find it, if need be, let us quit our country, and traverse foreign lands.' Three of those enquirers actually set out on their journey in search of truth ; they were ultimately received into the Christian Church. The story of the fourth is very touching and suggestive ; his heathen relatives prevented his going with his friends, and they were sorely distressed at his growing estrangement from the national faith. Zaid, for such was his name, found his only relief in prayer ; he daily visited the Kaaba, and cried to God for enlightenment; there he might be seen leaning with his back against the wall of the temple, and reiterating the petition : ' Lord, if I knew in what way 1 For the following deeply interesting facts we are indebted to Dr. Arnold's Islam and Christianity, pp. 35, 36. The Mohammedan Era. 143 Thou didst will to be adored and served, I would obey Thy will ; but I know it not.' Nothing, to our mind, is more affecting than cries like this going up from dark souls panting for light and peace ; how many of such cries are even now going up from the gloomy regions of heathendom only the Lord Grod of Sabaoth, who prompts and listens to such cries, can tell. Are not such cries answered ? answered how, we know not, but an- swered in love and mercy by Him who has declared, ' If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine ' (John vii. 17). The conduct of Zaid beautifully exemplified his earnestness and sincerity. He determined to act up to his limited know- ledge ; if he knew not the full truth, he would at least raise his voice against what he knew to be false ; accordingly he protested against many of the prevailing superstitions of the day. Like certain scrupulous Christians in the days of St. Paul, he warned all men against eating flesh offered to idols ; he also vigorously denounced the inhuman practice of destroying female infants. It was his glory and privilege to suffer for well-doing his uncle shut him up in prison ; after a time he escaped from his con- finement, and disconsolately wandered from place to place. During his wanderings the tidings reached him that an Arabian prophet was preaching the pure faith of Abraham at Mecca ; this prophet was Mohammed ; he had issued from his seclusion, and was proclaiming himself a messenger sent from Grod. These strange tidings fired the eager soul of Zaid ; immediately he turned his face towards the holy city, but he was never to reach that spot, he was never to listen to the pleadings of the self- sent messenger ; he was robbed and murdered on the road. Had he arrived at Mecca, can we doubt that, heart and soul, he would have thrown himself into the dubious movement ? and shall we not say that ' Grod took him, having provided some better thing for him ' ? It is easy to see that the existence in that era of men like 144 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. Zaid goes far to account for the origin and success of Moham- med's teaching. This brings us to the prophet himself. Sadly chequered and trying was the early history of Mohammed ; he came of a princely line, but his family was poor. He was born in the year 571 A.D. When he was but two months old his father died ; his mother Amena, gave the child to Halema, a Beduin woman, to nurse. According to agreement the nurse restored the child to his mother when he was two years of age ; Halema, however, seems to have been attached to the infant and craved permission to retain him a little longer; her request was granted ; but, to the surprise of all, at the end of two months she brought back the child and refused to keep him any longer ; she said she believed him to be possessed with evil spirits. The truth is, epilepsy had developed itself, and the fits were attributed to those malignant agents. This infirmity character- ised Mohammed up to man's estate, and, as it will be seen, con- stituted a not unimportant feature in his subsequent religious evolution. At the age of six his mother died ; this threw him on the protection of his grandfather ; but the poor orphan was to pass from hand to hand ; two years later the death of his grandfather threw him upon the care of an uncle. He subsequently took a journey with his uncle to Bussora. History states that the party accepted the hospitality of a Christian monk named Bahira, who foretold the coming greatness of the child. At sixteen he is seen travelling with another uncle ; at twenty he figures on a field of battle. From that period up to his twenty-fifth year he seems to have lived as a shepherd in the neighbourhood of Mecca. After a time he accepted a post as mercantile agent to a rich widow named Khadija. Whilst in her service he made journeys to Syria and elsewhere. The utmost integrity and diligence seem to have marked him in the discharge of his duties. The result was that he not only gained the confidence The Mohammedan Era. 145 but the affection of his mistress, and she offered him her hand and heart. At this time Mohammed was less than twenty-six years of age, whilst Khadija had seen forty summers. The future prophet, however, saw in this disparity no bar to the proposed union. They were married. Commercial misfortunes followed his marriage, and ulti- mately he lost all his property. What effect this reverse had upon him we are left to conjecture ; it will hardly be doubted that this was one link in the chain of events which was leading him to the momentous issue. From his thirty-fifth to his fortieth year he lived much in retirement and frequently resorted to a cave in Mount Hara ; generally he remained there in soli- tude ; sometimes he was accompanied by Khadija. What transpired during those visits we know not ; it is quite sup- . posable that for a considerable period no definite scheme, no ambitious project, loomed on the horizon of his vision ; we can quite believe, and see no reason for doubting, that many a time, with a burdened, restless, anxious spirit, he sought solace in solitary musings and devout breathings. We have no sympathy with those who can discern no other aspect of Mohammed than that of a hypocrite and impostor ; apart from the uncharitable- ness of this view, it utterly fails to account for all the phenomena which meet us in his religious history. We prefer to regard the prophet, in the opening of that history at least, as sincere and ingenuous, as conscious of an honest feeling after light and truth. At what particular moment the pellucid flow of his thoughts and desires contracted the first slight taint of mixed motives to what degree, as the stream became more and more turbid, he was self-deceived, or a conscious deceiver, or both, it is not for us to pronounce. We simply give the facts as they present themselves to us. Mohammed was in his fortieth year when he had the first alleged vision of the angel Gabriel. It was during repeated angelic visitations he received, as he professed, the divine reve- L 1 46 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. lations which are embodied in the Koran. It has already been stated that from infancy he was subject to epileptic attacks, and from the description given by eye-witnesses and others of his condition at the time of receiving those divine communications, it se^ms impossible to doubt that he was at such times suffering from spasmodic affections of that nature ; they speak of him as trembling, foaming at the mouth, and uttering loud cries ' like a young camel.' The popular idea attributed all such convul- sions to demoniacal possession, and it seems unquestionable that Mohammed shared the popular impression ; he believed himself to be possessed. Some time before the period of which we are speaking he had actually sought deliverance through the efforts of an exorcist ; and there seems to be the strongest ground for believing that, for some time after the visions commenced, he suspected that the excitement of which he was the subject 'was- occasioned by occult and malignant agency. This fact, whilst it shows his liability to superstitious delusion, rebuts the idea of designed imposition. Strange to say, a Christian priest named Waraka, a cousin of Khadija the wife of the prophet, was a main instrument in removing the impression of diabolical influence from the mind of Mahommed. He and Khadija to- gether succeeded in satisfying the prophet that his strange visitants in the solitary cave were from above and not from beneath. Mohammed, thus convinced and relieved, stood forth as a divinely accredited messenger, as the medium of a new revela- tion and the reformer of the national faith. There can be little doubt that at this period the prophet contemplated nothing beyond a national reformation; the idea of giving a new faith to the world was a later conception; it was the result of unlooked-for success in working out the original programme. Accordingly we find that in the earliest draught of his scheme he fights neither with small nor great, save only with national corruptions ; he denounces idolatry, proclaims The Mohammedan Era. in uncompromising tones the unity of God, and boldly rebukes certain prevalent vices. In those early days, when asked by an enquirer respecting his faith and doctrine, he merely re- plied that, ' he taught men to worship one God, to requite kindness to parents, not to kill children or any other person, to shun every crime, not to touch the goods of orphans, and to keep promises.' l His attitude towards Jews and Christians at that period was courteous and friendly ; he affirmed that the revelations which were vouchsafed to him were in no sense meant to supersede the divine authority of the Old and New Testament ; he too, as a prophet, was only one of the many prophets who, from the days of Abraham, had appeared. Of Jesus he spake as the ' Messiah,' c the Word of God,' ' the Word of