£ a|£5 i or ILLINOIS Received by bequest frorr Albert H. Lybyer Professor of History University of Illinois 1916-1949 C ^77 11 CENTRAL CIRCULATION The person 'S'J't'Sn to the library from ™ bontjg|» “ ,h ' Latest Date stamped below. ^ theft, mutil^tlo", =->a “^“^"’etult In dUmU«l <™ m Man Beauty. Development. •lUXOtf • fipog; Scandinavia Nature as Force Battle. Independence • t ; TEN GREAT RELIGIONS AN ESSAY IN COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY. BY JAMES FBEEMAN CLABKE. “ Prophets who have been since the world began.” — Luke i. 70. “ Gentiles . . % . who show the work (or influence) of the (that) law which is written in their hearts.” — Romans ii. 15. “ God .... hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth .... that they should seek the Lord, if haply they may feel after him and find him.” — Acts xviii. 24 - 27. BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 1877. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, BY JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. i University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., Cambridge. £ sc • a) -190 If'll TO WILLIAM HENKY CHANGING, MY FRIEND AND FELLOW-STUDENT DURING MANY YEARS, srfjts amork IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 'f ’ \ > X; v IV \ ' * k I PREFACE. ♦ HE first six chapters of the present volume are com- - L - posed from six articles prepared for the Atlantic Monthly, and published in that magazine in 1868. They attracted quite as much attention as the writer antici¬ pated, and this has induced him to enlarge them, and add other chapters. His aim is to enable the reader to become acquainted with the doctrines and customs of the principal religions of the world, without having to con¬ sult numerous volumes. He has not come to the task without some preparation, for it is more than twenty- five years since he first made of this study a speciality. In this volume it is attempted to give the latest results of modern investigations, so far as any definite and trust¬ worthy facts have been attained. But the writer is well aware of the difficulty of being always accurate in a task which involves such interminable study and such an amount of details. He can only say, in the words of a Hebrew writer: “ If I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I desired; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto.” CONTENTS. ♦ • • CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. -ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. Page $ 1. Object of the present Work.1 4 2. Comparative Theology; its Nature, Value, and present Position . 3 § 3. Ethnic Religions. Injustice often done to them by Christian Apol¬ ogists .4 § 4. How Ethnic Religions were regarded by Christ and his Apostles . 9 § 5. Comparative Theology will furnish a new Class of Evidences in Support of Christianity.13 § 6. It will show that, while most of the Religions of the World are Eth¬ nic, or the Religions of Races, Christianity is Catholic, or adapted to become the Religion of all Races.15 \ 7. It will show that Ethnic Religions are partial, Christianity universal 21 | 8. It will show that Ethnic Religions are arrested, but that Christianity is steadily progressive.29 CHAPTER II. CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE, OR THE PROSE OF ASIA. § 1. Peculiarities of Chinese Civilization.32 § 2. Chinese Government based on Education. Civil-Service Examina¬ tions .38 § 3. Life and Character of Confucius.44 § 4. Philosophy and subsequent Development of Confucianism . . 52 § 5. Lao-tse and Tao-ism.53 § 6. Religious Character of the “ Kings.”.57 § 7. Confucius and Christianity. Character of the Chinese . . .58 § 8. The Tae-ping Insurrection.62 Note. The Nestorian Inscription in China.71 CHAPTER III. BRAHMANISM. ' § 1. Our Knowledge of Brahmanism. Sir William Jones . . . 77 { 2. Difficulty of this Study. The Complexity of the System. The Hindoos have no History. Their Ultra-Spirifualism. 81 Vlll CONTENTS. § 3. Helps from Comparative Philology. The Aryans in Central Asia . 85 § 4. The Aryans in India. The Native Races. The Vedic Age. Theol¬ ogy of the Vedas.89 §5. Second Period. LawsofManu. The Brahmanic Age . . . 100 § 6. The Three Hindoo Systems of Philosophy, — The Sankhya, Vedanta, and Nvasa.114 $ 7. Origin o£ the Hindoo Triad.123 § 8. The Epics, the Puranas, and Modern Hindoo Worship . . . 128 § 9. Relation of Brahmanism to Christianity.135 CHAPTER IV. BUDDHISM, OR THE PROTESTANTISM OF THE EAST. • * § 1. Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Romanism; in its Spirit, Prot¬ estantism .139 § 2. Extent of Buddhism. Its Scriptures.146 § 3. Sakya-muni, the Founder of Buddhism.148 § 4. Leading Doctrines of Buddhism.153 § 5. The Spirit of Buddhism Rational and Humane.156 § 6. Buddhism as a Religion.159 § 7. Karma and Nirvana.161 § 8. Good and Evil of Buddhism.164 § 9. Relation of Buddhism to Christianity.167 CHAPTER V. ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AVESTA. § 1. Ruins of the Palace of Xerxes at Persepolis.171 § 2. Greek Accounts of Zoroaster. Plutarch’s Description of his Religion 175 § 3. Anquetil du Perron and his Discovery of the Zend Avesta. . . 178 § 4. Epoch of Zoroaster. What do we know of him ? ... . 180 § 5. Spirit of Zoroaster and of his Religion.182 § 6. Character of the Zend Avesta.187 § 7. Later Development of the System in the Bundehesch . . . 194 § 8. Relation of the Religion of the Zend Avesta to that of the Vedas . 201 § 9. Is Monotheism or pure Dualism the Doctrine of the Zend Avesta . 203 § 10. Relation of this System to Christianity. The Kingdom of Heaven . 204 CHAPTER VI. THE GODS OF EGYPT. § 1. Antiquity and Extent of Egyptian Civilization.209 § 2. Religious Character of the Egyptians. Their Ritual . . . 214 | 3. Theology of Egypt. Sources of our Knowledge concerning it . . 223 § 4. Central Idea of Egyptian Theology and Religion. Animal Worship 225 § 5. Sources of Eg} T ptian Theology. Age of the Empire and Affinities of the Race.230 § 6. The Three Orders of Gods.239 § 7. Influence upon Judaism and Christianity.250 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER VII. THE GODS OF GREECE. $ 1. The Land and the Race.259 ^ 2. Idea and general Character of Greek Religion .... 266 $ 3. The Gods of Greece before Homer.* .270 § 4. The Gods of the Poets.277 ^ 5. The Gods of the Artists.286 ^ 6. The Gods of the Philosophers.291 ^ 7. Worship of Greece. 297 § 8. The Mysteries. Orphism.301 § 9. Relation of Greek Religion to Christianity.308 CHAPTER VIII. THE RELIGION OF ROME. § 1. Origin and essential Character of the Religion of Rome . . . 316 § 2. The Gods of Rome.321 § 3. Worship and Ritual.331 ( 4. The Decay of the Roman Religion.339 \ 5. Relation of the Roman Religion to Christianity..... 347 CHAPTER IX. THE TEUTONIC AND SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. § 1. The Land and the Race.355 § 2. Idea of the Scandinavian Religion.362 § 3. The Eddas and their Contents.363 § 4. The Gods of Scandinavia.376 § 5. Resemblance of the Scandinavian Mythology to that of Zoroaster . 384 § 6. Scandinavian Worship.385 § 7. Social Character, Maritime Discoveries, and Political Institutions of the Scandinavians.387 § 8. Relation of this System to Christianity.390 CHAPTER X. THE JEWISH RELIGION. $ 1. Palestine, and the Semitic Races.397 §2. Abraham; or, Judaism as the Family Worship of a Supreme Being 402 § 3. Moses : or, Judaism as the national Worship of a just and holy King 409 § 4. David; or, Judaism as the personal Worship of a Father and Friend 421 §5. Solomon; or, the Religious Relapse.428 § 6. The Prophets; or, Judaism as a Hope of a spiritual and universal Kingdom of God.438 § 7. Judaism as a Preparation for Christianity . 444 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER XI. MOHAMMED AND ISLAM. § 1. Recent Works on the Life of Mohammed.448 § 2. The Arabs and Arabia.452 § 3. Early Life of Mohammed, to the Hegira.454 { 4. Change in the Character of Mohammed after the Hegira . . 465 § 5. Religious Doctrines and Practices among the Mohammedans . . 472 §6. The Criticism of Mr. Palgrave on Mohammedan Theology . . 478 § 7. Mohammedanism a Relapse; the worst Form of Monotheism, and a retarding Element in Civilization.481 CHAPTER XII. THE TEN RELIGIONS AND CHRISTIANITY. § 1. General Results of this Survey . . ..489 | 2. Christianity a Pleroma, or Fulness of Life.492 § 3. Christianity, as a Pleroma, compared with Brahmanism, Confu¬ cianism, and Buddhism.494 § 4. Christianity compared with the Avesta and the Eddas. The Duad in all Religions.496 § 5. Christianity and the Religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome . . 499 { 6. Christianity in Relation to Judaism and Mohammedanism. The Monad in all Religions.501 § 7. The Fulness of Christianity is derived from the Life of Jesus . 504 $ 8. Christianity as a Religion of Progress and of universal Unity . . 507 TEN. GREAT RELIGIONS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. — ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. § 1. Object of the present "Work. §2. Comparative Theology; its Na¬ ture, Value, and present Position. § 3. Ethnic Religions. Injustice often done to them by Christian Apologists. § 4. How Ethnic Re¬ ligions were regarded by Christ and his Apostles. § 5. Compara¬ tive Theology will furnish a new Class of Evidences in Support of Christianity. § 6. It will show that, while most of the Religions of the World are Ethnic, or the Religions of Races, Christianity is Catholic, or adapted to become the Religion of all Races. § 7. It will show that Ethnic Religions are Partial, Christianity Universal. § 8. It will show that Ethnic Religions are arrested, but that Christianity is steadily progressive. § 1. Object of the 'present Work. HE present work is what the Germans call a Versuch, I and the English an Essay, or attempt. It is an at¬ tempt to compare the great religions of the world with each other. When completed, this comparison ought to show what each is, what it contains, wherein it resembles the others, wherein it differs from the others; its origin and development, its place in universal history; its posi¬ tive and negative qualities, its truths and errors, and its influence, past, present, or future, on the welfare of man¬ kind. For everything becomes more clear by comparison. We can never understand the nature of a phenomenon when we contemplate it by itself, as well as when we look at it in its relations to other phenomena of the same kind.. The qualities of each become more clear in contrast with those of the others. By comparing together, therefore,, l 2 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. the religions of mankind, to see wherein they agree and wherein they differ, we are able to perceive with greater accuracy what each is. The first problem in Comparative Theology is therefore analytical, being to distinguish each religion from the rest. We compare them to see wherein they agree and wherein they differ. But the next prob¬ lem in Comparative Theology is synthetical, and considers the adaptation of each system to every other, to deter¬ mine its place, use, and value, in reference to universal or absolute religion. It must, therefore, examine the dif¬ ferent religions to find wherein each is complete or defec¬ tive, true or false; how each may supply the defects of the other or prepare the way for a better; how each religion acts on the race which receives it, is adapted to that race, and to the region of the earth which it inhabits. In this department, therefore, it connects itself with Comparative Geography, with universal his¬ tory, and with ethics. Finally, this department of Com¬ parative Theology shows the relation of each partial religion to human civilization, and observes how each religion of the world is a step in the progress of hu¬ manity. It shows that both the positive and negative side of a religion make it a preparation for a higher re¬ ligion, and that the universal religion must root itself in the decaying soil of partial religions. And in this sense Comparative Theology becomes the science of missions. Such a work as this is evidently too great for a single mind. Many students must co-operate, and that through many years, before it can be completed. This volume is intended as a contribution toward that end. It will con¬ tain an account of each of the principal religions, and its development. It will be, therefore, devoted to the natural history of ethnic and catholic religions, and its method will be that of analysis. The second part, which may be published hereafter, will compare these different systems to show what each teaches concerning the great subjects of religious thought,— God, Duty, and Immor¬ tality. Finally, it will compare them with Christianity, and will inquire whether or not that is capable of becom¬ ing the religion of the human race. ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC KELIGIONS. 3 § 2. Comparative Theology ; its Nature , Value, and present Position. The work of Comparative Theology is to do equal jus¬ tice to all the religious tendencies of mankind. Its position is that of a judge, not that of an advocate. As¬ suming, with the Apostle Paul, that each religion has come providentially, as a method by which different races “ should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him and find him,” it attempts to show how each may be a step in the religious progress of the races, and “ a school¬ master to bring men to Christ.” It is bound, however, to abstain from such inferences until it has accurately ascertained all the facts. Its first problem is to learn what each system contains; it may then go on, and en¬ deavor to generalize from its facts. Comparative Theology is, therefore, as yet in its infan¬ cy. The same tendency in this century, which has pro¬ duced the sciences of Comparative Anatomy, Comparative Geography, and Comparative Philology, is now creating this new science of Comparative Theology.* It will be to any special theology as Comparative Anatomy is to any special anatomy, Comparative Geography to any special geography, or Comparative Philology to the study of any particular language. It may be called a science, since it consists in the study of the facts of human his¬ tory, and their relation to each other. It does not dogma¬ tize : it observes. It deals only with phenomena, — single phenomena, or facts ; grouped phenomena, or laws. Several valuable works, bearing more or less directly on Comparative Theology, have recently appeared in Ger¬ many, France, and England. Among these may be men¬ tioned those of Max Muller, Bunsen, Burnouf, Dollinger, Hardwicke, St. Hilaire, Diincker, F. C. Baur, Penan, Creuzer, Maurice, G. W. Cox, and others. In America, except Mr. Alger’s admirable monograph on the ‘‘Doctrine of the Future Life,” we have scarcely anything worthy of notice. Mrs. Lydia Maria Child’s * It is one of the sagacious remarks of Goethe, that “the eighteenth century tended to analysis, hut the nineteenth will deal with synthesis.* 4 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. work on tlie “ Progress of Religious Ideas ” deserves the greatest credit, when we consider the time when it was written and the few sources of information then accessi¬ ble.* Twenty-five years ago it was hardly possible to pro¬ cure any adequate information concerning Brahmanism, Buddhism, or the religions of Confucius, Zoroaster, and Mohammed. Hardly any part of the Vedas had been translated into a European language. The works of Anquetil du Perron and Kleuker were still the highest authority upon the Zendavesta. About the Buddhists scarcely anything was known. But now, though many important lacuncc remain to be filled, we have ample means of ascertaining the essential facts concerning most of these movements of the human soul. The time seems to have come to accomplish something which may have a lasting value. § 3. Ethnic Religions. Injustice often clone to them by Christian Apologists. Comparative Theology, pursuing its impartial course as a positive science, will avoid the error into which most of the Christian apologists of the last century fell, in speaking of ethnic or heathen religions. In order to show the need of Christianity, they thought it necessary to disparage all other religions. Accordingly they have insisted that, while the Jewish and Christian religions were revealed, all other religions were invented; that, while these were from God, those were the work of man; that, while in the true religions there was nothing false, in the false religions there was nothing true. If any trace of truth was to be found in Polytheism, it was so mixed with error as to be practically only evil. As the doc¬ trines of heathen religions were corrupt, so their worship was only a debasing superstition. Their influence was to make men worse, not better; their tendency was to pro¬ duce sensuality, cruelty, and universal degradation. They did not proceed, in any sense, from God; they were not * Professor Cocker’s work on “ Christianity and Greek Philosophy," should also he mentioned. ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. 5 even the work of good men, but rather of deliberate imposition and priestcraft. A supernatural religion had become necessary in order to counteract the fatal conse¬ quences of these debased and debasing superstitions. This is the view of the great natural religions of the world which was taken by such writers as Leland, Whitby, and Warburton in the last century. Even liberal thinkers, like James Foster* and John Locke,'f* declare that, at the coming of Christ, mankind had fallen into utter darkness, and that vice and superstition filled the world. Infidel no less than Christian writers took the same disparaging view of natural religions. They considered them, in their source, the work of fraud; in their essence, corrupt super¬ stitions ; in their doctrines, wholly false; in their moral tendency, absolutely injurious ; and in their result, degen¬ erating more and more into greater evil. A few writers, like Cudworth and the Platonists, en¬ deavored to put in a good word for the Greek philoso¬ phers, but the religions of the world were abandoned to unmitigated reprobation. The account which so candid a writer as Mosheim gives of them is worth noticing, on account of its sweeping character. “ All the nations of the world,” he says, “ except the Jews, were plunged in the grossest superstition. Some nations, indeed, went be¬ yond others in impiety and absurdity, but all stood charged with irrationality and gross stupidity in matters of religion.” “ The greater part of the gods of all nations were ancient heroes, famous for their achievements and their worthy deeds, such as kings, generals, and founders of * James Foster has a sermon on “ The Advantages of a Revelation,” in which he declares that, at the time of Christ’s coming, “ just notions of God were, in general, erased from the minds of men. His worship was debased and polluted, and scarce any traces could be discerned of the genuine and immutable religion of nature.” + John Locke, in his “ Reasonableness of Christianity,” says that when Christ came “men had given themselves up into the hands of their priests, to fill their heads with false notions of the Deity, and their worship with foolish rites, as they pleased ; and what dread or craft once began, devotion soon made sacred, and religion immutable.” “In this state of darkness and ignorance of the true God, vice and supersti¬ tion held the world.” Quotations of this sort might be indefinitely mul¬ tiplied. See an article by the present writer, in the “ Christian Exam¬ iner,” March, 1857. 4 6 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. cities.” “ To these some added the more splendid and use¬ ful objects in the natural world, as the sun, moon, and stars ; and some were not ashamed to pay divine honors to mountains, rivers, trees, etc.” “ The worship of these deities consisted in ceremonies, sacrifices, and prayers. The cere¬ monies were, for the most part, absurd and ridiculous, and throughout debasing, obscene, and cruel. The pray¬ ers were truly insipid and void of piety, both in their form and matter.” “ The priests who presided over this worship basely abused their authority to impose on the people.” “ The whole pagan system had not the least effi¬ cacy to produce and cherish virtuous emotions in the soul; because the gods and goddesses were patterns of vice, the priests bad men, and the doctrines false.” * This view of heathen religions is probably much exag¬ gerated. They must contain more truth than error, and must have been, on the whole, useful to mankind. We do not believe that they originated in human fraud, that their essence is superstition, that there is more falsehood than truth in their doctrines, that their moral tendency is mainly injurious, or that they continually degenerate into greater evil. No doubt it may be justly predicated of all these systems that they contain much which is false and injurious to human virtue. But the following considerations may tend to show that all the religions of the earth are providential, and that all tend to benefit mankind. To ascribe the vast phenomena of religion, in their variety and complexity, to man as their author, and to suppose the whole a mere work of human fraud, is not a satisfactory solution of the facts before us. That priests, working on human ignorance or fear, should be able to build up such a great mass of belief, sentiment, and action, is like the Hindoo cosmogony, which sup¬ poses the globe to rest on an elephant, the elephant on a turtle, and the turtle on nothing at all. If the people were so ignorant, how happened the priests to be so wise ? If the people were so credulous, why were not the priests credulous too ? “ Like people, * Mosheim’s Church History, Yol. I. Chap. I. ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. 7 like priests,” is a proverb approved by experience. Among so many nations and through so many centuries, why has not some one priest betrayed the secret of the famous imposition ? Apply a similar theory to any other human institution, and how patent is its absurdity ! Let a republican contend that all other forms of government— the patriarchal system, government by castes, the feu¬ dal system, absolute and limited monarchies, oligarchies, and aristocracies — are wholly useless and evil, and were the result of statecraft alone, with no root in human na¬ ture or the needs of man. Let one maintain that every system of law (except our own) was an invention of law¬ yers for private ends. Let one argue in the same way about medicine, and say that this is a pure system of quackery, devised by physicians, in order to get a support out of the people for doing nothing. We should at once reply that, though error and ignorance may play a part in all these institutions, they cannot be based on error and ignorance only. Nothing which has not in it some ele¬ ments of use can hold its position in the world during so long a time and over so wide a range. It is only reasonable to say the same of heathen or ethnic religions. They contain, no doubt, error and evil. No doubt priest¬ craft has been carried very far in them, though not fur¬ ther perhaps than it has sometimes been carried in Chris¬ tianity. But unless they contained more of good than evil, they could not have kept their place. They partially satisfied a great hunger of the human heart. They exer¬ cised some restraint on human wilfulness and passion. They have directed, however imperfectly, the human con¬ science toward the right. To assume that they are wholly evil is disrespectful to human nature. It supposes man to be the easy and universal, dupe of fraud. But these religions do not rest on such a sandy foundation, but on the feeling of dependence, the sense of accountability, the recognition of spiritual realities very near to this world of matter, and the need of looking up and worship¬ ping some unseen power higher and better than ourselves. A decent respect for the opinions of mankind forbids ug to ascribe pagan religions to priestcraft as their chief source. 8 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. And a reverence for Divine Providence brings us to the same conclusion. Can it be that God lias left himself without a witness in the world, except among the He¬ brews in ancient times and the Christians in modern times ? This narrow creed excludes God from any com¬ munion with the great majority of human beings. The Father of the human race is represented as selecting a few of his children to keep near himself, and as leaving all the rest to perish in their ignorance and error. And this is not because they are prodigal children who have gone astray into a far country of their own accord; for they are just where they were placed by their Creator. He “ has determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation.” He has caused some to be born in India, where they can only hear of him through Brahmanism; and some in China, where they can know him only through Buddha and Confucius. The doctrine which we are opposing is; that, being put there by God, they are born into hopeless error, and are then punished for their error by everlasting destruction. The doctrine for which we contend is that of the Apostle Paul, that God has “ determined beforehand the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord, if haply they may feel after him and find him.” Paul teaches that “ all nations dwelling on all the face of the earth ” may not only seek and feel after God, but also find him. But as all living in heathen lands are heathen, if they find God at all, they must find him through heathenism. The pagan religions are the effort of man to feel after God. Otherwise we must conclude that the Being without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, the Being who never puts an insect into the air or a polyp into the water without providing it with some appro¬ priate food, so that it may live and grow, has left the vast majority of his human children, made with relig¬ ious appetences of conscience, reverence, hope, without a corresponding nutriment of truth. This view tends to atheism; for if the presence of adaptation everywhere is the legitimate proof of creative design, the absence of adaptation in so important a sphere tends, so far, to set aside that proof. ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. 9 The view which we are opposing contradicts that law of progress which alone gives meaning and unity to his¬ tory. Instead of progress, it teaches degeneracy and failure. But elsewhere we see progress, not recession. Geology shows us higher forms of life succeeding to the lower. Botany exhibits the lichens and mosses preparing a soil for more complex forms of vegetation. Civil his¬ tory shows the savage state giving way to the semi-civil¬ ized, and that to the civilized. If heathen religions are a step, a preparation for Christianity, then this law of de¬ grees appears also in religion; then we see an order in the progress of the human soul, — “ first the blade, then the ear, afterward the full corn in the ear.” Then we can understand why Christ’s coming was delayed till the ful¬ ness of the time had come. But otherwise all, in this most important sphere of human life, is in disorder, with¬ out unity, progress, meaning, or providence. These views, we trust, will be amply confirmed when we come to examine each great religion separately and carefully. We shall find them always feeling after God, often finding him. We shall see that in their origin they are not the work of priestcraft, but of human nature; in their essence not superstitions, but religions ; in their doctrines true more frequently than false ; in their moral tendency good rather than evil. And instead of degenerating toward something worse, they come to pre¬ pare the way for something better. § 4. How Ethnic Religions were regarded by Christ and his Apostles. According to Christ and the Apostles, Christianity was to grow out of Judaism, and be developed into a univer¬ sal religion. Accordingly, the method of Jesus was to go first to the Jews ; and when he left the limits of Pales¬ tine on a single occasion, he declared himself as only going into Phoenicia to seek after the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But he stated that he had other sheep, not of this fold, whom he must bring, recognizing that there were, among the heathen, good and honest hearts 10 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. prepared for Christianity, and already belonging to him; sheep who knew his voice and were ready to follow him. He also declared that the Eoman centurion and the Phoe¬ nician woman already possessed great faith, the centurion more than he had yet found in Israel. But the most striking declaration of Jesus, and one singularly over¬ looked, concerning the character of the heathen, is to be found in his description of the day of judgment, in Mat¬ thew (chap. xxv.). It is very curious that men should speculate as to the fate of the heathen, when Jesus has here distinctly taught that all good men among them are his sheep, though they never heard of him. The ac¬ count begins, “ Before him shall be gathered all the Gen¬ tiles ” (or heathen). It is not a description of the judg¬ ment of the Christian world, but of the heathen world. The word here used (ja e6vrj) occurs about one hundred and sixty-four times in the Hew Testament. It is trans¬ lated “ gentiles ” oftener than by any other word, that is, about ninety-three times ; by “ heathen ” four or five times ; and in the remaining passages it is mostly translated “ nations.” That it means the Gentiles or heathen here appears from the fact that they are represented as ignorant of Christ, and are judged, not by the standard of Christian faith, but by their humanity and charity toward those in suffering. Jesus recognizes, therefore, among these ethnic or heathen people, some as belonging to himself, — the “ other sheep,” not of the Jewish fold. The Apostle Paul, who was especially commissioned to the Gentiles, must be considered as the best authority upon this question. Did he regard their religions as wholly false ? On the contrary, he tells the Athenians that they are already worshipping the true God, though ignorantly. “ Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.” When he said this he was standing face to face with all that was most imposing in the religion of Greece. He saw the city filled with idols, majestic forms, the perfection of artistic grace and beauty. Was his spirit then moved only with indignation against this wor¬ ship, and had he no sympathy with the spiritual needs which it expressed ? It does not seem so. He recognized ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. 11 piety in tlieir souls. “ I see that ye are, in all ways, ex¬ ceedingly pious.” He recognized their worship as passing beyond the idols, to the true God. He did not profess that he came to revolutionize their religion, hut to reform it. He does not proceed like the backwoodsman, who fells the forest and takes out the stumps in order to plant a wholly different crop ; but like the nurseryman, who grafts a native stock with a better fruit. They were al¬ ready ignorantly worshipping the true God. What the apostle proposed to do was to enlighten that ignorance by showing them who that true God was, and what was his character. In his subsequent remarks, therefore, he does not teach them that there is one Supreme Being, but he assumes it, as something already believed. He assumes him to be the creator of all things ; to be omnipotent, — “ the Lord of heaven and earth ” ; spiritual, — “ dwelleth not in temples made with hands ” ; absolute, — “ not need¬ ing anything,” but the source of all things. He says this, as not expecting any opposition or contradiction; he re¬ serves his criticisms on their idolatry for the end of his discourse. He then states, quite clearly, that the different nations of the world have a common origin, belong to one family, and have been providentially placed in space and time, that each might seek the Lord in its own way. He recognized in them a power of seeking and finding God, the God close at hand, and in whom we live; and he quotes one of their own poets, accepting his statement of God’s fatherly character. How, it is quite common for those who deny that there is any truth in heathenism, to admire this speech of Paul as a masterpiece of ingenuity and eloquence. But he would hardly have made it, un¬ less he thought it to be true. Those who praise his eloquence at the expense of his veracity pay him a poor compliment. Did Paul tell the Athenians that they were worshipping the true God when they were not, and that for the sake of rhetorical effect ? If we believe this con¬ cerning him, and yet admire him, let us cease henceforth to find fault with the Jesuits. Ho! Paul believed what he said, that the Athenians were worshipping the true God, though ignorantly. The 12 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. sentiment of reverence, of worship, was lifting them to its true object. All they needed was to have their un¬ derstanding enlightened. Truth he placed in the heart rather than the understanding, but he also connected Christianity with Polytheism where the two religions touched, that is, on their pantheistic side. While placing God above the world as its ruler, “ seeing he is Lord of heaven and earth,” he placed him in the world as an im¬ manent presence,—"in him we live, and move, and have our being.” And afterward, in writing to the Bomans, he takes the same ground. He teaches that the Gentiles had a knowledge of the eternal attributes of God (Bom. i. 19) and saw him in his works (v. 20), and that they also had in their nature a law of duty, enabling them to do the things contained in the law. This he calls “ the law written in the heart ” (Bom. ii. 14,15). He blames them, not for ignorance, but for disobedience. The Apostle Paul, therefore, agrees with us in finding in heathen re¬ ligions essential truth in connection with their errors. The early Christian apologists often took the same view. Thus Clement of Alexandria believed that God had one great plan for educating the world, of which Christianity was the final step. He refused to consider the Jewish religion as the only divine preparation for Christianity, but regarded the Greek philosophy as also a preparation for Christ. Neander gives his views at length, and says that Clement was the founder of the true view of history.* Tertullian declared the soul to be naturally Christian. The Sibylline books were quoted as good prophetic works along with the Jewish prophets. Socrates was called by the Bathers a Christian before Christ. Within the last few years the extravagant condemna¬ tion of the heathen religions has produced a reaction in their favor. It has been felt to be disparaging to human nature to suppose that almost the whole human race should consent to be fed on error. Such a belief has been seen to be a denial of God’s providence, as regards nine tenths of mankind. Accordingly it has become more * Neander, Church History, Yol. I. p. 540 (Am. ed.). ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. 13 usual of late to rehabilitate heathenism, and to place it on the same level with Christianity, if not above it. The Vedas are talked about as though they were somewhat superior to the Old Testament, and Confucius is quoted as an authority quite equal to Paul or John. An igno¬ rant admiration of the sacred books of the Buddhists and Brahmins has succeeded to the former ignorant and sweeping condemnation of them. What is now needed is a fair and candid examination and comparison of these systems from reliable sources. § 5. Comparative Theology will furnish a new Class of Evidences in Support of Christianity. Such an examination, doing full justice to all other religions, acknowledging their partial truth and use, will not depreciate, but exalt the value of Christianity. It will furnish a new kind of evidence in its favor. But the usual form of argument may perhaps be changed. Is Christianity a supernatural or a natural religion ? Is it a religion attested to be from God by miracles ? This has been the great question in evidences for the last century. The truth and divine origin of Christianity have been made to depend on its supernatural character, and to stand or fall with a certain view of miracles. And then, in order to maintain the reality of miracles, it became necessary to prove the infallibility of the record; and so we were taught that, to believe in Jesus Christ, we must first believe in the genuineness and authenticity of the whole New Testament. “All the theology of England,” says Mr. Pattison,* “ was devoted to proving the Chris¬ tian religion credible, in this manner.” “ The apostles,” said Dr. Johnson, “were being tried one a week for the capital crime of forgery.” This was the work of the school of Lardner, Paley, and Whately. But the real question between Christians and un¬ believers in Christianity is, not whether our religion is or is not supernatural; not whether Christ’s miracles were or not violations of law; nor whether the New Essays and Reviews, Article VI. 14 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Testament, as it stands, is the work of inspired men. The main question, back of all these, is different, and not dependent on the views we may happen to take of the universality of law. It is this: Is Christianity, as taught by Jesus, intended by God to be the religion of the human race ? Is it only one among natural religions ? is it to be superseded in its turn by others, or is it the one religion which is to unite all mankind ? “Art thou he that should come, or look we for another ? ” This is the question which we ask of Jesus of Nazareth, and the answer to which makes the real problem of apologetic theology. Now the defenders of Christianity have been so occu¬ pied with their special disputes about miracles, about naturalism and supernaturalism, and about the inspira¬ tion and infallibility of the apostles, that they have left uncultivated the wide field of inquiry belonging to Com¬ parative Theology. But it belongs to this science to establish the truth of Christianity by showing that it possesses all the aptitudes which fit it to be the religion of the human race. This method of establishing Christianity differs from the traditional argument in this: that, while the last undertakes to prove Christianity to be true, this shows it to be true. For if we can make it appear, by a fair sur¬ vey of the principal religions of the world, that, while they are ethnic or local, Christianity is catholic or uni¬ versal; that, while they are defective, possessing some truths and wanting others, Christianity possesses all; and that, while they are stationary, Christianity is progressive ; it will not then be necessary to discuss in what sense it is a supernatural religion. Such a survey will show that it is adapted to the nature of man. When we see adap¬ tation we naturally infer design. If Christianity appears, after a full comparison with other religions, to be the one and only religion which is perfectly adapted to man, it will be impossible to doubt that it was designed by God to be the religion of our race; that it is the provi¬ dential religion sent by God to man, its truth God’s truth, its way the way to God and to heaven. ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. 15 § 6. It will show that, while most of the Religions of the World arc Ethnic, or the Religions of Races, Christianity is Catholic, or adapted to become the Religion of alt Races. By ethnic religions we mean those religions, each of which has always been confined within the boundaries of a particular race or family of mankind, and has never made proselytes or converts, except accidentally, outside of it. By catholic religions we mean those which have shown the desire and power of passing over these limits, and becoming the religion of a considerable number of persons belonging to different races. Now we are met at once with the striking and obvious fact, that most of the religions of the world are evidently religions limited in some way to particular races or na¬ tions. They are, as we have said, ethnic. We use this Greek word rather than its Latin equivalent, gentile, be¬ cause gentile, though meaning literally “ of, or belonging to, a race,” has acquired a special sense from its New Testament use as meaning all who are not Jews. The word “ ethnic ” remains pure from any such secondary or acquired meaning, and signifies simply that which belongs to a race. The science of ethnology is a modern one, and is still in the process of formation. Some of its conclusions, how¬ ever, may he considered as established. It has forever set aside Blumenbach’s old classification of mankind into the Caucasian and four other varieties, and has given us, in¬ stead, a division of the largest part of mankind into Indo- European, Semitic, and Turanian families, leaving a con¬ siderable penumbra outside as yet unclassified. That mankind is so divided into races of men it would seem hardly possible to deny. It is proved by physi¬ ology, by psychology, by glossology, and by civil history. Physiology shows us anatomical differences between races. There are as marked and real differences between the skull of a Hindoo and that of a Chinaman as between the skulls of an Englishman and a negro. There is not as great a difference, perhaps, but it is as real and as constant. Then the characters of races remain distinct, the same 1 6 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. traits reappearing after many centuries exactly as at first. We find the same difference of character between the Jews and Arabs, who are merely different families of the same Semitic race, as existed between their ancestors, Jacob and Esau, as described in the Book of Genesis. Jacob and the Jews are prudent, loving trade, money¬ making, tenacious of their ideas, living in cities; Esau and the Arabs, careless, wild, hating cities, loving the desert. A similar example of the maintaining of a moral type is found in the characteristic differences between the German and Kelts, two families of the same Indo-European race. Take an Irishman and a German, working side by side on the Mississippi, and they present the same characteris¬ tic differences as the Germans and Kelts described by Tacitus and Caesar. The German loves liberty, the Kelt equality; the one hates the tyrant, the other the aristo¬ crat ; the one is a serious thinker, the other a quick and vivid thinker; the one is a Protestant in religion, the other a Catholic. Ammianus Marcellinus, living in Gaul in the fourth century, describes the Kelts thus (see whether it does not apply to the race now). “ The Gauls,” says lie, “ are mostly tall of stature,* fair and red-haired, and horrible from the fierceness of their eyes, fond of strife, and haughtily insolent. A whole band of strangers would not endure one of them, aided in his brawl by his powerful and blue-eyed wife, especially when with swollen neck and gnashing teeth, poising her huge white arms, she begins, joining kicks to blows, to put forth her fists like stones from a catapult. Most of their voices are terrific and threatening, as well when they are quiet as when they are angry. All ages are thought fit for war. They are a nation very fond of wine, and invent many drinks resembling it, and some of the poorer sort wander about with their senses quite blunted by continual intoxication.” Kow we find that each race, beside its special moral qualities, seems also to have special religious qualities, which cause it to tend toward some one kind of religion * In this respect the type has changed. ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. 17 more tlian to another kind. These religions are the flower of the race; they come forth from it as its best aroma. Thus we see that Brahmanism is confined to that section or race of the great Aryan family which has occupied India for more than thirty centuries. It belongs to the Hindoos, to the people taking its name from the Indus, by the tributaries of which stream it entered India from the northwest. It has never attempted to extend itself beyond that particular variety of mankind. Perhaps one hundred and fifty millions of men accept it as their faith. It has been held by this race as their religion during a period immense in the history of mankind. Its sacred books are certainly more than three thousand years old. But during all this time it has never communicated it- self to any race of men outside of the peninsula of India. It is thus seen to be a strictly ethnic religion, showing neither the tendency nor the desire to become the religion of mankind. The same thing may be said of the religion of Con¬ fucius. It belongs to China and the Chinese. It suits their taste and genius. They have had it as their state religion for some twenty-three hundred years, and it rules the opinions of the rulers of opinion among three hun¬ dred millions of men. But out of China Confucius is only a name. So, too, of the system of Zoroaster. It was for a long period the religion of an Aryan tribe who became the ruling people among mankind. The Persians extended themselves through Western Asia, and conquered many nations, but they never communicated their religion. It was strictly a national or ethnic religion, belonging only to the Iranians and their descendants, the Parsees. In like manner it may be said that the religion of Egypt, of Greece, of Scandinavia, of the Jews, of Islam, and of Buddhism are ethnic religions. Those of Egypt and Scandinavia are strictly so. It is said, to be sure, that the Greeks borrowed the names of their gods from Egypt, but the gods themselves were entirely different ones. It is also true that some of the gods of the Romans were borrowed! from the Greeks, but their life was left behind. They 7 B 18 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. merely repeated by rote the Greek mythology, having no power to invent one for themselves. But the Greek re¬ ligion they never received. For instead of its fair humani¬ ties, the ltoman gods were only servants of the state, — a higher kind of consuls, tribunes, and lictors. The real Olympus of Borne was the Senate Chamber on the Capi- toline Hill. Judaism also was in reality an ethnic reli¬ gion, though it aimed at catholicity and expected it, and made proselytes. But it could not tolerate unessentials, and so failed of becoming catholic. The Jewish religion, until it had Christianity to help it, was never able to do more than make proselytes here and there. Christianity, while preaching the doctrines of Jesus and the New Tes¬ tament, lias been able to carry also the weight of the Old Testament, and to give a certain catholicity to Judaism. The religion of Mohammed has been catholic, in that it has become the religion of very different races, — the Arabs, Turks, and Persians, belonging to the three great varieties of the human family. But then Mohammedan¬ ism has never sought to make converts , but only subjects; it has not asked for belief, but merely for submission. Consequently Mr. Palgrave, Mr. Lane, and Mr. Vambery tell us, that, in Arabia, Egypt, and Turkistan, there are multitudes who are outwardly Mohammedan, but who in their private belief reject Mohammed, and are really Pagans. But, no doubt, there is a catholic tendency both in Judaism and Mohammedanism; and this comes from the great doctrine which they hold in common with Chris¬ tianity, — the unity of God. Faith in that is the basis of all expectation of a universal religion, and the wish and the power to convert others come from that doctrine of the Divine unity. But Christianity teaches the unity of God not merely as a supremacy of power and will, but as a supremacy of love and wisdom; it teaches God as Father, and not merely as King; so it seeks not merely to make prose¬ lytes and subjects, but to make converts. Hence Chris¬ tianity, beginning as a Semitic religion, among the Jews, went across the Greek Archipelago and converted the ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. 