Truth,' ' the Spirit of God.' He also admitted His miracu- lous conception. In order to conciliate and gain the suffrages of these two powerful sections of the community he made important concessions : the Jews might celebrate Mosaic ordinances, keep their sabbath, observe their fasts and pray with their faces towards Jerusalem. He seems to have been even more cordial and liberal to the Christians ; indeed, he began by adopting the ceremonial of baptism in admitting his converts. All these concessions were withdrawn as time advanced, and a far more rigid and dominant tone began to characterise the later teachings of the prophet. Growing power and wide- spread success led to loftier and more extensive claims ; not only must idolatry be subdued, ' the men of the Book ' must be subjugated too. The earlier revelations of Mohammed ac- corded with the modesty of his pretensions ; but the element of coercion was sanctioned when the means of exercising it were achieved. Obstinate idolaters were to be slain, and Christians and Jews who refused to acknowledge the religious supremacy of the prophet, were to be subjected to tribute. The changing 1 Arnold's Islam and Christianity. L 2 148 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. tone and accommodating aspect of those advancing revelations constitute, without doubt, the most suspicious feature in the case. Probably no one would have been more astonished than Mohammed himself had he been told, in his earlier and better days, that he would promulgate as the decree of Heaven the following fiery injunction : ' Fight for the religion of Grod against those who fight against you . . . kill them wherever you find them . . . fight against them till there be no temp- tation to idolatry and the religion be (rod's.' The dubious feature of accommodation in those so-called divine communications is nowhere more remarkable than in their bearing upon Mohammed's matrimonial relations. The original instructions on the subject of marriage allowed but four wives to each believer. It may fairly be assumed that, when this law was proclaimed, Mohammed purposed a loyal allegiance to it himself. He knew not his own weakness. Up to the age of fifty he had but one wife ; Khadija then died ; before a month elapsed he married again ; another and another wife was added to his domestic circle, until at length the pre- scribed limit had been exceeded. But a special revelation gave the messenger of Grod a dispensation which justified his con- duct ! 1 At his death he left nine widows to bewail him ; he had buried two of his wives before. He had besides a number of concubines amongst his slaves. Some time before his death a revelation restricted him to the wives he already possessed, but, strange to say, at the time of his death he was engaged to marry another. The divine communications contained in the Koran were received by the prophet at different periods, and on various occasions during the last twenty-three years of his life. They 1 One of the darkest features of his history was his marriage of Zeinab, the wife of a slave he had liberated, named Zaid. Mohammed persuaded the husband to divorce his wife, that he might be able to possess her. Finding that scandal was occasioned thereby, he published a special licence from heaven authorising the pro- ceeding. The Mohammedan Era. 149 were originally written on scraps of parchment, leather, palm- leaves, stones, shoulder-blades, and other materials. It was not until after the death of the prophet that these were col- lected and the Koran compiled. To those scattered records were added numbers of unwritten sayings of the prophet which had dwelt in the memories of his followers. The result was not satisfactory ; this first version of the Koran was so full of discrepancies and became such a source of discord to the faith- ful that the Kaliph Othman had a new and revised edition prepared ; he then, to ensure harmony of teaching and belief for the future, ordered every copy of the previous edition to- be destroyed ; an order which seems to have been successfully carried out. The effect of this judicious proceeding was, no ' doubt, to lessen the chaotic aspect of the Koran, but it left a sufficiently appalling residuum of confusion and contradiction, a residuum which all the labours of learned doctors for twelve centuries past have not been able to reduce to order. Indeed, those Mohammedan commentators have agreed that there are at least 225 passages so mutually contradictory and irrecon- cilable that they resist all attempts to bring them within a reasonable harmony of the book. To surmount this grave difficulty, they have adopted, with regard to these incorrigible texts, the theory of abrogation ; they say that, when two texts are mutually at variance, the latest in the order of revelation was meant to abrogate and supersede the former. But this solution, ingenious as it may be, is far from settling the diffi- culty ; no sooner does the question of chronology arise than the \ doctors flounder in the depths of inextricable confusion ; the Koran has hardly any certified chronological data to guide tha enquirer. The notion of abrogation has, no doubt, traditional I ground to rest upon, though most impartial minds would wonder at the precedent. On one occasion a friend wrote down from the lips of Mohammed a verse containing a divine revela- tion ; on the following morning the friend found to his 150 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. surprise it had been erased ; he asked the prophet an explana- tion of the matter, and received the answer that the communi- cation ' had been taken back to heaven ' ! Viewed as a literary production the Koran is allowed to possess great merit: even infidel scholars admit, what the doctors of Islam maintain, the excellence of the work in respect \ of language and style ; but the extraordinary anachronisms and historical and scientific blunders, besides errors of a graver nature, which disfigure the book, are as conclusive against the information and enlightenment of the author as against its | supernatural claims. Pharaoh and Haman are said to have f been contemporaries, and the Virgin Mary is said to be the sister of Aaron, the first High Priest ! Alexander the Great is described as a follower of the true God, erroneous accounts are given of his expeditions, and he is said to have reached the spot where the sun sets ; he found the orb of day rested at night in a spring of black mud! The following passage gives some idea of the extraordinary puerilities of the Koran : * If you hear a cock crow, pray for mercy, for it has seen an angel ; but when you hear an ass bray take refuge in God, for the ass has seen a devil ' ! But such instances are legion. It has been well re- marked that if the Koran, though the work of but one person, abounds with so many errors and contradictions, what would have been the case if, like the Bible, it had been composed by a multitude of different authors, in different countries and eras? If Mohammed's theology was somewhat better than his science and chronology, it was because he had better sources of informa- tion to draw upon. The teaching of the Old and New Testaments, reflected in the uncertain mirrors of the Talmud and the Apocryphal Gospels, together with floating traditions of both Jews and Christians, were these sources. 1 In the doctrinal system 1 That Mohammed imported very much both of fact and doctrine from those sources into his system, may be clearly proved from the Kor.in itself; doubtless he The Mohammedan Era. \ 5 r of Mohammed the unity of (rod and absolute submission to His will constitute its grand fundamental dogmas the centre round which everything else revolves. The character and attributes of Deity are well, though not perfectly, described. He is shown to be almighty, omnipresent, omniscient, and merciful ; but, strange to say, that which in the Bible is His most prominent characteristic moral perfection and holiness is wanting in the Koran. The doctrine of a resurrection, of a general judg- i ment, of eternal rewards and punishments, of the ministration of angels, and the reappearance of Christ at the end of the world, were fully proclaimed by the prophet of Mecca. 1 The ethical system of Mohammed, except in the vital prin- ciple of its recognising a personal (rod, is not more elevated than was that of Buddha. Indeed, it is far more lenient to the sensual infirmities of man than was the code of the stern recluse of India, In another important feature, too, it was inferior to the code of the Indian reformer. Buddha's charity and morality learned much from personal intercourse with Jews and Christians. We can well conceive that with all honesty of conviction hs received from them the grand fundamental truths after which he and many others had been feeling ; and though it may be difficult to acquit him of conscious duplicity in the later development of his scheme, still who would deny that, though not divinely sent, he was still divinely used used in ameliorating the foulness of heathen faith and practice used too in chastising a corrupt Church and a degenerate Christianity ?] 