19 Hellenic and the Latin races ; afterward the Goths, Lom¬ bards, Franks, Vandals ; later still, the Saxons, Danes, and Normans. Meantime, its Nestorian missionaries, push¬ ing east, made converts in Armenia, Persia, India, and China. In later days it has converted negroes, Indians, and the people of the Pacific Islands. Something, indeed, stopped its progress after its first triumphant successes during seven or eight centuries. At the tenth century it reached its term. Modern missions, whether those of Jesuits or Protestants, have not converted whole nations and races, hut only individuals here and there. The reason of this check, probably, is, that Christians have repeated the mistakes of the Jews and Mohammedans. They have sought to make proselytes to an outward sys¬ tem of worship and ritual, or to make subjects to a dogma; but not to make converts to an idea and a life. When the Christian missionaries shall go and say to the Hin¬ doos or the Buddhists : “ You are already on your way toward God, — your religion came from him, and was in¬ spired by his Spirit; now he sends you something more and higher by his Son, who does not come to destroy but to fulfil, not to take away any good thing you have, but to add to it something better,” then we shall see the process of conversion, checked in the ninth and tenth centuries, reinaugurated. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, all teaching the strict unity of God, have all aimed at becoming universal. Juda¬ ism failed because it sought proselytes instead of making converts. Islam, the religion of Mohammed (in reality a Judaizing Christian sect) failed because it sought to make subjects rather than converts. Its conquests over a variety of races were extensive, but not deep. To-day it holds in its embrace at least four very distinct races, — the Arabs, a Semitic race, the Persians, an Indo-European race, the Negroes, and the Turks or Turanians. But, correctly viewed, Islam is only a heretical Christian sect, and so all this must be credited to the interest of Christianity. Islam is a John the Baptist crying in the wilderness, “ Prepare the way of the Lord ” ; Mohammed is a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. It does for the nations just what Judaism 20 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. did, that is, it teaches the Divine unity. Esau has taken the place of Jacob in the economy of Providence. When the Jews rejected Christ they ceased from their providen¬ tial work, and their cousins, the Arabs, took their place. The conquests of Islam, therefore, ought to he regarded as the preliminary conquests of Christianity. There is still another system which has shown some tendencies toward catholicity. This is Buddhism, which has extended itself over the whole of the eastern half of Asia. But though it includes a variety of nationalities, it is doubtful if it includes any variety of races. All the Buddhists appear to belong to the great Mongol family. And although this system originated among the Aryan race in India, it has let go its hold of that family and transferred itself wholly to the Mongols. But Christianity, from the first, showed itself capable of taking possession of the convictions of the most differ¬ ent races of mankind. 1STow, as on the day of Pentecost, many races hear the apostles speak in their own tongues, in which they were born, — Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Judsea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Cretes and Arabians. The miracle of tongues was a type of the effect of the truth in penetrating the mind and heart of different nationalities. The Jewish Christians, indeed, tried to repeat in Christianity their old mistake which had prevented Judaism from becoming universal. They wished to insist that no one should become a Christian unless he became a Jew at the same time. If they had succeeded in this, they would have effectually kept the Gospel of Christ from becoming a catholic religion. But the Apostle Paul was raised up for the emergency, and he prevented this suicidal course. Consequently Chris¬ tianity passed at once into Europe, and became the religion of Greeks and Romans as well as Jews. Paul struck off from it its Jewish shell, told them that as Christians they had nothing to do with the Jewish law, or with Jewish Passovers, Sabbaths, or ceremonies. As Christians they were only to know Christ, and they were not to know ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC KELIGIONS. 21 him according to the flesh, that is, not as a Jew. So Christianity became at once a catholic religion, consisting in the diffusion of great truths and a divine life. It over¬ flowed the nationalities of Greece and Rome, of North Africa, of Persia and Western Asia, at the very beginning. It conquered the Gothic and German conquerors of the Roman Empire. Under Arian missionaries, it converted Goths, Vandals, Lombards. Under Nestorian mission¬ aries, it penetrated as far east as China, and made converts there. In like manner the Gospel spread over the whole of North Africa, whence it was afterwards expelled by the power of Islam. It has shown itself, therefore, capa¬ ble of adapting itself to every variety of the human race. § 7. Comparative Theology will probably show that the Eth¬ nic Religions are one-sided, each containing a Truth of its own, but being defective, wanting some corresponding Truth. Christianity, or the Catholic Religion, is complete on every Side. Brahmanism, for example, is complete on the side of spirit, defective on the side of matter; full as regards the infinite, empty of the finite; recognizing eternity but not time, God but not nature. It is a vast system of spiritual pantheism, in which there is no reality but God, all else • being Maya, or illusion. The Hindoo mind is singularly pious, but also singularly immoral. It has no history, for history belongs to time. No one knows when its sacred books were written, when its civilization began, what caused its progress, what its decline. Gentle, devout, abstract, it is capable at once of the loftiest thoughts and the basest actions. It combines the most ascetic self- denials and abstraction from life with the most voluptu¬ ous self-indulgence. The key to the whole system of Hin¬ doo thought and life is in this original tendency to see God, not man ; eternity, not time ; the infinite, not the finite. Buddhism, which was a revolt from Brahmanism, has ex¬ actly the opposite truths and the opposite defects. Where Brahmanism is strong, it is weak; where Brahmanism is weak, it is strong. It recognizes man, not God; the soul. 22 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. not the all; the finite, not the infinite; morality, not piety. Its only God, Buddha, is a man who has passed on through innumerable transmigrations, till, by means of exemplary virtues, he has reached the lordship of the universe. Its heaven, Nirvana, is indeed the world of infinite bliss ; but, incapable of cognizing the infinite, it calls it nothing. Heaven, being the inconceivable infinite, is equivalent to pure negation. Nature, to the Buddhist, instead of being the delusive shadow of God, as the Brahman views it, is envisaged as a nexus of laws, which reward and punish impartially both obedience and disobedience. The system of Confucius has many merits, especially in its influence on society. The most conservative of all systems, and also the most prosaic, its essential virtue is reverence for all that is. It is not perplexed by any fear or hope of change; the thing which has been is that which shall be ; and the very idea of progress is eliminated from the thought of China, Safety, repose, peace, these are its blessings. Probably merely physical comfort, earthly bien-etrc, was never carried further than in the Celestial Empire. That virtue so much exploded in Western civ¬ ilization, of respect for parents, remains in full force in China. The emperor is honored as the father of his peo¬ ple ; ancestors are worshipped in every family; and the best reward offered for a good action is a patent of nobil¬ ity, which does not reach forward to one’s children, but backward to one’s parents. This is the bright side of Chinese life; the dark side is the fearful ennui, the moral death, which falls on a people among whom there are no such things as hope, expectation, or the sense of progress. Hence the habit of suicide among this people, indicating their small hold on life. In every Chinese drama there are two or three suicides. A soldier will commit suicide rather than go into battle. If you displease a Chinaman, he will resent the offence by killing himself on your door¬ step, hoping thus to give you some inconvenience. Such are the merits and such the defects of the system of Con¬ fucius. The doctrine of Zoroaster and of the Zend Avesta is far nobler. Its central thought is that each man is a soldier, ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC KELIGIONS. 23 bound to battle for good against evil. The world, at the present time, is the scene of a great warfare between the hosts of light and those of darkness. Every, man who thinks purely, speaks purely, and acts purely is a servant of Ormazd, the king of light, and thereby helps on his cause. The result of this doctrine was that wonderful Persian empire, which astonished the world for cen¬ turies by its brilliant successes; and the virtue and intel¬ ligence of the Parsees of the present time, the only representatives in the world of that venerable religion. The one thing lacking to the system is unity. It lives in perpetual conflict. Its virtues are all the virtues of a soldier. Its defects and merits are, both, the polar op- posites of those of China. If the everlasting peace of China tends to moral stagnation and death, the perpetual struggle and conflict of Persia tends to exhaustion. The Persian empire rushed through a short career of flame to its tomb; the Chinese empire vegetates, unchanged, through a myriad of years. If Brahmanism and Buddhism occupy the opposite poles of the same axis of thought, — if the system of Confucius stands opposed, on another axis, to that of Zoroaster, — we find a third development of like polar antagonisms in the systems of ancient Egypt and Greece. Egypt stands for Nature; Greece for Man. Inscrutable as is the mystery of that Sphinx of the Nile, the old religion of Egypt, we can yet trace some phases of its secret. Its reverence for organization appears in the prac¬ tice of embalming. The bodies of men and of animals seemed to it to be divine. Even vegetable organization had something sacred in it: “ 0 holy nation,” said the Eoman satirist, “ whose gods grow in gardens! ” That plastic force of nature which appears in organic life and growth made up, in various forms, as we shall see in the proper place, the Egyptian Pantheon. The life-force of nature became divided into the three groups of gods, the highest of which represented its largest generalizations. Kneph, Neith, Sevech, Pascht, are symbols, according to Lepsius, of the World-Spirit, the World-Matter, Space 24 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. and Time. Each circle of the gods shows us some work¬ ing of the mysterious powers of nature, and of its occult laws. But when we come to Greece, these personified laws turn into men. Everything in the Greek Pantheon is human. All human tendencies appear transfigured into glowing forms of light on Mount Olympus. The gods of Egypt are powers and laws; those of Greece are persons. The opposite tendencies of these antagonist forms of piety appear in the development of Egyptian and Hel¬ lenic life. The gods of Egypt were mysteries too far removed from the popular apprehension to be objects of worship; and so religion in Egypt became priestcraft. In Greece, on the other hand, the gods were too familiar, too near to the people, to be worshipped with any real reverence. Partaking in all human faults and vices, it must sooner or later come to pass that familiarity would breed contempt. And as the religion of Egypt perished from being kept away from the people, as an esoteric system in the hands of priests, that of Greece, in which there was no priesthood as an order, came to an end because the gods ceased to be objects of respect at all. We see, from these examples, how each of the great ethnic religions tends to a disproportionate and excessive, because one-sided, statement of some divine truth or law. The question then emerges at this point: “ Is Chris¬ tianity also one-sided, or does it contain in itself all these truths ? ” Is it teres atque rotunclus, so as to be able to meet every natural religion with a kindred truth, and thus to supply the defects of each from its own fulness ? If it can be shown to possess this amplitude, it at once is placed by itself in an order of its own. It is not to be classified with the other religions, since it does not share their one family fault. In every other instance we can touch with our finger the weak place, the empty side. Is there any such weak side in Christianity ? It is the office of Comparative Theology to answer. The positive side of Brahmanism we saw to be its sense of spiritual realities. That is also fully present in Chris- ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. 25 tianity. Not merely does this appear in such New Testament texts as these: “ God is spirit,” “ The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life ”: not only does the New Testament just graze and escape Pantheism in such passages as “From whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things,” “ Who is above all, and through all, and in us all,” “ In him we live and move and have our being,” but the whole history of Christianity is the record of a spiritualism almost too excessive. It has appeared in the worship of the Church, the hymns of the Church, the tendencies to asceticism, the depreciation of earth and man. Christianity, therefore, fully meets Brahmanism on its positive side, while it fulfils its ne¬ gations, as we shall see hereafter, by adding as full a recognition of man and nature. The positive side of Buddhism is its cognition of the human soul and the natural laws of the universe. Now, if we look into the New Testament and into the history of the Church, we find this element also fully expressed. It appears in all the parables and teachings of Jesus, in which man is represented as a responsible agent, rewarded or punished according to the exact measure of his works; receiving the government of ten or five cities according to his stewardship. And when we look into the practical working of Christianity we find almost an exaggerated stress laid on the duty of saving one’s soul. This ex¬ cessive estimate is chiefly seen in the monastic system of the Roman Church, and in the Calvinistic sects of Protestantism. It also comes to light again, curiously enough, in such books as Combe’s “ Constitution of Man,” the theory of which is exactly the same as that of the Buddhists; namely, that the aim of life is a prudential virtue, consisting in wise obedience to the natural laws of the universe. Both systems substitute prudence for Providence as the arbiter of human destiny. But, apart from, these special tendencies in Christianity, it cannot be doubted that all Christian experience recognizes the positive truth of Buddhism in regarding the human soul as a substantial, finite, but progressive monad, not to be absorbed, as in Brahmanism, in the abyss of absolute being. 2 26 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. The positive side of the system of Confucius is the organization of the state on the basis of the family. The government of the emperor is paternal government, the obedience of the subject is filial obedience. Now, though Jesus did not for the first time call God “ the Father,” he first brought men into a truly filial relation to God. The Roman Church is organized on the family idea. The word “Pope” means the “Father”; he is the father of the whole Church. Every bishop and every priest is also the father of a smaller family, and all those born into the Church are its children, as all born into a family are bora sons and daughters of the family. In Protestantism, also, society is composed of families as the body is made up of cells. Only in China, and in Christendom, is family life thus sacred and worshipful. In some patriarchal sys¬ tems, polygamy annuls the wife and the mother; in others the father is a despot, and the children slaves; in other systems, the crushing authority of the state destroys the independence of the household. Chris¬ tianity alone accepts with China the religion of family life with all its conservative elements, while it fulfils it with the larger hope of the kingdom of heaven and brotherhood of mankind. This idea of the kingdom of heaven, so central in Christianity, is also the essential motive in the religion of Zoroaster. As, in the Zend Avesta, every man is a soldier, fighting for light or for darkness, and neutrality is impossible ; so, in the Gospel, light and good stand opposed to darkness and evil as perpetual foes. A cer¬ tain current of dualism runs through the' Christian Scrip¬ tures and the teaching of the Church. God and Satan, heaven and hell, are the only alternatives. Every one must choose between them. In the current theology, this dualism has been so emphasized as even to exceed that of the Zend Avesta, The doctrine of everlasting punishment and an everlasting hell has always been the orthodox doc¬ trine in Christianity, while the Zend Avesta probably, and the religion in its subsequent development certainly, teaches universal restoration, and the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Nevertheless, practically, in consequence ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. 27 of the greater richness and fulness of Christianity, this tendency to dualism lias been neutralized by its mono¬ theism, and evil kept subordinate; while, in the Zend religion, the evil principle assumed such proportions as to make it the formidable rival of good in the mind of the worshipper. Here, as before, we may say that Christianity is able to do justice to all the truth involved in the doc¬ trine of evil, avoiding any superficial optimism, and rec¬ ognizing the fact that all true life must partake of the nature of a battle. The positive side of Egyptian religion we saw to be a recognition of the divine element in nature, of that plas¬ tic, mysterious life which embodies itself in all organisms. Of this view we find little stated explicitly in the Hew Testament. But that the principles of Christianity con¬ tain it, implicitly, in an undeveloped form, appears, (1.) Because Christian monotheism differs from Jewish and Mohammedan monotheism, in recognizing God “in all things ” as well as God “ above all things .” (2.) Because Christian art and literature differ from classic art and literature in the romantic element, which is exactly the sense of this mysterious life in nature. The classic artist is a noirjTrjs, a maker; the romantic artist is a troubadour, a finder. The one does his work in giving form to a dead material; the other, by seeking for its hidden life. (3.) Because modern science is invention , i. e. finding. It recog¬ nizes mysteries in nature which are to be searched into, and this search becomes a serious religious interest with all truly scientific men. It appears to such men a pro¬ fanity to doubt or question the revelations of nature, and they believe in its infallible inspiration quite as much as the dogmatist believes in the infallible inspira¬ tion of Scripture, or the churchman in the infallible in¬ spiration of the Church. We may, therefore, say, that the essential truth in the Egyptian system has been taken up into our modern Christian life. And how is it, lastly, with that opposite pole of re¬ ligious thought which blossomed out in “ the fair human¬ ities of old religion ” in the wonderful Hellenic mind ? The gods of Greece were men. They were not abstract 28 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. ideas, concealing natural powers and laws. They were open as sunshine, bright as noon, a fair company of men and women idealized and gracious, just a little way off, a little way up. It was humanity projected upon the skies, divine creatures of more than mortal beauty, but thrill¬ ing with human life and human sympathies. Has Chris¬ tianity anything to offer in the place of this charming system of human gods and goddesses ? We answer that the fundamental doctrine of Chris¬ tianity is the incarnation, the word made flesh. It is God revealed in man. Under some doctrinal type this has always been believed. The common Trinitarian doc¬ trine states it in a somewhat crude and illogical form. Yet somehow the man Christ Jesus has always been seen to be the best revelation of God. But unless there were some human element in the Deity, he could not reveal himself so in a human life. The doctrine of the incarna¬ tion, therefore, repeats the Mosaic statement that “ man was made in the image of God.” Jewish and Moham¬ medan monotheism separate God entirely from the world. Philosophic monotheism, in our day, separates God from man, by teaching that there is nothing in common be¬ tween the two by which God can be mediated, and so makes him wholly incomprehensible. Christianity gives us Emmanuel, God with us, equally removed from the stern despotic omnipotence of the Semitic monotheism and the finite and imperfect humanities of Olympus. We see God in Christ, as full of sympathy with man, God “ in us all ”; and yet we see him in nature, providence, history, as “ above all ” and “ through all.” The Eoman Catholic Church has, perhaps, humanized religion too far. Eor every god and goddess of Greece she has given us, on some immortal canvas, an archangel or a saint to be adored and loved. Instead of Apollo and the Python we have Guido’s St. Michael and the Dragon; in place of the light, airy Mercury she provides a St. Sebastian; instead of the “ untouched ” Diana, some heavenly Agnes or Cecilia. The Catholic heaven is peopled, all the way up, with beautiful human forms ; and on the upper throne we have holiness and tenderness incarnate in the queen ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. 29 of heaven and her divine Son. All the Greek human¬ ities are thus fulfilled in the ample faith of Christen¬ dom. By such a critical survey as we have thus sketched in mere outline it will he seen that each of the great ethnic religions is full on one side, hut empty on the other, while Christianity is full all round. Christianity is adapted to take their place, not because they are false, but be¬ cause they are true as far as they go. They “ know in part and prophesy in part ; but when that which is per¬ fect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” § 8. Comparative, Theology will probably show that Ethnic Religions are arrested , or degenerate , and will come to an End, while the Catholic Religion is capable of a progres¬ sive Development. The religions of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Pome, have come to an end ; having shared the fate of the national civilization of which each was a part. The religions of China, Islam, Buddha, and Judaea have all been arrested, and remain unchanged and seemingly unchangeable. Like great vessels anchored in a stream, the current of time flows past them, and each year they are further behind the spirit of the age, and less in harmony with its de¬ mands. Christianity alone, of all human religions, seems to possess the power of keeping abreast with the ad¬ vancing civilization of the world. As the child’s soul grows with his body, so that when he becomes a man it is a man’s soul and not a child’s, so the Gospel of Jesus continues the soul of all human culture. It continually drops its old forms and takes new ones. It passed out of its Jewish body under the guidance of Paul. In a speculative age it unfolded into creeds and systems. In a worshipping age it developed ceremonies and a ritual. When the fall of Rome left Europe without unity or centre, it gave it an organization and order through the Papacy. When the Papacy became a tyranny, and the Renaissance called for free thought, it suddenly put forth 30 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Protestantism, as the tree by the water-side sends forth its shoots in due season. Protestantism, free as air, opens out into the various sects, each taking hold of some human need; Lutheranism, Calvinism, Methodism, Swedenbor- gianism, or Rationalism. Christianity blossoms out into modern science, literature, art, — children who indeed often forget their mother, and are ignorant of their source, but which are still fed from her breasts and partake of her life. Christianity, the spirit of faith, hope, and love, is the deep fountain of modern civilization. Its inventions are for the many, not for the few. Its science is not hoarded, but diffused. It elevates the masses, who everywhere else have been trampled down. The friend of the people, it tends to free schools, a free press, a free government, the abolition of slavery, w T ar, vice, and the melioration of soci¬ ety. We cannot, indeed, here prove that Christianity is the cause of these features peculiar to modern life; but we find it everywhere associated with them, and so we can say that it only, of all the religions of mankind, has been capable of accompanying man in his progress from evil to good, from good to better. We have merely suggested some of the results to which the study of Comparative Theology may lead us. They will appear more fully as we proceed in our examination of the religions, and subsequently in their comparison. This introductory chapter has been designed as a sketch of the course which the work will take. When we have completed our survey, the results to which we hope to arrive will be these, if we succeed in what we have undertaken: — 1. All the great religions of the world, except Christian¬ ity and Mohammedanism, are ethnic religions, or religions limited to a single nation or race. Christianity alone (in¬ cluding Mohammedanism and Judaism, which are its tem¬ porary and local forms) is the religion of all races. 2. Every ethnic religion has its positive and negative side. Its positive side is that which holds some vital truth; its negative side is the absence of some other essential truth. Every such religion is true and providen¬ tial, but each limited and imperfect. ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS. 31 3. Christianity alone is a 7r\rjpccpa, or a fulness of truth, not coming to destroy but to fulfil the previous religions ; hut being capable of replacing them by teaching all the truth they have taught, and supplying that which they have omitted. 4. Christianity, being not a system but a life, not a creed or a form, but a spirit; is able to meet all the chang¬ ing wants of an advancing civilization by new develop¬ ments and adaptations, constantly feeding the life of man at its roots by fresh supplies of faith in God and faith in man. 32 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. CHAPTEE II. «r CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE, OR THE PROSE OF ASIA. § 1. Peculiarities of Chinese Civilization. § 2. Chinese Government based on Education. Civil-Service Examinations. § 3. Life and Character of Confucius. § 4. Philosophy and subsequent Development of Con¬ fucianism. § 5. Lao-tse and Tao-ism. § 6. Religious Character of the “Kings.” §7. Confucius and Christianity. Character of the Chinese. § 8. The Tae-ping Insurrection. Note. The Nestorian Inscription in China of the Eighth Century. § 1. Peculiarities of Chinese Civilization. I N qualifying the Chinese mind as prosaic, and in calling the writings of Confucius and his successors prose , we intend no disrespect to either. Prose is as good as poetry. But we mean to indicate the point of view from which the study of the Chinese teachers should be approached. Accustomed to regard the East as the land of imagination; reading in our childhood the wild ro¬ mances of Arabia; passing, in the poetry of Persia, into an atmosphere of tender and entrancing song; then, as we go farther East into India, encountering the vast epics of the Maha-Bharata and the Bamayana; — we might naturally expect to find in far Cathay a still wilder flight of the Asiatic Muse. Not at all. We drop at once from unbridled romance into the most colorless prose. Another race comes to us, which seems to have no affinity with Asia, as we have been accustomed to think of Asia. No more aspiration, no flights of fancy, but the worship of order, decency, propriety, and peaceful commonplaces. As the people, so the priests. The works of Confucius and his commentators are as level as the valley of their great river, the Yang-tse-kiang, which the tide ascends for four hundred miles. All in these writings is calm, serious, and moral. They assume that all men desire to be made bet- I CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 33 ter, and will take the trouble to find out how they can be made so. It is not thought necessary to entice them into goodness by the attractions of eloquence, the charm of imagery, or the fascinations of a brilliant wit. These philosophers have a Quaker style, a dress of plain drab, used only for clothing the thought, not at all for its orna¬ ment. And surely we ought not to ask for any other attraction than the subject -itself, in order to find interest in China and its teachers. The Chinese Empire, which contains more than five millions of square miles, or twice the area of the United States, has a population of five hundred millions, or half the number of the human beings inhab¬ iting the globe. China proper, inhabited by the Chinese, is half as large as Europe, and contains about three hun¬ dred and sixty millions of inhabitants. There are eigh¬ teen provinces in China, many of which contain, singly, more inhabitants than some of the great states of Europe. But on many other accounts this nation is deeply inter¬ esting. China is the type of permanence in the world. To say that it is older than any other existmg nation is saying very little. Herodotus, who has been called the Eather of History, travelled in Egypt about 450 B. c. He studied its monuments, bearing the names of kings who were as distant from his time as he is from ours, — monuments which even then belonged to a gray antiquity. But the kings who erected those monuments were possibly pos¬ terior to the founders of the Chinese Empire. Porcelain vessels, with Chinese mottoes on them, have been found in those ancient tombs, in shape, material, and appearance precisely like those which are made in China to-day; and Bosellini believes them to have been imported from China by kings contemporary with Moses, or before him. This nation and its institutions have outlasted everything. The ancient Bactrian and Assyrian kingdoms, the Persian monarchy, Greece and Pome, have all risen, flourished, and fallen, — and China continues still the same. The dynasty has been occasionally changed; but the laws> customs, institutions, all that makes national life, have 2* c / ' 34 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. continued. The authentic history of China commences some two thousand years before Christ, and a thousand years in this history is like a century in that of any other people. The oral language of China has continued the same that it is now for thirty centuries. The great wall bounding the empire on the north, which is twelve hun¬ dred and forty miles long and twenty feet high, with towers every few hundred yards, — which crosses moun¬ tain ridges, descends into valleys, and is carried over rivers on arches,—was built two hundred years before Christ, probably to repel those fierce tribes who, after ineffectual attempts to conquer China, travelled westward till they appeared on the borders of Europe five hundred years later, and, under the name of Huns, assisted in the downfall of the Eoman Empire. All China was inter¬ sected with canals at a period when none existed in Europe. The great canal, like the great wall, is unrivalled by any similar existing work. It is twice the length of the Erie Canal, is from two hundred to a thousand feet wide, and has enormous banks built of solid granite along a great part of its course. One of the important mechanical in¬ ventions of modern Europe is the Artesian well. That sunk at Grenelle, in France, was long supposed to be the deepest in the world, going down eighteen hundred feet. One at St. Louis, in the United States, has since been drilled to a depth, as has recently been stated, of about four thousand.* But in China these wells are found by tens of thousands, sunk at very remote periods to ob¬ tain salt water. The method used by the Chinese from immemorial time has recently been adopted instead of our own as being the most simple and economical. The * The actual depth reached in the St. Louis well, before the enterprise was abandoned, was 3,843^ feet on August 9, 1869. This well was bored for the use of the St. Louis County Insane Asylum, at the public ex¬ pense. It was commenced March 31, 1866, under the direction of Mr. Charles H. Atkeson. At the depth of 1,222 feet the water became saltish, then sulphury. The temperature of the water, at the bottom of the well, was 105° F. Toward the end of the work it seemed as if the limit of the strength of wood and iron had been reached. The poles often broke at points two or three thousand feet down. “ Annual Report (1870) of the Superintendent of the St. Louis County Insane Asylum.” — CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 35 Chinese have been long acquainted with the circulation of the blood; they inoculated for the small-pox in the ninth century; and about the same time they invented print¬ ing. Their bronze money was made as early as 1100 B. c., and its form has not been changed since the beginning of the Christian era. The mariner’s compass, gunpowder, and the art of printing were made known to Europe through stories told by missionaries returning from Asia. These missionaries, coasting the shores of the Celestial Empire in Chinese junks, saw a little box containing a magnetized needle, called Ting-nan-Tchen, or “needle which points to the south.” They also noticed terrible machines used by the armies in China called Ho-pao or tire-guns, into which was put an inflammable powder, which produced a noise like thunder and projected stones and pieces of iron with irresistible force. Father Hue, in his “ Christianity in China,” says that “ the Europeans who penetrated into China were no less struck with the libraries of the Chinese than with their artillery. They were astonished at the sight of the elegant books printed rapidly upon a pliant, silky paper by means of wooden blocks. The first edition of the classical works printed in China appeared in 958, five hundred years be¬ fore the invention of Gutenberg. The missionaries had, doubtless, often been busied in their convents with the laborious work of copying manuscript books, and the sim¬ ple Chinese method of printing must have particularly attracted their attention. Many other marvellous pro¬ ductions were noticed, such as silk, porcelain, playing- cards, spectacles, and other products of art and industry unknown in Europe. They brought back these new ideas to Europe ; f and from that time,’ says Abel Bemusat, ‘ the West began to hold in due esteem the most beautiful, the most populous, and the most anciently civilized of all the four quarters of the world. The arts, the religious faith, and the languages of its people were studied, and it was even proposed to establish a professorship for the Tartar language in the University of Paris. The world seemed to open towards the East ; geography made immense strides, and ardor for discovery opened a new vent for the 36 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. adventurous spirit of the Europeans. As our own hemi¬ sphere became better known, the idea of another ceased to appear a wholly improbable paradox ; and in seeking the Zipangon of Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World/ ” The first aspect of China produces that impression on the mind which we call the grotesque. This is merely because the customs of this singular nation are so opposite to our own. They seem morally, no less than physically, our antipodes. Their habits are as opposite to ours as the direction of their bodies. We stand feet to feet in every¬ thing. In boxing the compass they say “ westnorth ” in¬ stead of northwest, “ eastsouth ” instead of southeast, and their compass-needle points south instead of north. Their soldiers wear quilted petticoats, satin boots, and bead necklaces, carry umbrellas and fans, and go to a night at¬ tack with lanterns in their hands, being more afraid of the dark than of exposing themselves to the enemy. The people are very fond of fireworks, but prefer to have them in the daytime. Ladies ride in wheelbarrows, and cows are driven in carriages. While in Europe the feet are put in the stocks, in China the stocks are hung round the neck. In China the family name comes first, and the per¬ sonal name afterward. Instead of saying Benjamin Frank¬ lin or Walter Scott they would say Franklin Benjamin, Scott Walter. Thus the Chinese name of Confucius, Kung-fu-tsee, means the Holy Master Kung; — Kung is * the family name. In the recent wars with the English the mandarins or soldiers would sometimes run away, and then commit suicide to avoid punishment. In getting on a horse, the Chinese mount on the right side. Their old men fly kites, while the little boys look on. The left hand is the seat of honor, and to keep on your hat is a sign of respect. Visiting cards are painted red, and are four feet long. In the opinion of the Chinese, the seat of the understanding is the stomach. They have villages which contain a million of inhabitants. Their boats are drawn by men, but their carriages are moved by sails. A married woman while young and pretty is a slave, but when she becomes old and withered is the most powerful, CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 37 respected, and beloved person in the family. The em¬ peror is regarded with the most profound reverence, but the empress mother is a greater person than he. When a man furnishes his house, instead of laying stress, as we do, on rosewood pianos and carved mahogany, his first ambition is for a handsome camphor-wood coffin, which he keeps in the best place in his room. The interest of money is thirty-six per cent, which, to be sure, we also give in hard times to stave off a stoppage, while with them it is the legal rate. We once heard a bad dinner de¬ scribed thus : “ The meat was cold, the wine was hot, and everything was sour but the vinegar.’’ This would not so much displease the Chinese, who carefully warm their wine, while we ice ours. They understand good living, however, very well, are great epicures, and somewhat gourmands, for, after dining on thirty dishes, they will sometimes eat a duck by way of a finish. They toss their meat into their mouths to a tune, every man keeping time with his chop-sticks, while we, on the contrary, make any¬ thing but harmony with the clatter of our knives and forks. A Chinaman will not drink a drop of milk, but he will devour birds’-nests, snails, and the fins of sharks with a great relish. Our mourning color is black and theirs is white ; they mourn for their parents three years, we a much shorter time. The principal room in their houses is called “ the hall of ancestors,” the pictures or tablets of whom, set up against the wall, are worshipped by them; we, on the other hand, are only too apt to send our grand¬ father’s portrait to the garret* * Andrew Wilson (“ The Ever-Victorious Army, Blackwood, 1868 ”) says that “the Chinese people stand unsurpassed, and probably unequalled, in regard to the possession of freedom and self-government.” He denies that infanticide is common in China. “Indeed,” says he, “there is nothing a Chinaman dreads so much as to die childless. Every China¬ man desires to have as large a family as possible ; and the labors of female children are very profitable.” 38 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. § 2. Chinese Government based on Education. Civil-Ser¬ vice Examinations. Such are a few of the external differences between the Chinese customs and ours. But the most essential pecu¬ liarity of this nation is the high value which they attribute to knowledge, and the distinctions and rewards which they bestow on scholarship. All the civil offices in the Empire are given as rewards of literary merit. The government, indeed, is called a complete despotism, and the emperor is said to have absolute authority. He is not bound by any written constitution, indeed; but the public opinion of the land holds him, nevertheless, to a strict responsibility. He, no less than his people, is bound by a law higher than that of any private will, — the authority of custom. Eor, in China, more than anywhere else, “what is gray with age becomes religion.” The authority of the em¬ peror is simply authority to govern according to the ancient usages of the country, and whenever these are persistently violated, a revolution takes place and the dynasty is changed. But a revolution in China changes nothing but the person of the monarch; the unwritten constitution of old usages remains in full force. “ A prin¬ ciple as old as the monarchy,” says Hu Halde, “is this, that the state is a large family, and the emperor is in the place of both father and mother. He must govern his people with affection and goodness ; he must attend to the smallest matters which concern their happiness. When he is not supposed to have this sentiment, he soon loses his hold on the reverence of the people, and his throne becomes insecure.” The emperor, therefore, is always studying how to preserve this reputation. When a prov¬ ince is afflicted by famine, inundation, or any other calam¬ ity, he shuts himself in his palace, fasts, and publishes decrees to relieve it of taxes and afford it aid. The true power of the government is in the literary class. The government, though nominally a monarchy, is really an aristocracy. But it is not an aristocracy of birth, like that of England, for the humblest man's son can obtain a place in it; neither is it an aristocracy of CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 39 wealth, like ours in the United States, nor a military aris¬ tocracy, like that of Eussia, nor an aristocracy of priests, like that of ancient Egypt, and of some modem countries, — as, for instance, that of Paraguay under the Jesuits, or that of the Sandwich Islands under the Protestant mis¬ sionaries but it is a literary aristocracy. The civil officers in China are called mandarins. They are chosen from the three degrees of learned men, who may be called the bachelors, licentiates, and doctors. All persons may be candidates for the first degree, except three excluded classes, — boatmen, barbers, and actors. The candidates are examined by the governors of their own towns. Of those approved, a few are selected after another examination. These again are examined by an officer who makes a circuit once in three years for that purpose. They are placed alone in little rooms or closets, with pencils, ink, and paper, and a subject is given them to write upon. Out of some four hundred candidates fif¬ teen may be selected, who receive the lowest degree. There is another triennial examination for the second degree, at which a small number of the bachelors are promoted. The examination for the highest degree, that of doctor, is held at Pekin only, when some three hundred are taken out of five thousand. These are capable of receiving the highest offices. Whenever a vacancy occurs, one of those who have received a degree is taken by lot from the few senior names. But a few years since, there were five thousand of the highest rank, and twenty-seven thousand of the second rank, who had not received em¬ ployment. The subjects upon which the candidates are examined, and the methods of these examinations, are thus described in the Shanghae Almanac (1852).* The examinations for the degree of Keujin (or licen¬ tiate) takes place at the principal city of each province once in three years. The average number of bachelors in the large province of Keang-Nan (which contains seventy millions of inhabitants) is twenty thousand, out of whom * Quoted by Mr. Meadows, who warrants the correctness of the account. ‘‘The Chinese and their Rebellions,” p. 404. 40 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. only about two hundred succeed. Sixty-five mandarins are deputed for this examination, besides subordinate officials. The two chief examiners are sent from Pekin. When the candidates enter the examination hall they are searched for books or manuscripts, which might assist them in writing their essays. This precaution is not su¬ perfluous, for many plans have been invented to enable mediocre people to pass. Sometimes a thin book, printed on very small type from copperplates, is slipped into a hole in the sole of the shoe. But persons detected in such practices are ruined for life. In a list of one hundred and forty-four successful candidates, in 1851, thirteen were over forty years of age, and one under fourteen years; seven were under twenty; and all, to succeed, must have known by heart the whole of the Sacred Books, besides being well read in history. Three sets of themes are given, each occupying two days and a night, and until that time is expired no one is allowed to leave his apartment, which is scarcely large enough to sleep in. The essays must not contain more than seven hundred characters, and no erasure or correc¬ tion is allowed. On the first days the themes are taken from the Four Books; on the next, from the older classics; on the last, miscellaneous questions are given. The themes are such as these : “ Choo-tsze, in commenting on the Shoo- King, made use of four authors, who sometimes say too much, at other times too little; sometimes their explana¬ tions are forced, at other times too ornamental. What have you to observe on them ? ” “ Cliinshow had great abilities for historic writing. In his Three Kingdoms he has depreciated Choo-ko-leang, and made very light of E and E, two other celebrated characters. What is it that he says of them ? ” These public-service examinations are conducted with the greatest impartiality. They were established about a thousand years ago, and have been gradually improved during the intervening time. They form the basis of the whole system of Chinese government. They make a good education universally desirable, as the poorest man may see his son thus advanced to the highest position. CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 41 All of the hundreds of thousands who prepare to compete are obliged to know the whole system of Confucius, to commit to memory all his moral doctrines, and to be¬ come familiar with all the traditional wisdom of the land. Thus a public opinion in favor of existing institutions and the fundamental ideas of Chinese government is continu¬ ally created anew. What an immense advantage it would he to our own country if we should adopt this institution of China! Instead of making offices the prize of impudence, political management, and party services, let them be competed for by all who consider themselves qualified. Let all offices now given by appointment be hereafter bestowed on those who show themselves best qualified to perform the duties. Each class of offices would of course require a different kind of examination. For some, physical culture as well as mental might be required. Persons who wished diplomatic situations should be prepared in a knowledge of foreign languages as well as of international law. All should be examined on the Constitution and history of the United States. Candidates for the Post-Office Department should be good copyists, quick at arithmetic, and acquainted with book-keeping. It is true that we cannot by an examina¬ tion obtain a certain knowledge of moral qualities ; but industry, accuracy, fidelity in work would certainly show themselves. A change from the present corrupt and cor¬ rupting system of appointments to that of competitive examinations would do more just now for our country than any other measure of reconstruction which can be proposed. The permanence of Chinese institutions is be¬ lieved, by those who know best, to result from the influ¬ ence of the literary class. Literature is naturally con¬ servative ; the tone of the literature studied is eminently conservative; and the most intelligent men in the empire are personally interested in the continuance of the insti¬ tutions under which they hope to attain position and fortune. The highest civil offices are seats at the great tribunals or boards, and the positions of viceroys, or governors, of the eighteen provinces. 