1 Those points which constitute the very essence of Christianity Mohammed carefully excluded from his eclectic system. The Trinity, the deity of Christ, his vicarious atonement, his death and resurrection all these things he repudiated and controverted. He denounces with especial emphasis the doctrine of a Triune Jehovah ; but he had obtained a most confused idea of that sacred verity, for the notion he combats is the conception that the Trinity consisted of the Father, the Son, and the Blessed Virgin ! It may well be believed that this erroneous view was more the misfortune than the fault of Mohammed. The worship of the Virgin had in that era become so prominent and universal in the Christian Church that the notion that she was regarded as a divine being had only too much ground to support it ; indeed, there seems to have actually existed in Arabia a heretical body of Christians whose idea of the Trinity was precisely that which Mohammed controverts. He gets over the recorded death of Christ by saying that some other person suffered in his stead, whilst Jesus was translated to heaven. Here, again, he was probably merely following the erroneous teaching of two other Christian sects which before his time had put forth the very same idea these were the 'Basilidians and the Ceriuthians. 152 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. embraced all mankind. The Koran teaches kindness, charity, and even the forgiveness of injuries ; but the obligation does not extend beyond the family of the faithful. Mohammedanism knows nothing of universal love and benevolence. A fundamental defect in the system of Mohammed is the want of a due sense of sin. Nowhere is it spoken of in the Koran as per se a great moral evil. No idea of original sin exists. Confused notions of man's primeval state appear ; it is said that Grod made man a free agent to choose between right and wrong, but He endued him at the same time with evil inclinations as well as with good. An inadequate percep- tion of the nature of sin goes far to explain the character both of Mohammed and of his religion. It accounts for much that was crooked, vacillating, and morally wrong in his con- duct ; his standard was sufficiently low to admit of his prac- tising certain things, without conscious hypocrisy, which, with ' the Christian standard, must have fixed that brand upon him. This explains, too, the absence of holiness as the distinguishing attribute of the Deity; it accounts, moreover, for the easy terms of pardon and salvation prescribed by the Koran. Con- trition of spirit, inward purity, assimilation to the Divine image, are not insisted upon ; a man has only to believe in God and the prophet, observe the five stated turns of prayer, give alms, keep the fast of the Ramazan, and perform him- self, or by deputy, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and his salvation is assured to him. Prayer, again, instead of being the hallowed outgoing of the soul's devotion, is a mere mechanical exercise ; it is not even necessary that the sense of the prayers should be understood ; two things alone are necessary they must be re- peated and must be said in the Arabic tongue. 1 Of fasting, 1 Attitude and posture during prayer are also matters of vital importance. An amusing illustration of this occurred some years ago in the Madrissah, the* Mahommedan College in Calcutta. As the English Resident Professor WMS, one evening taking his rounds throuirh the College, sounds of fierce contention re.'iclu'd hi ears. He bout his steps to the room vheaco the uproar proceeded, aud found 7 he Mohammedan Era. 153 Mohammed says, ' It is the gate of religion, and the breath of him that fasteth is more grateful to Grod than that of musk.' The thirty days' fast of the Eamazan is the main feature of self-mortification that Islam prescribes, but its severity is less real than apparent when it is remembered that the abstinence of the day may be followed by any amount of feasting through the night. Compared with the stern asceticism of devout Hindoos, the religious privations of the Mohammedans are sin- gularly mild ; whilst a degree of indulgence is permitted to the latter which the former would censure and shrink from. The absence of a higher tone of spirituality than the natural man desiderates, the profession of certain truths which, more or less, underlie all religions, the prescription of a lenient morality, and the appointment of a ritual in which the body more than the mind, and the memory more than the soul, are exercised, are four characteristics of Islam, important to be borne in mind in estimating its progress, whether in India or elsewhere. There is still another feature which must not be overlooked ; the eternal rewards of the faithful are precisely such as accord with the general character of the religion. The glory and bliss of the Mohammedan Paradise are nothing more than earthly sheen and sensual enjoyment intensified ; each of that a number of the students were discussing in the most excited , way the orthodox position of the heels during the time of prayer. One of the students had discovered some learned authority for praying with the heels closed ; his own convictions coincided with th's ruling, accordingly he declared himself the champion of the closed-heel theory ; but the majority of his co-students denounced such teaching as a detestable innovation, and a loathsome heresy. They declared that, not only must closed-heels utterly nullify the effect of prayer, but persistence in such a pernicious usage must inevitably sink the soul to perdition. Of course, the closed-heelers predicated the same terrible consequences of the opposite usage ! You smile, good reader, at such senseless puerilities perhaps good Moslems might reciprocate the smile when they see the aM'ful importance which some amongst us attach to posture, position, and sacerdotal attire; and perhaps they might retort with the query, ' If the efficacy of your holiest rites depend on these externals, then why may not the virtue of our devotions hang upon the deep mystical import of our closed or open heels ? ' Vide Dr. Hunter's Our Indian Mussulmans, p. 203. 154 TJie Trident, the Crescent, and tJie Cross. the faithful, decked with glorious robes, adorned with precious gems, bracelets of gold, and a crown of pearl, shall disport himself with a multitude of ravishing damsels, now roaming through the enchanting bowers of Eden, now reclining on silken carpets and luxurious couches, now quaffing the delicious beverages, and revelling in the tempting viands of that celes- tial abode ! Such is Mohammedanism. That a religion so essentially of the earth, earthy, should make its way in the world is no great marvel; unlike Christianity, it^had no quarrel with human nature as it is, it called for no moral renewal, enforced no painful ordeal of self-subjugation ; nay, it gained the suffrages of humanity by according the high sanction of heaven to its infirmities. It, like Christianity, had to struggle against prevalent systems of idolatry, but, whilst the religion of Jesus achieved its peaceful triumphs by patient endurance, by the power of persuasion, by the spectacle of heroic martyrdoms, by the force of truth, Mohammedanism rode rough-shod over all obstacles ; carnal in its character, its victories were won by carnal weapons ; the embattled hosts of the faithful were its missionaries ; idols, idol shrines, and idolatrous hosts were over- thrown by the might of their arm. Whilst Christianity in- spired its meek champions with the courage of non-resistance, Islam fired the ardour of its militant heroes by the assurance of a vast augmentation of the material joys of Paradise to every one who died fighting for the faith. 1 1 In connection with the prophet's enunciations on this head, a peculiar anecdote is recorded ; he had ruled that those who did not actually fight for the faith should, on that account, suffer a diminution of heavenly joys ; he drew a hard and fast line, making no exceptions -whatever. It happened that one of his attendants ventured to suggest that exceptions might well be made in the case of the blind and of others who were physically disabled from military service. The common sense ami simple justice of this remark evidently struck the prophet, and, forthwith, a now revelation appeared, making the very exceptions suggested ! No doubt the facile and convenient nature of many of Mohammed's professe 1 com- munications from heaven bears a suspicious aspect. Probably some years ago we should have gone with such of our readers as are disposed to see nought but The Mohammedan Era. 155 Very different is the story of the propagation of that faith in the earlier and later days of the prophet. For the first twelve years of his mission he dwelt in Mecca and laboured to advance his claims by simple teaching and persuasion. He encountered fierce opposition ; the men of his own tribe, the Koreishites, were his bitterest foes. They had considerable vested interests in the national idolatry : their animosity was, doubtless, less the offspring of devotion than of selfish considerations their craft was endangered by the prophet's teaching. Plots were formed for his destruction and a price was put upon his head. But for the kindness of an uncle, who sheltered him, though he rejected his claims, Mohammed would certainly have fallen a victim to the violence of his adversaries. As it was, his courage signally failed him, and, with the hope of conciliating his foes, he agreed to restore the idols to the position of mediators with God. He afterwards recalled this concession, and admitted it to have been a suggestion of Satan. At length the prophet fled from the scene of his trials ; his peaceful .efforts at Mecca had been rewarded with such slender results as to make it more than probable that, without other and more forcible influences to aid it, his religion would have trickery and imposition in these dubious proceedings ; as it is, we are inclined to put in a plea in arrest of judgment. In the first place, it is hard to reconcile the notion of sheer hypocrisy with the uniform earnestness and undoubted devotion of the prophet. The singular simplicity also of his mode of life up to the very end of his career rebuts such a harsh imputation. At the very time when armies did his bidding and admiring thousands paid him homage, he cooked his own food, milked his own goats, wore a simple woollen cap and two plain linen garments, and slept on a mattress of straw. Indeed, the more one contemplates the man as a whole, the more does the conviction force itself upon one that he believed in himself. If it be asked how it is possible for self-delusion to go to such a length, we are prone to reply by pointing to instances of credulity and self-deception in our own day which go far to show the possibility of this. When we find intelligent men and women, not a few, devoutly believing that they can at will summon and converse with the spirits of the dead, and receive messages through rocking tables and entranced mediums some, at least, of those mediums being equally sincere and equally deluded we have sufficient reason both to wonder at human gullibility and to suspend judgment in the case of the Arabian prophet. 156 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. died a natural death. The Hijra, or the Flight to Medina, from which event the Mohammedan era dates, took place in July, 622 A.D. On his way to this city of refuge he met an Arab tribe, the Beni-Sahm, and succeeded in converting them to his views. Their chief, as if divining the necessities of the case, took off his turban, bound it to his lance for a standard, and marched with his whole tribe as an escort to the prophet. Mo- hammed thus entered Medina, not as a lonely fugitive, but with an air of importance and power. Here he built his first mosque and instituted religious forms of worship. With considerable skill he organised rules of fraternity and mutual help amongst his followers, lie assiduously fostered their growing enthusiasm for his now advancing cause. During the first year of the Hijra, he proclaimed war as a divinely-appointed means of spreading the faith. His first efforts in this line were of a questionable character ; he longed to avenge himself upon his Meccan foes, but, being too weak to engage them in open warfare, he consoled and enriched himself by plundering their caravans. As the prophet shared the spoil with his followers, other motives than those of faith and devotion animated the eager recruits that flocked to his standard. At length he was enabled to take the field against the Meccan army ; victory attended his arms. In this, his first battle, he personally had no share ; like Moses of old (Exod. xvii. 9-12) he struggled in prayer to God whilst his followers were engaged in the deadly strife. After this, other contests followed with varying results ; but the grand crisis came ; the prophet, with an army of 10,000 men, suddenly appeared before the walls of Mecca ; the inhabitants, finding resistance useless, accepted him as their sovereign and teacher. Forthwith the Kaaba was purged of its 360 idols, and Islam became the creed of the holy city. In the meantime, the Moslem forces spread themselves over the provinces, demolishing idol-temples, and at the point of the sword propagating the victorious faith. Only a little before this, Mohammed issued The Mohammedan Era. 157 mandates to eight foreign potentates, calling upon them to ac- cept his religion and bow before his divine commission. Amongst the sovereigns thus addressed were the Koman Emperor, the Kings of Persia and Abyssinia, and the Governor of Egypt. That these missives provoked, for the most part, the ridicule and contempt of their royal recipients is only what might have been looked for ; but this did not alter the stern fact that the standard of the prophet was destined to float over the fairest portions of the countries ruled by those scoffing potentates. Singularly rapid had been the advance of Islam since the memorable Hijra: at the close of the first twelve years of his mission, Mohammed was a despised fugitive with a handful of followers ; at the end of the next ten years, which proved to be - the end of his life, he, as a sovereign and a prophet, rejoiced in the homage of myriads of his fellow-men. In the last year of his life he paid his last visit to Mecca in company with 40,000 _ pilgrims. Some months later the hand of death was upon him. The closing scenes in the lives of men like Buddha and Moham- med are fraught with interest ; in each of these cases the inte- rest is of a touching character. We have seen how the great *- founder of Buddhism passed away ; carnal force had formed no feature in his operations, love to his fellows and self-denial had ever marked him ; he died in the midst of patient, loving toil ; but he knew of neither God nor hope, so the last words which lingered on his lips were, ' All things are transient ! ' How died ^ the founder of Islam ? But a few days before his end, when he felt the end was approaching, he raised himself from his bed and, supported by a slave, in the dead of night, retired to the burial- _ place of Medina ; standing there, he said the option had been given to him to remain._mjthe_world or jjepart to his Lord ; he , declared that the latter was his choice. He then offered a prayer for the dead, and returned to his home. During the last day of his life he gave liberty to his slaves, distributed alms to the poor, then looked to heaven and cried, ' God stand with me 158 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. in the agony of death ! ' A little while after he expired in the ^ arms of Ayesha, his favourite wife, with the words, ' To the highest companion in heaven ! ' The Christian mind can hardly help reverting to another death-scene, occurring, chronologically, midway between the two just spoken of, and, as we watch the meek Sufferer's mien, as we listen to his wondrous utterances, as we behold his bowing head and catch his glorious expiring cry, ' It is finished ! ' can we but exclaim, ' Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift ! ' We must accord sincerity to Buddha, we may accord it to v Mohammed ; but neither the one nor the other could in the 1 hour of death rejoice in^Jinished^work. The Arabian Prophet, ' indeed, in his last illness, seemed to be haunted with an im- pression of the incompleteness of his work. When dying he felt that emendations and additions were called fur in the re- velations of which he had been the medium. It is recorded lhat, in his last moments, he called for writing materials, and essayed in vain to add a new chapter to his former inspired teachings. He predicted, also, coming strifes and divisions ; he predicted that his followers would be rent into no fewer than seventy-three differing sects. 1 - An apology is needed to such of our readers as may deem the preceding sketch of Mohammedanism superfluous and ir- relevant. We almost doubt ourselves whether we have not been guilty of an unwarrantable digression. Should, however, a por- tion of our readers feel that it has nelped them the better to understand the conditions of that religious struggle which the Moslem invasion forced upon India, we shall not altogether regret the seeming irregularity. 1 He seems to have had an odd notion of an analogical necessity for this ; he argued, with what historical accuracy does not appear, that, as the Jewish Church had been divided into seventy-one sects, and the Christian Church into seventy-two, the professors of Islam must in their divisions add one to the last number. The ! prophet's foresight, however, fell short of the reality, for it appears there are no fewer than 150 sects in the Mohammedan community. See Hughes's ' Notes on \ Mohammedanism,' p. 43. The Mohammedan Era. 159 Of the predicted sects of Islam, only four have prominently figured in the history of India ; these are the Sunnis, the Shiahs, the Sufis, and the Wahabees. The Sunnis pride themselves on their orthodoxy ; they comprise among themselves four sections, each of these being founded by one of the four great doctors of Islam Shafii, Hanifa, Malik, and Hambal. They have good ground for their claim of superior orthodoxy, for they yield im- plicit allegiance, not only to the teaching of the Koran, but to the whole body of tradition as set forth and expounded by those four distinguished authorities. Their position in relation to the other sects is pretty much the same as that of the Roman Church with regard to the Protestant communities. Their name, Sunni, is derived from ' Sunnah ' (tradition), and denotes their religious subjection to traditional teaching. The Shiahs bow before the Koran and such of the traditions as trace their origin to the inspired prophet, but they reject all the rest. The chief ground of contention, however, between the Shiahs and the Sunnis relates to the Khaliphs, the successors in office to the prophet. The Sunnis acknowledge Abubakr, Omar, and Othman the first two being Mohammed's fathers-in-law, the third his son-in-law as the legitimate vicegerents. The Shiahs, 1 on the other hand, reject these as usurpers, and accept Ali, husband of Fatima, the prophet's daughter, and the fourth in the Sunni order of succession, as the first of the true Imams (Khaliphs). Some of the Shiahs attribute to Ali divine charac- teristics ; they say that Allah (God) was in some mysterious way united with him. He and his two sons, Hassan and Hussain, are said to have been assassinated ; the Shiahs commemorate this event by the fast of the Mohurram, a period of wailing and lamentation extending over ten days. In other respects also this body of dissenters differs from the orthodox Sunnis ; the most interesting feature of this difference relates to the last of the 1 The term Shiah, implying party or sect, was evidently given to them by their opponents ; they call themselves, Adliyah, ' the rig tful society.' 