42 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. The boards are : — Ly Pou, Board of Appointment of Mandarins. Hon Pou, Board of Finance. Lee Pou, Board of Ceremonies. Ping Pou, Board of War. Hing Pou, Board of Criminal Justice. Kong Pou, Board of Works,— canals, bridges, &c. The members of these boards, with their councillors and subordinates, amount to twelve hundred officers. Then there is the Board of Doctors of the Han Lin Col¬ lege, who have charge of the archives, history of the em¬ pire, &c.; and the Board of Censors, who are the highest mandarins, and have a peculiar office. Their duty is to stand between the people and the mandarins, and between the people and the emperor, and even rebuke the latter if they find him doing wrong. This is rather a perilous duty, but it is often faithfully performed. A censor, who went to tell the emperor of some faults, took his coffin with him, and left it at the door of the palace. Two cen¬ sors remonstrated with a late emperor on the expenses of his palace, specifying the sums uselessly lavished for per¬ fumes and flowers for his concubines, and stating that a million of taels of silver might be saved for the poor by reducing these expenses. Sung, the commissioner who attended Lord Macartney, remonstrated with the Emperor Kiaking on his attachment to play-actors and strong drink, which degraded him in the eyes of the people. The emperor, highly irritated, asked him what punishment he deserved for his insolence. “ Quartering,” said Sung. “ Choose another,” said the emperor. “ Let me be be¬ headed.” “ Choose again,” said the emperor; and Sung asked to be strangled. The next day the emperor ap¬ pointed him governor of a distant province, — afraid to punish him for the faithful discharge of his duty, but glad to have him at a distance. Many such anecdotes are re¬ lated, showing that there is some moral courage in China. The governor of a province, or viceroy, has great power. He also is chosen from among the mandarins in the way described. The only limitations of his power are these : he is bound to make a full report every three years of the CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 43 affairs of the province, and give in it an account of liis own faults , and if he omits any, and they are discovered in other ways, he is punished by degradation, bambooing, or death. It is the right of any subject, however humble, to complain to the emperor himself against any officer, how¬ ever high ; and for this purpose a large drum is placed at one of the palace gates. Whoever strikes it has his case examined under the emperor’s eye, and if he has been wronged, his wrongs are redressed, but if he has com¬ plained unnecessarily, he is severely punished. Imperial visitors, sent by the Board of Censors, may suddenly ar¬ rive at any time to examine the concerns of a province; and a governor or other public officer who is caught trip¬ ping is immediately reported and punished. Thus the political institutions of China are built on lit¬ erature. Knowledge is the road to power and wealth. All the talent and knowledge of the nation are interested in the support of institutions which give to them either power or the hope of it. And these institutions work well. The machinery is simple, but it produces a vast amount of happiness and domestic virtue. While in most parts of Asia the people are oppressed by petty tyrants, and ground down by taxes, — while they have no motive to improve their condition, since every advance will only expose them to greater extortion, — the people of China are industrious and happy. In no part of the world has agriculture been carried to such perfection. Every piece of ground in the cultivated parts of the empire, except those portions devoted to ancestral monuments, is made to yield two or three crops annually, by the careful tillage bestowed on it. The ceremony of opening the soil at the beginning of the year, at which the emperor officiates, originated two thousand years ago. Farms are small, — of one or two acres, — and each family raises on its farm all that it consumes. Silk and cotton are cultivated and manufactured in families, each man spinning, weaving, and dyeing his own web. In the manufacture of porce¬ lain, on the contrary, the division of labor is earned very far. The best is made at the village of Kiangsee, which contains a million of inhabitants. Seventy hands are 44 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. sometimes employed on a single cup. The Chinese are very skilful in working horn and ivory. Large lanterns are made of horn, transparent and without a flaw. At Birmingham men have tried with machines to cut ivory in the same manner as the Chinese, and have failed. § 3. Life and Character of Confucius. Of this nation the great teacher for twenty-three cen¬ turies has been Confucius. He was born 551 B. c., and was contemporary with the Tarquins, Pythagoras, and Cy¬ rus. About his time occurred the return of the Jews from Babylon and the invasion of Greece by Xerxes. His descendants have always enjoyed high privileges, and there are now some forty thousand of them in China, seventy generations and more removed from their great ancestor. His is the oldest family in the world, unless we consider the Jews as a single family descended from Abraham. His influence, through his writings, on the minds of so many millions of human beings is greater than that of any man who ever lived, excepting the writers of the Bible; and in saying this we do not forget the names of Mohammed, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Luther. So far as we can see, it is the influence of Confucius which has maintained, though probably not originated, in China, that profound reverence for parents, that strong family affection, that love of order, that regard for knowledge and deference for literary men, which are fundamental princi¬ ples underlying all the Chinese institutions. His minute and practical system of morals, studied as it is by all the learned, and constituting the sum of knowledge and the principle of government in China, has exerted and exerts an influence on that innumerable people which it is impossible to estimate, but which makes us admire the power which can emanate from a single soul. To exert such an influence requires greatness. If the tree is to be known by its fruits, Confucius must have been one of the master minds of our race. The supposition that a man of low morals or small intellect, an impostor or an enthusiast, could influence the world, is a theory CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 45 which is an insult to human nature. The time for such theories has happily gone by. We now know that nothing can come of nothing, — that a fire of straw may make a bright blaze, but must necessarily soon go out. A light which illuminates centuries must be more than an ignis fatuus. Accordingly we should approach Confucius with respect, and expect to find something good and wise in his writings. It is only a loving spirit which will enable us to penetrate the difficulties which surround the study, and to apprehend something of the true genius of the man and his teachings. As there is no immediate dan¬ ger of becoming his followers, we can see no objections to such a course, which also appears to be a species of men¬ tal hospitality, eminently in accordance with the spirit of our own Master. Confucius belongs to that small company of select ones whose lives have been devoted to the moral elevation of their fellow-men. Among them he stands high, for he sought to implant the purest principles of religion and morals in the character of the whole people, and succeeded in doing it. To show that this was his purpose it will be necessary to give a brief sketch of his life. His ancestors were eminent statesmen and soldiers in the small country of Loo, then an independent kingdom, now a Chinese province. The year of his birth was that in which Cyrus became king of Persia. His father, one of the highest officers of the kingdom, and a brave soldier, died when Confucius was three years old. . He was a studious boy, and when fifteen years old had studied the five sacred books called Kings. He was married at the age of nineteen, and had only one son by his only wife. This son died before Confucius, leaving as his posterity a single grandchild, from whom the great multitudes of his descendants now in China were derived. This grandson was second only to Confucius in wisdom, and was the teacher of the illustrious Mencius. The first part of the life of Confucius was spent in at¬ tempting to reform the abuses of society by means of the official stations which he held, by his influence with princes, and by travelling and intercourse with men. The second 46 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. period was that in which he was recalled from his travels to become a minister in his native country, the kingdom of Loo. Here he applied his theories of government, and tested their practicability. He was then fifty years olcl His success was soon apparent in the growing prosperity of the whole people. Instead of the tyranny which be¬ fore prevailed, they were now ruled according to his idea of good government, — that of the father of a family. Confidence was restored to the public mind, and all good influences followed. But the tree was not yet deeply enough rooted to resist accidents, and all his wise arrange¬ ments were suddenly overthrown by the caprice of the monarch, who, tired of the austere virtue of Confucius, suddenly plunged into a career of dissipation. Confucius resigned his office, and again became a wanderer, but now with a new motive. He had before travelled to learn, now he travelled to teach. He collected disciples around him, and, no longer seeking to gain the ear of princes, he diffused his ideas among the common people by means of his disciples, whom he sent out everywhere to communi¬ cate his doctrines. So, amid many vicissitudes of out¬ ward fortune, he lived till he was seventy-three years old. In the last years of his life he occupied himself in pub¬ lishing his works, and in editing the Sacred Books. His disciples had become very numerous, historians estimat¬ ing them at three thousand, of whom five hundred had attained to official station, seventy-two had penetrated deeply into his system, and ten, of the highest class of mind and character, were continually near his person. Of these Hwuy was especially valued by him, as having early attained superior virtue. He frequently referred to him in his conversations. “ I saw him continually advance,” said he, “ but I never saw him stop in the path of knowl¬ edge.” Again he says : “ The wisest of my disciples, hav¬ ing one idea, understands two. Hwuy, having one under¬ stands ten.” One of the select ten disciples, Tszee-loo, was rash and impetuous like the Apostle Peter. Another, Tszee-Kung, was loving and tender like the Apostle John ; he built a house near the grave of Confucius, wherein to mourn for him after his death. CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 47 The last years of the life of Confucius were devoted to editing the Sacred Books, or Kings. As we now have them they come from him. Authentic records of Chinese his¬ tory extend back to 2357 b. c., while the Chinese philoso¬ phy originated with Fuh-he, who lived about 3327 B. c. He it was who substituted writing for the knotted strings which before formed the only means of record. He was also the author of the Eight Diagrams, — each consisting of three lines, half of which are whole and half broken in two,—which by their various combinations are supposed to represent the active and passive principles of the uni¬ verse in all their essential forms. Confucius edited the Yih-King, the Shoo-King, the She-King, and the Le-Ke, which constitute the whole of the ancient literature of China which has come down to posterity.* The Four Books, which contain the doctrines of Confucius, and of his school, were not written by himself, but composed by others after his death. One of these is called the " Immutable Mean,” and its object is to show that virtue consists in avoiding extremes. Another — the Lun-Yu, or Analects — contains the con¬ versation or table-talk of Confucius, and somewhat resem¬ bles the Memorabilia of Xenophon and Boswell’s Life of Johnson.* * Dr. Legge thus arranges the Sacred Books of China, or the Chinese Classics : — A. The Five King. [King means a web of cloth, or the warp which keeps the threads in their place.] (a) Yih-King. (Changes.) (b) Slioo-King. (History.) (c) She-King. (Odes.) (d) Le-Kc-King. (Bites.) (e) Ch’un-Ts'eu. (Spring and Autumn. Annals from b. c. 721 to 480.) B. The Four Books. (a) Lun- Yu. (Analects, or Table-Talk of Confucius.) (b) Ta-Hio. (Great Learning. Written by Tsang-Sin, a discipP of Confucius.) (c) Chung- Yung (or Doctrine of the Mean), ascribed to Kung-Keih, the grandson of Confucius. (d) Works of Mencius. After the death of Confucius there was a period in which the Sacred Books were much corrupted, down to the Han dynasty (b. c. 201 tc 48 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. The life of Confucius was thus devoted to communicat¬ ing to the Chinese nation a few great moral and religious principles, which he believed would insure the happiness of the people. His devotion to this aim appears in his writings. Thus he says : — “ At fifteen years I longed for wisdom. At thirty my mind was fixed in the pursuit of it. At forty I saw clearly certain principles. At fifty I understood the rule given by heaven. At sixty everything I heard I easily under¬ stood. At seventy the desires of my heart no longer transgressed the law.” “ If in the morning I hear about the right way, and in the evening I die, I can be happy.” He says of himself: “ He is a man who through his earnestness in seeking knowledge forgets his food, and in his joy for having found it loses all sense of his toil, and thus occupied is unconscious that he has almost reached old age.” Again : “ Coarse rice for food, water to drink, the bended arm for a pillow, — happiness may be enjoyed even with these; but without virtue both riches and honor seem to me like the passing cloud.” “ Grieve not that men know not you ; grieve that you know not men.” A. D. 24), which collected, edited, and revised them : since which time they have been watched with the greatest care. “The evidence is complete that the Classical Books of China have come down from at least a century before our era, substantially the same as we have them at present.” — Legge , Vol. I. Chap. I. § 2. The Four Books have been translated into French, German, and English. Dr. Marsliman translated the Lun-Yu. Mr. Collie afterward published at Calcutta the Four Books. But within a few years the labors of previous sinologues have been almost superseded by Dr. Legge’s splendid work, still in process of publication. We have, as yet, only the volumes containing the Four Books of Confucius and his successors, and a portion of the Kings. Dr. Legge’s work is in Chinese and English, with copious notes and ex¬ tracts from many Chinese commentators. In his notes, and his prelimi¬ nary dissertations, he endeavors to do justice to Confucius and his doc¬ trines. Perhaps he does not fully succeed in this, but it is evident that he respects the Chinese sage, and is never willingly unfair to him. If to the books above mentioned be added the works of Pauthier, Stanislas Julien, Mohl, and other French sinologues, and the German works on the same subject, we have a sufficient apparatus for the study of Chinese thought. CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 49 “ To rule with equity is like the North Star, which is fixed, and all the rest go round it.” “ The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.” “ Worship as though the Deity were present.” “ If my mind is not engaged in my worship, it is as though I worshipped not.” “ Formerly, in hearing men, I heard their words, and gave them credit for their conduct; now I hear their words, and observe their conduct.” “ A man’s life depends on virtue; if a bad man lives, it is only by good fortune.” “ Some proceed blindly to action, without knowledge ; I hear much, and select the best course.” He was once found fault with, when in office, for not opposing the marriage of a ruler with a distant relation, which was an offence against Chinese propriety. He said: “ I am a happy man; if I have a fault, men ob¬ serve it.” Confucius was humble. He said: “ I cannot bear to hear myself called equal to the sages and the good. All that can be said of me is, that I study with delight the conduct of the sages, and instruct men without weariness therein.” “ The good man is serene,” said he, “ the bad always in fear.” “ A good man regards the root ; he fixes the root, and all else flows out of it. The root is filial piety; the fruit brotherly love.” “ There may be fair words and an humble countenance when there is little real virtue.” “ I daily examine myself in a threefold manner : in my transactions with men, if I am upright; in my intercourse with friends, if I am faithful; and whether I illustrate the teachings of my master in my conduct.” “ Faithfulness and sincerity are the highest things.” “ When you transgress, do not fear to return.” “ Learn the past and you will know the future.” The great principles which he taught were chiefly based on family affection and duty. He taught kings that they 3 D 50 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. were to treat their subjects as children, subjects to respect the kings as parents; and these ideas so penetrated the national mind, that emperors are obliged to seem to gov¬ ern thus, even if they do not desire it. Confucius was a teacher of reverence, — reverence for God, respect for parents, respect and reverence for the past and its lega¬ cies, for the great men and great ideas of former times. He taught men also to regard each other as brethren, and even the golden rule, in its negative if not its positive form, is to be found in his writings. Curiously enough, this teacher of reverence was dis¬ tinguished by a remarkable lump on the top of his head, where the phrenologists have placed the organ of venera¬ tion.* Booted in his organization, and strengthened by all his convictions, this element of adoration seemed to him the crown of the whole moral nature of man. But, while full of veneration, he seems to have been deficient in the sense of spiritual things. A personal God was un¬ known to him ; so that his worship was directed, not to God, but to antiquity, to ancestors, to propriety and usage, to the state as father and mother of its subjects, to the ruler as in the place of authority. Perfectly sincere, deeply and absolutely assured of all that he knew, he said nothing he did not believe. His power came not only from the depth and clearness of his convictions, but from the absolute honesty of his soul. Lao-tse, for twenty-eight years his contemporary, founder of one of the three existing religions of China, —* Tao-ism, — was a man of perhaps equal intelligence. But he was chiefly a thinker; he made no attempt to elevate the people; his purpose was to repress the passions, and to preserve the soul in a perfect equanimity. He was the Zeno of the East, founder of a Chinese stoicism. With him virtue is sure of its reward; everything is arranged by a fixed law. His disciples afterwards added to his system a thaumaturgic element and an invocation of de¬ parted spirits, so that now it resembles our modern Spirit¬ ism ; but the original doctrine of Lao-tse was rationalism * “ On tlie top of his head was a remarkable formation, in consequence of which he was named Kew.” — Legge, Yol. I. Chap. YI. (note). CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 51 in philosophy and stoicism in morals. Confucius is said, in a Chinese work, to have visited him, and to have frankly confessed his inability to understand him. “ I know how birds fly, how fishes swim, how animals run. The bird may be shot, the fish hooked, and the beast snared. But there is the dragon. I cannot tell how he mounts in the air, and soars to heaven. To-day I have seen the dragon.” But the modest man, w T ho lived for others, has far sur¬ passed in his influence this dragon of intelligence. It certainly increases our hope for man, when we see how these qualities of perfect honesty, good sense, generous devotion to the public good, and fidelity to the last in ad¬ herence to his work, have made Confucius during twenty- three centuries the daily teacher and guide of a third of the human race. Confucius was eminently distinguished by energy and persistency. He did not stop working till he died. His life was of one piece, beautiful, noble. “ The general of a large army,” said he, “ may be defeated, but you cannot defeat the determined mind of a peasant.” He acted con¬ formably to this thought, and to another of his sayings. “ If I am building a mountain, and stop before the last basketful of earth is placed on the summit, I have failed of my work. But if I have placed but one basketful on the plain, and go on, I am really building a mountain.” Many beautiful and noble things are related concerning the character of Confucius, — of his courage in the midst of danger, of his humility in the highest position of honor. His writings and life have given the law to Chinese thought. He is the patron saint of that great empire. His doctrine is the state religion of the nation, sustained by the whole power of the emperor and the literary body. His books are published every year by societies formed for that purpose, who distribute them gratuitously. His descendants enjoy the highest consideration. The num¬ ber of temples erected to his memory is sixteen hundred and sixty. One of them occupies ten acres of land. On' the two festivals in the year sacred to his memory there are sacrificed some seventy thousand animals of different U. OF ILL LIB. 52 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. kinds, and twenty-seven thousand pieces of silk are burned on his altars. Yet his is a religion without priests, liturgy, or public worship, except on these two occasions. § 4. Philosophy and subsequent Development of Con¬ fucianism. According to Mr. Meadows, the philosophy of China, in its origin and present aspect, may be thus briefly de¬ scribed.* Setting aside the Buddhist system and that of Tao-ism, which supply to the Chinese the element of religious worship and the doctrine of a supernatural world, wanting in the system of Confucius, we find the latter as the established religion of the state, merely tolerating the others as suited to persons of weak minds. The Confu- cian system, constantly taught by the competitive exami¬ nations, rules the thought of China. Its first development was from the birth of Confucius to the death of Mencius (or from 551 b. c. to 313 B. c.). Its second period was from the time of Chow-tsze (a. d. 1034) to that of Choo- tsze (a. d. 1200). The last of these is the real fashioner of Chinese philosophy, and one of the truly great men of the human race. His works are chiefly Commentaries on the Kings and the Four Books. They are committed to memory by millions of Chinese who aspire to pass the public-service examinations. The Chinese philosophy, thus established by Choo-tsze, is as follows,^ There is one highest, ultimate principle of all existence, — the Tae-keih, or Grand Extreme. This is absolutely immaterial, and the basis of the order of the universe. From this ultimate principle, operating from all eternity, come all animate and inanimate nature. It operates in a twofold way, by expansion and contraction, or by cease¬ less active and passive pulsations. The active expansive pulsation is called Yang, the passive intensive pulsation is Yin, and the two may be called the Positive and Nega¬ tive Essences of all things. When the active expansive phase of the process has reached its extreme limit, the op- * Meadows, “ The Chinese and their Rebellions,” p. 332. t Meadows, p. 342. CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 53 eration becomes passive and intensive; and from these vi¬ brations originate all material and mortal existences. Cre¬ ation is therefore a perpetual process, — matter and spirit are opposite results of the same force. The one tends to variety, the other to unity; and variety in unity is a per¬ manent and universal law of being. Man results from the utmost development of this pulsatory action and pas¬ sion ; and man’s nature, as the highest result, is perfectly good, consisting of five elements, namely, charity, righte¬ ousness, propriety, wisdom, and sincerity. These consti¬ tute the inmost, essential nature of man; but as man comes in contact with the outward world evil arises by the conflict. When man follows the dictates of his nature his actions are good, and harmony results. When he is unduly influenced by the outward world his actions are evil, and discord intervenes. The holy man is one who has an instinctive, inward sight of the ultimate principle in its twofold operation (or what we should call the sight of God, the beatific vision), and who therefore spontane¬ ously and easily obeys his nature. Hence all his thoughts are perfectly wise, his actions perfectly good, and his words perfectly true. Confucius was the last of these holy men. The infallible authority of the Sacred Books results from the fact that their writers, being holy men, had an instinctive perception of the working of the ulti¬ mate principle. All Confucian philosophy is pervaded by these princi¬ ples : first, that example is omnipotent; secondly, that to secure the safety of the empire, you must secure the hap¬ piness of the people; thirdly, that by solitary persistent thought one may penetrate at last to a knowledge of the essence of things ; fourthly, that the object of all govern¬ ment is to make the people virtuous and contented. § 5. Lao-tse and Tao-ism. One of the three religious systems of China is that of the Tao, the other two being that of Confucius, and that of Buddhism in its Chinese form. The difficulty in under¬ standing Tao-ism comes from its appearing under three 54 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. entirely distinct forms: (1) as a philosophy of the absolute or unconditioned, in the great work of the Tse-Lao, or old teacher; * (2) as a system of morality of the utilitarian school, -f- which resolves duty into prudence; and (3) as a system of magic, connected with the belief in spirits. In the Tao-te-king we have the ideas of Lao himself, which we will endeavor to state; premising that they are considered very obscure and difficult even by the Chi¬ nese commentators. The Tao (§ 1) is the unnamable, and is the origin of heaven and earth. As that which can be named, it is the mother of all things. These two are essentially one. Being and not-being are born from each other (§ 2). The Tao is empty but inexhaustible (§ 4), is pure, is profound, and was before the Gods. It is invisible, not the object of perception, it returns into not-being (§§ 14 , 40). It is vague, confused, and obscure (§ 25, 21). It is little and strong, universally present, and all beings return into it (§ 32). It is without desires, great (§ 34). All things are born of being, being is born of not-being (§ 40). From these and similar statements it would appear that the philosophy of the Tao-te-king is that of absolute being, or the identity of being and not-being. In this point it anticipated Hegel by twenty-three centuries, j It teaches that the absolute is the source of being and of not-being. Being is essence, not-being is existence. The first is the noumenal, the last the phenomenal. As being is the source of not-being (§ 40), by iden¬ tifying one’s self with being one attains to all that is not-being, i. e. to all that exists. Instead, therefore, of aiming at acquiring knowledge, the wise man avoids it; instead of acting, he refuses to act. He “feeds his mind with a wise passiveness.” (§ 16.) “ J\ r ot to act is the source of all power,” is a thesis continually present to the mind of Lao (§§ 3, 23, 38,43, 48, 63). The wise man * “ Le Tao-te-king, le livre de la voie et de la vertu, compose dans le vi e siecle avant l'ere Cliretienne, par le pliilosophe Lao-tseu, traduit par Stanislas Julien. Paris, 1842.” t “Le livre des Recompenses et des Peines. Julien, 1835.” J “Seyn and Niclits ist Dasselbe.” Hegel. CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 55 is like water (§§ 8, 78), which seems weak and is strong; which yields, seeks the lowest place, which seems the softest thing and breaks the hardest thing. To be wise one must renounce wisdom, to be good one must re¬ nounce’ justice and humanity, to be learned one must renounce knowledge (§§ 19, 20, 45), and must have no desires (§§ 8, 22), must detach one’s self from all things (§ 20) and be like a new-born babe. From everything proceeds its opposite, the easy from the difficult, the difficult from the easy, the long from the short, the high from the low, ignorance from knowledge, knowledge from ignorance, the first from the last, the last from the first. These antagonisms are mutually related by the hidden principle of the Tao (§§ 2, 27). Nothing is independent or capable of existing save through its opposite. The good man and bad man are equally necessary to each other (§ 27). To desire aright is not to desire (§ 64). The saint can do great things because he does not at¬ tempt to do them (§ 63). The unwarlike man con¬ quers.* He who submits to others controls them. By this negation of all things we come into possession of all things (§ 68). Not to act is, therefore, the secret of all power (§§ 3, 23, 38, 43, 48, 63). We find here the same doctrine of opposites which appears in the Phsedo, and which has come up again and again in philosophy. We shall find something like it in the Sankhya-karika of the Hindoos. The Duad, with the Monad brooding behind it, is the fundamental prin¬ ciple of the Avesta. The result, thus far, is to an active passivity. Lao teaches that not to act involves the highest energy of being, and leads to the greatest results. By not acting one identifies himself with the Tao, and receives all its power. And here we cannot doubt that the Chinese philosopher was pursuing the same course with Sakya- Muni. The Tao of the one is the Nirvana of the other. The different motive in each mind constitutes the differ¬ ence of their career. Sakya-Muni sought Nirvana, or * “ The meek shall inherit the earth.” 56 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. the absolute, the pure knowledge, in order to escape from evil and to conquer it. Lao sought it, as his book shows, to attain power. At this point the two systems diverge. Buddhism is generous, benevolent, humane; it seeks to help others. Tao-ism seeks its own. Hence the selfish morality which pervades the Book of Be wards and Pun¬ ishments. Every good action has its reward attached to it. Hence also the degradation of the system into pure magic and spiritism. Buddhism, though its course runs so nearly parallel, always retains in its scheme of merits a touch of generosity. We find thus, in the Tao-te-king, the element after¬ wards expanded into the system of utilitarian and eudae- monic ethics in the Book of Be wards and Punishments. We also can trace in it the source of the magical ten¬ dency in Tao-ism. The principle, that by putting one’s self into an entirely passive condition one can enter into communion with the unnamed Tao, and so acquire power over nature, naturally tends to magic. Precisely the same course of thought led to similar results in the case of Neo-Platonism. The ecstatic union with the divine element in all nature, which Plotinus attained four times in his life, resulted from an immediate sight of God. In this sight is all truth given to the soul. The unity, says Plotinus, which produces ail things, is an essence behind both substance and form. Through this essential being all souls commune and interact, and magic is this inter¬ action of soul upon soul through the soul of souls, with which one becomes identified in the ecstatic union. A man therefore can act on demons and control spirits by theurgie rites. Julian, that ardent Neo-Platonician, was surrounded by diviners, hierophants, and aruspices.* In the Tao-te-king (§§ 50, 55, 56, etc.) it is said that he who knows the Tao need not fear the bite of serpents nor the jaws of wild beasts, nor the claws of birds of prey. He is inaccessible to good and to evil. He need fear neither rhinoceros nor tiger. In battle he needs neither cuirass nor sword. The tiger cannot tear him, the * See “La Magie et l’Astrologie, par Alfred Maury.” CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 57 soldier cannot wound him. He is invulnerable and safe from death.* If Neo-Platonism had not had for its antagonist the vital force of Christianity, it might have established itself as a permanent form of religion in the Roman Empire, as Tao-ism has in China. I have tried to show how the later form of this Chinese system has come naturally from its principles, and how a philosophy of the absolute may have degenerated into a system of necromancy. * § 6. Religious Character of the “ Kings.” We have seen that, in the philosophy of the Con- fucians, the ultimate principle is not necessarily iden¬ tical with a living, intelligent, and personal God. Nor did Confucius, when he speaks of Teen, or Heaven, ex¬ press any faith in such a being. He neither asserted nor denied a Supreme God. His worship and prayer did not necessarily imply such a faith. It was the prayer of reverence addressed to some sacred, mysterious, un¬ known power, above and behind all visible things. What that power was, he, with his supreme candor, did not ven¬ ture to intimate. But in the She-King a personal God is addressed. The oldest books recognize a Divine person. They teach that there is one Supreme Being, who is omni¬ present, who sees all things, and has an intelligence which nothing can escape, —that he wishes men to live together in peace and brotherhood. He commands not only right ac¬ tions, but pure desires and thoughts; that we should watch ail our behavior, and maintain a grave and majestic de¬ meanor, “ which is like a palace in which virtue resides ” ; but especially that we should guard the tongue. “ For a blemish may be taken out of a diamond by carefully polish¬ ing it; but, if your words have the least blemish, there is no way to efface that.” “ Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues.” “ To acknowledge one’s incapacity is the way to be soon prepared to teach others; for from the * Was it some pale reflection of this Oriental philosophy which took form in the ode of Horace, “Integer vitae ” (i. 22), in which he describes the portentous wolf which fled from him ? 58 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. moment that a man is no longer full of himself, nor puffed up with empty pride, whatever good he learns in the morning he practises before night.” “ Heaven penetrates to the bottom of our hearts, like light into a dark cham¬ ber. We must conform ourselves to it, till we are like two instruments of music tuned to the same pitch. We must join ourselves with it, like two tablets which appear but one. We must receive its gifts the very moment its hand is open to bestow. Our irregular passions shut up the door of our souls against God. v Such are the teachings of these Kings, which are un¬ questionably among the oldest existing productions of the human mind. In the days of Confucius they seem to have been nearly forgotten, and their precepts wholly neglected. Confucius revised them, added his own ex¬ planations and comments, and, as one of the last acts of his life, called his disciples around him and made a solemn dedication of these books to Heaven. He erected an altar on which he placed them, adored God, and re¬ turned thanks upon his knees in a humble manner for having had life and health granted him to finish this undertaking. § 7. Confucius and Christianity. Character of the Chinese. It were easy to find defects in the doctrine of Con¬ fucius. It has little to teach of God or immortality. But if the law of Moses, which taught nothing of a future life, was a preparation for Christianity; if, as the early Chris¬ tian Fathers asserted, Greek philosophy was also a school¬ master to bring men to Christ; who can doubt tliat the truth and purity in the teachings of Confucius were prov¬ identially intended to lead this great nation in the right direction ? Confucius is a Star in the East, to lead his people to Christ. One of the most authentic of his say¬ ings is this, that “ in the West the true Saint must be looked for and found.” He had a perception, such as truly great men have often had, of some one higher than himself, who was to come after him. We cannot doubt, therefore, that God, who forgets none of his children, has CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 59 given this teacher to the swarming millions of China to lead them on till they are ready for a higher light. And certainly the temporal prosperity and external virtues of this nation, and their long-continued stability amid the universal changes of the world, are owing in no small de¬ gree to the lessons of reverence for the past, of respect for knowledge, of peace and order, and especially of filial piety, which he inculcated. In their case, if in no other, has been fulfilled the promise of the divine commandment, “ Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God givetli thee.” In comparing the system of Confucius with Christian¬ ity, it appears at once that Christianity differs from this system, as from most others, in its greater completeness. Jesus says to the Chinese philosopher, as he said to the Jewish law, “I have not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” He fulfils the Confucian reverence for the past by adding hope for the future ; he fulfils its stability by progress, its faith in man with faith in God, its interest in this world with the expectation of another, its sense of time with that of eternity. Confucius aims at peace, order, out¬ ward prosperity, virtue, and good morals. All this be¬ longs also to Christianity, but Christianity adds a moral enthusiasm, a faith in the spiritual world, a hope of im¬ mortal life, a sense of the Fatherly presence of God. So that here, as before, we find that Christianity does not exclude other religions, but includes them, and is distin¬ guished by being deeper, higher, broader, and more far- reaching than they. A people with such institutions and such a social life as we have described cannot be despised, and to call them uncivilized is as absurd in us as it is in them to call Europeans barbarians. They are a good, intelligent, and happy people. Lieutenant Forbes, who spent five years in China, —from 1842 to 1847, — says : “ I found myself in the midst of as amiable, kind, and hospitable a popula¬ tion as any on the face of the earth, as far ahead of us in some things as behind us in others.” As to the charge of dishonesty brought against them by those who judge the whole nation by the degraded population of the sub- j 60 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. urbs of Canton, Forbes says, “My own property suffered more in landing in England and passing the British fron¬ tier than in my whole sojourn in China.” “There is no nation,” says the Jesuit DuHalde, “more laborious and temperate than this. They are inured to hardships from their infancy, which greatly contributes to preserve the innocence of their manners.They are of a mild, tractable, and humane disposition.” He thinks them exceedingly modest, and regards the love of gain as their chief vice. “ Interest,” says he, “ is the spring of all their actions; for, when the least profit offers, they despise all difficulties and undertake the most painful journeys to procure it.” This may be true ; but if a Chi¬ nese traveller in America should give the same account of us, would it not be quite as true ? One of the latest writ¬ ers — the author of “ The Middle Kingdom ” — accuses the Chinese of gross sensuality, mendacity, and dishonesty. No doubt these are besetting sins with them, as with all nations who are educated under a system which makes submission to authority the chief virtue. But then this writer lived only at Canton and Macao, and saw person¬ ally only the refuse of the people. He admits that “ they have attained, by the observance of peace and good order, to a high security of life and property; that the various classes are linked together in a remarkably homogeneous manner by the diffusion of education; and that property and industry receive their just reward of food, raiment, and shelter.” He also reminds us that the religion of China differs from all Pagan religions in this, that it en¬ courages neither cruelty nor sensuality. No human vic¬ tims have ever been offered on its altars, and those licentious rites which have appeared in so many religions have never disgraced its pure worship. The Chinese citizen enjoys a degree of order, peace, and comfort unknown elsewhere in Asia. “ He can hold and sell landed property with a facility, certainty, and secu¬ rity which is absolute perfection compared with the nature of English dealings of the same kind.” * He can traverse the country for two thousand miles unquestioned by any * Meadows, p. 28. CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 61 official. He can follow what occupation he pleases. He can quit his country and re-enter it without a passport. The law of primogeniture does not exist. The emperor appoints his heir, hut a younger son quite as often as an elder one. The principle that no man is entitled by birth to rule over them is better known to the three hundred and sixty millions of China than to the twenty-seven mil¬ lions of Great Britain that they have a right to a trial by their peers.* The principle of Chinese government is to persuade rather than to compel, to use moral means rather than physical. This rests on the fundamental belief in human goodness. For, as Mr. Meadows justly observes : “ The theory that man’s nature is radically vicious is the true psychical basis of despotic or physical-force govern¬ ment ; while the theory that man’s nature is radically good is the basis of free or moral-force government.” The Chinese government endeavors to be paternal. It has re¬ fused to lay a tax on opium, because that would counte¬ nance the sale of it, though it might derive a large income from such a tax. The sacred literature of the Chinese is perfectly free from everything impure or offensive. There is not a line but might be read aloud in any family circle in England. All immoral ceremonies in idol worship are forbidden. M. Hue says that the birth of a daughter is counted a disaster in China ; but well-informed travellers tell us that fathers go about with little daughters on their arms, as proud and pleased as a European father could be. Slavery and concubinage exist in China, and the hus¬ band has absolute power over his wife, even of life and death. These customs tend to demoralize the Chinese, and are a source of great evil. Woman is the slave of man. The exception to this is in the case of a mother. She is absolute in her household, and mothers, in China, command universal reverence. If an officer asks leave of absence to visit his mother it must be granted him. A mother may order an official to take her son to prison, and she must be obeyed. As a wife without children woman is a slave, but as a mother with grown- up sons she is a monarch. * Meadows, p. 18. 62 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. § 8. The Tae-ping Insurrection. Two extraordinary events have occurred in our day in China, the results of which may be of the utmost impor¬ tance to the nation and to mankind. The one is the Tae- ping insurrection, the other the diplomatic mission of Mr. Burlingame to the Western world. Whatever may he the immediate issue of the great insurrection of our day against the Tartar dynasty, it will remain a phenomenon of the utmost significance. There is no doubt, notwith¬ standing the general opinion to the contrary, that it has been a religious movement, proceeding from a single mind deeply moved by the reading of the Bible. The hostility of the Chinese to the present Mantclioo Tartar monarchs no doubt aided it; but there has been in it an element of power from the beginning, derived, like that of the Puritans, from its religious enthusiasm. Its leader, the Heavenly Prince, Hung-sew-tseuen, son of a poor peas¬ ant living thirty miles northeast of Canton, received a tract, containing extracts from the Chinese Bible of Dr. Morison, from a Chinese tract distributor in the streets of Canton. This was in 1833, when he was about twenty years of age. He took the book home, looked over it carelessly, and threw it aside. Disappointed of his de¬ gree at two competitive examinations, he fell sick, and saw a vision of an old man, saying : “ I am the Creator of all things. Go and do my work.” After this vision six years passed by, when the English war broke out, and the English fleet took the Chinese forts in the river of Canton. Such a great national calamity indicated, according to Chinese ideas, something rotten in the government; and such success on the part of the English showed that, in some way, they were fulfilling the will of Heaven. This led Hung-sew-tseuen to peruse again his Christian books; and alone, with no guide, he became a sincere believer in Christ, after a fashion of his own. God was the Creator of all things, and the Supreme Father. Jesus was the Elder Brother and heavenly Teacher of mankind. Idol¬ atry was to be overthrown, virtue to be practised. Hung- sew-tseuen believed that the Bible confirmed his former CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. G3 visions. He accepted his mission and began to make con¬ verts. All his converts renounced idolatry, and gave up the worship of Confucius. They travelled to and fro teaching, and formed a society of God-worshippers.” The first convert, Fung-yun-san, became its most ardent mis¬ sionary and its disinterested preacher. Hung-sew-tseuen returned home, went to Canton, and there met Mr. Boberts, an American missionary, who was induced by false charges to refuse him Christian baptism. Eut he, without being offended with Mr. Eoberts, went home and taught his converts how to baptize themselves. The society of “ God-worshippers ” increased in number. Some of them were arrested for destroying idols, and among them Fung- yun-san, who, however, on his way to prison, converted the policemen by his side. These new converts set him at liberty and went away with him as his disciples. Various striking phenomena occurred in this society. Men fell into a state of ecstasy and delivered exhortations. Sick persons were cured by the power of prayer. The teach¬ ings of these ecstatics were tested by Scripture ; if found to agree therewith, they were accepted ; if not, rejected. It was in October, 1850, that this religious movement assumed a political form. A large body of persons, in a state of chronic rebellion against the Chinese authorities, had fled into the district, and joined the “ God-worship- pers.” Pursued by the imperial soldiers, they were pro¬ tected against them. Hence war began. The leaders of the religious movement found themselves compelled to choose between submission and resistance. They resisted, and the great insurrection began. But in China an insur¬ rection against the dynasty is in the natural order of things. Indeed, it may be said to be a part of the consti¬ tution. By the Sacred Books, taught in all the schools and made a part of the examination papers, it is the duty of the people to overthrow any bad government. The Chinese have no power to legislate, do not tax themselves, and the government is a pure autocracy. But it is not a despotism ; for old usages make a constitution, which the government must respect or be overthrown. “ The right to rebel,” says Mr. Meadows, “ is in China a chief element 64 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. of national stability.” The Tae-ping (or UniveTsal-Peace) Insurrection has shown its religious character throughout. It has not been cruel, except in retaliation. At the tak¬ ing of Nan-king orders were given to put all the women together and protect them, and any one doing them an injury was punished with death. Before the attack on Nan-king a large body of the insurgents knelt down and prayed, and then rose and fought, like the soldiers of Cromwell. The aid of a large body of rebels was refused, because they did not renounce idolatry, and continued to allow the use of opium. Hymns of praise to the Heavenly Bather and Elder Brother were chanted in the camp. And the head of the insurrection distinctly announced that, in case it succeeded, the Bible would be substituted in all public examinations for office in the place of Con¬ fucius. This would cause the Bible to be at once studied by all candidates for office among three hundred and sixty millions of people. It would constitute the greatest event in the history of Christianity since the days of Constan¬ tine, or at least since the conversion of the Teutonic races. The rebellion has probably failed; but great results must follow this immense interest in Christianity in the heart of China, — an interest awakened by no Christian mission, whether Catholic or Protestant, but coming down into this great nation like the rain from heaven. In the “ History of the Ti-Ping Revolution ” (published in London in 1866), written by an Englishman who held a command among the Ti-Pings, there is given a full, in¬ teresting, and apparently candid account of the religious and moral character of this great movement, from which I take the following particulars : — “ I have probably,” says this writer,* “ had a much greater * Ti-Ping Tien-Kwoh ; The History of the Ti-Ping Revolution, by Lin-Le, special agent of the Ti-Ping General-in-Chief, &c. Davy ancl Son, London, 1866. Yol. I. p. 306. Mr. Andrew Wilson, author of “ The Ever-Victorious Army” (Black¬ wood, 1868)', speaks with much contempt of Lin-Le’s book. In a note (page 389) he brings certain charges against the author. Mr. Wilson's book is written to glorify Gordon, Wood, and others, who accepted rov¬ ing commissions against the Ti-Pings ; and of course he takes their view of the insurrection. The accusations he brings against Lin-Le, even if correct, do not detract from the apparent accuracy of that writer’s story, nor from the weight of his arguments. CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 65 experience of the Ti-Ping religious practices than any other European, and as a Protestant Christian I have never yet found occasion to condemn their form of wor¬ ship. The most important part of their faith is the Holy Bible, — Old and New Testaments entire. These have been printed and circulated gratuitously by the govern¬ ment through the whole population of the Ti-Ping juris¬ diction.” Abstracts of the Bible, put into verse, were circulated and committed to memory. Their form of wor¬ ship was assimilated to Protestantism. The Sabbath was kept religiously on the seventh day. Three cups of tea were put on the altar on that day as an offering to the Trinity. They celebrated the communion once a month by partaking of a cup of grape wine. Every one admitted to their fellowship was baptized, after an examination and confession of sins. The following was the form pre¬ scribed in the “ Book of Beligious Precepts of the Ti-Ping Dynasty ” : — * Forms to be observed when Men wish to forsake their Sins. — They must kneel down in God’s presence, and ask him to forgive their sins. They may then take either a basin of water and wash themselves, or go to the river and bathe themselves ; after which they must continue daily to sup¬ plicate Divine favor, and the Holy Spirit’s assistance to renew their hearts, saying grace at every meal, keeping holy the Sabbath day, and obeying all God’s command¬ ments, especially avoiding idolatry. They may then be accounted the children of God, and their souls will go to Heaven when they die.” The prayer offered by the recipient of Baptism was as follows: — “ I (A. B.), kneeling down with a true heart, repent of my sins, and pray the Heavenly Father, the great God, of his abundant mercy, to forgive my former sins of ignorance in repeatedly breaking the Divine commands, earnestly beseeching him also to grant me repentance and newness of life, that my soul may go to Heaven, while I henceforth truly forsake my former ways, abandoning idolatry and * Ibid., Yol. I. p. 315. These forms are given, says the writer, partly from memory. 66 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. all corrupt practices, in obedience to God’s commands. I also pray that God would give me his Holy Spirit to change my wicked heart, deliver me from all temptation, and grant me his favor and protection, bestowing on me food and raiment, and exemption from calamity, peace in this world and glory in the next, through the mercies of our Saviour and Elder Brother, Jesus, who redeemed us from sin.” In every household throughout the Ti-Ping territory the following translation of the Lord’s Prayer was hung up for the use of the children, printed in large black char¬ acters on a white board : — " Supreme Lord, our Heavenly Father, forgive all our sins that we have committed in ignorance, rebelling against thee. Bless us, brethren and sisters, thy little children. Give us our daily food and raiment; keep from us all calamities and afflictions ; that in this world we may have peace and finally ascend to heaven to enjoy everlasting happiness. We pray thee to bless our brethren and sisters of all nations. We ask these things for the redeeming merits of our Lord and Saviour, our heavenly brother, Jesus. We also pray. Heavenly Father, that thy will may be done on earth as in heaven: for thine are all the kingdoms, glory, and power. Amen.” The writer says he has frequently watched the Ti-Ping women teaching the children this prayer; “ and often, on entering a house, the children ran up to me, and pulling me toward the board, began to read the prayer.” The seventh day was kept very strictly. As soon as midnight sounded on Friday, all the people throughout Ti-Pingdom were summoned to worship. Two other ser¬ vices were held during the day. Each opened with a doxology to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Then was sung this hymn: — “ The true doctrine is different from the doctrine of this world ; It saves men’s souls and gives eternal bliss. The wise receive it instantly with joy ; The foolish, wakened by it, find the way to Heaven. Our Heavenly Father, of his great mercy, Did not spare his own Son, but sent him down To give his life to redeem sinners. When men know this, and repent, they may go to Heaven.” CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 67 The rest of the services consisted in a chapter of the Bible read by the minister ; a creed, repeated by the con¬ gregation standing; a prayer, read by the minister and repeated by the whole congregation kneeling. Then the prayer was burned, the minister read a sermon, an anthem was chanted to the long life of the king; then followed the Ten Commandments, music, and the burning of in¬ cense and fire-crackers. No business was allowed on the Sabbath, and the shops were closed. There was a clergy, chosen by competitive examination, subject to the ap¬ proval of the Tien-Wong, or supreme religious head of the movement. There was a minister placed over every twenty-five families, and a church, or Heavenly Hall, as¬ signed to him in some public building. Over every twenty- five parishes there was a superior, who visited them in turn every Sabbath. Once every month the whole people were addressed by the chief Wong. The writer of this work describes his attendance on morning prayers at Nan-king, in the Heavenly Hall of the Chung-Wang’s household. This took place at sunrise every morning, the men and women sitting on opposite sides of the hall. “ Oftentimes,” says he, “ while kneel¬ ing in the midst of an apparently devout congregation, and gazing on the upturned countenances lightened by the early morning sun, have I wondered why no British missionary occupied my place, and why Europeans gen¬ erally preferred slaughtering the Ti-Pings to accepting them as brothers in Christ. When I look back,” he adds, “ on the unchangeable and universal kindness I always met with among the Ti-Pings, even when their dearest relatives were being slaughtered by my countrymen, or delivered over to the Manchoos to be tortured to death, their magnanimous forbearance seems like a dream. Their kind and friendly feelings were often annoying. To those who have experienced the ordinary dislike of foreigners by the Chinese, the surprising friendliness of the Ti-Pings was most remarkable. They welcomed Europeans as “ brethren from across the sea,” and claimed them as fel¬ low-worshippers of “ Yesu.” Though the Ti-Pings did not at once lay aside all hea« 68 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. then customs, and could not be expected to do so, they took some remarkable steps in the right direction. Their women were in a much higher position than among the other Chinese; they abolished the custom of cramping their feet; a married woman had rights, and could not be divorced at will, or sold, as under the Manchoos. Large institutions were established for unmarried women. Slavery was totally abolished, and to sell a human being was made a capital offence. They utterly prohibited the use of opium; and this was probably their chief offence in the eyes of the English. Prostitution was punished by death, and was unknown in their cities. Idolatry was also utterly abolished. Their treatment of the people under them was merciful; they protected their prisoners, whom the Imperialists always massacred. The British troops, instead of preserving neutrality, aided the Impe¬ rialists in putting down the insurrection in such ways as this. The British cruisers assumed that the Ti-Ping junks were pirates, because they captured Chinese vessels. The British ship Bittern and another steamer sank every ves¬ sel but two in a rebel fleet, and gave up the crew of one which they captured to be put to death. This is the de¬ scription of another transaction of the same kind, in the harbor of Shi-poo : “ The junks were destroyed, and their crews shot, drowned, and hunted down, until about a thousand were killed; the Bittern’s men aiding the Chi¬ nese on shore to complete the wholesale massacre.” * It is the deliberate opinion of this well-informed Eng¬ lish writer that the Ti-Ping insurrection would have suc¬ ceeded but for British intervention; that the Tartar dynas¬ ty would have been expelled, the Chinese regained their autonomy, and Christianity have been established through¬ out the Empire. At the end of his book he gives a table of forty-three battles and massacres in which the British soldiers and navy took part, in which about four hundred thousand of the Ti-Pings were killed, and he estimates that more than two millions more died of starvation in 1863 and 1864, in the famine occasioned by the opera¬ tions of the allied English, French, and Chinese troops, * Hong-Kong Gazette, October 12, 1855. CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 69 when the Ti-Pings were driven from their territories. Tn view of such facts, well may an English writer say: “ It is not once or twice that the policy of the British gov¬ ernment has been ruinous to the best interests of the world. Disregard of international law and of treaty law in Europe, deeds of piracy and spoliation in Asia, one vast system of wrong and violence, have everywhere for years marked the dealings of the British government with the weaker races of the globe.” * Other Englishmen, beside “ Lin-Le ” and Mr. Meadows, give the same testimony to the Christian character of this great movement in China. Captain Fishbourne, describ¬ ing his visit in H. M. S. Hermes to Nan-king, says: “ It was obvious to the commonest observer that they were prac¬ tically a different race.” They had the Scriptures, many seemed to him to be practical Christians, serious and religious, believing in a special Providence, thinking that their trials were sent to purify them. “ They accuse us of magic,” said one. “ The only magic we employ is prayer to God.” The man who said this, says Captain Fishbourne, “was a little shrivelled-up person, but he uttered words of courageous confidence in God, and could utter the words of a hero. He and others like him have impressed the minds of their followers with their own courage and morality” The English Bishop of Victoria has constantly given the same testimony. Of one of the Ti-Ping books Dr. Medliurst says : “ There is not a word in it which a Chris¬ tian missionary might not adopt and circulate as a tract for the benefit of the Chinese.” Dr. Medliurst also describes a scene which took place in Shanghae, where he was preaching in the chapel of the London Missionary Society, on the folly of idolatry and the duty of worshipping the one true God. A man arose in the middle of the congregation and said: “ That is true ! that is true ! the idols must perish. I am a Ti- Ping ; we all worship one God and believe in Jesus, and we everywhere destroy the idols. Two years ago when we began we were only three thousand; now we have * Intervention and Non-Intervention, by A. G. Stapleton. 70 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. marched across the Empire, because God was on our side.” He then exhorted the people to abandon idolatry and to believe in Jesus, and said: “We are happy'in our religion, and look on the day of our death as the happiest moment of life. When any of our number dies, we do not weep, but congratulate each other because he has gone to the joy of the heavenly world.” The mission of Mr. Burlingame indicated a sincere de¬ sire on the part of the sagacious men who then governed China, especially of Prince Rung, to enter into relations with modern civilization and modern thought. Erom the official papers of this mission,* it appears that Mr. Bur¬ lingame was authorized “ to transact all business with the Treaty Powers in which those countries and China had a common interest,” (communication of Prince Rung, Decem¬ ber 31, 1867). The Chinese government expressly states that this step is intended as adopting the customs of diplo¬ matic intercourse peculiar to the West, and that in so doing the Chinese Empire means to conform to the law of nations, as understood among the European states. It therefore adopted “ Wheaton’s International Law ” as the text-book and authority to be used in its Foreign Office, and had it carefully translated into Chinese for the use of its mandarins. This movement was the result, says Mr. Burlingame, of the “ co-operative policy ” adopted by the representatives in China of the Treaty Powers, in which they agreed to act together on all important ques¬ tions, to take no cession of territory, and never to menace the autonomy of the Empire. They agreed “ to leave her perfectly free to develop herself according to her own form of civilization, not to interfere with her interior affairs, to make her waters neutral, and her land safe ” (Burlingame’s speech at San Francisco). There is no doubt that if the states known as the “ Treaty Powers,” namely, the United States, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, North Germany, Russia, Spain, and Swe¬ den, will loyally abstain from aggression and interference in China and respect her independence, that this great * Official Papers of the Chinese Legation. Berlin : T. Calvary & Co., Oberwasser Square. 1870. CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 71 Empire will step forth from her seclusion of fifty centuries, and enter the commonwealth of nations. The treaty between the United States and China of July 28,1868, includes provisions for the neutrality of the Chinese waters ; for freedom of worship for United States citizens in China, and for the Chinese in the United States; for allowing voluntary emigration, and prohibiting the compulsory coolie trade; for freedom to travel in China and the United States by the citizens of either country; and for freedom to establish and attend schools in both countries. We add to this chapter a Note, containing an interest¬ ing account, from Hue’s “ Christianity in China,” of an in¬ scribed stone, proving that Christian churches existed in China in the seventh century. These churches were the result of the efforts of Nestorian missionaries, who were the Protestant Christians of their age. Their success in China is another proof that the Christianity which is to be welcomed there must be presented in an intelligible and rational form. NOTE. THE NESTORIAN INSCRIPTION IN CHINA.* In 1625 some Chinese workmen, engaged in digging a founda¬ tion for a house, outside the walls of the city of Si-ngau-Fou, the capital of the province of Chen-si, found buried in the earth a large monumental stone resembling those which the Chinese are in the habit of raising to preserve to posterity the remembrance of remarkable events and illustrious men. It was a dark-colored marble tablet, ten feet high and five broad, and bearing on one side an inscription in ancient Chinese, and also some other characters quite unknown in China. • • • • • Several exact tracings from the stone were sent to Europe by the Jesuits who saw it. The library of their house at Rome had one of the first, and it attracted numerous visitors; subsequently, another authentic copy of the dimensions of the tablet was sent to Paris, and deposited at the library in the Rue Richelieu, where it may still be seen in the gallery of manuscripts. * From Hue’s “ Christianity in China.” 72 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. This monument, discovered by chance amidst rubbish in the environs of an ancient capital of the Chinese Empire, excited a great sensation; for on examining the stone, and endeavoring to interpret the inscription, it was with surprise discovered that the Christian religion had had numerous apostles in China at the be¬ ginning of the seventh century, and that it had for a long time flourished there. The strange characters proved to be those called estrangelhos, which were in use among the ancient inhabitants of Syria, and will be found in some Syriac manuscripts of earlier date than the eighth century. Monument of the great Propagation of the Luminous Doctrine in the Central Empire , composed by Khing-Tsing, a devout Man of the Temple of Ta-Thsin. 1. There has always been only one true Cause, essentially the first, and without beginning, supremely intelligent and immaterial; essentially the last, and uniting all perfections. He placed the poles of the heavens and created all beings; marvellously holy, he is the source of all perfection. This admirable being, is he not the Triune , the true Lord without beginning, Ololio ? He divided the world by a cross into four parts. After having decomposed the primordial air, he gave birth to the two elements. Chaos was transformed, and then the sun and the moon appeared. He made the sun and the moon move to produce day and night. He elaborated and perfected the ten thousand things; but in creat¬ ing the first man, he endowed him with perfect interior harmony. He enjoined him to watch over the sea of his desires. His nature was without vice and without error; his heart, pure and simple, was originally without disorderly appetites. 2. But Sa-Thang propagated lies, and stained by his malice that which had been pure and holy. He proclaimed, as a truth, the equality of greatness, and upset all ideas. This is why three hun¬ dred and sixty-five sects, lending each other a mutual support, formed a long chain, and wove, so to speak, a net of law. Some put the creature in the place of the Eternal, others denied the exist¬ ence of beings, and destroyed the two principles. Others instituted prayers and sacrifices to obtain good fortune; others proclaimed their own sanctity to deceive mankind. The minds of men labored, and were filled with anxiety; aspirations after the supreme good were trampled down; thus perpetually floating about they attained to nothing, and all went from bad to worse. The darkness thick¬ ened, men lost their sight, and for a long time they wandered without being able to find it again. 3. Then our Triune Glod communicated his substance to the very venerable Mi-chi-ho (Messiah), who, veiling his true majesty, ap¬ peared in the world in the likeness of a man. The celestial spirits manifested their joy, and a virgin brought forth the saint in Ta- Thsin. The most splendid constellations announced this happy CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 73 event; the Persians saw the splendor, and ran to pay tribute. He fulfilled what was said of old by the twenty-four saints; he organ¬ ized, by his precepts, both families and kingdoms; he instituted the new religion according to the true notion of the Trinity in Unity; he regulated conscience by the true faith; he signified to the world the eight commandments, and purged humanity from its pollutions by opening the door to the three virtues. He diffused life and ex¬ tinguished death ; he suspended the luminous sun to destroy the dwelling of darkness, and then the lies of demons passed away. He directed the bark of mercy towards the palace of light, and all creatures endowed with intelligence have been succored. After having consummated this act of power, he rose at midday towards the Truth. Twenty-seven books have been left. He has enlarged the springs of mercy, that men might be converted. The baptism by water and by the Spirit is a law that purifies the soul and beautifies the exterior. The sign of the cross unites the four quarters of the world, and restores the harmony that had been destroyed. By striking upon a piece of wood, we make the voice of charity and mercy resound; by sacrificing towards the east we indicate the way of life and glory. Our ministers allow their beards to grow, to show that they are devoted to their neighbors. The tonsure that they wear at the top of their heads indicates that they have renounced worldly desires. In giving liberty to slaves we become a link between the powerful and weak. We do not accumulate riches, and we share with the poor that which we possess. Fasting strengthens the intellectual powers, abstinence and moderation preserve health. We worship seven times a day, and by our prayers we aid the living and the dead. On the seventh day we offer sacrifice, after having purified our hearts and received absolution for our sins. This religion, so perfect and so excellent, is difficult to name, but it enlightens dark¬ ness by its brilliant precepts. It is called the Luminous Religion. 5. Learning alone without sanctity has no grandeur, sanctity with¬ out learning makes no progress. When learning and sanctity pro¬ ceed harmoniously, the universe is adorned and resplendent. The Emperor Tai-Tsoung illustrated the Empire. He opened the revolution, and governed men in holiness. In his time there was a man of high virtue named Olopen, who came from the kingdom of Ta-Thsin. Directed by the blue clouds, he bore the Scriptures of the true doctrine; he observed the rules of the winds, and trav¬ ersed difficult and perilous countries In the ninth year of Tching-Kouan (636) he arrived at Tchang- ngan. The Emperor ordered Fang-hi-wen-Ling, first minister of the Empire, to go with a great train of attendants to the western suburb, to meet the stranger and bring him to the palace. He had the Holy Scriptures translated in the Imperial library. The court listened to the doctrine, meditated on it profoundly, and understood the great unity of truth. A special edict was promulgated for its publication and diffusion. 3 74 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. In the twelfth year of Tching-Kouan, in the seventh moon, during the autumn, the new edict was promulgated in these terms: — The doctrine has no fixed name, the holy has no determinate substance; it institutes religions suitable to various countries, and carries men in crowds in its tracks. Olopen, a man of Ta-Thsin, and of a lofty virtue, bearing Scriptures and images, has come to offer them in the Supreme Court. After a minute examination of the spirit of this religion, it has been found to be excellent, mysteri¬ ous, and pacific. The contemplation of its radical principle gives birth to perfection and fixes the will. It is exempt from verbosity; it considers only good results. It is useful to men, and conse¬ quently ought to be published under the whole extent of the heavens. I, therefore, command the magistrates to have a Ta- Thsin temple constructed in the quarter named T-ning of the Imperial city, and twenty-one religious men shall be installed therein. * • • • • 10. Sou-Tsoung, the illustrious and brilliant emperor, erected at Ling-ou and other towns, five in all, luminous temples. The primi¬ tive good was thus strengthened, and felicity flourished. Joyous solemnities were inaugurated, and the Empire entered on a wide course of prosperity. 11. Tai-Tsoung (764), a lettered and a warlike emperor, propa¬ gated the holy revolution. He sought for peace and tranquillity. Every year, at the hour of the Nativity (Christmas), he burnt celestial perfumes in remembrance of the divine benefit; he pre¬ pared imperial feasts, to honor the luminous (Christian) multitude. • • • • • 21. This stone was raised in the second year of Kien-Tchoung of the great dynasty of Thang (a. d. 781), on the seventh day of the moon of the great increase. At this time the devout Ning- Chou, lord of the doctrine, governed the luminous multitude in the Eastern country. Such is the translation of the famous inscription found at Si-ngau- Fou, in 1625. On the left of the monument are to be read the following words in the Syriac language : u In the days of the Father of Fathers, Anan-Yeschouah, Patriarch Catholicos .” To the right can be traced, u Adam, Priest, and Chor-Episcopus ” ; and at the base of the inscription: “ In the year of the Greeks one thousand nine hundred and two (a. d. 781), Mar Yezd-bouzid, Priest and Chor-Episcopus of the Imperial city of Komdam, son of Millesins, priest of happy memory, of Balkh, a town of Tokharistan (Turkis- tan), raised this tablet of stone, on winch are described the benefits of our Saviour, and the preaching of our fathers in the kingdom of the Chinese. Adam, Deacon, son of Yezd-bouzid, Chor-Episco¬ pus; Sabar-Jesu, Priest; Gabriel, Priest, Archdeacon, and Ecclesi- arch of Komdam and Sarage.” CONFUCIUS AND THE CHINESE. 75 The abridgment of Christian doctrine given in the Syro-Chinese inscription of Si-ngau-Fou shows us, also, that the propagators of the faith in Upper Asia in the seventh century professed the Nestorian errors. Through the vague and obscure verbiage which characterizes the Chinese style, we recognize the mode in which that heresiarch admitted the union of the Word with man, by indwelling plenitude of grace superior to that of all the saints. One of the persons of the Trinity communicated himself to the very illustrious and venerable Messiah, “ veiling his majesty.” That is certainly the doctrine of Nestorius; upon that point the authority of the critics is unanimous. History, as we have elsewhere remarked, records the rapid pro¬ gress of the Nestor ian sects in the interior of Asia, and their being able to hold their ground, even under the sway of the Mussulmans, by means of compromises and concessions of every kind. Setting out from the banks of the Tigris or the Euphrates, these ardent and courageous propagators of the G-ospel probably proceeded to Khorassan, and then crossing the Oxus, directed their course toward the Lake of Lop, and entered the Chinese Empire by the province of Chen-si. Olopen, and his successors in the Christian mission, whether Syrians or Persians by birth, certainly belonged to the Nestorian church. Voltaire, who did not like to trouble himself with scientific argu¬ ments, and who was much stronger in sarcasm than in erudition, roundly accuses the missionaries of having fabricated the inscription on the monument of Si-ngau-Fou, from motives of “ pious fraud.” “ As if,” says Remusat, “ such a fabrication could have been prac¬ ticable in the midst of a distrustful and suspicious nation, in a country in which magistrates and private people are equally ill- disposed towards foreigners, and especially missionaries, where all eyes are open to their most trivial proceedings, and where the authorities watch with the most jealous care over everything re¬ lating to the historical traditions and monuments of antiquity. It would be very difficult to explain how the missionaries could have been bold enough to have printed and published in China, and in Chinese, an inscription that had never existed, and how they could have imitated the Chinese style, counterfeited the manner of the writers of the dynasty of Thang, alluded to customs little known, to local circumstances, to dates calculated from the mysterious figures of Chinese astrology, and the whole without betraying themselves for a moment; and with such perfection as to impose on the most skilful men of letters, induced, of course, by the singularity of the discovery to dispute its authenticity. It could only have been done by one of the most erudite of Chinese scholars, joining with the missionaries to impose on his own countrymen.” “ Even that would not be all, for the borders of the inscription are covered with Syrian names in fine estranghelo characters. The . forgers must, then, have been not only acquainted with these char¬ acters, but have been able to get engraved with perfect exactness 76 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. ninety lines of them, and in the ancient writing, known at present to very few.” “ This argument of Remusat’s,” says another learned Orientalist, M. Felix Neve, “ is of irresistible force, and we have formerly heard a similar one maintained with the greatest confidence by M. Quatremere, of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, and we allow ourselves to quote the opinion of so highly qualified a judge upon this point. Before the last century it would have been absolutely impossible to forge in Europe a series of names and titles belonging to a Christian nation of Western Asia; it is only since the fruits of Assemani’s labors have been made public by his family at Rome, that there existed a sufficient knowledge of the Syriac for such a purpose; and it is only by the publication of the manuscripts of the Vatican, that the extent to which Nestorianism spread in the centre of Asia, and the influence of its hierarchy in the Persian provinces could have been estimated. There is no reason to suppose that missionaries who left Europe in the very beginning of the seventeenth century could have acquired a knowledge which could only be obtained from reading the originals and not vague accounts of them.” The sagacity of M. Saint Martin, who was for a long time the colleague of M. Quatremere, has pointed out in a note worthy of his erudition, another special proof, which is by no means to be neglected. “ Amongst the various arguments,” he says, “ that might be urged in favor of the legitimacy of the monument, but of which, as yet, no use has been made, must not be forgotten the name of the priest by whom it is said to have been erected. The name Yezdbouzid is Persian, and at the epoch when the monument was discovered it would have been impossible to invent it, as there existed no work where it could have been found. Indeed, I do not think that, even since then, there has ever been any one published in which it could have been met with. “'It is a very celebrated name among the Armenians, and comes to them from a martyr, a Persian by birth, and of the royal race, who perished towards the middle of the seventh century, and rendered his name illustrious amongst the Christian nations of the East.” Saint Martin adds in the same place, that the famous monu¬ ment of Si-ngau-Fou, whose authenticity has for a long time been called in question from the hatred entertained against the Jesuit missionaries who discovered it, rather than from a candid examina¬ tion of its contents, is now regarded as above all suspicion. BRAHMANISM. 77 CHAPTER III. BRAHMANISM. § 1. Our Knowledge of Brahmanism. Sir William Jones. § 2. Diffi¬ culty of this Study. The Complexity of the System. The Hindoos have no History. Their Ultra-Spiritualism. § 3. Helps from Comparative Philology. The Aryans in Central Asia. § 4. The Aryans in India. The Native Races. The Vedic Age. Theology of the Vedas. §5. Sec¬ ond Period. Laws of Manu. The Brahmanic Age. § 6. The Three Hindoo Systems of Philosophy, —the Sankhya, Vedanta, and Nyasa. § 7. Origin of the Hindoo Triad. § 8. The Epics, the Puranas, and Modern Hindoo Worship. § 9. Relation of Brahmanism to Chris¬ tianity. § 1. Our Knowledge of Brahmanism. Sir William Jones. I T is more than forty years since the writer, then a boy, was one day searching among the heavy works of a learned library in the country to find some entertaining reading for a summer afternoon. It was a library rich in theology, in Greek and Latin classics, in French and Spanish literature, but contained little to amuse a child. Led by some happy fortune, .in turning over a pile of the “ Monthly Anthology ” his eye was attracted by the title of a play, “ Sacontala* or the Fatal Ring; an Indian Drama, translated from the original Sanskrit and Pracrit. Calcutta, 1789,” and reprinted in the Anthology in suc¬ cessive numbers. Gathering them together, the boy took them into a great chestnut-tree, amid the limbs of which he had constructed a study, and there, in the warm, fragrant shade, read hour after hour this bewitching story. The tale was suited to the day and the scene, — filled with images of tender girls and religious sages, who lived amid a tropical abundance of flowers and fruits; so blending the beauty of nature with the charm of love. Nature becomes in it alive, and is interpenetrated with human sentiments. . * Now usually written Sakoontala or Sakuntala. 78 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Sakuntala loves tlie flowers as sisters; the Kesara-tree beckons to her with its waving blossoms, and clings to her in affection as she bends over it. The jasmine, the wife of the mango-tree, embraces her lord, who leans down to protect his blooming bride, “the moonlight of the grove.” The holy hermits defend the timid fawn from the hunters, and the birds, grown tame in their peaceful solitudes, look tranquilly on the intruder. The demons occasionally disturb the sacrificial rites, but, like well- educated demons, retire at once, as soon as the protecting Raja enters the sacred grove. All breathes of love, gentle and generous sentiment, and quiet joys in the bosom of a luxuriant and beautiful summer land. Thus, in this poem, written a hundred years before Christ, we find that romantic view of nature, unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and first appearing in our own time in such writers as Rousseau, Goethe, and Byron. He w T ho translated this poem into a European language, and communicated it to modern readers, was Sir William Jones, one of the few first-class scholars whom the world has produced. In him was joined a marvellous gift of language with a love for truth and beauty, which detected by an infallible instinct what was worth knowing, in the mighty maze of Oriental literature. He had also the rare good fortune of being the first to discover this domain of literature in Asia, unknown to the West till lie came to reveal it. The vast realm of Hindoo, Chinese, and Per¬ sian genius was as much a new continent to Europe, when discovered by Sir William Jones, as America was when made known by Columbus. Its riches had been accumulating during thousands of years, waiting till the fortunate man should arrive, destined to reveal to our age the barbaric pearl and gold of the gorgeous East, — the true wealth of Ormus and of Ind. Sir William Jones came well equipped for his task. Some men are born philologians, loving words for their own sake, — men to whom the devious paths of language * are open highways; who, as Lord Bacon says, “ have come forth from the second general curse, which was the con¬ fusion of tongues, by the art of grammar.” Sir William BRAHMANISM. 79 Jones was one of these, perhaps the greatest of them. A paper in his own handwriting tells ns that he knew criti¬ cally eight languages, — English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit; less perfectly eight others, — Spanish, Portuguese, German, Eunic, Hebrew, Bengali, Hindi, Turkish; and was moderately familiar with twelve more, — Tibetian, Pali, Phalavi, Deri, Eussian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, and Chi¬ nese. There have been, perhaps, other scholars who have known as many tongues as this. But usually they are crushed by their own accumulations, and we never hear of their accomplishing anything. Sir William Jones was not one of these, “ deep versed in books, and shallow in himself.” Language was his instrument, but knowledge his aim. So, when he had mastered Sanskrit and other Oriental languages, he rendered into English not only Sakuntala, but a far more important work, “ The Laws of Manu ” ; “ almost the only work in Sanskrit,” says Max Muller, “ the early date of which, assigned to it by Sir William Jones from the first, has not been assailed.” He also translated from the Sanskrit the fables of Hitopadesa, extracts from the Vedas, and shorter pieces. He formed a society in Calcutta for the study of Oriental literature, was its first president, and contributed numerous essays, all valuable, to its periodical, the “ Asiatic Besearclies.” He wrote a grammar of the Persian language, and trans¬ lated from Persian into French the history of Nadir Shah. From the Arabic he also translated many pieces, and among them the Seven Poems suspended in the temple at Mecca, which, in their subjects and style, seem an Arabic anticipation of Walt Whitman. He wrote in Latin a Book of Commentaries on Asiatic Poetry, in English several works on the Mohammedan and Civil Law, with a translation of the Greek Orations of Isseus. As a lawyer, a judge, a student of natural history, his ardor of study was equally apparent. He presented to the Boyal Society in London a large collection of valuable Oriental manu¬ scripts, and left a long list of studies in Sanskrit to be pursued by those who should come after him. Plis gen¬ erous nature showed itself in his opposition to slavery and 80 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. the slave-trade, and his open sympathy with the American Revolution. His correspondence was large, including such names as those of Benjamin Franklin, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Monboddo, Gibbon, Warren Hastings, Dr. Price, Ed¬ mund Burke, and Dr. Parr. Such a man ought to be remembered, especially by all who take an interest in the studies to which he has opened the way, for he was one who had a right to speak of himself, as he has spoken in these lines: — “ Before thy mystic altar, heavenly truth, I kneel in manhood, as I knelt in youth. Thus let me kneel, till this dull form decay, And life’s last shade he brightened by thy ray, Then shall my soul, now lost in clouds below, Soar without bound, without consuming glow.” Since the days of Sir William Jones immense progress has been made in the study of Sanskrit literature, espe¬ cially within the last thirty or forty years, from the time when the Schlegels led the way in this department. Now, professors of Sanskrit are to be found in all the great European universities, and in tnis country we have at least one Sanskrit scholar of the very highest order, Pro¬ fessor William D. Whitney, of Yale. The system of Brahmanism, which a short time since could only be known to Western readers by means of the writings of Colebrooke, Wilkins, Wilson, and a few others, has now been made accessible by the works of Lassen, Max Muller, Burnouf, Muir, Pictet, Bopp, Weber, Windischmann, Vivien de Saint-Martin, and a multitude of eminent writers in France, England, and Germany.* * To avoid multiplying footnotes, we refer here to the chief sources on which we rely in this chapter. C. Lassen , Indische Altherthums- kunde ; Max Muller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature (and other works) ; J. Muir, Sanskrit Texts ; Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Europeennes ; Sir William Jones, Works, 13 vols. ; Viviev de Saint-Martin, Etude, &c., and articles in the Revue Germanique ; Monier Williams, Sakoon- tala (a new translation), the Ramayana, and the Maha Bharata ; Horace Hayman Wilson, Works (containing the Vischnu Purana, &c.) ; Bur¬ nouf, Essai sur la Veda, Le Bhagavata Purana ; Stephenson, the Sanhita of the Sama Veda ; Ampere, La Science en Orient ; Bunsen , Gott in der Geschichte ; Shea and Troyer, The Dabistan ; Hardwick, Christ and other Masters ; J. Talboys Wheeler, History of India from the Earliest Times ; Works published by the Oriental Translation Fund ; Max Dunck- er. Die Geschichte der Arier; Rammohun Roy, The Veds ; Mullens , Hindoo Philosophy. BRAHMANISM. 81 § 2. Difficulty <>f this Study. The Complexity of the System. The Hindoos have no History. Their Ultra- Spiritualism. But, notwithstanding these many helps, Brahmanism remains a difficult study. Its source is not in a man, hut in a caste. It is not the religion of a Confucius, a Zoroas¬ ter, a Mohammed, but the religion of the Brahmans. We call it Brahmanism, and it can be traced to no individual as its founder or restorer. There is no personality about it.* It is a vast world of ideas, but wanting the unity which is given by the life of a man, its embodiment and representative. But what a system ? How large, how difficult to under¬ stand ! So vast, so complicated, so full of contradictions, so various and changeable, that its very immensity is our refuge ! We say, It is impossible to do justice to such a system ; therefore do not demand it of us. India has been a land of mystery from the earliest times. From the most ancient days we hear of India as the most populous nation of the world, full of barbaric wealth and a strange wisdom. It has attracted conquer¬ ors, and has been overrun by the armies of Semiramis, Darius, Alexander; by Mahmud, and Tamerlane, and Nadir Shah; by Lord Clive and the Duke of Wel¬ lington. These conquerors, from the Assyrian Queen to the British Mercantile Company, have overrun and plundered India, but have left it the same unintelligible, unchangeable, and marvellous country as before. It is the same land now which the soldiers of Alexander described, — the land of grotto temples dug out of solid porphyry ; of one of the most ancient Pagan religions of the world; of social distinctions fixed and permanent as the earth itself; of the sacred Ganges ; of the idols of Juggernaut, with its bloody worship; the land of elephants and tigers ; of fields of rice and groves of palm ; of treasuries filled with chests of gold, heaps of pearls, diamonds, and incense. But, above all, it is the land of unintelligible * “ The soul knows no persons.” — Emerson. 4 * f 82 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. systems of belief, of puzzling incongruities, and irrecon¬ cilable contradictions. The Hindoos have sacred books of great antiquity, and a rich literature extending back twenty or thirty cen¬ turies ; yet no history, no chronology, no annals. They have a philosophy as acute, profound and, spiritual as any in the world, which is yet harmoniously associated with the coarsest superstitions. With a belief so abstract that it almost escapes the grasp of the most speculative intellect, is joined the notion that sin can be atoned for by bathing in the Ganges or repeating a text of the Yeda. With an ideal pantheism resembling that of Hegel, is united the opinion that Brahma and Siva can be driven from the throne of the universe by any one who will sacrifice a suf¬ ficient number of wild horses. To abstract one’s self from matter, to renounce all the gratification of the senses, to macerate the body, is thought the true road to felicity; and nowhere in the world are luxury, licentiousness and the gratification of the appetites carried so far. Every civil right and privilege of ruler and subject is fixed in a code of laws, and a body of jurisprudence older far than the Christian era, and the object of universal reverence; but the application of these laws rests (says Bliode) on the arbitrary decisions of the priests, and their execution on the will of the sovereign. The constitution of India is therefore like a house without a foundation and without a roof. It is a principle of Hindoo religion not to kill a worm, not even to tread on a blade of grass, for fear of injuring life; but the torments, cruelties, and bloodshed inflicted by Indian tyrants would shock a Nero or a Bcrgia. Half the best informed writers on India will tell you that the Brahmanical religion is pure monotheism; the other half as confidently assert that they worship a million gods. Some teach us that the Hindoos are spirit¬ ualists and pantheists; others that their idolatry is more gross than that of any living people. Is there any way of reconciling these inconsistencies ? If we cannot find such an explanation, there is at least one central point where we may place ourselves ; one elevated position, from which this mighty maze will not seem BRAHMANISM. 