1 60 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. Imams and the consummation of all things. The Shias, beginning with Ali, count twelve successors to the prophet, the last of these was Abu Kasim. The Shiahs maintain that he did not actually die, they believe that he is still alive, but kept in con- cealment until the great day of his manifestation, as fixed by the Almighty, shall arrive ; his appearance will take place in the last age of the world, and the result of his return will be the conversion of all nations to the worship of the true Grod. The Sunnis agree with the Shiahs in looking for the universal triumph of the faith before the end comes ; but in two impor- tant particulars their expectations differ from those of the Shiahs; they deny the return of Abu Kasim as the Imam Mahdi, and their idea of the conversion of the world involves the total subjugation of all tribes and creeds to the faith of the prophet of Arabia. The views of the Shiahs are more catholic and charitable they believe that the final triumph of truth will be brought about by an amalgamation of Mohammedanism and Christianity. The Sunnis, in point of numbers, vastly prepon- derate over the Shiahs ; it is estimated that in India not more than one-tenth of the Moslem population belongs to this latter division. The Shiah type of Islam has been for many centuries the national faith of Persia. Six hundred years ago the Sufi sect had its origin in that country. It was an outcome of Shiahism, but diverged much more widely from orthodox tenets than did its dissenting parent. Very special interest attaches to the views of the Sufis, inasmuch as we behold in them a reflection of the Vedanta philosophy of India. The history of their con- tact with this philosophy would seem to be thus : Zoroaster, the great Persian sage, who nourished somewhere about the era of Buddha, undoubtedly borrowed largely from the Vedantist school of thought ; the Sufis in turn caught their peculiar tinge of doctrine from the religion which he founded. The reader has only to recall to mind what, in a previous chapter, was said of The Mohammedan Era. 161 the Hindoo Gyan-marga, 6 the way of knowledge,' to comprehend the system of the Sufis. Like their Indian precursors, they went upon two fundamental principles they maintained that God alone existed, and that the final absorption of the human j soul (which was really a part of God) into the Supreme Deity J-" was the grand aim and end of life. This ultimate union with Deity was to be reached by successive steps, as the result of persistent devotion and intense meditation. An interesting distinction, however, appears in the process as delineated by the Indian and Persian mystics, respectively. Whilst the Indian devotee aimed at utter mental abstraction, a complete cessation from thought, sense, and desire, the Sufi aspired to a growing acquaintance with God, such as would culminate in ecstatic de- votion to the Divine Being a love which would fascinate the whole soul, and expel all inferior affections and desires. 1 The Wahabees derive their origin and name from Mohammed Ab dul Wahab, who founded the sect some 150 years ago. He was the son of a petty chieftain of Nejed ; he was an orthodox 1 It is not to be denied that the mysticism of the Sufis often finds expression in a sort of wild delirium, and even in reveries of a gross and carnal nature, yet all that is the corruption and perversion of a true conception. An eminent Mohammedan convert in India, Maulavi Safdar Ali, says of them, ' There are among them many men who truly love God, and earnestly desire to obtain his favour, and who practise on this account exceedingly severe austerities, and engage in labours night and day ; they leave the world and wander about in jungles, hungry and thirsty, lamenting their ignorance of God and His will, and continue L-^' every moment in disquietude and unrest on this account.' The Eev. T. V. French, one of the most eminent of our Indian missionaries, and one who has, perhaps, consorted more with Indian Mussulmans than any living missionary, says of the Sufis, ' There is a deep feeling of need stirring in the hearts of many a devout Moslem, need of nearness to God, of a higher, diviner life ; of fellowship with the best, purest, truest, loveliest Being with God ; a dim, restless, unsatisfied craving after a life the counterpart of that which the Apostle Paul describes as exp-jrienced in himself, " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." ' In illustration v of this statement Mr. French cites the following remarkable petition of one of those devout souls, ' Give me, Lord, first a death in which there is no life, and then afterwards a life in which there is no death!' Such was the prayer of Ab duli Kadar Jilani. Who can but breathe 'Amen! ' to such a touching cry? Vide Papers in the Report of the Allahabad Missionary Conference for 1872-73, by Maulavi Safdar Ali and the Eev. T. V. French, M.A. "^ M 1 62 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. Sunni of the Hambali school. His father was a devout and earnest follower of Islam, and in his early youth the son im- bibed the devotional tone and spirit of the sire. When a young man, he accompanied his father on a pilgrimage to Mecca. That Eome of Mohammedanism had become what the Papal capital was when the denunciations of Luther first began to be heard ; it was no longer a holy city, it was the centre of the^ foulest superstitions and the grossest sensuality ; myriads of pilgrims flocked to the sacred shrines, only to gaze upon senseless mummeries, strange to the Koran, and to be scandalised by, or to revel in, unblushing immorality, repugnant even to the lenient morality of that sacred book. The righteous soul of Wahab groaned within itself at the terrible and loathsome spectacle. He said little, but for three years, in the city of Damascus, did he ponder over the subject. At length he broke silence, and fiercely and persistently de- nounced the prevailing corruption of faith and morals. He fearlessly accused the doctors of the law of nullifying the written word by their own traditions, whilst he stigmatised the mass of the people as being, in point of morality, worse than infidels. The usual consequences followed ; he paid the penalty of his faithfulness he was hunted from city to city, accursed by the priests, and hated by the populace. At length he found an asylum and a friend ; an Arabian chief, Mohammed Ibn Sa'ud, welcomed the reformer and embraced his views. The marriage of Wahab with the chieftain's daughter cemented the union and developed it into oneness of interest. It is curious to note how a movement which, at its origin, is simply religious and highly commendable, may, by seemingly accidental conjunctures, be diverted from its course, and receive a new and less laudable tendency. Our readers will remember how this was the case with Mohammed himself, how the meeting with and conversion of a wandering tribe, during his flight to Medina, helped to decide the future militant aspect of his mission. It was thus The Mohammedan Era. 163 with Wahab ; encouraged and prompted by his father-in-law, he raised the standard of revolt against the Turkish Government. The army of the reformation went forth conquering and to con- quer ; ere long, thirty Arab tribes acknowledged the reformers sway. Wahab himself died A.D. 1787, but the movement con- tinued to triumph ; at length, in 1 803, an army of more than one hundred thousand Wahabees captured Mecca and, in the following year, made themselves masters of Medina also. Their entrance into the holy city was marked by a violent display of zeal and vengeance ; thousands of the inhabitants were slain, sepulchral monuments and numerous shrines, at which devout pilgrims supplicated departed saints, were demolished not even was the tomb of the Prophet spared. For many years they suc- cessfully defied the Turkish power, and vigorously upheld and advanced their protestant creed. That creed repudiated all idea of saintly mediation, it denied the power of intercession even to Mohammed himself; it maintained the right of private inter- pretation of the Koran and rejected the authority of priestly glosses thereupon ; it denounced the unauthorised ceremonies which had crept into the ancient ritual ; it enjoined the obli- gation (even more strongly than the Prophet had done) of advancing the faith by the power of the sword; it taught implicit subjection to the spiritual head of their community, and directed all true believers to look anxiously for the coming of the true Imam, who would lead their forces to universal victory and conquest. But Wahabeeism, so far as it depended upon the sword, was doomed to perish by the sword. In 1811 Mohammed Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, entered the lists against this formidable con- federation ; after a struggle of two years he recovered Mecca and Medina, and inflicted a heavy blow at the prestige and power of the reformers. Their final and complete overthrow was effected by the succeeding Pasha, Ibrahim, in 1818. At that time their last head, Abdallah, was captured and taken to M 2 164 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. Constantinople, where he was executed. Their temporal power was thus abolished ; but, as a religious sect, the followers of Wahab still exist in considerable numbers in Arabia and Turkey, and also in India. As we shall see hereafter, the political and militant element in the Wahabee movement is by no means ex- tinct ; it may be held in abeyance, but, as we have learned to our cost in India, it may at any time assume the character of a fanatical and furious crescentade. In dealing with the history of Mohammedanism in India, i- it is extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible, to sepa- rate the religious from the political element to show in what way, and to what extent, Islamism, as a religion merely, affected , and moulded the convictions 'of the Hindoos. Ever since Mo- hammed grasped the sword on his flight from