83 wholly without a plan. In India the whole tendency of thought is ideal, the whole religion a pure spiritualism. An ultra, one-sided idealism is the central tendency of the Hindoo mind. The God of Brahmanism is an intel¬ ligence, absorbed in the rest of .profound contemplation. The good man of this religion is he who withdraws from an evil world into abstract thought. Nothing else explains the Hindoo character as this does. An eminently religious people, it is their one-sided spiritualism, their extreme idealism, which gives rise to all their incongruities. They have no history and no au¬ thentic chronology, for history belongs to this world, and chronology belongs to time. But this world and time are to them wholly uninteresting; God and eternity are all in all. They torture themselves with self-inflicted torments; for the body is the great enemy of the soul’s salvation, and they must beat it down by ascetic mortifi¬ cations. But asceticism, here as everywhere else, tends to self-indulgence, since one extreme produces another. In one part of India, therefore, devotees are swinging on hooks in honor of Siva, hanging themselves by the feet, head downwards, over a fire, rolling on a bed of prickly thorns, jumping on a couch filled with sharp knives, boring holes in their tongues, and sticking their bodies full of pins and needles, or perhaps holding the arms over the head till they stiffen in that position. Mean¬ time in other places whole regions are given over to sensual indulgences, and companies of abandoned women are connected with different temples and consecrate their gains to the support of their worship. As one-sided spiritualism will manifest itself in morals in the two forms of austerity and sensuality, so in reli¬ gion it shows itself in the opposite direction of an ideal pantheism and a gross idolatry. Spiritualism first fills the world full of God, and this is a true and Christian view of things. But it takes another step, which is to deny all real existence to the world, and so runs into a false pantheism. It first says, truly, “ There is nothing without God.” It next says, falsely, “ There is nothing but God.” This second step was taken in India by means 84 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. of the doctrine of Maya , or Illusion. Maya means the delusive shows which spirit assumes. For there is nothing but spirit; which neither creates nor is created, neither acts nor suffers, which cannot change, and into which all souls are absorbed when they free themselves by medita¬ tion from the belief that they suffer or are happy, that they can experience either pleasure or pain. The next step is to polytheism. For if God neither creates nor destroys, but only seems to create and destroy, these ap¬ pearances are not united together as being the acts of one Being, but are separate, independent phenomena. When you remove personality from the conception of God, as you do in removing will, you remove unity. Now if creation be an illusion, and there be no creation, still the appearance of creation is a fact. But as there is no sub¬ stance but spirit, this appearance must have its cause in spirit, that is, is a clivine appearance, is God. So destruc¬ tion, in the same way, is an appearance of God, and reproduction is an appearance of God, and every other appearance in nature is a manifestation of God. But the unity of will and person being taken away, we have not one God, but a multitude of gods, — or polytheism. Having begun this career of thought, no course was possible for the human mind to pursue but this. An ultra spiritualism must become pantheism, and pantheism must go on to polytheism. In India this is not a theory, but a history. We find, side by side, a spiritualism which denies the existence of anything but motionless spirit or Brahm, and a polytheism which believes and worships Brahma the Creator, Siva the Destroyer, Vischnu the Preserver, Indra the God of the Heavens, the Sactis or energies of the gods, Krishna the Hindoo Apollo, Doorga, and a host of others, innumerable as the changes and appearances of things. But such a system as this must necessarily lead also to idolatry. There is in the human mind a tendency to worship, and men must worship something. But they believe in one Being, the absolute Spirit, the supreme and only God, — Para Brahm ; him they cannot worship, for he is literally an unknown God. He has no qualities, BRAHMANISM. 85 no attributes, no activity. He is neither the object of hope, fear, love, nor aversion. Since there is nothing in the universe but spirit and illusive appearances, and they cannot worship spirit because it is absolutely unknown, they must worship these appearances, which are at any rate divine appearances, and which do possess some traits, qualities, character; are objects of hope and fear. But they cannot worship them as appearances, they must worship them as persons. But if they have an inward personality or soul, they become real beings, and also be¬ ings independent of Brahm, whose appearances they are. They must therefore have an outward personality; in other words, a body, a shape, emblematical and character¬ istic ; that is to say, they become idols. Accordingly idol-worship is universal in India. The most horrible and grotesque images are carved in the stone of the grottos, stand in rude, block-like statues in the temple, or are coarsely painted on the walls. Figures of men with heads of elephants or of other animals, or with six or seven human heads, — sometimes growing in a pyramid, one out of the other, sometimes with six hands coming from one shoulder, — grisly and uncouth mon¬ sters, like nothing in nature, yet too grotesque for sym¬ bols,— such are the objects of the Hindoo worship. § 3. Helps from Comparative Philology. The Aryans in Central Asia. We have seen how hopeless the task has appeared of getting any definite light on Hindoo chronology or his¬ tory. To the ancient Egyptians events were so impor¬ tant that the most trivial incidents of daily life were written on stone and the imperishable records of the land, covering the tombs and obelisks, have patiently waited during long centuries, till their decipherer should come to read them. To the Hindoos, on the other hand, all events were equally unimportant. The most unhis- toric people on earth, they cared more for the minutiae of grammar, or the subtilties of metaphysics, than for the whole of their past. The only date which has emerged 86 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. from this vague antiquity is that of Chandragupta, a con¬ temporary of Alexander, and called by the Greek histori¬ ans Sandracottus. He became king B. c. 315, and as, at his accession, Buddha had been dead (by Hindoo state¬ ment) one hundred and sixty-two years, Buddha may have died B. c. 477. We can thus import a single date from Greek history into that of India. This is the whole. But all at once light dawns on us from an unexpected quarter. While we can learn nothing concerning the history of India from its literature, and nothing from its inscriptions or carved temples, language comes to our aid. The fugitive and airy sounds, which seem so fleeting and so changeable, prove to be more durable monuments than brass or granite. The study of the Sanskrit language has told us a long story concerning the origin of the Hindoos. It has rectified the ethnology of Blumenbach, has taught us who were the ancestors of the nations of Europe, and has given us the information that one great family, the Indo- European, has done most of the work of the world. It shows us that this family consists of seven races, — the Hindoos, the Persians, the Greeks, the Bomans, who all emigrated to the south from the original ancestral home; and the Kelts, the Teutons, and Slavi, who entered Europe on the northern side of the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. This has been accomplished by the new science of Comparative Philology. A comparison of languages has made it too plain to be questioned, that these seven races were originally one; that they must have emigrated from a region of Central Asia, at the east of the Caspian, and northwest of India; that they were originally a pastoral race, and gradually changed their habits as they descended from those great plains into the valleys of the Indus and the Euphrates. In these seven linguistic families the roots of the most common names are the same ; the gram¬ matical constructions are also the same ; so that no scholar, who has attended to the subject, can doubt that the seven languages are all daughters of one common mother-tongue. Pursuing the subject still further, it has been found BRAHMANISM. 8T possible to conjecture with no little confidence what was the condition of family life in this great race of Central Asia, before its dispersion. The original stock has re¬ ceived the name Aryan. This designation occurs in Manu (II. 22), who says : “ As far as the eastern and western oceans, between the two mountains, lies the land which the wise have named Ar-ya-vesta, or inhabited by honorable men.” The people of Iran receive this same appellation in the Zend Avesta, with the same meaning of honorable. Herodotus testifies that the Medes were formerly called "Apiot (Herod. VII. 61). Strabo men¬ tions that, in the time of Alexander, the whole region about the Indus was called Ariana. In modern times, the word Iran for Persia and Erin for Ireland are possible reminiscences of the original family appella¬ tion. The Ayrans, long before the age of the Vedas or the Zend Avesta, were living as a pastoral people on the great plains east of the Caspian Sea. What their condition was at that epoch is deduced by the following method: If it is found that the name of any fact is the same in two or more of the seven tribal languages of this stock, it is evident that the name was given to it before they sepa¬ rated. For there is no reason to suppose that two nations living wide apart would have independently selected the same word for the same object. For example, since we find that house is in Sanskrit Dama and Dam; in Zend, Demana; in Greek, Aopos ; in Latin, Domus; in Irish, Dahm ; in Slavonic, Domic, — from which root comes also our English word Domestic, — we may be pretty sure that the original Aryans lived in houses. When we learn that boat was in Sanskrit Nau or nauka; in Persian, Naw, nawah ; in Greek, NaOs-; in Latin, Navis ; in old Irish, Noi or nai; in old German, Nawa or nawi; and in Polish Nawa, we cannot doubt that they knew something of what we call in English Vertical affairs, or Navigation. But as the words designating masts, sails, yards, &c. differ wholly from each other in all these linguistic families, it is reasonable to infer that the Aryans, before their dis¬ persion, went only in boats, with oars, on the rivers of 88 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. their land, the Oxus and Jaxartes, and did not sail any¬ where on the sea. Pursuing this method, we see that we can ask almost any question concerning the condition of the Aryans, and obtain an answer by means of Comparative Philology. Were they a pastoral people ? The very word pastoral gives us the answer. For Pa in Sanskrit means to watch, to guard, as men guard cattle, — from which a whole company of words has come in all the Aryan languages. The results of this method of inquiry, so far as given by Pictet, are these. Some 3000 years b. c.,* the Aryans, as yet undivided into Hindoos, Persians, Kelts, Latins, Greeks, Teutons, and Slavi, were living in Central Asia, in a region of which Bactriana was the centre. Here they must have remained long enough to have developed their admirable language, the mother-tongue of those which we know. They were essentially a pastoral, but not a nomad people, having fixed homes. They had oxen, horses, sheep, goats, hogs, and domestic fowls. Herds of cows fed in pastures, each the property of a community, and each with a cluster of stables in the centre. The daughters f of the house were the dairy-maids; the food was chiefly the products of the dairy and the flesh of the cattle. The cow was, however, the most important ani¬ mal, and gave its name to many plants, and even to tho clouds and stars, in which men saw heavenly herds pass¬ ing over the firmament above them. But the Aryans were not an exclusively pastoral people; they certainly had barley, and perhaps other cereals, be¬ fore their dispersion. They possessed the plough, the mill for grinding grain; they had hatchet,j hammer, auger. The Aryans were acquainted with several metals, among * All Indian dates older than 300 b. c. are uncertain. The reasons for this one are given carefully and in full by Pictet. t Our English word daughter, together with the Greek Ovy&T-rjp, the Zend dughdar, the Persian dochtar, &c., corresponds with the Sanskrit duhitar, which means both daughter and milkmaid. J Hatchet, in Sanskrit takshani, in Zend tasha, in Persian tash, Greek r6xos, Irish tuagh, Old German dcksa, Polish tasak, Russian tesaku. And what is remarkable, the root tak appears in the name of the hatchet in the languages of the South Sea Islanders and the North American Indians, BRAHMANISM. 89* which, were gold, silver, copper, tin. They knew how to spin and weave to some extent; they were acquainted with pottery. How their houses were built we do not know, but they contained doors, windows, and fireplaces. They had cloaks or mantles, they boiled and roasted meat, and certainly used soup. They had lances, swords, the bow and arrow, shields, but not armor. They had family life, some simple laws, games, the dance, and wind instru¬ ments. They had the decimal numeration, and their year was of three hundred and sixty days. They wor¬ shipped the heaven, earth, sun, fire, water, wind; but there are also plain traces of an earlier monotheism, from which this nature-worship proceeded. § 4. The Aryans in India. The Native Races. The Vedic Age. Theology of the Vedas. So far Comparative Philology takes us, and the next step forward brings us to the Yedas, the oldest works in the Hindoo literature, but at least one thousand or fifteen hundred years more recent than the times we have been describing. The Aryans have separated, and the Hindoos are now in India. It is eleven centuries before the time of Alexander. They occupy the region between the Pun- jaub and the Ganges, and here was accomplished the transition of the Aryans from warlike shepherds into agriculturists and builders of cities.* The last hymns of the Yedas were written (says St. Martin) when they arrived from the Indus at the Ganges, and were building their oldest city, at the confluence of that river with the Jumna. Their complexion was then white, and they call the race whom they conquered, and who afterward were made Soudras, or lowest caste, blacks.*)* * M. Vivien de Saint-Martin has determined more precisely than has been done before the primitive country of the Aryans, and the route fol¬ lowed by them in penetrating into India. They descended through Cabul to the Punjaub, having previously reached Cabul from the region * be¬ tween the Jaxartes and the Oxus. + The Rig-Veda distinguishes the Aryans from the Dasjus. Mr. Muir quotes a multitude of texts in which Indra is called upon to protect the former and slay the latter. _ 90 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. The chief gods of the Yedic age were Indra, Varuna, Agni, Savitri, Soma. The first was the god of the atmosphere ; the second, of the Ocean of light, or Heaven; the third, of Fire; * the fourth, of the Sun ; and the fifth, of the Moon. Yama was the god of death. All the powers of nature were personified in turn, — as earth, food, wine, months, seasons, day, night, and dawn. Among all these divini¬ ties, Indra and Agni were the chief.*)* But behind this in¬ cipient polytheism lurks the original monotheism,— for each of these gods, in turn, becomes the Supreme Being. The universal Deity seems to become apparent, first in one form of nature and then in another. Such is the opinion of Colebrooke, who says that " the ancient Hindoo religion recognizes but one God, not yet suffi¬ ciently discriminating the creature from the Creator.” And Max Muller says: “ The hymns celebrate Varuna, Indra, Agni, &c., and each in turn is called supreme. The whole mythology is fluent. The powers of nature become moral beings.” Max Miiller adds: “ It would be easy to find, in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which almost every single god is represented as supreme and absolute. Agni is called ‘ Euler of the Universe’; Indra is cele¬ brated as the Strongest god, and in one hymn it is said, ‘ Indra is stronger than all.’ It is said of Soma that ‘ he conquers every one.’ ” But clearer traces of monotheism are to be found in the Vedas. In one hymn of the Big-Veda it is said: “ They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni; then he is the well¬ winged heavenly Garutmat; that which is One, the wise call it many ways ; they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan.” Nothing, however, will give us so good an idea of the character of these Vedic hymns as the hymns themselves. I therefore select a few of the most striking of those which have been translated by Colebrooke, Wilson, M. Muller, E. Bumonfc, and others. In the following, from one of the oldest Vedas, the unity of God seems very clearly expressed. * Agni, whence Ignis, in Latin. + See Talboys Wheeler, “ History of India.” BRAHMANISM. 91 Rig-Veda, X. 121. “ In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. He was the only born Lord of all that is. He established the earth, and this sky. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice 1 “ He who gives life. He who gives strength; whose blessing all the bright gods desire; whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice'? “ He who through his power is the only king of the breath¬ ing and awakening world. He who governs all, man and beast. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice 1 “ He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power the sea proclaims, with the distant river. He whose these regions are, as it were his two arms. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice 1 “ He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm. He through whom heaven was stablished; nay, the highest heaven. He who measured out the light in the air. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice 1 “ He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by his will, look up, trembling inwardly. He over whom the rising sun shines forth. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice 1 “Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose he who is the only life of the bright gods. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice % “ He wdio by his might looked even over the water-clouds, the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice ; lie who is God above all gods. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice 1 “May he not destroy us, —he the creator of the earth, — or he, the righteous, who created heaven; he who also created the bright and mighty waters. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifices *? ” * * Muller’s Ancient Sanskrit Literature, page 569. He adds the follow¬ ing remarks: “ There is nothing to prove that this hymn is of a particu¬ larly ancient date. On the contrary, there are expressions in it which seem to belong to a later age. But even if we assign the lowest possible date to this and similar hymns, certain it is that they existed during the Mantra period, and before the composition of the Brahmanas. For, in spite of all the indications of a modern date, I see no possibility how 92 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. The oldest and most striking account of creation is in the eleventh chapter of the tenth Book of the Big-Veda. Colebrooke, Max Muller, Muir, and Goldstiicker, all give a translation of this remarkable hymn and speak of it with admiration. We take that of Colebrooke, modified by that of Muir: — “Then there was no entity nor non-entity; no world, no sky, nor aught above it; nothing anywhere, involving or involved; nor water deep and dangerous. Death was not, and therefore no immortality, nor distinction of day or night. But That One breathed calmly* alone with Nature, her who is sustained within him. Other than Him, nothing existed [which] since [has been]. Darkness there was; [for] this universe was enveloped with darkness, and was indistinguisha¬ ble waters; but that mass, which was covered by the husk, was [at length] produced by the power of contemplation. First desire f was formed in his mind; and that became the original productive seed; which the wise, recognizing it by the intellect in their hearts, distinguish as the bond of nonentity with entity. “Did the luminous ray of these [creative acts] expand in the middle, or above, or below 1 That productive energy became providence [or sentient souls], and matter [or the elements] ; Nature, who is sustained within, was inferior; and he who sustains was above. “ Who knows exactly, and who shall in this world declare, whence and why this creation took place % The gods are sub¬ sequent to the production of this world : then who can know whence it proceeded, or whence this varied world arose, or whether it upholds [itself] or not 1 He who in the highest heaven is the ruler of this universe, — he knows, or does not know.” If the following hymn, says Muller, were addressed only to the Almighty, omitting the word “ Varuna,” it would not disturb us in a Christian Liturgy : — we could account for the allusions to it which occur in the Brahmanas, or for its presence in the Sanhitas, unless we admit that this poem formed part of the final collection of the Rig-veda-Sanhita, the work of the Mantra period. * Max Muller translates “breathed, breathless by itself; other than it nothing since has been.” t Max Muller says, “ Love fell upon it.” BRAHMANISM. 93 1. “ Let me not yet, 0 Yaruna, enter into the house of clay ; have mercy, almighty, have mercy. 2. “ If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind, have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! 3. “ Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone to the wrong shore; have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! 4. “ Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the midst of the waters; have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! 5. “ Whenever we men, 0 Yaruna, commit an offence before the heavenly host; whenever we break thy law through thoughtlessness ; have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! ” Out of a large number of hymns addressed to Indra, Muller selects one that is ascribed to Vasishtha. 1. “ Let no one, not even those who worship thee; delay thee far from us ! Even from afar come to our feast ! Or, if thou art here, listen to us ! 2. “For these who here make prayers for thee, sit together near the libation, like flies round the honey. The worshippers, anxious for wealth, have placed their desire upon Indra, as we put our foot upon a chariot. 3. “ Desirous of riches, I call him who holds the thunderbolt with his arm, and who is a good giver, like as a son calls his father. 4. “ These libations of Soma, mixed with milk, have been prepared for Indra : thou, armed with the thunderbolt, come with the steeds to drink of them for thy delight; come to the house ! 5. “ May he hear us, for he has ears to hear. He is asked for riches ; will he despise our prayers 1 He could soon give hundreds and thousands; — no one could check him if he wishes to give.” 13. “Make for the sacred gods a hymn that is not small, that is well set and beautiful ! Many snares pass by him who abides with Indra through his sacrifice. 14. “ What mortal dares to attack him who is rich in thee 1 Through faith in thee, 0 mighty, the strong acquires spoil in the day of battle.” 17. “ Thou art w T ell known as the benefactor of every one, whatever battles there be. Every one of these kings of the earth implores thy name, when wishing for help. 18. “ If I were lord of as much as thou, I should support the 94 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. sacred bard, thou scatterer of wealth, I should not abandon him to misery. 19. “I should award wealth day by day to him who mag¬ nifies ; I should award it to whosoever it be. We have no other friend but thee, no other happiness, no other father, 0 mighty ! ” 22. “ We call for thee, 0 hero, like cows that have not been milked ; we praise thee as ruler of all that moves, 0 Indra, as ruler of all that is immovable. 23. “ There is no one like thee in heaven and earth ; he is not born, and will not be bora. 0 mighty Indra, we call upon thee as we go fighting for cows and horses.” “ In this hymn,” says Muller, “ Indra is clearly con¬ ceived as the Supreme God, and we can hardly understand how a people who had formed so exalted a notion of the Deity and embodied it in the person of Indra, could, at the same sacrifice, invoke other gods with equal praise. When Agni, the lord of fire, is addressed by the poet, he is spoken of as the first god, not inferior even to Indra. While Agni is invoked Indra is forgotten; there is no competition between the two, nor any rivalry between them and other gods. This is a most important feature in the religion of the Veda, and has never been taken into consideration by those who have written on the history of ancient polytheism.” * “ It is curious,” says Muller, “ to watch the almost im¬ perceptible transition by which the phenomena of nature, if reflected in the mind of the poet, assume the character of divine beings. The dawn is frequently described in the Veda as it might be described by a modern poet. She is the friend of men, she smiles like a young wife, she is the daughter of the sky.” “ But the transition from devi, the bright, to devi , the goddess, is so easy; the daughter of the sky assumes so readily the same personality which is given to the sky, Dyaus, her father, that we can only guess whether in every passage the poet is speaking of a "bright apparition, or of a bright goddess; of a natural vision, or of a visible deity. The following hymn of Va- shishtha will serve as an instance: — * Muller, Sanskrit Lit., p. 546. BRAHMANISM. 95 * “She shines upon us, like a young wife, rousing every living being to go to his work. The fire had to be kindled by men; she brought light by striking down darkness. “ She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving towards every one. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. The mother of the cows-(of the morning clouds), the leader of the days, she shone gold-colored, lovely to behold. “She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the god, who leads the white and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn was seen, revealed by her rays; with brilliant treasures she follows every one. “ Thou, who art a blessing where thou art near, drive far away the unfriendly; make the pastures wide, give us safety! Remove the haters, bring treasures ! Raise wealth to the worshipper, thou mighty Dawn. “Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou who lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest us food, who givest us wealth in cows, horses, and chariots. “ Thou, daughter of the sky, thou high-born Dawn, whom the Yasishthas magnify with songs, give us riches high and wide : all ye gods, protect us always with your blessings! ” “ This hymn, addressed to the Dawn, is a fair specimen of the original simple poetry of the Veda. It has no reference to any special sacrifice, it contains no technical expressions, it can hardly be called a hymn, in our sense of the word. It is simply a poem expressing, without any effort, without any display of far-fetched thought or brilliant imagery, the feelings of a man who has watched the approach of the Dawn with mingled delight and awe, and who was moved to give utterance to what he felt in measured language.” * “ But there is a charm in these primitive strains dis¬ coverable in no other class of poetry. Every word retains something of its radical meaning, every epithet tells, every thought, in spite of the most intricate and abrupt expressions, is, if we once disentangle it, true, correct, and complete.” The Yedic literature is divided by Muller into four periods, namely, those of the Chhandas, Mantra, Brahman a, and Sutras. The Chhandas period contains the oldest * Muller, Sanskrit Lit., p. 552. + Ibid., p. 553. 96 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. hymns of the oldest, or Big-Yeda. To that of the Man¬ tras belong the later hymns of the same Yeda. But the most modern of these are older than the Brahmanas. The Brahmanas contain theology; the older Mantras are liturgic. Miiller says that the Brahmanas, though so very ancient, are full of pedantiy, shallow and insipid grandiloquence and priestly conceit. Next to these, in the order of time, are the Upanishads. These are philo¬ sophical, and almost the only part of the Yedas which are read at the present time. They are believed to con¬ tain the highest authority for the different philosophical systems, of which we shall speak hereafter. Their authors are unknown. More modern than these are the Sutras. The word “ Sutra” means string , and they consist of a string of short sentences. Conciseness is the aim in this style, and every doctrine is reduced to a skeleton. The numer¬ ous Sutras now extant contain the distilled essence of all the knowledge which the Brahmans have collected during centuries of meditation. They belong to the non-revealed literature, as distinguished from the revealed literature, — a distinction made by the Brahmans before the time of Buddha. At the time of the Buddhist controversy the Sutras were admitted to be of human origin and were consequently recent works. The distinction between the Sutras and Brahmanas is very marked, the second being revealed. The Brahmanas were composed by and for Brahmans and are in three collections. The Yedangas are intermediate between the Yedic and non-Vedic literature. Panini, the grammarian of India, was said to be contem¬ porary with King Nanda, who was the successor of Chan- dragupta, the contemporary of Alexander, and therefore in the second half of the fourth century before Christ. Dates are so precarious in Indian literature, says Max Muller, that a confirmation within a century or two is not to be despised. Now the grammarian Katyayana completed and corrected the grammar of Panini, and Patanjeli wrote an immense commentary on the two which became so famous as to be imported by royal authority into Cashmere, in the first half of the first century of our era. Muller considers the limits of the BRAHMANISM. 97 Sfitra period to extend from 600 B. c. to 200 B. c. Buddhism before Asoka was but modified Brahmanism. The basis of Indian chronology is the date of Chandra- gupta. All dates before his time are merely hypothetical. Several classical writers speak of him as founding an empire on the Ganges soon after the invasion of Alex¬ ander. He was grandfather of Asoka. Indian traditions refer to this king. Beturning to the Brahmana period, we notice that between the Sutras and Brahmanas come the Aranyakas, which are books written for the recluse. Of these the Upanishads, before mentioned, form part. They presup¬ pose the existence of the Brahmanas. Bammohun Boy was surprised that Dr. Bosen should have thought it worth while to publish the hymns of the Veda, and considered the Upanishads the only Yedic books worth reading. They speak of the divine Self, of the Eternal Word in the heavens from which the hymns came. The divine Self they say is not to be grasped by tradition, reason, or revelation, but only by him whom he himself grasps. In the beginning was Self alone. At¬ man is the Self in all our selves, — the Divine Self con¬ cealed by his own qualities. This Self they sometimes call the Undeveloped and sometimes the Hot-Being. There are ten of the old Upanishads, all of which have been published. Anquetil Du Perron translated fifty into Latin out of Persian. The Brahmanas are very numerous. Muller gives stories from them and legends. They relate to sacrifices, to the story of the deluge, and other legends. They sub¬ stituted these legends for the simple poetry of the ancient Vedas. They must have extended over at least two hundred years, and contained long lists of teachers. Muller supposes that writing was unknown when the Big-Veda was composed. The thousand and ten hymns of the Vedas contain no mention of writing or books, any more than the Homeric poems. There is no allusion to writing during the whole of the Brahmana period, nor even through the Sutra period. This seems incredible to ns, says Muller, only because our memory has been sys- 93 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. tematically debilitated by newspapers and the like during many generations. It was the business of every Brahman to learn by heart the Yedas during the twelve years of his student life. The Guru, or teacher, pronounces a group of words, and the pupils repeat after him. After writing was introduced, the Brahmans were strictly forbid¬ den to read the Yedas, or to write them. Caesar says the same of the Druids. Even Panini never alludes to writ¬ ten words or letters. None of the ordinary modern words for book, paper, ink, or writing have been found in any ancient Sanskrit work. No such words as nolumen> volume ; liber , or inner bark of a tree ; byblos, inner bark of papyrus ; or book, that is beech wood. But Buddha had learnt to write, as we find by a book translated into Chinese A. D. 76. In this book Buddha instructs his teacher; as in the “ Gospel of the Infancy ” Jesus explains to his teacher the meaning of the Hebrew alphabet. So Buddha tells his teacher the names of sixty-four alphabets. The first authentic inscription in India is of Buddhist origin, belonging to the third century before Christ. In the most ancient Yedic period the language had be¬ come complete. There is no growing language in the Vedas. In regard to the age of these Yedic writings, we will quote the words of Max Muller, at the conclusion of his admirable work on the “ History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,” from which most of this section has been taken: — “ Oriental scholars are frequently suspected of a desire to make the literature of the Eastern nations appear more ancient than it is. As to myself, I can truly say that nothing would be to me a more welcome discovery, nothing would remove so many doubts and difficulties, as some suggestions as to the manner in which certain of the Yedic hymns could have been added :to the original collection during the Bralimana or Sutra periods, or, if possible, by the writers of our MSS., of which most are not older than the fifteenth century. But these MSS., though so modern, are checked by the Anukramanis. Every hymn which stands in our MSS. is counted in the Index of Saunaka, who is anterior to the invasion of Alexander. The Sutras, belonging to the same period as Saunaka, prove the previous existence of every chapter of the Brahmanas; and I BRAHMANISM. 99 doubt whether there is a single hymn in the Sanhita of the Rig-Veda which could not be checked by some passage of the Brahmanas and Sutras. The chronological limits assigned to the Sutra and Brahmana periods will seem to most Sanskrit scholars too narrow rather than too wide, and if we assign but two hundred years to the Mantra- period, from 800 to 1000 b. c., and an equal number to the Chhandas period, from 1000 to 1200 b. c., we can do so only under-the supposition that during the early periods of history the growth of the human mind was more luxuriant than in later times, and that the layers of thought were formed less slowly in the primary than in the tertiary ages of the world.” The Yedic age, according to Miiller, will then be as follows: — Sutra period, from b. c. 200 to b. c. 600. Brahmana period, “ “ 600 “ 800. Mantra period, “ “ 800 “ 1000. Chhandas period, “ “ 1000 “ 1200. Dr. Haug, a high authority, considers the Yedic period to extend from b. c. 1200 to B. c. 2000, and the very oldest hymns to have been composed B. c. 2400. The principal deity in the oldest Yedas is Indra, God of the air. In Greek he becomes Zeus ; in Latin, Jupi¬ ter. The hymns to Indra are not unlike some of the Psalms of the Old Testament. Indra is called upon as the most ancient god whom the Fathers worshipped. Next to India comes Agni, fire, derived from the root Ag, which means “ to move.” * Fire is worshipped as the prin¬ ciple of motion on earth, as Indra was the moving power above. Not only fire, but the forms of flame, are wor¬ shipped and all that belongs to it. Entire nature is called Aditi, whose children are named Adityas. M. Maury quotes these words from Gotama : “ Aditi is heaven; Aditi is air; Aditi is mother, father, and son; Aditi is all the gods and the five races; Aditi is what¬ ever is born and will be born; in short, the heavens and the earth, the heavens being the father and the earth the mother of all things. This reminds one of the Greek Zeus-pateer and Gee-meteer. Yaruna is the vault of * That heat was “a form of motion ” was thus early discovered. 100 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. heaven. Mitra is often associated with Varuna in the Yedic hymns. Mitra is the sun, illuminating the day, while Yaruna was the sun with an obscure face going- hack in the darkness from west to east to take his lumi¬ nous disk again. From Mitra seems to be derived the Persian Mithra. There are no invocations to the stars in the Yeda. But the Aurora, or Dawn, is the object of great admiration; also, the Aswins, or twin gods, who in Greece become the Dioscuri. The god of storms is Budra, supposed by some writers to be the same as Siva. The two hostile worships of Yislmu and Siva do not ap¬ pear, however, till long after this time. Yislmu appears frequently in the Yeda, and his three steps are often spoken of. These steps measure the heavens. But his real worship came much later. The religion of the Yedas was of odes and hymns, a religion of worship by simple adoration. Sometimes there were prayers for temporal blessings, sometimes simple sacrifices and libations. Human sacrifices have scarcely left any trace of themselves if they ever existed, un¬ less it be in a typical ceremony reported in one of the Yedas. § 5. Second Period. Laws of Manu. The Brahmanic Age. Long after the age of the elder Yedas Brahmanism be¬ gins. Its text-book is the Laws of Manu.* As yet Yishnu and Siva are not known. The former is named once, the latter not at all. The writer only knows three Yedas. The Atharva-Veda is later. But as Siva is men¬ tioned in the oldest Buddhist writings, it follows that the laws of Manu are older than these. In the time of Manu the Aryans are still living in the valley of the Ganges. The caste system is now in full operation, and the author¬ ity of the Brahman is raised to its highest point. The Indus and Punjaub are not mentioned ; all this is forgot¬ ten. This work could not be later than B. c. 700, or earlier than B. c. 1200. It was probably written about * It is the opinion of Maine (“Ancient Law”) and other eminent scholars, that this code was never fully accepted or enforced in India, and remained always an ideal of the perfect Brahmanic state. BRAHMANISM. 101 B. c. 900 or B. c. 1000. In this view agree Wilson, Las¬ sen, Max Miiller, and Saint-Martin. The Supreme Deity is now Brahma, and sacrifice is still the act by which one comes into relation with heaven. Widow-burning is not mentioned in Manu; but it appears in the Mahab- harata, one of the great epics, which is therefore later. In the region of the Sarasvati, a holy river, which for¬ merly emptied into the Indus, but is now lost in a desert, the Aryan race of India was transformed from nomads into a stable community.* There they received their laws, and there their first cities were erected. There were founded the Solar and Lunar monarchies. The Manu of the Vedas and he of the Brahmans are very different persons. The first is called in the Vedas the father of mankind. He also escapes from a deluge by building a ship, which he is advised to do by a fish. He preserves the fish, which grows to a great size, and when the flood comes acts as a tow-boat to drag the ship of Manu to a mountain.*!* This account is contained in a Brahmana. The name of Manu seems afterward to have been given by the Brahmans to the author of their code. Some extracts from this very interesting volume we will now give, slightly abridged, from Sir William Jones’s transla¬ tion.;!; From the first book, on Creation : — “ The universe existed in darkness, imperceptible, unde- finable, undiscoverable, and undiscovered; as if immersed in sleep.” “ Then the self-existing power, undiscovered himself, but making the world discernible, with the five elements and other principles, appeared in undiminished glory, dispelling the gloom.” “ He, whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the external organs, who has no visible parts, who ex¬ ists from eternity, even he, the soul of all beings, shone forth in person. * See Yivien de Saint-Martin, Revue Germanique, July 16, 1862. The Sarasvati is highly praised in the Rig-Veda. Talboys Wheeler, II. 429. t Max Miiller, Sanskrit Lit., p. 425. X Institutes of Hindu Law, or the Ordinances of Menu, according to the Gloss of Calluca, Calcutta. 1796, §§ 5, 6, 7, 8. 102 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. “ He having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, first with a thought created the waters, and placed in them a productive seed.” “ The seed became an egg bright as gold, blazing like the luminary with a thousand beams, and in that egg he was born himself, in the form of Brahma, the great forefather of all spirits. “ The waters are called Nara, because they were the produc¬ tion of Nara, or the spirit of God; and hence they were his first ayana, or place of motion; he hence is named Nara yana, or moving on the waters. “ In that egg the great power sat inactive a whole year of the creator, at the close of which, by his thought alone, he caused the egg to divide itself. “ And from its two divisions he framed the heaven above and the earth beneath; in the midst he placed the subtile ether, the eight regions, and the permanent receptacle of waters. “From the supreme soul he drew forth mind, existing sub¬ stantially though unperceived by sense, immaterial; and before mind, or the reasoning power, he produced conscious¬ ness, the internal monitor, the ruler. “ And before them both he produced the great principle of the soul, or first expansion of the divine idea; and all vital forms endued with the three qualities of goodness, passion, and darkness, and the five perceptions of sense, and the five organs of sensation. “ Thus, having at once pervaded with emanations from the Supreme Spirit the minutest portions of fixed principles immensely operative, consciousness and the five perceptions, he framed all creatures. “ Thence proceed the great elements, endued with peculiar powers, and mind with operations infinitely subtile, the unper¬ ishable cause of all apparent forms. “ This universe, therefore, is compacted from the minute portions of those seven divine and active principles, the great soul, or first emanation, consciousness, and five perceptions; a mutable universe from immutable ideas. “ Of created things, the most excellent are those which are animated; of the animated, those which subsist by intelli¬ gence ; of the intelligent, mankind; and of men, the sacer¬ dotal class. “Of priests, those eminent in learning; of the learned, BRAHMANISM. 103 those who know their duty; of those who know it, such as perform it virtuously; and of the virtuous, those who seek beatitude from a perfect acquaintance with scriptural doctrine. “ The very birth of Brahmans is a constant incarnation of Dharma, God of justice; for the Brahman is born to promote justice, and to procure ultimate happiness. “ When a Brahman springs to light, he is born above the world, the chief of all creatures, assigned to guard the treasury of duties, religious and civil. “The Brahman who studies this book, having performed sacred rites, is perpetually free from offence in thought, in word and in deed. “ He confers purity on his living family, on his ancestors, and on his descendants as far as the seventh person, and he alone deserves to possess this whole earth.” The following passages are from Book II., “ On Educa¬ tion and the Priesthood ” : — “Self-love is no laudable motive, yet an exemption from self-love is not to be found in this world : on self-love is grounded the study of Scripture, and the practice of actions recommended in it. “ Eager desire to act has its root in expectation of some ad¬ vantage ; and with such expectation are sacrifices performed; the rules of religious austerity and abstinence from sins are all known to arise from hope of remuneration. “Not a single act here below appears ever to be done by a man free from self-love; whatever he perform, it is wrought from his desire of a reward. “ He, indeed, who should persist in discharging these duties without any view to their fruit, would attain hereafter the state of the immortals, and even in this life would enjoy all the virtuous gratifications that his fancy could suggest. “ The most excellent of the three classes, being girt with the sacrificial thread, must ask food with the respectful word Dhavati at the beginning of the phrase; those of the second class with that word in the middle; and those of the third with that word at the end. “ Let him first beg food of his mother, or of his sister, or of his mother’s whole sister; then of some other female who will not disgrace him. “ Having collected as much of the desired food as he has occasion for, and having presented it without guile to his pre- 104 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. ceptor, let him eat some of it, being duly purified, with his face to the east. “ If he seek long life, he should eat with his face to the east; if prosperity, to the west; if truth and its reward, to the north. “ When the student is going to read the Yeda he must per¬ form an ablution, as the law ordains, with his face to the north; and having paid scriptural homage, he must receive instruc¬ tion, wearing a clean vest, his members being duly composed. “ A Brahman beginning and ending a lecture on the Veda must always pronounce to himself the syllable om ; for unless the syllable om precede, his learning will slip away from him j and unless it follow, nothing will be long retained. “ A priest who shall know the Veda, and shall pronounce to himself, both morning and evening, that syllable, and that holy text preceded by the three w r ords, shall attain the sanc¬ tity which the Veda confers. “ And a twice-born man, w r ho shall a thousand times repeat those three (or om, the vyahritis, and the gayatri) apart from the multitude, shall be released in a month even from a great offence, as a snake from his slough. “ The three great immutable words, preceded by the tri¬ literal syllable, and followed by the gayatri, which consists of three measures, must be considered as the mouth, or principal part of the Veda. “ The triliteral monosyllable is an emblem of the Supreme ; the suppressions of breath, with a mind fixed on God, are the highest devotion; but nothing is more exalted than the gay¬ atri ; a declaration of truth is more excellent than silence. “All rites ordained in the Veda, oblations to fire, and solemn sacrifices pass away; but that which passes not away is declared to be the syllable om, thence called acshara; since it is a symbol of God, the Lord of created beings. “ The act of repeating his Holy Name is ten times better than the appointed sacrifice ; an hundred times better when it is heard by no man; and a thousand times better when it is purely mental. “ To a man contaminated by sensuality, neither the Vedas, nor liberality, nor sacrifices, nor strict observances, nor pious austerities, ever procure felicity. “ As he who digs deep with a spade comes to a spring of water, so the student, who humbly serves his teacher, attains the knowledge which lies deep in his teacher’s mind. BRAHMANISM. 105 “ If the sun should rise and set, while he sleeps through sensual indulgence, and knows it not, he must fast a whole day repeating the gayatri. “ Let him adore God both at sunrise and at sunset, as the law ordains, having made his ablution, and keeping his organs controlled; and with fixed attention let him repeat the text, w r hich he ought to repeat in a place 'free from impurity. “ The twice-born man who shall thus without intermission have passed the time of his studentship shall ascend after death to the most exalted of regions, and no more again spring to birth in this lower world. The following passages are from Book IV., “ On Private Morals ” : — “ Let a Brahman, having dwelt with a preceptor during the first quarter of a man’s life, pass the second quarter of human life in his own house, when he has contracted a legal marriage. “ He must live with no injury, or with the least possible in¬ jury, to animated beings, by pursuing those means of gaining subsistence, which are strictly prescribed by law, except in times of distress. “ Let him say what is true, but let him say what is pleas¬ ing ; let him speak no disagreeable truth, nor let him speak agreeable falsehood ; this is a primeval rule. “ Let him say ‘ well and good,’ or let him say ‘ well ’ only; but let him not maintain fruitless enmity and altercation with any man. “ All that depends on another gives pain ; and all that de¬ pends on himself gives pleasure ; let him know this to be in few words the definition of pleasure and pain. “ And for whatever purpose a man bestows a gift, for a sim¬ ilar purpose he shall receive, with due honor, a similar reward. “ Both he who respectfully bestows a present, and he who respectfully accepts it, shall go to a seat of bliss; but, if they act otherwise, to a region of horror. “ Let not a man be proud of his rigorous devotion ; let him not, having sacrificed, utter a falsehood; let him not, though injured, insult a priest ; having made a donation, let him never proclaim it. “ By falsehood the sacrifice becomes vain; by pride the merit of devotion is lost; by insulting priests life is dimin¬ ished ; and by proclaiming a largess its fruit is destroyed. “ For in his passage to the next world., neither his father, 106 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS- nor Ins mother, nor his wife, nor his son, nor his kinsmen will remain his company ; his virtue alone will adhere to him. “ Single is each man born; single he dies; single he re¬ ceives the reward of his good, and single the punishment of his evil deeds. From Book V., “ On Diet ” : — “ The twice-born man who has intentionally eaten a mush¬ room, the flesh of a tame hog, or a town cock, a leek, or an onion, or garlic, is degraded immediately. “ But having undesignedly tasted either of those six things, he must perform the penance santapana, or the chandrayana, which anchorites practise; for other things he must fast a whole day. “ One of those harsh penances called prajapatya the twice- born man must perform annually, to purify him from the un¬ known taint of illicit food; but he must do particular penance for such food intentionally eaten. “ He who injures no animated creature shall attain without hardship whatever he thinks of, whatever he strives for, what¬ ever he fixes his mind on. “ Flesh meat cannot be procured without injury to animals, and the slaughter of animals obstructs the path to beatitude ; from flesh meat, therefore, let man abstain. “ Attentively considering the formation of bodies, and the death or confinement of embodied spirits, let him abstain from eating flesh meat of any kind. “ Not a mortal exists more sinful than he who, without an oblation to the manes or the gods, desires to enlarge his own flesh with the flesh of another creature. “ By subsisting on pure fruit and on roots, and by eating such grains as are eaten by hermits, a man reaps not so high a reward as by carefully abstaining from animal food. “ In lawfully tasting meat, in drinking fermented liquor, in caressing women, there is no turpitude; for to such enjoy¬ ments men are naturally prone, but a virtuous abstinence from them produces a signal compensation. “Sacred learning, austere devotion, fire, holy aliment, earth, the mind, water, smearing with cow-dung, air, prescribed acts of religion, the sun, and time are purifiers of embodied spirits. “ But of all pure things purity in acquiring wealth is pro¬ nounced the most excellent; since he who gains wealth with clean hands is truly pure; not he who is purified merely with earth and water. BRAHMANISM. 107 “By forgiveness of injuries, the learned are purified; by liberality, those who have neglected their duty; by pious meditation, those who have secret faults; by devout austerity, those who best know the Veda. “Bodies are cleansed by water; the mind is purified by truth; the vital spirit, by theology and devotion; the under¬ standing, by clear knowledge. “ No sacrifice is allowed to women apart from their hus¬ bands, no religious rite, no fasting; as far only as a wife honors her lord, so far she is exalted in heaven. “ A faithful wife, who wishes to attain in heaven the man¬ sion of her husband, must do nothing unkind to him, be he living or dead. “ Let her emaciate her body by living voluntarily on pure flowers, roots, and fruit; but let her not, when her lord is de¬ ceased, even pronounce the name of another man. “Let her continue till death forgiving all injuries, perform¬ ing harsh duties, avoiding every sensual pleasure, and cheer¬ fully practising the incomparable rules of virtue, which have been followed by such women as were devoted to one only husband.” The Sixth Book of the Laws of Mann relates to devo¬ tion. It seems that the Brahmans were in the habit of becoming ascetics, or, as the Boman Catholics would say, entering Religion. A Brahman, or twice-born man, who wishes to become an ascetic, must abandon his home and family, and go to live in the forest. His food must be roots and fruit, his clothing a bark garment or a skin, he must bathe morning and evening, and suffer his hair to grow. He must spend his time in reading the Veda, with a mind intent on the Supreme Being, “a perpetual giver but no receiver of gifts; with tender affection for all animated bodies.” He is to perform various sacrifices with offerings of fruits and flowers, practise austerities by exposing himself to heat and cold, and “ for the purpose of uniting his soul with the Divine Spirit he must study the Upanishads.” “A Brahman, having shuffled off his body by these modes, which great sages practise, and becoming void of sorrow and fear, is exalted into the divine essence.” 108 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. “ Let him not wish for death. Let him not wish for life. Let him expect his appointed time, as the hired servant ex¬ pects his wages.” “ Meditating on the Supreme Spirit, without any earthly de¬ sire, with no companion but his own soul, let him live in this world seeking the bliss of the next.” The anchorite is to beg food, but only once a day; if it is not given to him, he must not be sorrowful, and if he receives it he must not be glad ; he is to meditate on the “ subtle indivisible essence of the Supreme Being,” he is to be careful not to destroy the life of the smallest insect, and he must make atonement for the death of those which he has ignorantly destroyed by making six sup¬ pressions of his breath, repeating at the same time the triliteral syllable A U M. He will thus at last become united with the Eternal Spirit, and his good deeds will be inherited by those who love him, and his evil deeds by those who hate him. The Seventh Book relates to the duties of rulers. One of these is to reward the good and punish the wicked. The genius of punishment is a son of Brahma, and has a body of pure light. Punishment is an active ruler, governs all mankind, dispenses laws, preserves the race, and is the perfection of justice. Without it all classes would become corrupt, all barriers would fall, and there would be total confusion. Kings are to respect the Brah¬ mans, must shun vices, must select good counsellors and brave soldiers. A King must be a father to his people. When he goes to war he must observe the rules of honor¬ able warfare, must not use poisoned arrows, strike a fallen enemy, nor one who sues for life, nor one without arms, nor one who surrenders. He is not to take too little revenue, and so “ cut up his own root ”; nor too much, and so “ cut up the root of others ”; he is to be severe when it is necessary, and mild when it is necessary. The Eighth Book relates to civil and criminal law. The Kaja is to hold his court every day, assisted by his Brahmans, and decide causes concerning debts and loans, sales, wages, contracts, boundaries, slander, assaults, lar¬ ceny, robbery, and other crimes. The Raja, “ understand- BRAHMANISM. 109 ing what is expedient or inexpedient, but considering only what is law or not law,” should examine all disputes. He must protect unprotected women, restore property to its rightful owner, not encourage litigation, and decide according to the rules of law. These rules correspond very nearly to our law of evidence. Witnesses are warned to speak the truth in all cases by the considera¬ tion that, though they may think that none see them, the gods distinctly see them and also the spirit in their own breasts. “ The soul itself is its own witness, the soul itself is its own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness of men.” “ The fruit of every virtuous act which thou hast done, 0 .good man, since thy birth, shall depart from thee to the dogs, if thou deviate from the truth.” “ 0 friend to virtue, the Supreme Spirit, which is the same with thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all¬ knowing inspector of thy goodness or wickedness.” The law then proceeds to describe the punishments which the gods would inflict upon false witnesses; but, curiously enough, allows false witness to be given, from a benevolent motive, in order to save an innocent man from a tyrant. This is called “the venial sin of benevolent falsehood.” The book then proceeds to describe weights and meas¬ ures, and the rate of usury, which is put down as five per cent. It forbids compound interest. The law of deposits occupies a large space, as in all Eastern countries, where investments are difficult. A good deal is said about the wages of servants, especially of those hired to keep cattle, and their responsibilities. The law of slander is carefully laid down. Crimes of violence are also minutely described, and here the Lex Talionis comes in. If a man strikes a human being or an animal so as to inflict much pain, he shall be struck himself in the same way. A man is allowed to correct with a small stick his wife, son, or servant, but not on the head or any noble part of the body. The Brahmans, however, are protected by special laws. 110 TEX GREAT RELIGIONS. “ Never shall the king flay a Brahman, though convicted of all possible crimes : let him banish the offender from his realm, but with all his property secure and his body unhurt.” “No greater crime is known on earth than flaying a Brah¬ man ; and the king, therefore, must not even form in his mind the idea of killing a priest.” The Ninth Book relates to women, to families, and to the law of castes. It states that women must be kept in a state of dependence. “ Their fathers protect them in childhood; their husbands protect them in youth; their sons protect them in age. A woman is never fit for independence.” It is the duty of men to watch and guard women, and very unfavorable opinions are expressed concerning the female character. “ Women have no business with the text of the Veda ; this is fully settled ; therefore having no knowledge of expiatory texts, sinful women must be as foul as falsehood itself. This is a fixed law.” It is, however, stated that good women become like goddesses, and shall be joined with their husbands in heaven; and that a man is only perfect when he consists of three persons united, — his wife, himself, and his son. Manu also attributes to ancient Brahmans a maxim almost verbally the same as that of the Bible, namely, “ The hus¬ band is even one person with his wife.” Nothing is said by Manu concerning the cremation of widows, but, on the other hand, minute directions are given for the behavior of widows during their life. Directions are also given concerning the marriage of daughters and sons and their inheritance of property. The rest of the book is devoted to a further description of crimes and punishments. The Tenth Book relates to the mixed classes and times of distress. The Eleventh Book relates to penance and expiation. In this book is mentioned the remarkable rite which con¬ sists in drinking the fermented juice of the moon-plant (or acid asclepias) with religious ceremonies. This Hindu sacrament began in the Vedic age, and the Sanhita of the BRAHMANISM. Ill Sama-Veda consists of hymns to be sung at the moon- plant sacrifice.* This ceremony is still practised occa¬ sionally in India, and Dr. Haug has tasted this sacred beverage, which he describes as astringent, bitter, intoxi¬ cating, and very disagreeable.*)* It is stated by Manu that no one has a right to drink this sacred juice who does not properly provide for his own household. He encourages sacrifices by declaring that they are highly meritorious and will expiate sin. Involuntary sins re¬ quire a much lighter penance than those committed with knowledge. Crimes committed by Brahmans require a less severe penance than those performed by others; while those committed against Brahmans involve a much deeper guilt and require severer penance. The law declares : — “ From his high birth alone a Brahman is an object of •veneration, even to deities, and his declarations are decisive evidence.” “A Brahman, who has performed an expiation with his whole mind fixed on God, purifies his soul.” Drinking intoxicating liquor (except in the Soma sacri¬ fice) is strictly prohibited, and it is even declared that a Brahman who tastes intoxicating liquor sinks to the low caste of a Sudra. If a Brahman who has tasted the Soma juice even smells the breath of a man who has been drinking spirits, he must do penance by repeating the Gayatri, suppressing his breath, and eating clarified butter. Next to Brahmans, cows were the objects of reverence, probably because, in the earliest times, the Aryan race, as nomads, depended on this animal for food. He who kills a cow must perform very severe penances, among which are these: — “ All day he must wait on a herd of cows and stand quaff¬ ing the dust raised by their hoofs; at night, having servilely attended them, he must sit near and guard them.” “ Free from passion, he must stand while they stand, follow when they move, and lie down near them when they lie down.” * See translation of the Sanhita of the Sama-Veda, by the Rev. J. Stevenson. London, 1842. + Max Muller, “Chips,” Vol. I. p. 107. 112 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. “ By thus waiting on a herd for three months, he who has killed a cow atones for his guilt.” Bor such offences as cutting down fruit-trees or grasses, or killing insects, or injuring sentient creatures, the pen¬ ance is to repeat so many texts of the Yeda, to eat clari¬ fied butter, or to stop the breath. A low-born man w T ho treats a Brahman disrespectfully, or who even overcomes him in argument, must fast all day and fall prostrate before him. He who strikes a Brahman shall remain in hell a thousand years. Great, however, is the power of sincere devotion. By repentance, open confession, reading the Scripture, almsgiving, and reformation, one is released from guilt. Devotion, it is said, is equal to the performance of all duties; and even the souls of worms and insects and vegetables attain heaven by the power of devotion. But especially great is the sanctifying influence of the Yedas. He who can repeat the whole of the Big-Veda would be free from guilt, even if he had killed the inhabitants of the three worlds. The last book of Manu is on transmigration and final beatitude. The principle is here laid down that every human action, word, and thought bears its appropriate fruit, good or evil. Out of the heart proceed three sins of thought, four sins of the tongue, and three of the body, namely, covetous, disobedient, and atheistic thoughts; scur¬ rilous, false, frivolous, and unkind words ; and actions of theft, bodily injury, and licentiousness. He who controls his thoughts, words, and actions is called a triple com¬ mander. There are three qualities of the soul, giving it a tendency to goodness, to passion, and to darkness. The first leads to knowledge, the second to desire, the third to sen¬ suality. To the first belong study of Scripture, devotion, purity, self-command, and obedience. From the second pro¬ ceed hypocritical actions, anxiety, disobedience, and self-in¬ dulgence. The third produces avarice, atheism, indolence, and every act which a man is ashamed of doing. The ob¬ ject of the first quality is virtue; of the second, worldly success; of the third, pleasure. The souls in which the first quality is supreme rise after death to the condition of deities ; those in whom the second rules pass into the BRAHMANISM. 113 bodies of other men; while those under the dominion of the third become beasts and vegetables. Mann proceeds to expound, in great detail, this law of transmigration. For great sins one is condemned to pass a great many times into the bodies of dogs, insects, spiders, snakes, or grasses. The change has relation to the crime : thus, he who steals grain shall be born a rat; he who steals meat, a vulture ; those who indulge in forbidden pleasures of the senses shall have their senses made acute to endure intense pain. The highest of all virtues is disinterested goodness, performed from the love of God, and based on the knowl¬ edge of the Yeda. A religious action, performed from hope of reward in this world or the next, will give one a place in the lowest heaven. But he who performs good actions without hope of reward, “ perceiving the supreme soul in all beings, and all beings in the su¬ preme soul, fixing his mind on God, approaches the divine nature.” “ Let every Brahman, with fixed attention, consider all na¬ ture as existing in the Divine Spirit; all worlds as seated in him; he alone as the whole assemblage of gods j and he the author of all human actions.” “ Let him consider the supreme omnipresent intelligence as the sovereign lord of the universe, by whom alone it ex¬ ists, an incomprehensible spirit; pervading all beings in five elemental forms, and causing them to pass through birth, growth, and decay, and so to revolve like the wheels of a car.” “ Thus the man who perceives in his own soul the supreme soul present in all creatures, acquires equanimity toward them all, and shall be absolved at last in the highest essence.,, even that of the Almighty himself.” We have given these copious extracts from the Brah- manic law, because this code is so ancient and authentic, and contains the bright consummate fiower of the system, before decay began to come. 114 TEN GKEAT EELIGIONS. § 6. The Three Hindoo Systems of Philosophy, — SdnJchya, Vedanta, and Nyasa. Duncker says * that the Indian systems of philosophy were produced in the sixth or seventh century before Christ. As the system of Buddha implies the existence of the Sankhya philosophy, the latter must have preceded Buddhism.-)* * § Moreover, Kapila and his two principles are distinctly mentioned in the Laws of Manu,J and in the later Upanishads.§ This brings it to the Brahmana period of Max Muller, B. c. 600 to b. c. 800, and probably still earlier. Dr. AVeber at one time was of the opinion that Kapila and Buddha were the same person, but afterward retracted this opinion. || Colebrooke says that Kapila is mentioned in the Veda itself, but intimates that this is probably another sage of the same name.1T The sage was even considered to be an incarnation of Vischnu, or of Agni. The Vedanta philosophy is also said by Lassen to be mentioned in the Laws of Manu.** This system is founded on the Upanishads, and would seem to be later than that of Kapila, since it criticises his system, and devotes much space to its confutation.*)*-)* But Duncker regards it as the oldest, and already beginning in the Upanishads of the Vedas.|.| As the oldest works now ex¬ tant in both systems are later than their origin, this ques¬ tion of date can only be determined from their contents. That which logically precedes the other must be chrono¬ logically the oldest. The Sankhya system of Kapila is contained in many works, but notably in the Karika, or Sankhya-Karika, by Iswara Krishna. This consists in eighty-two memorial * Geschichte der Arier, Buch Y. § 8. + Lassen, I. 830. X Laws of Manu (XIT. 50) speaks of “ k the two principles of nature in the philosophy of Kapila.” § Duncker, as above. || Muller, Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 102. IF Colebrooke, Miscellaneous Essays, I. 349. ** Lassen, I. 834. ++ Colebrooke, I. 350, 352. Duncker, I. 204 (third edition, 1867). BRAHMANISM. 115 verses, with a commentary * * * § The Yedanta is contained in the Sutras, the Upanishads, and especially the Brahma- Sutra attributed to Vyasa.*f* The ISTyaya is to be found in the Sutras of Gotama and Canade.^ These three systems of Hindoo philosophy, the Sankhya, the ISTyaya, and the Yedanta, reach far back into a misty twilight, which leaves it doubtful when they began or who were their real authors. In some points they agree, in others they are widely opposed. They all agree in having for their object deliverance from the evils of time, change, sorrow, into an eternal rest and peace. Their aim is, therefore, not merely speculative, but prac¬ tical. All agree in considering existence to be an evil, understanding by existence a life in time and space. All are idealists, to whom the world of sense and time is a delusion and snare, and who regard the Idea as the only substance. All agree in accepting the fact of transmi¬ gration, the cessation of which brings final deliverance. All consider that the means of this deliverance is to be found in knowledge, in a perfect knowledge of reality as opposed to appearance. And all are held by Brah¬ mans, who consider themselves orthodox, who honor the Yedas above all other books, pay complete respect to the Hinduism of the day, perform the daily ceremonies, and observe the usual caste rules.§ The systems of philos¬ ophy supplement the religious worship, but are not in¬ tended to destroy it. The Yedantists hold that while in truth there is but one God, the various forms of worship in the Yedas, of Indra, Agni, the Maruts, etc., were all in¬ tended for those who could not rise to this sublime mono¬ theism. Those who believe in the Sankhya maintain that though it wholly omits God, and is called “ the system without a God,” it merely omits, but does not deny, the Divine existence. || * The Sankhya-Karika, translated by Colebrooke. Oxford, 1837. t Essay on the Yedanta, by Chnnder Dutt. Calcutta, 1854. J Colebrooke, I. 262. § The Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy : A Prize Essay, by Joseph Mullens, p. 43. London, 1860. See also Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy, by Rev. K. M. Banerjea. London, 1861. || Mullens, p. 44. 116 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Each of these philosophies has a speculative and a prac¬ tical side. The speculative problem is, How did the universe come ? The practical problem is, How shall man be delivered from evil ? In answering the first question, the Vedanta, or Mi- mansa doctrine, proceeds from a single eternal and uncre^ ated Principle; declaring that there is only one being in the universe, God or Bralim, and that all else is Maya, or illusion. The Sankhya accepts two eternal and un¬ created substances, Soul and Nature. The Nyaya assumes three eternal and uncreated substances, — Atoms, Souls, and God. The solution of the second problem is the same in all three systems. It is by knowledge that the soul is eman¬ cipated from body or matter or nature. Worship is in¬ adequate, though not to be despised. Action is injurious rather than beneficial, for it implies desire. Only knowl¬ edge can lead to entire rest and peace. According to all three systems, the transmigration of the soul through different bodies is an evil resulting from desire. As long as the soul wishes anything, it will con¬ tinue to migrate and to suffer. When it gathers itself up into calm insight, it ceases to wander and finds repose. The Vedanta or Mimansa is supposed to be referred to in Manu.* Mimansa means “ searching.” In its logical forms it adopts the method so common among the scho¬ lastics, in first stating the question, then giving the objection, after that the reply to the objection, and lastly the conclusion. The first part of the Mimansa re¬ lates to worship and the ceremonies and ritual of the Veda. The second part teaches the doctrine of Brahma. Brahma is the one, eternal, absolute, unchangeable Being. He unfolds into the universe as Creator and Created. He becomes first ether, then air, then fire, then water, then earth. From these five elements all bodily existence pro¬ ceeds. Souls are sparks from the central fire of Brahma, separated for a time, to be absorbed again at last. Brahma, in his highest form as Para-Brahm, stands for the Absolute Being. The following extract from * Duncker, I. 205. He refers to Manu, II. 160. BRAHMANISM. 117 tlie Sama-Veda (after Hang’s translation) expresses this: “ The generation of Brahma was before all ages, unfolding himself evermore in a beautiful glory; everything which is highest and everything which is deepest belongs to him. Being and Hot-Being are unveiled through Brahma.” The following passage is from a Upanishad, translated by Windischmann: — “ How can any one teach concerning Brahma ? he is neither the known nor the unknown. That which cannot be expressed by words, but through which all expression comes, this I know to be Brahma. That which cannot be thought by the mind, but by which all thinking comes, this I know is Brahma. That which cannot be seen by the eye, but by which the eye sees, is Brahma. If thou thinkest that thou canst know it, then in truth thou knowest it. very little. To whom it is unknown, he knows it; but to whom it is known, he knows it not.” This also is from Windischmann, from the Kathaka Upanishad: “One cannot attain to it through the word, through the mind, or through the eye. It is only reached by him who says, ‘It is ! It is !’ He perceives it in its essence. Its essence appears when one perceives it as it is.” The old German expression Istigkeit, according to Bun¬ sen, corresponds to this. This also is the name of Je¬ hovah as given to Moses from the burning bush: “ And God said unto Moses, I am the I am. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” The idea is that God alone really exists, and that the root of all being is in him. This is expressed in another Upanishad: “ He who exists is the root of all creatures; he who exists is their foundation, and in him they rest.” In the Vedanta philosophy this speculative pantheism is carried further. Thus speaks Sankara, the chief teacher of the Vedanta philosophy (“ Colebrooke’s Essays”): “I am- the great Brahma, eternal, pure, free, one, constant, happy, existing without end. He who ceases to contem¬ plate other things, who retires into solitude, annihilates his desires, and subjects his passions, he understands that 118 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Spirit is the One and the Eternal. The wise man anni¬ hilates all sensible things in spiritual things, and contem¬ plates that one Spirit who resembles pure space. Brahma is without size, quality, character, or division.” According to this philosophy (says Bunsen) the world is the Not-Being. It is, says Sankara, “ appearance with¬ out Being; it is like the deception of a dream.” “ The soul itself,” he adds, “ has no actual being.” There is an essay on Yedantism in a book published in Calcutta, 1854, by a young Hindoo, Shosliee Chunder Dutt, which describes the creation as proceeding from Maya, in this way: “ Dissatisfied with his own solitude, Brahma feels a desire to create worlds, and then the volition ceases so far as he is concerned, and he sinks again into his apathetic happiness, while the desire, thus willed into existence, assumes an active character. It becomes Maya, and by this was the universe created, without exertion on the part of Brahma. This passing wish of Brahma carried, however, no reality with it. And the creation proceeding from it is only an illusion. There is only one absolute Unity really existing, and existing without plurality. But he is like one asleep. Krishna, in the Gita, says: ‘ These works (the universe) confine not me, for I am like one who sitteth aloof unin¬ terested in them all.’ The universe is therefore all illusion, holding a position between something and noth¬ ing. It is real as an illusion, but unreal as being. It is not true, because it has no essence; but not false, be¬ cause its existence, even as illusion, is from God. The Vedanta declares: ‘ From the highest state of Brahma to the lowest condition of a straw, all things are delusion.’ ” Chunder Dutt, however, contradicts Bunsen’s assertion that the soul also is an illusion according to the Vedanta. “The soul,” he says, “is not subject to birth or death, but is in its substance, from Brahma himself.” The truth seems to be that the Vedanta regards the individuation of the soul as from Maya and illusive, but the substance of the soul is from Brahma, and destined to be absorbed into him. As the body of man is to be resolved into its material elements, so the soul of man is to be resolved BRAHMANISM. 119 into Brahma. This substance of the soul is neither born nor dies, nor is it a thing of which it can be said, “ It was, is, or shall be.” In the Gita, Krishna tells Arjun that he and the other princes of the world “ never were not.” * The Vedantist philosopher, however, though he con¬ siders all souls as emanations from God, does not believe that all of them will return into God at death. Those only who have obtained a knowledge of God are rewarded by absorption, but the rest continue to migrate from body to body so long as they remain unqualified for the same. “The knower of God becomes God.” This union with the Deity is the total loss of personal identity, and is the attainment of the highest bliss, in which are no grades and from which is no return. This absorption comes not from good works or penances, for these confine the soul and do not liberate it. “ The confinement of fetters is the same whether the chain be of gold or iron.” “ The knowl¬ edge which realizes that everything is Brahm alone lib¬ erates the soul. It annuls the effect both of our virtues and vices. We traverse thereby both merit and demerit, the heart’s knot is broken, all doubts are split, and all our works perish. Only by perfect abstraction, not merely from the senses, but also from the thinking intellect and by remaining in the knowing intellect, does the devotee become identified with Brahm. He then remains as pure glass when the shadow has left it. He lives destitute of passions and affections. He lives sinless; for as water wets not the leaf of the lotus, so sin touches not him who knows God.” He stands in no further need of virtue, for “ of what use can be a winnowing fan when the sweet southern wind is blowing.” His meditations are of this sort: “ I am Brahm, I am life. I am everlasting, perfect, self-existent/undivided, joyful.” If therefore, according to this system, knowledge alone unites the soul to God, the question comes, Of what use are acts of virtue, penances, sacrifices, worship ? The answer is, that they effect a happy transmigration from * The Bhagavat-Gita, an episode in the Maha-Bharata, in an authority with the Vedantists. 120 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. the lower forms of bodily life to higher ones. They do not accomplish the great end, which is absorption and escape from Maya, but they prepare the way for it by causing one to be born in a higher condition. The second system of philosophy, the Sankhya of Kapila, is founded not on one principle, like the Vedanta, but on two. According to the seventy aphorisms, Nature is one of these principles. It is uncreated and eternal. •It is one, active, creating, non-intelligent. The other of the two principles, also uncreated and eternal, is Soul, or rather Souls. Souls are many, passive, not creative, in¬ telligent, and in all things the opposite to Nature. But from the union of the two all the visible universe pro¬ ceeds, according to the law of cause and effect. God not being recognized in this system, it is often called atheism. Its argument, to show that no one perfect being could create the universe, is this. Desire implies want, or imperfection. Accordingly, if God desired to create, he would be unable to do so; if he was able, he would not desire to do it. In neither case, therefore, could God have created the universe. The gods are spoken of by the usual names, Brahma, Indra, etc., but are all finite beings, belonging to the order of human souls, though superior. Every soul is clothed in two bodies, — the interior origi¬ nal body, the individualizing force, which is eternal as itself and accompanies it through all its migrations; and the material, secondary body, made of the five elements, ether, air, fire, water, and earth. The original body is subtile and spiritual. It is the office of Nature to liberate the Soul. Nature is not what we perceive by the senses, but an invisible plastic principle behind, which must be known by the intellect. As the Soul ascends by good¬ ness, it is freed by knowledge. The final result of this emancipation is the certainty of non-existence, —“ neither I am, nor is aught mine, nor do I exist,” — which seems to be the same result as that of Hegel, Being = Not- Being. Two or three of the aphorisms of the Karika are as follows: — “ LIX. As a dancer, having exhibited herself to the specta- BRAHMANISM. 121 tor, desists from the dance, so does Nature desist, having manifested herself to the Soul.” “ LX. Generous Nature, endued with qualities, does by manifold means accomplish, without benefit (to herself), the wish of ungrateful Soul, devoid of qualities.” “ LXI. Nothing, in my opinion, is more gentle than Nature ; once aware of having been seen, she does not again expose herself to the gaze of Soul.” “ LXYI. Soul desists, because it has seen Nature. Nature desists, because she has been seen. In their (mere) union there is no motive for creation.” Accordingly, the result of knowledge is to put an end to creation, and to leave the Soul emancipated from desire, from change, from the material body, in a state which is Being, but not Existence (esse, not existere; Seyn, not Da-seyn). This Sankhya philosophy becomes of great importance, when we consider that it was the undoubted source of Buddhism. This doctrine which we have been describing was the basis of Buddhism* * * § M. Cousin has called it the sensualism of India,*f- but certainly without propriety. It is as purely ideal a doc¬ trine as that of the Vedas. Its two eternal principles are both ideal. The plastic force which is one of them, Kapila distinctly declares cannot be perceived by the senses. f Soul, the other eternal and uncreated principle, who “ is witness, solitary, bystander, spectator, and pas¬ sive,” § is not only spiritual itself, but is clothed with a spiritual body, within the material body. In fact, the Karika declares the material universe to be the result of the contact of the Soul with Nature, and consists in chains with which Nature binds herself, for the purpose (uncon- * Bumouf, Introduction a l’Histoire du Buddhisme Indien, I. 511, 520. He says that Sakya-Muni began his career with the ideas of the Sankhya philosophy, namely, absence of God ; multiplicity and eternity of human souls ; an eternal plastic nature ; transmigration ; and Nirvana, or deliverance by knowledge. t Cours de l'Histoire de Philosophie, I. 200 (Paris, 1829) ; quoted by Hardwick, I. 211. X Karika, 8. “It is owing to the subtilty of Nature .... that it is not apprehended by the senses.” § Karika, 19. 6 122 TEN GKEAT EELIGIONS. scious) of delivering the Soul. "When by a process of knowledge the Soul looks through these, and perceives the ultimate principle beyond, the material universe ceases, and both Soul and Nature are emancipated.* One of the definitions of the Karika will call to mind the fourfold division of the universe by the great thinker of the ninth century, Erigena. In his work, nep\ tyvo-eos pepio-pov, he asserts that there is, (1.) A Nature which creates and is not created. (2.) A Nature which is created and creates. (3.) A Nature which is created and does not create. (4.) A Nature which neither creates nor is created. So Kapila (Karika, 3) says, “ Nature, the root of all things, is productive hut not a production. Seven principles are productions and productive. Six¬ teen are productions hut not productive. Soul is neither a production nor productive.” Mr. Muir (Sanskrit Texts, Part III. p. 96) quotes the following passages in proof of the antiquity of Kapila, and the respect paid to his doctrine in very early times: — Svet. Upanishacl. “ The God who superintends every mode of production and all forms, who formerly nourished with various knowledge his son Kapila the rishi, and beheld him at his birth.” “ Bhagavat Purana (I. 3, 10) makes Kapila an incarnation of Vischnu. In his fifth incarnation, in the form of Kapila, he declared to Asuri the Sankhya which defines the collection of principles. “Bhagavat Purana (IX. 8, 12) relates that Kapila, being attacked by the sons of King Sangara, destroyed them with fire which issued from his body. But the author of the Purana denies that this was done in anger. ‘ How could the sage, by whom the strong ship of the Sankhya was launched, on which the man seeking emancipation crosses the ocean of existence, entertain the distinction of friend and foe ’ 1 ” The Sankhya system is also frequently mentioned in the Mahaharata. The Nyaya system differs from that of Kapila, by assuming a third eternal and indestructible principle as the basis of matter, namely, Atoms. It also assumes the * Karika, 58, 62, 63, 68. BRAHMANISM. 123 existence of a Supreme Soul, Brahma, who is almighty and allwise. It agrees with Kapila in making all souls eternal, and distinct from body. Its evil to be overcome is the same, namely, transmigration; and its method of release is the same, namely Buddlii , or knowledge. It is a more dialectic system than the others, and is rather of the nature of a logic than a philosophy. Mr. Banerjea, in his Dialogues on the Hindu philosophy, considers the Buddhists’ system as closely resembling the Nyaya system. He regards the Buddhist Nirvana as equivalent to the emancipation of the Nyaya system. Apavarga, or emancipation, is declared in this philoso¬ phy to be final deliverance from pain, birth, activity, fault, and false notions. Even so the Pali doctrinal books speak of Nirvana as an exemption from old age, dis¬ ease, and death. In it desire, anger, and ignorance are consumed by the fire of knowledge. Here all selfish distinctions of mine and thine, all evil thoughts, all slan¬ der and jealousy, are cut down by the weapon of knowl¬ edge. Here we have an experience of immortality which is cessation of all trouble and perfect felicity.* § 7. Origin of the Hindoo Triad. There had gradually grown up among the people a wor¬ ship founded on that of the ancient Vedas. In the West of India, the god Budra, mentioned in the Vedic hymns, had been transformed into Siva. In the Rig-Veda Rudra is sometimes the name for Agni.-f He is described as father of the winds. He is the same as Maha-deva. He is fierce and beneficent at once. He presides over medi¬ cinal plants. According to Weber (Indische Stud., II. 19) he is the Storm-God. The same view is taken by Profes¬ sor Whitney. J But his worship gradually extended, until, under the name of Siva, the Destroyer, he became one of * Quoted from tlie Lalita Vistara in Dialogues on the Hindu Philos¬ ophy. By Rev. R. M. Banerjea. London : Williams and Nordgate. 1861. + Muir, Sanskrit Texts, Part IV. p. 253. X Journal Am. Orient. Soc., III. 318. 124 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. the principal deities of India. Meantime, in the 'valley of the Ganges, a similar devotion had grown np for the Yedic god Yischnu, who in like manner had been pro¬ moted to the chief rank in the Hindoo Pantheon. He had been elevated to the character of a Friend and Protector, gifted with mild attributes, and worshipped as the life of Nature. By accepting the popular worship, the Brah¬ mans were able to oppose Buddhism with success. We have no doubt that the Hindoo Triad came from the effort of the Brahmans to unite all India in one worship, and it may for a time have succeeded. Images of the Trimurtti, or three-faced God, are frequent in India, and this is still the object of Brahmanical worship. But be¬ side this practical motive, the tendency of thought is always toward a triad of law, force, or elemental substance, as the best explanation of the universe. Hence there have been Triads in so many religions : in Egypt, of Osiris the Creator, Typlion the Destroyer, and Horns the Preserver; in Persia, of Ormctzd the Creator, Ahriman the Destroyer, and Mithra the Bestorer; in Buddhism, of Buddha the Divine Man, Dliarmma the Word, and Sangha the Com¬ munion of Saints. Simple monotheism does not long satisfy the speculative intellect, because, though it accounts for the harmonies of creation, it leaves its discords unex¬ plained. But a dualism of opposing forces is found still more unsatisfactory, for the world does not appear to be such a scene of utter warfare and discord as this. So the mind comes to accept a Triad, in which the unities of life and growth proceed from one element, the antagonisms from a second, and the higher harmonies of reconciled op¬ positions from a third. The Brahmanical Triad arose in the same way.* Thus grew up, from amid the spiritual pantheism into which all Hindoo religion seemed to have settled, another system, that of the Trimurtti, or Divine Triad ; the Indian Trinity of Brahma, Vischnu, and Siva. This Triad ex- * Even in the grammatical forms of the Sanskrit verb, this threefold tendency of thought is indicated. It has an active, passive, and middle voice (like that of the cognate Greek), and the reflex action of its middle voice corresponds to the Restorer or Preserver. BRAHMANISM. 125 presses the unity of Creation, Destruction, and Restora- tion. A foundation for this already existed in a Yedic saying, that the highest being exists in three states, that of creation, continuance, and destruction. Neither of these three supreme deities of Brahmanism held any high rank in the Vedas. Siva (Qiva) does not ap¬ pear therein at all, nor, according to Lassen, is Brahma mentioned in the Vedic hymns, but first in a Upanishad. Vischnu is spoken of in the Rig-Veda, but always as one of the names for the sun. He is the Sun-God. His three steps are sunrise, noon, and sunset. He is mentioned as one of the sons of Aditi; he is called the “ wide-step¬ ping,” “ measurer of the world,” “ the strong,” “ the de¬ liverer,” “ renewer of life,” “ who sets in motion the revolutions of time,” “ a protector,” “ preserving the high¬ est heaven.” Evidently he begins his career in this my¬ thology as the sun. Brahma, at first a word meaning prayer and devotion, becomes in the laws of Manu the primal God, first-born of the creation, from the self-existent being, in the form of a golden egg. He became the creator of all things by the power of prayer. In the struggle for ascendency which took place between the priests and the warriors, Brahma naturally became the deity of the former. But, meantime, as we have seen, the worship of Vischnu had been extending itself in one region and that of Siva in another. Then took place those mysterious wars between the kings of the Solar and Lunar races, of which the great epics contain all that we know. And at the close of these wars a compromise was apparently accepted, by which Brahma, Vischnu, and Siva were united in one su¬ preme God, as creator, preserver, and destroyer, all in one. It is almost certain that this Hindoo Triad was the result of an ingenious and successful attempt, on the part of the Brahmans, to unite all classes of worshippers in India against the Buddhists. In this sense the Brahmans edited anew the Mahabharata, inserting in that epic passages extolling Vischnu in the form of Krishna. The Greek accounts of India which followed the invasion of Alexander speak of the worship of Hercules as prevalent 126 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. in the East, and by Hercules they apparently mean the god Krishna* The struggle between the Brahmans and Buddhists lasted during nine centuries (from A. D. 500 to A. d. 1400), ending with the total expulsion of Buddh¬ ism, and the triumphant establishment of the Triad, as the worship of India.*)* Before this Triad or Trimurtti (of Brahma, Yischnu, and Siva) there seems to have been another, consist¬ ing of Agni, Indra, and Surya. j This may have given the hint of the second Triad, which distributed among the three gods the attributes of Creation, Destruction, and Benovation. Of these Brahma, the Creator, ceased soon to be popular, and the worship of Siva and Yischnu as Krishna remain as the popular religion of India. One part, and a very curious one, of the worship of Yischnu is the doctrine of the Avatars, or incarnations of that deity. There are ten of these Avatars, — nine have passed and one is to come. The object of Yischnu is, each time, to save the gods from destruction impending over them in consequence of the immense power acquired by some king, giant, or demon, by superior acts of auster¬ ity and piety. For here, as elsewhere, extreme spiritualism is often divorced from morality; and so these extremely pious, spiritual, and self-denying giants are the most cruel and tyrannical monsters, who must be destroyed at all hazards. Yischnu, by force or fraud, overcomes them all. His first Avatar is of the Fish, as related in the Maha- bharata. The object was to recover the Yedas, which had been stolen by a demon from Brahma when asleep. In consequence of this loss the human race became corrupt, and were destroyed by a deluge, except a pious prince and seven holy men who were saved in a ship. Yischnu, as a large fish, drew the ship safely over the water, killed the demon, and recovered the Yedas. The second Avatar was in a Turtle, to make the drink of immortality. The third was in a Boar, the fourth in a Man-Lion, the fifth in the Dwarf who deceived Bali, who had become so powerful * See Colebrooke, Lassen, &c. + Lassen, I. S38 ; II. 446. + See Muir, Sanskrit Texts, Part IV. p. 136. BRAHMANISM. 