Mecca, physical force and political influence have been prominent agencies in . I spreading the faith. So markedly has this been the case in India, that one almost searches in vain for any trace of the moral and persuasive element the element whereby alone the convincing force of a religion can be tested. As you journey through the shifting_phases and tortuous windings of Moslem history in Hindustan, you find abundant traces of collision between the faith of the Prophet and that of the Hindus ; here you see an outburst of furious fanaticism, now of the Hindus, - / now of the Moslems but oftener of the latter. You behold victorious legions of the faithful slaughtering the infidels by thousands, destroying idols, demolishing temples, or turning them into mosques, forcibly circumcising Brahmans, aftd^alas ! too often perpetrating outrages on women ; anon, you beholof a ruler less ruthless and more sagacious, tolerating Hindus and their worship, opening to them offices of emolument and dis- ' 1 tinction, contracting even matrimonial alliances with them, and so soothing their prejudices and, more or less, reconciling them to the dominant creed ; all this you plainly see, but you discern hardly a vestige of what may be termed a purely missionary The Mohammedan Era. 165 effort, an effort to effect the conversion of the Hindus by an appeal to their convictions an effort, that is, corresponding in character to the labours of Buddha and his bands of preachers, or the operations of Christian missionaries in the present day. So conspicuous, indeed, is this moral influence by its absence, that one is tempted to ask, where would Islam have been at this day in India had its power of propagation been restricted to this one rational agency ? As it is, its success has been altogether dubious and partial ; that, after a lapse of ten cen- turies since its first appearance in the country it should count its followers by millions, is no matter of surprise the sur- prise is, that after such a lengthened period of contact and conflict, it should have left the great Hindu fabric not only un- shaken, but scarcely affected by the strife. When the last of the Mohammedan rulers resigned the sceptre, Hinduism was, in the main, just what it was when the first Moslem set his foot on the shores of India ; but, though it emerged from the struggle with scarcely a scar, it left deep indentations in the shield of its foe Islam in India has become deeply tainted with the corruptions of the hostile creed. It is impossible to review the history of the successive in- vasions of India by the followers of the Prophet, and the per- sistent opposition which they and their creed encountered before their rule was established, without admiring the heroism and self-sacrifice of the Hindus. Patriotic devotion and deeds of , ** valour, unsurpassed even in the annals of Greece and Rome, again and again distinguished them, whilst a noble army of martyrs, who preferred death to apostasy, appears side by side with those who cheerfully shed their blood for their country's freedom. The wonderful ease and rapidity with which Moham- medanism spread itself over Syria, Persia, the north of Africa, and Spain, overturning dynasties and abolishing national faiths, . stands out in striking contrast to the slow and painful process by which it gained a footing in India. In truth, as it has been 1 66 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. well remarked, Hinduism presented a mightier barrier to its progress than did the degenerate Christianity of other lands. Hinduism was just issuing out of a deadly conflict with Buddhism, bearing the palms of victory, and nerved with fresh vigour, whilst in those lands where Islam won its easier triumphs, Christianity had, by growing superstitions and prevailing cor- ruptions, become old and ready to vanish away ; in the one case the Philistines encountered Samson in his giant strength, in the other they came upon him when bereft of his potent IqcksJL The Trident and the Crescent first confronted each other on the plains of Scinde. In the year 705 A.D., Walid I., Khali ph of Damascus, sent an army to avenge an alleged outrage upon an Arab vessel. The Rajah marched against the invading foe, but was defeated and slain. Two of his daughters fell into the enemy's hand ; they were sent to grace the harem of the Khaliph. The widow of the Rajah and the mother of the girls proved / herself a heroine of the noblest type ; she placed herself at the head of her brave Rajpoot troops, and made a last stand at the city of Brahmanabad. When all hope of deliverance failed them, the Rani, with the rest of the women and children, burnt themselves alive, whilst the Rajpoots rushed out upon the enemy and perished sword in hand. Kasim, the Moslem general, offered the vanquished Hindus of Scinde the alternative of Islam or tribute. The terms were indignantly rejected, where- upon the Arab soldiers wreaked their vengeance on the recal- citrant idolaters. Kasim forcibly circumcised a number of Brahmans, but they, notwithstanding, bravely spurned the tyrant's creed ; hereupon the enraged general put to death every , Brahman over seventeen years of age, and reduced to slavery all who were under that age. 2 Such is the story of the first contact of Hinduism with Islam. Thus Moslem bigotry and violence encountered at their first impact with India the sturdy valour of 1 Vide Robson's Hinduism in its Relations to Christianity, p. 228. * Vide Wheeler's History of India; Mussulman I{ul<\ {>p. 1(1, 17. The Mohammedan Era. 167 true patriots and the religious devotion of true martyrs. This opening phase of the coming strife casts its explanatory shade over the eventful future. In subsequent campaigns Walid subdued other portions of the country, until, at length, his forces reached the banks of the Granges. Here their progress was stayed ; they were utterly defeated and driven out of India byjSappa, the Kajah of Mewar. . For the best part of a century no further attempts were made at the conquest of Hindustan. After that a series of Moslem invasions followed, all of which failed of their object ; defeat after defeat attended the arms of the invaders, and they were compelled to retire before the resolute chivalry of the Hindus. The advent of the redoubtable Mahmud of Grhuzni, A.D. 1001, changed the aspect of affairs. Bravely as ever did the Kajpoots - fight for their freedom and faith ; it was in vain. Mahmud, in twelve successive invasions, triumphed over all opposition, and at length established the Moslem dominion in India. His re- ligious zeal was displayed in the demolition of Hindu gods and \ idol- temples, but, so far as appears, the Moslem faith achieved no other triumph in the conquered land. After the death of Mahmud in 1030, a century and a half followed with a history so uninteresting and valueless that it may well be passed over in silence. The reigns of Mohammed Grhori and of Kutub-ud-deen were marked by martial and political vigour ; idols and temples were | overthrown, and idolaters were compelled to pay the Jezzia, the tribute which punished their religious contumacy ; no other trace of the advance of Islam appears. During this period, Bengal and Bihar first felt the grip of the iron hand. Mohammed Bakhtiyar, a Moslem adventurer, formed a kingdom for himself in those fertile and peaceful pro- vinces. The conquest was easily accomplished ; the inhabitants of those regions lacked jthe noble physique and warlike spirit of x the Eajpoots they meekly bent to the storm and accepted the 1 68 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. inevitable. This did not prevent the ruthless victor from per- petrating gratuitous atrocities; in one case he put a whole college of Brahmans to the sword, and on entering Nuddea? the capital of Bengal, slaughtered every soul he met in the palace of the Rajah. The reason which accounts for this easy triumph of Moslem arms will go far to explain the comparative success of the faith in those districts. The Hindus of Bengal were as inferior to their brethren of the north in religious fer- vour as in physical courage ; a considerable proportion of the rural population in southern and eastern Bengal were either not Hindus at all, or loosely hung on to the outskirts of the Hindu community ; they stood at the very bottom of the social scale : to self-respect and enthusiasm they were alike strangers ; a change of religion to them brought with it no sacrifice of conviction or surrender of privilege positive advantages rewarded the change : as dishonoured Hindus they were fleeced by the Brahmans and despised by their high-caste brethren; as converts to Islam they could ridicule caste distinctions and glory in holding the faith of their rulers, and doubtless enjoyed other advantages of a more tangible character. Looking at the matter in this light, one ceases to wonder that one half the entire Moslem population of India is to be found in Bengal, and amongst persons of the very class we have described. There can be little doubt that the establishment of the Mohammedan rule in Bengal was fol- lowed by wholesale conversions of the ancestors of the twenty- one millions in that province who now swear by the faith of Mohammed. 