127 by austerities as to conquer the gods and take possession of Heaven. In the eighth Avatar he appears as Krishna and in the ninth as Buddha. This system of Avatars is so peculiar and so deeply rooted in the system, that it would seem to indicate some law of Hindoo thought. Perhaps some explanation may be reached thus : — We observe that,— Vischnu does not mediate between Brahma and Siva, but between the deities and the lower races of men or demons. The danger arises from a certain fate or necessity which is superior both to gods and men. There are laws which enable a man to get away from the power of Brahma and Siva. But what is this necessity but nature, or the nature of things, the laws of the outward world of active exist¬ ences ? It is not till essence becomes existence, till spirit passes into action, that it becomes subject to law. The danger then is from the world of nature. The gods are pure spirit, and spirit is everything. But, now and then, nature seems to be something , it will not be ig¬ nored or lost in God. Personality, activity, or human nature rebel against the pantheistic idealism, the abstract spiritualism of this system. To conquer body, Vischnu or spirit enters into body, again and again. Spirit must appear as body to destroy Nature. For thus is shown that spirit cannot be excluded from anything, — that it can descend into the lowest forms of life, and work in law as well as above law. But all the efforts of Brahmanism could not arrest the natural development of the system. It passed on into polytheism and idolatry. The worship of India for many centuries has been divided into a multitude of sects. While the majority of the Brahmans still profess to recog¬ nize the equal divinity of Brahma, Vischnu, and Siva, the mass of the people worship Krishna, Kama, the Lingam, and many other gods and idols. There are Hindoo athe¬ ists who revile the Vedas; there are the Kabirs, who are a sort of Hindoo Quakers, and oppose all worship; the 128 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Ramanujas, an ancient sect of Vischnu worshippers; the Ramavats, living in monasteries; the Panthis, who oppose all austerities; the Maharajas, whose religion consists with great licentiousness. Most of these are worshippers of Vischnu or of Siva, for Brahma-worship has wholly disappeared. § 8. The Epics, the Pur anas, and modern Hindoo Wor ship. The Hindoos have two great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, each of immense length, and very popular with the people. Mr. Talhoys Wheeler has re¬ cently incorporated both epics (of course much abridged) into his History of India, and we must refer our readers to his work for a knowledge of these remarkable poems. The whole life of ancient India appears in them, and cer¬ tainly they are not unworthy products of the genius of that great nation. According to Lassen,* * * § the period to which the great Indian epics refer follows directly on the Vedic age. Yet they contain passages inserted at a much later epoch, probably, indeed, as long after as the war which ended in the expulsion of the Buddhists from India.*)* Mr. Talboys Wheeler considers the war of Rama and the Monkeys against Ravana to refer to this conflict, and so makes the Ramayana later than the Mahabharata. The majority of writers, however, differ from him on this point. The writers of the Mahabharata were evidently Brahmans, educated under the laws of Manu.j But it is very diffi¬ cult to fix the date of either poem with any approach to accuracy. Lassen lias proved that the greater part of the Mahabharata was written before the political establish¬ ment of Buddhism.§ These epics were originally trans¬ mitted by oral tradition. They must have been brought to their present forms by Brahmans, for their doctrine is • that of this priesthood. How if such poems had been * Lassen, Ind. Alterthum, I. 357. + Max Muller, Sanskrit Lit., 37. t Ibid., p. 46. § Ind. Alterthum, I. 483 - 499. Mtiller, Sanskrit Lit., 62, note . BRAHMANISM. 129 composed after the time of Asoka, when Buddhism be> came a state religion in India, it must have been often referred to. No such references appear in these epics, except in some solitary passages, which are evidently modern additions* Hence the epics must have been composed before the time of Buddhism. This argument of Lassen’s is thought by Max Muller to be conclusive, and if so it disproves Mr. Talboys Wheeler’s view of the purpose of the Bamayana. Few Hindoos now read the Yedas. The Puranas and the two great epics constitute their sacred books. The Kamayana contains about fifty thousand lines, and is held in great veneration by the Hindoos. It describes the youth of Kama, who is an incarnation of Vischnu, his banishment and residence in Central India, and his war with the giants and demons of the South, to recover his wife, Sita. It probably is founded on some real war between the early Aryan invaders of Hindostan and the indigenous inhabitants. The Mahabharata, which is probably of later date, contains about two hundred and twenty thousand lines, and is divided into eighteen books, each of which would make a large volume. It is supposed to have been col¬ lected by Yyasa, who also collected the Yedas and Puranas. These legends are very old, and seem to refer to the early history of India. There appear to have been two Aryan dynasties in ancient India, — the Solar and Lunar. Eama belonged to the first and Bharata to the second. Pandu, a descendant of the last, has five brave sons, who are the heroes of this book. One of them, Arjuna, is especially distinguished. One of the episodes is the famous Bhagavat-gita. Another is called the Brah¬ man’s Lament. Another describes the deluge, showing the tradition of a flood existing in India many centuries before Christ. Another gives the story of Savitri and Satyavan. These episodes occupy three fourths of the poem, and from them are derived most of the legends of * As of the Atheist in the Ramayana, Javali, who advises Rama to disobey his dead father’s commands, on the ground that the dead are nothing. 6 * I 130 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. the Puranas. A supplement, which is itself a longer poem than the Iliad and Odyssey combined (which together contain about thirty thousand lines), is the source of the modern worship of Krishna. The whole poem represents the multilateral character of Hinduism. It indicates a higher degree of civilization than that of the Homeric poems, and describes a vast variety of fruits and flowers existing under culture. The characters are nobler and purer than those of Homer. The pictures of domestic and social life are very touching; children are dutiful to their parents, parents careful of their children; wives are loyal and obedient, yet independent in their opinions; and peace reigns in the domestic circle. The different works known as the Puranas are derived from the same religious system as the two epics. They repeat the cosmogony of the poems, and they relate more fully their mythological legends. Siva and Yischnu are almost the sole objects of worship in the Puranas. There is a sectarian element in their devotion to these deities which shows their partiality, and prevents them from being authorities for Hindoo belief as a whole * The Puranas, in their original form, belong to a period, says Mr. Wilson, a century before the Christian era. They grew out of the conflict between Buddhism and Brahmanism. The latter system had offered no personal gods to the people and given them no outward worship, and the masses had been uninterested in the abstract view of Deity held by the Brahmans.*)* According to Mr. Wilson,,J there are eighteen Puranas which are now read by the common people. They are read a great deal by women. Some are very ancient, or at least contain fragments of more ancient Puranas. The very word signifies “antiquity.” Most of them are de¬ voted to the worship of Yischnu. According to the Bhagavat Purana,§ the only reasonable object of life is * Preface to the Yischnu Purana, translated by Horace Hayman Wil¬ son. London, 1864. *t Duncker, Geschichte, &c., II. 318. X Preface to his English translation of the Yischnu Purana. § Translated by E. Burnouf into French. BRAHMANISM. 131 to meditate on Vischnu. Brahma, who is called in one place “the cause of causes/’ proclaims Vischnu to be the only pure absolute essence, of which the universe is the manifestation. In the Vischnu Purana, Brahma, at the head of the gods, adores Vischnu as the Supreme Being whom he himself cannot understand. The power of ascetic penances is highly extolled in the Puranas, as also in the epics. In the Bhagavat it is said that Brahma, by a penitence of sixteen thousand years, created the universe. It is even told in the Ramayana, that a sage of a lower caste became a Brahman by dint of austerities, in spite of the gods who considered such a confusion of castes a breach of Hindoo etiquette* To prevent him from continuing his devotions, they sent a beautiful nymph to tempt him, and their daughter was the famous Sakuntala. But in the end, the obstinate old ascetic conquered the gods, and when they still refused to Brahmanize him, he began to create new heavens and new gods, and had already made a few stars, when the deities thought it prudent to yield, and allowed him to become a Brahman. It is also mentioned that the Ganges, the sacred river, in the course of her wanderings, overflowed the sacrificial ground of another powerful ascetic, who incontinently drank up, in his anger, all its waters, but was finally induced by the persuasions of the gods to set the river free again by discharging it from his ears. Such were the freaks of sages in the times of the Puranas. Never was there a more complete example of piety divorced from morality than in these theories. The most wicked demons acquire power over gods and men, by de¬ vout asceticism. This principle is already fully developed in the epic poems. The plot of the Ramayana turns around this idea. A Rajah, Ravana, had become so pow¬ erful by sacrifice and devotion, that he oppressed the gods; compelled Yama (or Death) to retire from his dominions; compelled the sun to shine there all the year, and the moon to be always full above his Raj. Agni (Fire) must not burn in his presence; the Maruts (Winds) * The Ramayana, Ac., by Monier Williams Baden Professor of San¬ skrit at Oxford. 132 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. must blow only as lie wishes. He cannot be hurt by gods or demons. So Vischnu becomes incarnate as Bama. and the gods become incarnate as Monkeys, in order to destroy him. Such vast power was supposed to be at¬ tained by piety without morality. The Puranas are derived from the same system as the epic poems, and carry out further the same ideas. Siva and Yischnu are almost the only gods who are worshipped, and they are worshipped with a sectarian zeal unknown to the epics. Most of the Puranas contain these five topics, — Creation, Destruction and Benovation, the Genealogy of the gods, Beigns of the Manus, and History of the Solar and Lunar races. Their philosophy of creation is derived from the Sankhya philosophy. Pantheism is one of their invariable characteristics, as they always identify God and Nature; and herein they differ from the system of Kapila. The form of the Puranas is always that of a dialogue. The Puranas are eighteen in number, and the contents of the whole are stated to be one mil¬ lion six hundred thousand lines.* The religion of the Hindoos at the present time is very different from that of the Yedas or Manu. Idolatry is universal, and every month has its special worship, — April, October, and January being most sacred. April begins the Hindoo year. During this sacred month bands of singers go from house to house, early in the morning, singing hymns to the gods. On the 1st of April Hin¬ doos of all castes dedicate pitchers to the shades of their ancestors. The girls bring flowers with which to worship little ponds of water dedicated to Siva. Women adore the river Ganges, bathing in it and offering it flowers. They also walk in procession round the banyan or sacred tree. Then they worship the cow, pouring water on her feet and putting oil on her forehead. Sometimes they take a vow to feed some particular Brahman luxuriously during the whole month. They bathe their idols with religious care every day and offer them food. This lasts during April and then stops. In May the women of India worship a goddess friendly * Preface to the translation of the Yischnu Purana, by H. H. Wilson. BRAHMANISM. 133 to little babies, named Shus-ty. They bring the infants to be blessed by some venerable woman before the image of the goddess, whose messenger is a cat. Social parties are also given on these occasions, although the lower castes are kept distinct at four separate tables. The women also, not being allowed to meet with the men at such times, have a separate entertainment by themselves. The month of June is devoted to the bath of Jugger¬ naut, who was one of the incarnations of Vischnu. The name, Jugger-naut, means Lord of the Universe. His worship is comparatively recent. His idols are extremely ugly. But the most remarkable thing perhaps about this worship is that it destroys, for the time, the distinc¬ tion of castes. While within the walls which surround the temple Hindoos of every caste eat together from the same dish. But as soon as they leave the temple this equality disappears. The ceremony of the bath originated in this legend. The idol Jugger-naut, desiring to bathe in the Ganges, came in the form of a boy to the river, and then gave one of his golden ornaments to a confectioner for something to eat. Next day the ornament was miss¬ ing, and the priests could find it nowhere. But that night in a dream the god revealed to a priest that he had given it to a certain confectioner to pay for his lunch; and it being found so, a festival was established on the spot, at which the idol is annually bathed. The other festival of this month is the worship of the Ganges, the sacred river of India. Here the people come to bathe and to offer sacrifices, which consist of flowers, incense, and clothes. The most sacred spot is where the river enters the sea. Before plunging into the water each one confesses his sins to the goddess. On the surface of this river castes are also abolished, the holi¬ ness of the river making the low-caste man also holy. In the month of July is celebrated the famous cere¬ mony of the car of Jugger-naut, instituted to commemo¬ rate the departure of Krishna from his native land. These cars are in the form of a pyramid, built several stories high, and some are even fifty feet in height. They are found in every part of India, the offerings of wealthy peo- 134 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. pie, and some contain costly statues. They are drawn by hundreds of men, it being their faith that each one who pulls the rope will certainly go to the heaven of Krishna when he dies. Multitudes, therefore, crowd around the rope in order to pull, and in the excitement they sometimes fall under the wheels and are crushed. But this is accidental, for Krishna does not desire the suffering of his worshippers. He is a mild divinity, and not like the fierce Siva, who loves self-torture. In the month of August is celebrated the nativity of Krishna, the story of whose birth resembles that in the Gospel in this, that the tyrant whom he came to de¬ stroy sought to kill him, but a heavenly voice told the father to fly with the child across the Jumna, and the tyrant, like Herod, killed the infants in the village. In this month also is a feast upon which no fire must be kindled or food cooked, and on which the cactus-tree and serpents are worshipped. In September is the great festival of the worship of Doorga, wife of Siva. It commences on the seventh day of the full moon and lasts three days. It commemorates a visit made by the goddess to her parents. The idol has three eyes and ten hands. The ceremony, which is costly, can only be celebrated by the rich people, who also give presents on this occasion to the poor. The image is placed in the middle of the hall of the rich man’s house. One Brahman sits before the image with flowers, holy water, incense. Trays laden with rice, fruit, and other kinds of food are placed near the image, and given to the Brahmans. Goats and sheep are then sacrificed to the idol on an altar in the yard of the house. When the head of the victim falls the people shout, “Victory to thee, 0 mother! ” Then the bells ring, the trumpets sound, and the people shout for joy. The lamps are waved before the idol, and a Brahman reads aloud from the Scripture. Then comes a dinner on each of the three days, to which the poor and the low-caste people are also invited and are served by the Brahmans. The people visit from house to house, and in the evening there is music, dancing, and public shows. So that the worship BRAHMANISM. 135 of the Hindoos is by no means all of it ascetic, but much is social and joyful, especially in Bengal. In October, November, and December there are fewer ceremonies. January is a month devoted to religious bathing. Also, in January, the religious Hindoos invite Brahmans to read and expound the sacred books in their houses, which are open to all hearers. In February there are festivals to Krishna. The month of March is devoted to ascetic exercises, especially to the famous one of swinging suspended by hooks. It is a festival in honor of Siva. A procession goes through the streets and enlists followers by putting a thread round their necks. Every man thus enlisted must join the party and go about with it till the end of the ceremony under pain of losing caste. On the day before the swinging, men thrust iron or bamboo sticks through their arms or tongues. On the next day they march in procession to the swinging tree, where the men are suspended by hooks and whirled round the tree four or five times. It is considered a pious act in India to build temples, dig tanks, or plant trees by the roadside. Rich people have idols in their houses for daily worship, and pay a priest who comes every morning to wake up the idols, wash and dress them, and offer them their food. In the evening he comes again, gives them their supper and puts them to bed. Mr. Gangooly, in his book, from which most of the above facts are drawn, denies emphatically the statement so commonly made that Hindoo mothers throw their in¬ fants into the Ganges. He justly says that the maternal instinct is as strong with them as with others; and in addition to that, their religion teaches them to offer sacrifices for the life and health of their children. § 9. Relation of Brahmanism to Christianity. Having thus attempted, in the space we can here use, to give an account of Brahmanism, we close by showing its special relation as a system of thought to Christianity. 136 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Brahmanism teaches the truth of the reality of spirit, and that spirit is infinite, absolute, perfect, one; that it is the substance underlying all existence. Brahmanism glows through and through with this spirituality. Its literature, no less than its theology, teaches it. It is in the dramas of Calidasa, as well as in the sublime strains of the Bhagavat-gita. Something divine is present in all nature and all life, — “ Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air.” Now, with this Christianity is in fullest agreement. We have such passages in the Scripture as these : “ God is a Spirit ”; “ God is love; whoso dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him ” ; “ In him we live, and move, and have our being ”; “ He is above all, and through all, and in us all.” But beside these texts, which strike the key-note of the music which was to come after, there are divine strains of spiritualism, of God all in all, which come through a long chain of teachers of the Church, sounding on in the Confessions of Augustine, the prayers of Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Bonaventura, St. Bernard, through the Latin hymns of the Middle Ages, and develop themselves at last in what is called romantic art and romantic song. A Gothic cathedral like Antwerp or Strasburg, — what is it but a striving upward of the soul to lose itself in God ? A symphony of Beethoven, — what is it but the same unbounded longing and striving toward the Infinite and Eternal ? The poetry of Words¬ worth, of Goethe, Schiller, Dante, Byron, Victor Hugo, Manzoni, all partake of the same element. It is opposed to classic art and classic poetry in this, that instead of limits, it seeks the unlimited; that is, it believes in spirit, which alone is the unlimited ; the mfinite, that which is, not that which appears; the essence of things, not their existence or outwardness. Thus Christianity meets and accepts the truth of Brah¬ manism. But how does it fulfil Brahmanism ? The deficiencies of Brahmanism are these, — that holding to eternity, it omits time, and so loses history. It therefore BRAHMANISM. 137 is incapable of progress, for progress takes place in time. Believing in spirit, or infinite unlimited substance, it loses person, or definite substance, whether infinite or finite. The Christian God is the infinite, definite sub¬ stance, self-limited or defined by his essential nature. He is good and not bad, righteous and not the opposite, per¬ fect love, not perfect self-love. Christianity, therefore, gives us God as a person, and man also as a person, and so makes it possible to consider the universe as order, kosmos, method, beauty, and providence. For, unless we can conceive the Infinite Substance as definite, and not undefined; that is, as a person with positive charac¬ ters ; there is no difference between good and bad, right and wrong, to-day and to-morrow, this and that, but all is one immense chaos of indefinite spirit. The moment that creation begins, that the spirit of the Lord moves on the face of the waters, and says, “ Let there be light,” and so divides light from darkness, God becomes a person, and man can also be a person. Things then become “ separate and divisible ” which before were “ huddled and lumped.” Christianity, therefore, fulfils Brahmanism by adding to eternity time, to the infinite the finite, to God as spirit God as nature and providence. God in himself is the unlimited, unknown, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; hidden, not by darkness, but by light. But God, as turned toward us in nature and providence, is the infinite definite substance, that is, having certain defined characters, though these have no bounds as regards extent. This last view of God Chris¬ tianity shares with other religions, which differ from Brahmanism in the opposite direction. For example, the religion of Greece and of the Greek philosophers never loses the definite God, however high it may soar. While Brahmanism, seeing eternity and infinity, loses time and the finite, the Greek religion, dwelling in time, often loses the eternal and the spiritual. Christianity is the mediator, able to mediate, not by standing between both, but by standing beside both. It can lead the Hindoos to an Infinite Friend, a perfect Father, a Divine Providence, and so make the possibility for them of a new progress, 138 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. and give to that ancient and highly endowed race another chance in history. What they want is evidently moral power, for they have all intellectual ability. The effemi¬ nate quality which has made them slaves of tyrants dur¬ ing two thousand years will be taken out of them, and a virile strength substituted, when they come to see God as law and love, — perfect law and perfect love, — and to see that communion with him comes, not from absorption, contemplation, and inaction, but from active obedience, moral growth, and personal development. For Chris¬ tianity certainly teaches that we unite ourselves with God, not by sinking into and losing our personality, in him, but by developing it, so that we may be able to serve and love him. BUDDHISM. 139 CHAPTER IV. BUDDHISM, OR THE PROTESTANTISM OF THE EAST. § 1. Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Romanism ; in its Spirit, Prot¬ estantism. § 2. Extent of Buddhism. Its Scriptures. § 3. Sakya- muni, the Founder of Buddhism. § 4. Leading Doctrines of Buddhism. § 5. The Spirit of Buddhism Rational and Humane. § 6. Buddhism as a Religion. § 7. Karma and Nirvana. § 8. Good and Evil of Buddhism. § 9. Relation of Buddhism to Christianity. § 1. Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Bomanism ; in its Spirit, Protestantism. O UST first becoming acquainted with the mighty and ancient religion of Buddha, one may be tempted to deny the correctness of this title, “ The Protestantism of the East.” One might say, “Why not rather the Bo¬ manism of the East ?” Eor so numerous are the resem¬ blances between the customs of this system and those of the Romish Church, that the first Catholic missionaries who encountered the priests of Buddha were confounded, and thought that Satan had been mocking their sacred rites. Father Bury, a Portuguese missionary,* when he beheld the Chinese bonzes tonsured, using rosaries, pray¬ ing in an unknown tongue, and kneeling before images, exclaimed in astonishment: “ There is not a piece of dress, not a sacerdotal function, not a ceremony of the court of Rome, which the Devil has not copied in this country.” Mr. Davis (Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, II. 491) speaks of “the celibacy of the Buddhist clergy, and the monastic life of the societies of both sexes ; to which might be added their strings of beads, their manner of chanting prayers, their incense, and their candles.” Mr. Medhurst (“ China,” London, 1857) men- * Kesson, “The Cross and the Dragon” (London, 1854), quoted by Hardwick. 140 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. tions the image of a virgin, called the “ queen of heaven,” having an infant in her arms, and holding a cross. Con¬ fession of sins is regularly practised. Father Hue, in his “ Kecollections of a Journey in Tartary, Thibet, and China,” (Hazlitt’s translation), says: “ The cross, the mitre, the dalmatica, the cope, which the grand lamas wear on their journeys, or when they are performing some cere¬ mony out of the temple, — the service with double choirs, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer suspended from five chains, and which you can open or close at pleasure, — the benedictions given by the lamas by extending the right hand over the heads of the faithful, — the chaplet, ecclesiastical celibacy, religious retirement, the worship of the saints, the fasts, the processions, the litanies, the holy water, — all these are analogies between the Buddh¬ ists and ourselves.” And in Thibet there is also a Dalai Lama, who is a sort of Buddhist pope. Such nu¬ merous and striking analogies are difficult to explain. After the simple theory “ que le diable y etait pour beau- coup ” was abandoned, the next opinion held by the Jesuit . missionaries was that the Buddhists had copied these customs from ISTestorian missionaries, who are known to have penetrated early even as far as China* But a serious objection to this theory is that Buddhism is at least five hundred years older than Christianity, and that many of these striking resemblances belong to its earliest pe¬ riod. Thus Wilson (Hindu Drama) has translated plays written before the Christian era, in which Buddhist monks appear as mendicants. The worship of relics is quite as ancient. Fergusson •)* describes topes, or shrines for relics, of very great antiquity, existing in India, Cey¬ lon, Birmah, and Java. Many of them belong to the age of Asoka, the great Buddhist emperor, who ruled all India B. c. 250, and in whose reign Buddhism became the religion of the state, and held its third (Ecumenical Council. The ancient Buddhist architecture is very singular, and often very beautiful. It consists of topes, rock-cut tem- * See Note to Chap. II. on the Nestorian inscription in China. + Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, p. 67. BUDDHISM. 141 pies, and monasteries. Some of the topes are monolithic columns, more than forty feet high, with ornamented capi¬ tals. Some are immense domes of brick and stone, con¬ taining sacred relics. The tooth of Buddha was once preserved in a magnificent shrine in India, hut was con¬ veyed to Ceyion a. d. 311, where it still remains an ob¬ ject of universal reverence. It is a piece of ivory or bone two inches long, and is kept in six cases, the largest of which, of solid silver, is five feet high. The other cases are inlaid with rubies and precious stones.* Be¬ sides this, Ceylon possesses the “ left collar-bone relic,” contained in a bell-shaped tope, fifty feet high, and the thorax bone, which was placed in a tope built by a Hin¬ doo Baja, B. c. 250, beside which two others were subse¬ quently erected, the last being eighty cubits high. The Sanchi tope, the finest in India,+ is a solid dome of stone, one hundred and six feet in diameter and forty-two feet high, with a basement and terrace, having a colonnade, now fallen, of sixty pillars, with richly carved stone rail¬ ing and gateway. The rock-cut temples of the Buddhists are very ancient, and are numerous in India. Mr. Fergusson, who has made a special personal study of these monuments, believes that more than nine hundred still remain, most of them within the Bombay presidency. Of these, many date back two centuries before our era. In form they singu¬ larly resemble the earliest Boman Catholic churches. Excavated out of the solid rock, they have a nave and side aisles, terminating in an apse or semi-dome, round which the aisle is carried. One at Ivarli, built in this manner, is one hundred and twenty-six feet long and forty-five wide, with fifteen richly carved columns on each side, separating the nave from the aisles. The fa¬ cade of this temple is also richly ornamented, and has a great open window for lighting the interior, beneath an elegant gallery or rood-loft. The Buddhist rock-cut monasteries in India are also numerous, though long since deserted. Between seven * Hardy, Eastern Monachism, p. 224. Fergusson, p. 9. *f Fergusson, p. 10. Cunningham, Bhilsa Topes of India. 142 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. and eight hundred are known to exist, most of them having been excavated between B. c. 200 and A, D. 500. Buddhist monks, then as now, took the same three vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience, which are taken by the members of all the Catholic orders. In addi¬ tion to this, all the Buddhist priests are mendicants. They shave their heads, wear a friar’s robe tied round the waist with a rope, and beg from house to house, carrying tlieir w T ooden bowl in which to receive boiled rice. The old monasteries of India contain chapels and cells for the monks. The largest, however, had accommodation for only thirty or forty; while at the present time a single monastery in Thibet, visited by MM. Hue and Gabet (the lamasery of Kounboum), is occupied by four thousand lamas. The structure of these monasteries shows clearly that the monkish system of the Buddhists is far too an¬ cient to have been copied from the Christians. Is, then, the reverse true ? Did the Catholic Christians derive their monastic institutions, their bells, their rosary, their tonsure, their incense, their mitre and cope, their worship of relics, their custom of confession, etc., from the Buddhists ? Such is the opinion of Mr. Prinsep (Thibet, Tartary, and Mongolia, 1852) and of Lassen (Indische Alterthumskunde). But, in reply to this view, Mr. Hard- wicke objects that we do not find in history any trace of such an influence. Possibly, therefore, the resemblances may be the result of common human tendencies working out, independently, the same results. If, however, it is necessary to assume that either religion copied from the other, the Buddhists may claim originality, on the ground of antiquity. But, however this may be, the question returns, Why call Buddhism the Protestantism of the East, when all its external features so much resemble those of the Koman Catholic Church ? We answer: Because deeper and more essential rela¬ tions connect Brahmanism with the Bomish Church, and the Buddhist system with Protestantism. The human mind in Asia went through the same course of experi¬ ence, afterward repeated in Europe. It protested, in the BUDDHISM. 143 interest of humanity, against the oppression of a priestly caste. Brahmanism, like the Church of Rome, established a system of sacramental salvation* in the hands of a sacred order. Buddhism, like Protestantism, revolted, and estab¬ lished a doctrine of individual salvation based on personal character. Brahmanism, like the Church of Rome, teaches an exclusive spiritualism, glorifying penances and martyr¬ dom, and considers the body the enemy of the soul. But Buddhism and Protestantism accept nature and its laws, and make a religion of humanity as well as of devotion. To such broad statements numerous exceptions may doubtless be always found, but these are the large lines of distinction. The Roman Catholic Church and Brahmanism place the essence of religion in sacrifices. Each is eminently a sacrificial system. The daily sacrifice of the mass is the central feature of the Romish Church. So Brahmanism is a system of sacrifices. But Protestantism and Buddhism save the soul by teaching. In the Church of Rome the sermon is subordinate to the mass; in Protestantism and in Buddhism sermons are the main instruments by which souls are saved. Brahmanism is a system of inflexible castes; the priestly caste is made distinct and supreme; and in Romanism the priesthood almost constitutes the church. In Buddhism and Protestantism the laity re¬ gain their rights. Therefore, notwithstanding the external resemblance of Buddhist rites and ceremonies to those of the Roman Catholic Church, the internal resemblance is to Protestantism. Buddhism in Asia, like Protestantism in Europe, is a revolt of nature against spirit, of humanity against caste, of individual freedom against the despotism of an order, of salvation by faith against salvation by sacraments. And as all revolts are apt to go too far, so it has been with Buddhism. In asserting the rights of nature against the tyranny of spirit, Buddhism has lost God. There is in Buddhism neither creation nor Creator. Its tracts say : “ The rising of the world is a natural case.” “ Its rising and perishing are by nature itself.” “ It is natural that the world should rise and perish.” * While * Upham, Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon. 144 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. in Brahmanism absolute spirit is the only reality, and this world is an illusion, the Buddhists know only this world, and the eternal world is so entirely unknown as to be equivalent to nullity. But yet, as no revolt, however radical, gives up all its antecedents, so Buddhism has the same aim as Brahmanism, namely, to escape from the vicissitudes of time into the absolute rest of eternity. They agree as to the object of existence ; they differ as to the method of reaching it. The Brahman and the Roman Catholic think that eternal rest is to be obtained by intel¬ lectual submission, by passive reception of what is taught us and done for us by others : the Buddhist and Protest¬ ant believe it must be accomplished by an intelligent and free obedience to Divine laws. Mr. Hodgson, who has long studied the features of this religion in Nepaul, says : “ The one infallible diagnostic of Buddhism is a belief in the infinite capacity of the human intellect.” The name of Buddha means the Intelligent One, or the one who is wide awake. And herein also is another resemblance to Protestantism, which emphasizes so strongly the value of free thought and the seeking after truth. In Judaism we find two spiritual powers, — the prophet and the priest. The priest is the organ of the pardoning and saving love of God; the prophet, of his inspiring truth. In the European Reformation, the prophet revolting against the priest founded Protestantism; in the Asiatic Reformation he founded Buddhism. Finally, Brahmanism and the Roman Catholic Church are more religious; Buddhism and Protestant Christianity, more moral. Such, sketched in broad outline, is the justification for the title of this chapter; but we shall be more convinced of its accuracy after looking more closely into the resemblances above indicated between the religious ceremonies of the East and West. These resemblances are chiefly between the Buddhists and the monastic orders of the Church of Rome. How it is a fact, but one which has never been sufficiently noticed, that the whole monastic system of Rome is based on a principle foreign to the essential ideas of that church. The fundamental doctrine of Rome is that of salvation by BUDDHISM. 145 sacraments. This alone justifies its maxim, that “ out of communion with the Church there is no salvation/’ The sacrament of Baptism regenerates the soul; the sacra¬ ment of Penance purifies it from mortal sin; the sacra¬ ment of the Eucharist renews its life; and that of Holy Orders qualifies the priest for administering these and the other sacraments. But if the soul is saved by sacraments, duly administered and received, why go into a religious order to save the soul ? Why seek by special acts of piety, self-denial, and separation from the world that which comes sufficiently through the usual sacraments of the church ? The more we examine this subject, the more we shall see that the whole monastic system of the Church of Borne is an included Protestantism, or a Protest¬ antism within the church. Many of the reformers before the Beformation were monks. Savonarola, St. Bernard, Luther himself, were monks. From the monasteries came many of the leaders of the Beformation. The Protestant element in the Bomish Church was shut up in monasteries during many centuries, and remained there as a foreign substance, an alien element included in the vast body. When a bullet, or other foreign substance, is lodged in the flesh, the vital powers go to work and build up a little wall around it, and shut it in. So when Catholics came who were not satis¬ fied with a merely sacramental salvation, and longed for a higher life, the sagacity of the Church put them together in convents, and kept them by themselves, where they could do no harm. One of the curious homologons of history is this repetition in Europe of the course of events in Asia. Buddhism was, for many centuries, tolerated in India in the same wav. It took the form of a monasti- */ cism included in Brahmanism, and remained a part of the Hindoo religion. And so, when the crisis came and the conflict began, this Hindoo Protestantism maintained itself for a long time in India, as Lutheranism continued for a century in Italy, Spain, and Austria. But it was at last driven out of its birthplace, as Protestantism was driven from Italy and Spain; and now only the ruins of its topes, its temples, and its monasteries remain to show/ 7 J 146 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. how extensive was its former influence in the midst of Brahmanism. § 2. Extent of Buddhism. Its Scriptures. Yet, though expelled from India, and unable to main¬ tain its control over any Aryan race, it has exhibited a powerful propagandist element, and so has converted to its creed the majority of the Mongol nations. It em¬ braces nearly or quite (for statistics here are only guess¬ work)* three hundred millions of human beings. It is the popular religion of China; the state religion of Thibet, and of the Birman Empire; it is the religion of Japan, Siam, Anam, Assam, Nepaul, Ceylon, in short, of nearly the whole of Eastern Asia. Concerning this vast religion we have had, until re¬ cently, very few means of information. But, during the last quarter of a century, so many sources have been opened, that at present we can easily study it in its * Here are a few of the guesses : — Christians Buddhist . Cunningham, Bhilsa Topes. • •••••• • •••••• 270 millions. 222 Christians Jews . Mohammedans Brahmans . Buddhists Hassel, Penny Cyclopaedia. • •••••• • •••••# • •••••• • •••••• 120 millions. 4 252 “ 111 315 Christians . Jews Brahmans . Mohammedans Buddhists . Johnston, Physical Atlas. *•••••• ••••••• 301 millions. 5 133 “ 110 “ 245 “ Christians Mohammedans Jews Buddhists . Perkins, Johnson's American Atlas. • • • • s i • • • ••••••• ••••••• 369 millions. 160 “ 6 320 “ Buddhists New American Cyclopaedia. •••••#* 290 millions. And Professor Newmann estimates the number of Buddhists at 369 .millions. BUDDHISM. 147 original features and its subsequent development. The sacred books of this religion have been preserved inde¬ pendently, in Ceylon, Nepaul, China, and Thibet. Mr. G-. Tumour, Mr. Georgely, and Mr. R. Spence Hardy are our chief authorities in regard to the Pitikas, or the Scriptures in the Pali language, preserved in Ceylon. Mr. Hodgson has collected and studied the Sanskrit Scriptures, found in Nepaul. In 1825 he transmitted to the Asiatic Society in Bengal sixty works in Sanskrit, and two hundred and fifty in the language of Thibet. M. Csoma, an Hungarian physician, discovered in the Buddhist monasteries of Thibet an immense collection of sacred books, which had been translated from the Sanskrit works previously studied by Mr. Hodgson. In 1829 M. Schmidt found the same works in the Mongolian. M. Stanislas Julien, an eminent student of the Chinese, has also translated works on Buddhism from that language, which ascend to the year 76 of our era.* More recently inscriptions cut upon rocks, columns, and other monuments in Northern India, have been transcribed and translated. Mr. James Prinsep deciphered these inscriptions, and found them to be in the ancient language of the province of Magadha where Buddh¬ ism first appeared. They contain the decrees of a king, or raja, named Pyadasi, whom Mr. Tumour has shown to be the same as the famous Asoka, before alluded to. This king appears to have come to the throne somewhere between B. c. 319 and b. c. 260. Similar inscriptions have been discovered throughout India, proving to the satisfaction of such scholars as Burnouf, Prinsep, Tumour, Lassen, Weber, Max Muller, and Saint-Hilaire, that Buddh¬ ism had become almost the state religion of India, in the fourth century before Christ.*}* * Le Bouddha et sa Religion. Par J. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire. —- Eastern Monachism. By Spence Hardy. — Burnouf, Introduction, etc. — Koeppen, Die Religion des Buddha. + The works from which this chapter has been mostly drawn are these : — Introduction a l’Histoire du Buddhisme indien. Par E. Bur¬ nouf. (Paris, 1844.) Le Bouddha et sa Religion. Par J. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire. (Paris, 1860.) Eastern Monachism. By R. Spence Hardy. (London, 1850.) A Manual of Buddhism in its Modern Development. By R. Spence Hardy. (London, 1853.) Die Religion des Buddha. Yon Karl F. Koeppen. (Berlin, 1857.) Indische Alterthumskunde. Yon 148 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. § 3. Sakya-muni, the Founder of Buddhism. Nortli of Central India and of the kingdom of Oude, near the borders of Nepaul, there reigned, at the end of the seventh century before Christ, a wise and good king, in his capital city, Kapilavastu.* He was one of the last of the great Solar race, celebrated in the ancient epics of India. His wife, named Maya because of her great beauty, became the mother of a prince, who was named Siddartha, and afterward known as the Buddlia.-f* She died seven days after his birth, and the child was brought up by his maternal aunt. The young prince dis¬ tinguished himself by his personal and intellectual qual¬ ities, but still more by his early piety. It appears from the laws of Manu that it was not unusual, in the earliest periods of Brahmanism, for those seeking a superior piety to turn hermits, and to live alone in the forest, engaged in acts of prayer, meditation, abstinence, and the study of the Yedas. This practice, however, seems to have been confined to the Brahmans. It was, therefore, a grief to the king, when his son, in the flower of his youth and Christian Lassen. (Bonn, 1852.) Der Buddhismus, Seine Dogmen, Ges- chichte, und Literatur. Yon W. Wassiljew. (St. Petersburg, I860.) Ueber Buddha’s Todesjahr. Yon N. L. Westergaard. (Breslau, 1862.) Gott in der Geschichte. Yon C. C. J. Bunsen. (Leipzig, 1858.) The Bhilsa Topes, or Buddhist Monuments of Central India. By A. Cunning¬ ham. (London, 1854.) Buddhism in Thibet. By Emil Schlagintweit. (Leipzig and London, 1863.) Travels in Eastern countries by Hue and Gabet, and others. References to Buddhism in the writings of Max Muller, Maurice, Baur, Hardwick, Fergusson, Pritchard, Wilson, Cole- brooke, etc. * At the end of the fourth century of our era a Chinese Buddhist made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Buddha, and found the city in ruins. Another Chinese pilgrim visited it A. d. 632, and was able to trace the remains of the ruined palace, and saw a room which had been occupied by Buddha. These travels have been translated from the Chi¬ nese by M. Stanislas Julien. + Buddha is not a proper name, but an official title. Just as we ought not to say Jesus Christ, but always Jesus the Christ, so we should say Siddartha the Buddha, or Sakya-muni the Buddha, or Gautama ; the Buddha. The first of these names, Siddartha (contracted from Sarvdrtha- siddha) was the baptismal name given by his father, and means “The fulfilment of every wish.” Sakya-muni means “The hermit of the race of Sakya,” — Sakya being the ancestral name of his father’s race. The name Gautama is stated by Koeppen to be “der priesterliche Beiname des Geschlechts der Sakya,” —whatever that may mean. BUDDHISM. 