1 , 1 As to the precise way in which the original converts were gathered into the Moslem fold, history is silent ; certain legends point to the fact, which we can well believe, that, over and above official and governmental influence, individual Mohammedans with laudable missionary zeal advanced their faith amongst the ignorant masses ; but it is a singular and noteworthy circumstance that Islam utterly failed as a converting agency amongst the middle and higher classes of ] I in' 1 us. The few families of respectability which now figure amongst the Moslem population of Bengal are, with scarcely an exception, descendants of imperial dignitaries and of othwrs who hold office under the Sultans of Gour. The Mohammedan Era. 1 69 Bakhtiyar established his capital at Gour ; thus Mussulman India was divided into two kingdoms, the one comprising Bihar ( - and Bengal, the other the kingdom of Delhi, embracing the Punjab and Hindustan as far as Allahiabad. The dynasty known as that of the Slave Kings of Delhi passed away at the end of the thirteenth century ; thus nearly three hundred years had elapsed since Mahmud established the Moslem dominion in India. So utterly meagre are the historical data that it is impossible to speak with any certainty as to the religious aspect of affairs at the end of that period. Southern India had in the meantime been hardly touched by Moslem power or influence. At length Alla-ud-deen ojyLexian^and ,_cpn_ quered a great part of the Dekhan and the Peninsula. He carried off and married the wife of the Rajah of Gruzerat, and . ultimately betrothed the Hindu daughter of the Eani to his ^ *> eldest son. These were the first instances of matrimonial alli- ances between the Mohammedan rulers and Hindu princesses. A converted Hindu was also advanced by the Sultan to the post ^ of Vizier. It would appear that about this period not a few shrewd and ambitious Hindus purchased political advancement by the sacrifice of religious fidelity. One such a dubious con- vert, named Khusru Khan, played a conspicuous part during the profligate reign of Mubarak, the son of Alla-ud-deen. This facile courtier first secured his royal master's affections, then pandered to his vices, and at last murdered him. The assassin seized the reins of power, and for five months ruled as Sultan, under the style of Nasir-ud-deen. He seems to have contem- plated the re-establishment of the Hindu religion ; the Koran was dishonoured, and idols~were set up in the mosques. He was dethroned and slain by Grhias-ud-deen, the founder of the Tugh- I lak dynasty. Nothing of religious interest meets us until the reign of Firuz Shah, A.D. 1350-1388. The period during which this sovereign swayed the sceptre was in some respects a palmy I jo The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. era for Hindustan ; Firuz presents the type of an enlightened ruler and a devout Moslem. He sought, and in every way ad- vanced, the material interests of the country and the prosperity ) and happiness of his subjects. His honest devotion to Islam, however, made him a conscientious and resolute foe to idolatry. He rightly divined that Brahmanical influence formed the chief barrier to the progress of the faith of Islam. Up to his time, the Brahmans had been exempted from the payment of the Jezzia, the infidel poll-tax. Firuz insisted on their paying the hated impost. His righteous zeal was manifested in still more rigid proceedings. Tidings reached the ears of the Sultan, that a venerable Brahman, in the heart of the royal capital itself, was I converting the followers of the Prophet to his idolatrous creed. Firuz cited the Brahman into his presence. The guilt of the s culprit was proved. Firuz then appealed to the Ulama, the L Moslem bench of law-doctors, to adjudicate the matter; their answer was clear and prompt recantation or death was the only ^ sentence which the Koran admitted. It was put to the Brahman whether he would embrace Islam or die a Hindu; his answer was not less firm and resolute, he preferred death to apostasy. He was bound hand and foot and perished in the flames a spectacle of what the Moslems called pagan obstinacy, but which / we prefer to describe as heroic religious constancy. 1 r That, not- withstanding his religious intolerance, Firuz Shah was popular with the mass of his subjects, seems indisputable ; and, though again we have to bewail a dearth of positive historic data, we can well conceive that, in his reign, Mohammedanism achieved a degree of substantial success in the country to which it had been a stranger before. Three years Before Firuz Shah ascended the throne of Delhi, a Shiah revolt against the paramount power broke out in the Dekhan ; this resulted in the severance of the south from im- perial control. Hasan Gangu, of whose previous history little is 1 Vide Wheeler's History of India, Mussulman Rule, p. 75. The Mohammedan Era. 171 known, founded an independent kingdom with Kulbarga for its capital. The Sultan made a Brahman his Prime Minister, with- out, as it appears, requiring his adoption of the faith of Islam. From this circumstance the new Dekhan kingdom came to be termed the Bahmani or Brahmani kingdom. Hasan was a ^taMMMMMMM^MMVMMMMM 1 Shi ah, and would seem to have been tolerant of the Hindus even to the extent of sympathising with their views. On the other hand, his son and successor, Mohammed Shah, was a Sunni, and was as bitter and hostile to the Hindus as his father had been courteous and indulgent. The ferocity of his nature, quite as much as his religious bigotry, appears in a terrible episode in his history. During the progress of a war between himself and the Hindu sovereign of Vijayanagar, Mohammed made a solemn vow on the Koran that he would not sheathe his sword until he had dyed it with the blood of 100,000 idolaters. Fear- ful to relate, he kept his vow to the letter, and by the indis- criminate murder of men, women, and children, made up the dreadful tale of slaughter. A touching scene followed upon this cruel outrage -a scene which surely ennobles the character of the Hindus, whilst it blasts that of the ruthless tyrant. A Hindu embassy from Vijayanagar waited upon Mohammed, and thus addressed him : ' Sultan ! Krishna Rai (the Hindu Rajah) may have committed sins, but it is not good for you to kill the inno- cent. The Bestower of kingdoms has given the Dekhan to you and the Kanarese country to Krishna Rai ; there may yet be many wars between the two kingdoms ; let therefore a treaty be made, that henceforth none shall be slain excepting the soldiers fighting in the field.' \^ Between the death of Mohammed Shah, in 1 374, and the dismemberment of the Bahmani kingdom, in 1516, nought but the barest hints and incidents of religious interest meet us ; these cast at best a fitful and flickering light on the mutual re- lations of the two antagonistic faiths in the Dekhan. One thing 1 Vide Wheeler's History of India, Mussulman Period, p. 94. 172 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cress. is abundantly clear, that in this part of India more than else- where, Islam was a house divided against itself ; the hereditary hate of the Shiah and Sunni factions repeatedly manifested itself in bitter party strifes. During the century and a half which intervened between the death of Hasan Grangu and the disappearance of the kingdom which he founded, only one sultan appears on whom the mind can rest with pleasure. This was Mahmud, who reigned for twenty years, from 1378 to 1397 A.D. In character he seems to have resembled Firuz Shah, of Delhi ; he was a good Moslem, and a righteous and beneficent sovereign in short, just one of those rulers who may be supposed to have exercised all the more religious and moral influence upon his subjects from the fact that his genial and peaceful reign left hardly any materials for the secular historian to record. A serious famine occurred whilst he was on the throne, and he, . anticipating the benevolent and enlightened policy of the present Government of India in such emergencies, employed many / thousands of bullocks to import grain, to sustain his famishing / subjects. He then did the very thing which in our day has been carried out, he collected the orphans left by the devastation of the famine, and in all the chief towns in his kingdom established I schools and orphanages for their instruction and support. In searching for auxiliary agencies in the propagation of Islam in the Dekhan, such a fact stands out with singular prominence. 1 1 A very curious history attaches to an institution of this nature in Bengal. In the Orissa famine of 1866 probably half a million of persons perished ; hundreds of ^orphans were collected ; some two hundred of these were received by the Commissioner , of Police in Calcutta, the present Sir Stuart Hogg. This gentleman organised an Orphanage for them, and, in order to conciliate the religious prejudices of the natives, left it to a joint-committee of Hindu and Mohammedan gentlemen to decide s the question of the religious and moral training of the children. Probably the Commissioner had a shrewd apprehension of the inevitable result. It was a case in which not even Herod and Pilate could agree; all agreed in the necessity of fume religious training, but what should be its character? Who was to say what. the religion of the parents had been ? in many cases this was impossible to decide ; but without caste they could not be Hindus here was the Hindu difficulty. ' Then,' said the Moslems, ' let us train them all as Mohammedans.' 'No,' said the Hindus, The Mohammedan Era. 173 Amongst the worthless sovereigns who succeeded Mahmud, we find one, Firuz, a libertine in morals and a liberal in religion. He studied the Old and New Testaments along with the Koran, / and he filled his harem with women from various lands and of various creeds. Hindu ladies shared the dubious honours of the seraglio. In his day, the Hindus routed the Moslem forces, levelled to the ground mosques and Moslem shrines, and imitated, we fear, too closely the atrocities which had been perpetrated on themselves. This broke the heart of Firuz ; but his successor, Ahmud Shah, amply revenged the injury and fully developed the savageness of his nature. He slaughtered the Hindus of all ages and sexes by twenty thousand at a time, and then paused for a three days' feast before repeating the holocaust. He de- molished temples and Brahmanical colleges. How far his atro- cities affected the religion of his day does not appear. If the generous rule of Mahmud appealed to the convictions of the best of the Hindus, the ruthless might of Firuz might well help on the conformity of the worst. During the reign of his son, Alla-ud-deen, the Hindu Eajah of Vijayanagar held a council of Brahmans and Rajpoots, and , asked their solution of the problem which troubled him-^-how was it that the Moslems almost invariably defeated the Hindus ? The Brahmans replied that the true answer was that God \ willed it, that this anomaly was a necessary concomitant of the age of JKali (the dark age) and had been foretold in the holy Shasters. The soldiers took a more practical view of the diffi- culty ; they assured the Rajah that the superior discipline and equipments of the Moslems sufficiently accounted for the phe- nomenon which he deplored. The Rajah bowed to the comments of the Brahmans, and acted upon the suggestions of the Rajpoots; ' for some are certainly of our creed.' The upshot was, that each party gave up the matter as hopeless, and the Commissioner, nothing loath, surrendered the children to Christian guardianship, and we look back with thankfulness to the time when it was our happy privilege to admit the greater part of them by baptism into the ( Church of Christ. / 1 74 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. he improved the discipline of his Hindu troops, and enlisted great numbers of Mussulman soldiers in his army. To meet their case, he built them a mosque and placed a copy of the Koran before his throne, to which they might honestly render - obeisance. 1 Here, again, we obtain a glimpse of one .of the manifold agencies which, in the absence of direct missionary effort, aided the development of Islam in the country. Ultimately the Bahmani kingdom was broken up into five independent Moslem States. The change abolished the Moham- medan supremacy in the Dekhan. The future religious history of that portion of India consists, for the most part, of struggles between Shiahs and Sunnis, the Hindus now allying themselves to the one party, now to the other. During that era of unprofit- able strife, the Shiah Sultan of Bijaypur, Yusuf Adil Shah, alone deserves specific mention. He rose superior to the narrow spirit of the age ; he stretched forth a kindly hand to both Sunnis and Hindus : ' Islam,' said he, * has many sects, and heaven has many mansions.' Returning to Hindustan proper, we find Baber, the first of the Moghul Emperors, ascend the throne of Delhi, A.D. 1526. Until his distinguished grandson, Akbar, grasped the sceptre in 1556, nothing of religious importance meets us. For half a century did this remarkable man rule the destinies of Hindustan ; that his reign was of considerable religious importance to India no one can doubt. In order to comprehend rightly the kind of impression produced upon the country during his sway, it is necessary to enquire into the religious character of Akbar him- self. At no period of his life does he appear to have been a devout and earnest Moslem ; his sympathies, so far as they went with one party rather than another, inclined towards the Shiahs. . To the Hindus he was more than tolerant ; there is little doubt that his policy, quite as much as his religious principles, in- fluenced his bearing towards them. He was a soldier and a 1 Vide Wheeler's History of India, Mussulman Rule, p. 104. The Mohammedan Era. 1 7 5 / statesman ; he beheld the Mussulman community torn by party ~ 2- spirit elements of faction were at work which might eventuate in a dismemberment of his empire corresponding to that which had taken place in the Dekhan. He set his eye and heart upon _ the Rajpoots ; if only he could succeed in attaching these valorous champions of Ifidia^ and Hinduism to himself, his throne would be secured by a bulwarkjof strength, however the waves of Sunni \ and Shiah fanaticism might surge around it or Hindu conspiracy *- threaten it. He sought their support, not their conversion. To bring about the desired end he proposed to the three leading Eajpoot princes a marriage between himself and three of their daughters. After considerable delay, and with ill-disguised re- luctance, the Rajahs of Jaipur and Jodhpur consented to the proposal. The Rana of Chitore indignantly spurned the sug- . gestion, and accepted the penalty of an exile and an outlaw in preference to a union of his daughter with the great Moghul. ^^ A number of inferior Rajpoot chiefs followed the example of the two" Rajahs, and rendered homage to the emperor. . Akbar was thus gaining his point. Besides forming family ties with the leading Rajpoots, he admitted them to a share__in the military dignities and emoluments which had previously been monopolised by the Moslems. His efforts at uniting the Rajpoot and Moslem elements 1 met with very partial^ success. Yet those efforts, doubtless, had an influence on both parties the Mussulmans became more or less Hinduised, and the Hindus - grew more tolerant of the dominant creed. Akbar, indeed, met the Hindus more than half way : he maintained Brahman priests to minister to his Hindu wives, and sometimes even joined in their idolatrous worship. All this disgusted and scandalised the orthodox Sunnis ; the Shiahs and Sufis, on the other hand, re- garded the Emperor's laxity with_tpje^able_cpmDlacency. This was to them a day of grace ; they went through the country proclaiming the coming of the great Imam Mahdi, who, as they believed, was about to appear to usher in the Mussulman mil- 1 76 The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross. lennium. Those fervid preachers seem to have addressed them- selves chiefly to the Moslem population ; they denounced the pride and hypocrisy of the clergy and the general depravity of the laity in burning terms. The Ulama, the Court of Moslem doctors at the capital, called upon Akbar, as the defender of the faith, to silence the fanatics, and, if needs be, persecute them even unto death. The emperor was either too enHghtened or too politic to act on their advice. In truth his faith in Islam was waning, whilst his personal ambition was growing ; he seems to have entertained the idea of supplanting the system of Mo- hammed by an eclectic system of his own devising. With great address he transferred to himself the authority which had been centred in the Ulama, and effectually humbled its pride. He then held consultations with Brahmans, Sufis, Parsis, and Christian divines. These latter were Eoman Catholic priests, who, at his own request, visited him from the Portuguese settlement of Groa. * The emperor received them courteously, lodged them in his palace, and, with apparent eagerness, listened to their instruc- tion. He, to their great delight, kissed the crucifix and reve- rently placed the Bible on his head. He, moreover, arranged controversies between the Christian Fathers and a number of i Moslem divines, whilst with wrapt attention he followed the course of the discussion. The upshot was the conversion of Akbar. To what extent lie apprehended and embraced the fund:i - mental doctrines of Christianity does not appear ; probably his conversion meant nothing more than a general impression of the superiority of Christianity to Islam. This impression he did not hesitate to avow ; he entered the chapel which the priests had, with his permission, set up within the palace precincts, and there he prostrated himself before the image of the Saviour. He directed his favourite minister, Abul Fazl, to prepare a translation of the Gospels ; he accorded full authority to the priests to preach Christianity in any part of his empire. Thus far he went, but he would go no farther ; when pressed by his The Mohammedan Era. 177 Christian preceptors to confess his faith by baptism, he demurred ; he said he must wait for Divine illumination before taking that step. The story goes that, but for the deterrent influence of his aged mother and his wives, he would have entered the Christian Fold ; if this story be true, it is akin to many a similar story which, in the present day, could be told of educated natives of India, who, though they believe in Christ, shrink from baptism ; but, we suspect, Akbar's convictions were too feeble and his policy too cautious to allow of his taking such a decided step. The notion was still seething in his brain of an eclectic faith, of which he himself would be the honoured prophet, and which all his subjects might embrace. His friend and confidant, Abul Fazl, is said to have been actually baptised ; in all probability he and his royal master thought alike on the subject of religion. The following lines by Abul Fazl show how vaguely comprehensive were his views, and doubtless they furnish us with a tolerably accurate reflection of the creed of Akbar at the time spoken of. O God, in every temple I see people that seek Thee, In every language I hear spoken people praise Thee ; Polytheism and Islam feel after Thee ; Each religion says, * Thou art without equal.' If it be a mosque, people murmur the holy prayer ; If it be a Christian church, people ring the bell from love to Thee ; Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister, and sometimes the mosque ; It is Thou whom I search for from temple to temple. 1 In the meantime, popular speculation busied itself with en- quiries as to the actual belief of the emperor now the Moslems, now the Hindus, now the Christians, laid claim to him. Hh shifting phases of faith and conduct justified these clashing theories. At length all uncertainty was removed by the promul- gation of what Akbar called ( the Divine Faith.' It was a sad 1 Translation by Mr. Blockmann, quoted in Wheeler's History of Indi