149 highly accomplished in every kingly faculty of body and mind, began to turn his thoughts toward the life of an anchorite. In fact, the young Siddartha seems to have gone through that deep experience out of which the great prophets of mankind have always been born. The evils of the world pressed on his heart and brain; the very air seemed full of mortality; all things were passing away. Was anything permanent ? anything stable ? Nothing v but truth ; only the absolute, eternal law of things. “ Let me see that/’ said he, “ and I can give lasting peace to mankind. Then shall I become their deliverer.” So, in opposition to the strong entreaties of his father, wife, and friends, he left the palace one night, and exchanged the position of a prince for that of a mendicant. “ I will never return to the palace,” said he, “ till I have attained to the sight of the divine law, and so become Buddha.” * He first visited the Brahmans, and listened to their doc¬ trines, but found no satisfaction therein. The wisest among them could not teach him true peace, — that pro¬ found inward rest, which was already called Nirvana. He was twenty-nine years old. Although disapproving of the Bralimanic austerities as an end, he practised them dur¬ ing six years, in order to subdue the senses. He then became satisfied that the path to perfection did not lie that way. He therefore resumed his former diet and a more comfortable mode of life, and so lost many disciples who had been attracted by his amazing austerity. Alone in his hermitage, he came at last to that solid conviction, that knowledge never to be shaken, of the laws of things, which had seemed to him the only foundation of a truly free life. The spot where, after a week of constant med¬ itation, he at last arrived at this beatific vision, became one of the most sacred places in India. He was seated under a tree, his face to the east, not having moved for a day and night, when he attained the triple science, which was to rescue mankind from its woes. Twelve hundred years after the death of the Buddha, a Chinese pilgrim w r as shown what then passed for the sacred tree. It was * The Sanskrit root, whence the English “bode” and “forebode,” means “ to know.” 150 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. surrounded by high brick walls, with an opening to the east, and near it stood many topes and monasteries. In the opinion of M. Saint-Hilaire, these ruins, and the lo¬ cality of the tree, may yet be rediscovered. The spot deserves to be sought for, since there began a movement which has, on the whole, been a source of happiness and improvement to immense multitudes of human beings, during twenty-four centuries. Having attained this inward certainty of vision, he de¬ cided to teach the world his truth. He knew well what it would bring him, — what opposition, insult, neglect, scorn. But he thought of three classes of men: those who were already on the way to the truth, and did not need him; those who were fixed in error, and whom he could not help; and the poor doubters, uncertain of their way. It w T as to help these last, the doubters, that the Buddha went forth to preach. On his way to the holy city of India, Benares, a serious difficulty arrested him at the Ganges, namely, his having no money to pay the boatman for his passage. At Benares he made his first converts, “ turning the wheel of the law ” for the first time. His discourses are contained in the sacred books of the Buddhists. He converted great numbers, his father among the rest, but met with fierce opposition from the Hindoo Scribes and Pharisees, the leading Brahmans. So he lived and taught, and died at the age of eighty years. Naturally, as soon as the prophet was dead he became very precious in all eyes. His body was burned with much pomp, and great contention arose for the uncon- sumed fragments of bone. At last they were divided into eight parts, and a tope was erected, by each of the eight fortunate possessors, over such relics as had fallen to him. The ancient books of the North and South agree as to the places where the topes w r ere built, and no Boman Catholic relics are so well authenticated. The Buddha, who believed with Jesus that “ the flesh profitetli nothing,” and that “the word is spirit and life,” would probably have been the first to condemn this idolatry. But fetich- worship lingers in the purest religions. The time of the death of Sakya-muni, like most Orient- BUDDHISM. 151 al dates, is uncertain. The Northern Buddhists, in Thi¬ bet, Nepaul, etc., vary greatly among themselves. The Chinese Buddhists are not more certain. Lassen, there¬ fore, with most of the scholars, accepts as authentic the period upon which all the authorities of the South, espe¬ cially of Ceylon, agree, which is b. c. 543. Lately Wes- tergaard has mitten a monograph on the subject, in which, by a labored argument, he places the date about two hun¬ dred years later. Whether he will convince his brother savans remains to be seen. Immediately after the death of Sakya-muni a general council of his most eminent disciples was called, to fix the doctrine and discipline of the church. The legend runs that three of the disciples were selected to recite from memory what the sage had taught. The first was appointed to repeat his teaching upon discipline; “for discipline,” said they, “is the soul of the law.” Whereupon Upali, mounting the pulpit, repeated all of the precepts concern¬ ing morals and the ritual. Then Ananda was chosen to give his master’s discourses concerning faith or doctrine. Finally, Kasyapa announced the philosophy and meta¬ physics of the system. The council sat during seven months, and the threefold division of the sacred Scrip¬ tures of Buddhism was the result of their work; for Sakya-muni wrote nothing himself. He taught by con¬ versation only. The second general council was called to correct certain abuses which had begun to creep in. It was held about a hundred years after the teacher’s death. A great frater¬ nity of monks proposed to relax the conventual discipline, by allowing greater liberty in taking food, in drinking in¬ toxicating liquor, and taking gold and silver if offered in alms. The schismatic monks were degraded, to the number of ten thousand, but formed a new sect. The third council, held during the reign of the great Buddhist Emperor Asoka, was called on account of heretics, who, to the number of sixty thousand, were degraded and ex¬ pelled. After this, missionaries were despatched to preach the word in different lands. The names and success of these missionaries are recorded in the Mahawanso, or 152 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Sacred History, translated by Mr. George Tumour from the Singhalese. But what is remarkable is, that the relics of some of them have been recently found in the Sanchi topes, and in other sacred buildings, contained in caskets, w r ith their names inscribed on them. These inscribed names correspond with those given to the same mission¬ aries in the historical books of Ceylon. For example, according to the Mahawanso, two missionaries, one named Kassapo (or Kasyapa), and the other called Majjhima (or Madhyama), went to preach in the region of the Him¬ alayan Mountains. They journeyed, preached, suffered, and toiled, side by side, so the ancient history informs us, — a history composed in Ceylon in the fifth century of our era, with the aid of works still more ancient; * and now, when the second Sanchi tope was opened in 1851, by Major Cunningham, the relics of these very mission¬ aries were discovered.-f* The tope was perfect in 1819, when visited by Captain Fell,— “not a stone fallen.” And though afterward injured, in 1822, by some amateur relic-hunters, its contents remained intact. It is a solid hemisphere, built of rough stones without mortar, thirty- nine feet in diameter; it has a basement six feet high, projecting all around five feet, and so making a terrace. It is surrounded by a stone railing, with carved figures. In the centre of this tope was found a small chamber, made of six stones, containing the relic-box of white sandstone, about ten inches square. Inside this were four caskets of steatite (a sacred stone among the Buddh¬ ists), each containing small portions of burnt human bone. On the outside lid of one of these boxes was this inscription: “ Belies of the emancipated Kasyapa Gotra, missionary to the whole Hemawanta.” And on the inside of the lid was carved: “ Belies of the emancipated Mad¬ hyama.” These relics, with those of eight other leading men of the Buddhist Church, had rested in this monu¬ ment since the age of Asoka, and cannot have been placed there later than b. c. 220. The missionary spirit displayed by Buddhism distin¬ guishes it from all other religions which preceded Christian- + Bliilsa Topes. * Saint-Hilaire. BUDDHISM. 153 ity. The religion of Confucius never attempted to make converts outside of China. Brahmanism never went beyond India. The system of Zoroaster was a Persian religion; that of Egypt was confined to the Valley of the Nile; that of Greece to the Hellenic race. But Buddh¬ ism was inflamed with the desire of bringing all man¬ kind to a knowledge of its truths. Its ardent and success¬ ful missionaries converted multitudes in Nepaul, Thibet, Birmah, Ceylon, China, Siam, Japan; and in all these states its monasteries are to-day the chief sources of knowledge and centres of instruction to the people. It is idle to class such a religion as this with the superstitions which debase mankind. Its power lay in the strength of conviction which inspired its teachers; and that, again, must have come from the sight of truth, not the belief in error. § 4. Leading Doctrines of Biiddhism. What, then, are the doctrines of Buddhism ? What are the essential teachings of the Buddha and his disciples ? Is it a system, as we are so often told, which denies God and immortality ? Has atheism such a power over human hearts in the East ? Is the Asiatic mind thus in love with eternal death ? Let us try to discover. The hermit of Sakya, as we have seen, took his de¬ parture from two profound convictions, — the evil of perpetual change, and the possibility of something perma¬ nent. He might have used the language of the Book of Ecclesiastes, and cried, “Vanity of vanities ! all is vanity!” The profound gloom of that wonderful book is based on the same course of thought as that of the Buddha, namely, that everything goes round and round in a circle; that nothing moves forward; that there is no new thing under the sun; that the sun rises and sets, and rises again; that the wind blows north and south, and east and west, and then returns according to its circuits. Where can rest be found ? where peace ? where any certainty ? Siddartha was young; but he saw age ap¬ proaching. He was in health; but he knew that sick- 7* 154 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. ness and death were lying in wait for him. He could not escape from the sight of this perpetual round of growth and decay, life and death, joy and woe. He cried out, from the depths of his soul, for something stable, permanent, real. Again, he was assured that this emancipation from change and decay was to be found in knowledge. But by knowledge he did not intend the perception and recol¬ lection of outward facts, — not learning. Nor did he mean speculative knowledge, or the power of reasoning. He meant intuitive knowledge, the sight of eternal truth, the perception of the unchanging laws of the universe. This was a knowledge which was not to be attained by any merely intellectual process, but by moral training, by purity of heart and life. Therefore he renounced the world, and went into the forest, and became an anchorite. But just at this point he separated himself from the Brahmans. They, also were, and are, believers in the value of mortification, abnegation, penance. They had their hermits in his day. But they believed in the value of penance as accumulating merit. They practised self- denial for its own sake. The Buddha practised it as a means to a higher end, — emancipation, purification, intu¬ ition. And this end he believed that he had at last attained. At last he saw the truth. He became “ wide awake.” Illusions disappeared; the reality was before him. He was the Buddha, — the Man who knew. Still he was a man, not a God. And here again is another point of departure from Brahmanism. In that system, the final result of devotion was to become ab¬ sorbed in God. The doctrine of the Brahmans is divine absorption; that of the Buddhists, human development. In the Bralimanical system, God is everything and man nothing. In the Buddhist, man is everything and God nothing. Here is its atheism, that it makes so much of man as to forget God. It is perhaps “ without God in the world,” but it does not deny him. It accepts the doctrine of the three worlds, — the eternal world of abso¬ lute being; the celestial world of the gods, Brahma, Indra, Vischnu, Siva; and the finite world, consisting of indi- BUDDHISM. 155 v- - vidual souls and the laws of nature. Only it says, of the world of absolute being, Nirvana, we know nothing. That is our aim and end; but it is the direct opposite to all we know. It is, therefore, to us as nothing. The celestial world, that of the gods, is even of less moment to us. "What we know are the everlasting laws of nature, by obedience to which w T e rise, disobeying which we fall, by perfect obedience to which we shall at last obtain Nir¬ vana, and rest forever. To the mind of the Buddha, therefore, the world con¬ sisted of two orders of existence, — souls and laws. He saw an infinite multitude of souls, — in insects, animals, men, — and saw that they were surrounded by inflexible laws, — the laws of nature. To know these and to obey them, — this was emancipation. The fundamental doctrine of Buddhism, taught by its founder and received by all Buddhists without exception, in the North and in the South, in Birmah and Thibet, in Ceylon and China, is the doctrine of the four sublime truths, namely: — 1. All existence is evil, because all existence is subject to change and decay. 2. The source of this evil is the desire for things which are to change and pass away. 3. This desire, and the evil which follows it, are not inevitable; for if we choose we can arrive at Nirvana, when both shall wholly cease. 4. There is a fixed and certain method to adopt, by pursuing which we attain this end, without possibility of failure. These four truths are the basis of the system. They are: 1st, the evil; 2d, its cause; 3d, its end; 4th, the way of reaching the end. £-- Then follow the eight steps of this way, namely: — 1. Bight belief, or the correct faith. 2. Bight judgment, or wise application of that faith to life. 3. Bight utterance, or perfect truth in all that we say and do. 4. Bight motives, or proposing always a proper end and aim. 156 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. 5. Right occupation, or an outward life not involving sin. 6. Right obedience, or faithful observance of duty. 7. Right memory, or a proper recollection of past conduct. 8. Right meditation, or keeping the mind fixed on permanent truth. After this system of doctrine follow certain moral com¬ mands and prohibitions, namely, five, which apply to all men, and five others which apply only to the novices or the monks. The five first commandments are : 1st, do not kill; 2d, do not steal; 3d, do not commit adultery; 4th, do not lie ; 5th, do not become intoxicated. The other five are: 1st, take no solid food after noon; 2d, do not visit dances, singing, or theatrical representations; 3d, use no ornaments or perfumery in dress ; 4th, use no luxurious beds ; 5th, accept neither gold nor silver. All these doctrines and precepts have been the subject of innumerable commentaries and expositions. Every¬ thing has been commented, explained, and elucidated. Systems of casuistry as voluminous as those of the Fathers of the Company of Jesus, systems of theology as full of minute analysis as the great Summa Totius Theologicc of St. Thomas, are to be found in the libraries of the monasteries of Thibet and Ceylon. The monks have their Golden Legends, their Lives of Saints, full of miracles and marvels. On this simple basis of a few rules and convictions has arisen a vast fabric of meta¬ physics. Much of this literature is instructive and enter¬ taining. Some of it is profound. Baur, who had made a special study of the intricate speculations of the Gnostics, compares them with “ the vast abstractions of Buddhism.” § 5. The Spirit of Buddhism Rational and Humane. Ultimately, two facts appear, as we contemplate this system, — first, its rationalism; second, its humanity. It is a system of rationalism. It appeals throughout to human reason. It proposes to save man, not from a future but a present hell, and to save him by teach BUDDHISM. 157 ing. Its great means of influence is the sermon. The Buddha preached innumerable sermons; his missionaries went abroad preaching. Buddhism has made all its con¬ quests honorably, by a process of rational appeal to the human mind. It was never propagated by force, even when it had the power of imperial rajas to support it. Certainly, it is a very encouraging fact in the history of man, that the two religions which have made more con¬ verts than any other, Buddhism and Christianity, have not depended for their success on the sword of the con¬ queror or the frauds of priestcraft, but have gained their victories in the fair conflict of reason with reason. We grant that Buddhism has not been without its supersti¬ tions and its errors ; but it has not deceived, and it has not persecuted. In this respect it can teach Christians a les¬ son. Buddhism has no prejudices against those who con¬ fess another faith. The Buddhists have founded no In¬ quisition ; they have combined the zeal which converted kingdoms with a toleration almost inexplicable to our Western experience. Only one religious war has dark¬ ened their peaceful history during twenty-three cen¬ turies, — that which took place in Thibet, but of which we know little. A Siamese told Crawford that he be¬ lieved all the religions of the world to be branches of the true religion. A Buddhist in Ceylon sent his son to a Christian school, and told the astonished missionary, “ I respect Christianity as much as Buddhism, for I regard it as a help to Buddhism.” MM. Hue and Gabet converted no Buddhist in Tartary and Thibet, but they partially converted one, bringing him so far as to say that he con¬ sidered himself at the same time a good Christian and a good Buddhist. Buddhism is also a religion of humanity. Because it lays such stress on reason, it respects all men, since all possess this same gift. In its origin it broke down all castes. All men, of whatever rank, can enter its priest¬ hood. It has an unbounded charity for all souls, and holds it a duty to make sacrifices for all. One legend tells us that the Buddha gave his body for food to a starved tigress, who could not nurse her young through 158 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. weakness. An incident singularly like that in the fourth chapter of John is recorded of the hermit, who asked a woman of low caste for water, and when she expressed surprise said, “ Give me drink, and I will give you truth/’ The unconditional command, “ Thou shalt not kill,” which applies to all living creatures, has had great in¬ fluence in softening the manners* of the Mongols. This command is connected with the doctrine of transmigra¬ tion of souls, which is one of the essential doctrines of this system as well as of Brahmanism. But Buddhism has abolished human sacrifices, and indeed all bloody offerings, and its innocent altars are only crowned with flowers and leaves. It also inculcates a positive human¬ ity, consisting of good actions. All its priests are sup¬ ported by daily alms. It is a duty of the Buddhist to be hospitable to strangers, to establish hospitals for the sick and poor, and even for sick animals, to plant shade-trees, and ereot houses for travellers. Mr. Malcoin, the Baptist missionary, says that he was resting one day in a zayat in a small village in Birmah, and was scarcely seated when a woman brought a nice mat for him to lie on. Another brought cool water, and a man went and picked for him half a dozen good oranges. None sought or ex¬ pected, he says, the least reward, but disappeared, and left him to his repose. He adds: “ None can ascend the river without being struck with the hardihood, skill, energy, and good-humor of the Birmese boatmen. In point of temper and morality they are infinitely superior to the boatmen on our Western waters. In my various trips, I have seen no quarrel nor heard a hard word.” Mr. Malcom goes on thus: “ Many of these people have never seen a white man before, but I am constantly struck with their politeness. They desist from anything on the slightest intimation; never crowd around to be troublesome; and if on my showing them my watch or pencil-case, or anything which particularly attracts them, there are more than can get a sight, the outer ones stand aloof and wait till their turn comes. “ I saw no intemperance in Birmah, though an intoxi¬ cating liquor is made easily of the juice of a palm. .... BUDDHISM. 159 "A man may travel from one end of the kingdom to the other without money, feeding and lodging as well as the people.” “ I have seen thousands together, for hours, on public occasions, rejoicing in all ardor, and no act of violence or case of intoxication. “ During my whole residence in the country I never saw an indecent act or immodest gesture in man or woman.I have seen hundreds of men and women bathing, and no immodest or careless act. .... “ Children are treated with great kindness, not only by the mother but the father, who, when unemployed, takes the young child in his arms, and seems pleased to attend to it, while the mother cleans the rice or sits unemployed at his side. I have as often seen fathers caressing female infants as male. A widow with male and female children is more likely to be sought in marriage than if she has none. “ Children are almost as reverent to parents as among the Chinese. The aged are treated with great care and tenderness, and occupy the best places in all assemblies.” According to Saint-Hilaire’s opinion, the Buddhist mo¬ rality is one of endurance, patience, submission, and absti¬ nence, rather than of action, energy, enterprise. Love for all beings is its nucleus, every animal being our possi¬ ble relative. To love our enemies, to offer our lives for animals, to abstain from even defensive warfare, to govern ourselves, to avoid vices, to pay obedience to superiors, to reverence age, to provide food and shelter for men and animals, to dig wells and plant trees, to despise no reli¬ gion, show no intolerance, not to persecute, are the virtues of these people. Polygamy is tolerated, but not approved. Monogamy is general in Ceylon, Siam, Birmah; some¬ what less so in Thibet and Mongolia. Woman is better treated by Buddhism than by any other Oriental religion. § 6. Buddhism as a Religion. But what is the religious life of Buddhism ? Can there be a religion without a God ? And if Buddhism has no 160 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. God, how can it have worship, prayer, devotion ? There is no doubt that it has all these. We have seen that its cultus is much like that of the Boman Catholic Church. It differs from this church in having no secular priests, but only regulars; all its clergy are monks, taking the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Their vows, however, are not irrevocable ; they can relinquish the yel¬ low robe, and return into the world, if they find they have mistaken their vocation. The God of Buddhism is the Buddha himself, the deified man, who has become an infinite being by entering Nirvana. To him prayer is addressed, and it is so natural for man to pray, that no theory can prevent him from doing it. In Thibet, prayer-meetings are held even in the streets. Hue says : “ There is a very touching custom at Lliassa. In the evening, just before sundown, all the people leave their work, and meet in groups in the public streets and squares. All kneel and begin to chant their prayers in a low and musical tone. The concert of song winch rises from all these numerous reunions produces an immense and solemn harmony, which deeply impresses the mind. We could not help sadly comparing this Pagan city, where all the people prayed together, with our Euro¬ pean cities, where men would blush to be seen making the sign of the cross.” In Thibet confession was early enjoined. Public wor¬ ship is there a solemn confession before the assembled priests. It confers entire absolution from sins. It con¬ sists in an open confession of sin, and a promise to sin no more. Consecrated water is also used in the service of the Pagodas. There are thirty-five Buddhas who have preceded Sakya- muni, and are considered the chief powers for taking away sin. These are called the “ Thirty-five Buddhas of Confession.” Sakya-muni, however, has been included in the number. Some lamas are also joined with them in the sacred pictures, as Tsonkhapa, a lama born in A. D. 1555, and others. The mendicant priests of Buddha are bound to confess twice a month, at the new and full moon. BUDDHISM. 161 The Buddhists have also nunneries for women. It is related that Sakya-muni consented to establish them at the earnest request of his aunt and nurse, and of his favorite disciple, Ananda. These nuns take the same vows as the monks. Their rules -require them to show reverence even to the youngest monk, and to use no angry or harsh words to a priest. The nun must be willing to be taught; she must go once a fortnight for this purpose to some virtuous teacher ; she must not devote more than two weeks at a time to spiritual retirement; she must not go out merely for amusement; after two years’ prepara¬ tion she can be initiated, and she is bound to attend the closing ceremonies of the rainy season. § 7. Karina and Nirvana. One of the principal metaphysical doctrines of this system is that which it called Karma. This means the law of consequences, by which every act committed in one life entails results in another. This law operates until one reaches Nirvana. Mr. Hardy goes so far as to suppose that Karma causes the merits or demerits of each soul to result at death in the production of another con¬ sciousness, and in fact to result in a new person. But this must be an error. Karma is the law of consequences, by which every act receives its exact recompense in the next world, where the soul is bom again. But unless the same soul passes on, such a recompense is impossible. “ Karma” said Buddha, “ is the most essential property of all beings ; it is inherited from previous births, it is the cause of all good and evil, and the reason why some are mean and some exalted when they come into the world. It is like the shadow which always accompanies the body.” Buddha himself obtained all his elevation by means of the Karma obtained in previous states. No one can obtain Karma or merit, but those who hear the dis¬ courses of Buddha. There has been much discussion among scholars con¬ cerning the true meaning of Nirvana, the end of all Bud¬ dhist expectation. Is it annihilation ? Or is it absorp- 162 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. tion in God ? The weight of authority, no doubt, is in favor of the first view. Burnouf’s conclusion is : “ For Buddhist theists, it is the absorption of the individual life in God; for atheists, absorption of this individual life in the nothing. But for both, it is deliverance from all evil, it is supreme affranchisement.” In the opinion that it is annihilation agree Max Muller, Tumour, Schmidt, and Hardy. And M. Saint-Hilaire, while calling it “ a hideous faith,” nevertheless assigns it to a third part of the human race. But, on the other hand, scholars of the highest rank deny this view. In particular, Bunsen (Gott in cler Ges- chichte) calls attention to the fact that, in the oldest monuments of this religion, the earliest Sutras, Nirvana is spoken of as a condition attained in the present life. How then can it mean annihilation ? It is a state in which all desires cease, all passions die. Bunsen believes that the Buddha never denied or questioned God or im¬ mortality. The following account of Nirvana is taken from the o Pali Sacred Books : — “ Again the king of Saga! said to Nagasena: ‘ Is the joy of Nirvana unmixed, or is it associated with sorrow ? * The priest replied that it is unmixed satisfaction, entirely free from sorrow. “ Again the king of Sagal said to Nagasena: * Is Nir¬ vana in the east, west, south, or north; above or below ? Is there such a place as Nirvana ? If so, where is it ?’ Nagasena: ‘ Neither in the east, south, west, nor north, neither in the sky above, nor in the earth below, nor in any of the infinite sakwalas, is there such a place as Nir¬ vana.’ Milinda: ‘ Then if Nirvana have no locality, there can be no such thing; and when it is said that any one attains Nirvana, the declaration is false.’ Nagasena: 4 There is no such place as Nirvana, and yet it exists ; the priest who seeks it in the right manner will attain it.’ ‘ When Nirvana is attained, is there such a place V Na¬ gasena: ‘ When a priest attains Nirvana there is such a place.’ Milinda: ‘ Where is that place ? ’ Nagasena: * Wherever the precepts can be observed ; it may be any- BUDDHISM. 1G3 where : just as he who has two eyes can see the sky from any or all places; or as all places may have an eastern side.’ ” The Buddhist asserts Nirvana as the object of all his hope, yet, if you ask him what it is, may reply, " Nothing.” But this cannot mean that the highest good of man is annihilation. No pessimism could be more extreme than such a doctrine. Such a belief is not in accordance w r ith human nature. Tennyson is wiser when he writes : — “ Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death. “ ’T is life, whereof our nerves are scant, 0 life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want. ” The Buddhist, when he says that Nirvana is nothing, means simply that it is no thing ; that it is nothing to our present conceptions ; that it is the opposite of all we know, the contradiction of what we call life now, a state so sublime, so wholly different from anything we know or can know now, that it is the same thing as nothing to us. All present life is change; that is permanence: all pres¬ ent life is going up and down ; that is stability: all present life is the life of sense; that is spirit. The Buddhist denies God in the same way. He is the unknowable. He is the impossible to be conceived of. “ Who shall name Him And dare to say, ‘ I believe in Him ’ ? Who shall deny Him, And venture to affirm, ‘ I believe in Him not l ’ ”* To the Buddhist, in short, the element of time and the finite is all, as to the Brahman the element of eternity is all. It is the most absolute contradiction of Brahmanism which we can conceive. It seems impossible for the Eastern mind to hold at the same time the two conceptions of God and nature, the in¬ finite and the finite, eternity and time. The Brahmans * Goethe, Faust. 164 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. accept the reality of God, the infinite and the eternal, and omit the reality of the finite, of nature, history, time, and the world. The Buddhist accepts the last, and ignores the first. This question has been fully discussed by Mr. Alger in his very able work, “ Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life,” and his conclusion is wholly opposed to the view which makes Nirvana equivalent to annihila¬ tion. § 8. Good and Evil of Buddhism. The good and the evil of Buddhism are thus summed up by M. Saint-Hilaire. He remarks that the first peculiarity of Buddhism is the wholly practical direction taken by its founder. He proposes to himself the salvation of mankind. He ab¬ stains from the subtle philosophy of the Brahmans, and takes the most direct and simple way to his end. But he does not offer low and sensual rewards; he does not, like so many lawgivers, promise to his followers riches, pleas¬ ures, conquests, power. He invites them to salvation by means of virtue, knowledge, and self-denial. Not in the Yedas, nor the books which proceed from it, do we find such noble appeals, though they too look at the infinite as their end. But the indisputable glory of Buddha is the boundless charity to man with which his soul was filled. He lived to instruct and guide man aright. He says in so many words, “ My law is a law of grace for all ” (Bur- nouf, Introduction, etc., p. 198). We may add to M. Saint-Hilaire’s statement, that in these words the Buddha plainly aims at what we have called a catholic religion. In his view of man’s sorrowful life, all distinctions of rank and class fall away ; all are poor and needy together ; and here, too, he comes in contact with that Christianity which says, “ Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy- laden.” Buddha also wished to cure the sicknesses, not only of the Hindoo life, but of the life of mankind. M. Saint-Hilaire adds, that, in seeking thus to help man, the means of the Buddha are pure, like his ends. BUDDHISM. 165 He tries to convince and to persuade : he does not wish to compel. He allows confession, and helps the weak and simple by explanations and parables. He also tries to guard man against evil, by establishing habits of chas¬ tity, temperance, and self-control. * He goes forward into the Christian graces of patience, humility, and forgive¬ ness of injuries. He has a horror of falsehood, a rever¬ ence for truth; he forbids slander and gossip ; he teaches respect for parents, family, life, home. Yet Saint-Hilaire declares that, with all these merits, Buddhism has not been able to found a tolerable social state or a single good government. It failed in India, the land of its birth. Nothing like the progress and the development of Christian civilization appears in Buddh¬ ism. Something in the heart of the system makes it sterile, notwithstanding its excellent intentions. What is it ? The fact is, that, notwithstanding its benevolent pur¬ poses, its radical thought is a selfish one. It rests on pure individualism, — each man’s object is to save his own soul. All the faults of Buddhism, according to M. Saint-Hilaire, spring from this root of egotism in the heart of the system. No doubt the same idea is found in Christianity. Per¬ sonal salvation is herein included. But Christianity starts from a very different point: it is the “ kingdom of Heav¬ en.” “ Thy kingdom come : thy will be done on earth.” . It is not going on away from time to find an unknown eternity. It is God with us, eternity here, eternal life abiding in us now. If some narrow Protestant sects make Christianity to consist essentially in the salvation of our own soul hereafter, they fall into the condemna¬ tion of Buddhism. But that is not the Christianity of Christ. Christ accepts the great prophetic idea of a Mes¬ siah who brings down Gq$’s reign into this life. It is the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heav¬ en. It is the earth full of the knowledge of God, as the waters cover the sea. It is all mankind laboring together for this general good. This solitary preoccupation with one’s own salvation 166 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. causes the religious teachers of Buddhism to live apart, outside of society, and take no interest in it. There is in the Catholic and Protestant world, beside the monk, a secular priesthood, which labors to save other men’s bodies and souls. No such priesthood exists in Buddhism. Moreover, not the idea of salvation from evil, — which keeps before us evil as the object of contemplation, — but the idea of good, is the true motive for the human con¬ science. This leads us up at once to God; this alone can create love. We can only love by seeing something lovely. God must seem, not terrible, but lovely, in order to be loved. Man must seem, not mean and poor, but noble and beautiful, before we can love him. This idea of the good does not appear in Buddhism, says M. Saint- Hilaire. Not a spark of this divine flame — that which to see and show has given immortal glory to Plato and to Socrates — has descended on Sakya-muni. The notion of rewards, substituted for that of the infinite beauty, has perverted everything in his system. Duty itself becomes corrupted, as soon as the idea of the good disappears. It becomes then a blind submission to mere law. It is an outward constraint, not an inward inspiration. Scepticism follows. “ The world is empty, the heart is dead surely,” is its language. Nihilism ar¬ rives sooner or later. God is nothing; man is nothing ; life is nothing ; death is nothing; eternity is nothing. Hence the profound sadness of Buddhism. To its eye all existence is evil, and the only hope is to escape from time into eternity, — or into nothing, — as you may choose to interpret Nirvana. While Buddhism makes God, or the good, and heaven, to be equivalent to nothing, it intensi¬ fies and exaggerates evil. Though heaven is a blank, hell is a very solid reality. It is present and future too. Everything in the thousand hells of Buddhism is painted as vividly as in the hell of Dante. God has disappeared from the universe, and in his place is only the inexorable law, which grinds on forever. It punishes and rewards, but has no love in it. It is only dead, cold, hard, cruel, unrelenting law. Yet Buddhists are not atheists, any more than a child who has never heard of God is an BUDDHISM. f . 167 atheist. A child is neither deist nor atheist: he has no theology. The only emancipation from self-love is in the percep¬ tion of an infinite love. Buddhism, ignoring this infinite love, incapable of communion with God, aiming at mo¬ rality without religion, at humanity without piety, be¬ comes at last a prey to the sadness of a selfish isolation. We do not say that this is always the case, for in all sys¬ tems the heart often redeems the errors of the head. But this is the logical drift of the system and its usual out¬ come. § 9. Relation of Buddhism to Christianity. In closing this chapter, let us ask what relation this great system sustains to Christianity. The fundamental doctrine and central idea of Buddhism is personal salvation, or the salvation of the sold by per¬ sonal acts of faith and obedience. This we maintain, not¬ withstanding the opinion that some schools of Buddhists teach that the soul itself is not a constant element or a special substance, but the mere result of past merit or demerit. For if there be no soul, there can be no trans¬ migration. Now it is certain that the doctrine of trans¬ migration is the very basis of Buddhism, the corner-stone of the system. Thus M. Saint-Hilaire says: “ The chief and most immovable fact of Buddhist metaphysics is the doctrine of transmigration.” Without a soul to migrate, there can be no migration. Moreover, the whole ethics of the system would fall with its metaphysics, on this theory; for why urge men to right conduct, in order to attain happiness, or Nirvana, hereafter, if they are not to exist hereafter. No, the soul’s immortality is a radical doctrine in Buddhism, and this doctrine is one of its points of contact with Christianity. Another point of contact is its doctrine of reward and punishment, — a doctrine incompatible with the supposi¬ tion that the soul does not pass on from world to world. But this is the essence of all its ethics, the immutable, inevitable, unalterable consequences of good and evil. In 168 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. this also it agrees with Christianity, which teaches that “ whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap ” ; that he who turns his pound into five will he set over five cities, he who turns it into ten, over ten cities. A third point of contact with Christianity, however singular it may at first appear to say so, is the doctrine of Nirvana. Nirvana, to the Buddhist, means 1 the abso¬ lute, eternal world, beyond time and space; that which is nothing to us now, but will be everything hereafter. Incapable of cognizing both time and eternity, it makes them absolute negations of each other. The peculiarity of Plato, according to Mr. Emerson and other Platonists was, that he was able to grasp and hold intellectually both conceptions, — of God and man, the infinite and finite, the eternal and the temporal. The merit of Christianity is, in like manner, that it is able to take up and keep, not primarily as dogma, but as life, both these antagonistic ideas. Christianity recognizes God as the infinite and eternal, but recognizes also the world of time and space as real. Man exists as well as God: we love God, w r e must love man too. Brahmanism loves God, but not man; it has piety, but not humanity. Buddhism loves man, but not God; it has humanity, but not piety; or if it has piety, it is by a beautiful want of logic, its heart being wiser than its head. That which seems an impossibility in these Eastern systems is a fact of daily life to the Christian child, to the ignorant and simple Christian man or woman, who, amid daily duty and trial, find joy in both heavenly and earthly love. There is a reason for this in the inmost nature of Chris¬ tianity as compared with Buddhism. Why is it that Buddhism is a religion without God ? Sakya-muni did not ignore God. The object of his life was to attain Nirvana, that is, to attain a union with God, the Infinite Being. He became Buddha by this divine experience. Why, then, is not this religious experience a constituent element in Buddhism, as it is in Christianity ? Because in Buddh¬ ism man struggles upward to find God, while in Chris¬ tianity God comes down to find man. To speak in the language of technical theology, Buddhism is a doctrine BUDDHISM. 169 of \sorks, and Christianity of grace. That which God gives all men may receive, and he united by this com¬ munity of grace in one fellowship. But the results attained by effort alone, divide men; because some do more and receive more than others. The saint attained Buddha, but that was because of his superhuman efforts and sacrifices; it does not encourage others to hope for the same result. We see, then, that here, as elsewhere, the superiority of Christianity is to be found in its quantity, in its fulness of life. It touches Buddhism at all its good points, in all its truths. It accepts the Buddhistic doc¬ trine of rewards and punishments, of law, progress, self- denial, self-control, humanity, charity, equality of man with man, and pity for human sorrow; but to all this it adds — how much more ! It fills up the dreary void of Buddhism with a living God; w T ith a life of God in man’s soul, a heaven here as w r ell as hereafter. It gives us, in addition to the struggle of the soul to find God, a God coming down to find the soul. It gives a divine as real as the human, an infinite as solid as the finite. And this it does, not by a system of thought, but by a fountain and stream of life. If all Christian works, the New Testament included, were destroyed, we should lose a vast deal no doubt; but we should not lose Christianity; for that is not a book, but a life. Out of that stream of life would be again developed the conception of Chris¬ tianity, as a thought and a belief. We should be like the people living on the banks of the Nile, ignorant for five thousand years of its sources; not knowing whence its beneficent inundations were derived; not knowing by what miracle its great stream could flow on and on amid the intense heats, where no rain falls, and fed during a course of twelve hundred miles by no single affluent, yet not absorbed in the sand, nor evaporated by the ever-burning sun. But though ignorant of its source, they know it has a source, and can enjoy all its benefits and blessings. So Christianity is a full river of life, containing truths ap¬ parently the most antagonistic, filling the soul and heart of man and the social state of nations with its impulses • 8 170 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. and its ideas. We should lose much in losing our posi¬ tive knowledge of its history; hut if all the books were gone, the tablets of the human heart would remain, and on these would be written the everlasting Gospel of Jesus, in living letters which no years could efface and no changes conceal. ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AVESTA. 171 CHAPTER Y. ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AVESTA. § 1 . Ruins of the Palace of Xerxes at Persepolis. § 2. Greek Accounts of Zoroaster. Plutarch’s Description of his Religion. § 3. Anquetil du Perron and his Discovery of the Zend Avesta. § 4. Epoch of Zoroaster. What do we know of him ? § 5. Spirit of Zoroaster and of his Religion. § 6. Character of the Zend Avesta. § 7. Later Development of the System in the Bundehesch. § 8. Relation of the Religion of the Zend Avesta to that of the Vedas. § 9. Is Monotheism or pure Dualism the Doctrine taught in the Zend Avesta ? § 10. Relation of this Sys¬ tem to Christianity. The Kingdom of Heaven. § 1. Ruins of the Palace of Xerxes at Persepolis. I N’ the southwestern part of Persia is the lovely valley of Schiraz, in the province of Earsistan, which is the ancient Persis. Through the long spring and summer the plains are covered with flowers, the air is laden with per¬ fume, and the melody of birds, winds, and waters fills the ear. The fields are covered with grain, which ripens in May; the grapes, apricots, and peaches are finer than those of Europe. The nightingale (or bulbul) sings more sweetly than elsewhere, and the rose-bush, the national emblem of Persia, grows to the size of a tree, and is weighed down by its luxuriant blossoms. The beauty of this region, and the loveliness of the women of Schiraz awakened the genius of Hafiz and of Saadi, the two great lyric poets of the East, both of whom resided here. At one extremity of this valley, in the hollow of a crescent formed by rocky hills, thirty miles northwest of Schiraz, stands an immense platform, fifty feet high above the plain, hewn partly out of the mountain itself, and partly built up with gray marble blocks from twenty to sixty feet long, so nicely fitted together that the joints can scarcely be detected. This platform is about fourteen 172 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. hundred feet long by nine hundred broad, and its faces front the four quarters of the heavens. You rise from the plain by flights of marble steps, so broad and easy that a procession on horseback could ascend them. By these you reach a landing, where stand as sentinels two colossal figures sculptured from great blocks of marble. The one horn in the forehead seems to Heeren to indicate the Unicorn ; the mighty limbs, whose muscles are carved with the. precision of the Grecian chisel, induced Sir Bobert Porter to believe that they represented the sacred bulls of the Magian religion; while the solemn, half¬ human repose of the features suggests some symbolic and supernatural meaning. Passing these sentinels, who have kept their solitary watch for centuries, you ascend by other flights of steps to the top of the terrace. There stand, lonely and beautiful, a few gigantic columns, whose lofty fluted shafts and elegantly carved capitals belong to an unknown order of architecture. Fifty or sixty feet high, twelve or fifteen feet in circumference, they, with a multitude of others, once supported the roof of cedar, now fallen, whose beams stretched from capital to capital, and which protected the assembled multitudes from the hot sun of Southern x4sia. Along the noble upper stairway are carved rows of figures, which seem to be ascending by your side. They represent warriors, courtiers, captives, men of every nation, among whom may be easily distin¬ guished the negro from the centre of Africa. Inscriptions abound, in that strange arrow-headed or wedge-shaped character, — one of the most ancient and difficult of all, — which, after long baffling the learning of Europe, has at last begun yielded to the science and acuteness of the present century. One of the inscriptions copied from these walls was read by Grotefend as follows : — “Darius the King, King of Kings, son of Hystaspes, successor of the Euler of the World, Djemchid.” Another: — “ Xerxes the King, King of Kings, son of Darius the King, successor of the Euler of the World.” More recently, other inscriptions have been deciphered. ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AVESTA. 173 one of which is thus given by another German Orientalist, Benfey: — * “ Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd) is a mighty God ; who has created the earth, the heaven, and men; who has given glory to men; who has made Xerxes king, the ruler of ' y many. I, Xerxes, King of Kings, king of the earth near and far, son of Darius, an Achsemenid. What I have done here, and what I have done elsewhere, I have done by the grace of Ahura-Mazda.” In another place : — “ Artaxerxes the King has declared that this great work is done by me. May Ahura-Mazda and Mithra protect me, my building, and my people.” -f" Here, then, was the palace of Darius and his succes¬ sors, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, famous for their conquests, — some of which are recorded on these walls, — who car¬ ried their victorious arms into India on the east, Syria and Asia Minor on the west, but even more famous for being defeated at Marathon and Thermopylae. By the side of these columns sat the great kings of Persia, giving audience to ambassadors from distant lands. Here, per¬ haps, sat Cyrus himself, the founder of the Persian mon¬ archy, and issued orders to rebuild Jerusalem. Here the son of Xerxes, the Ahasuerus of Scripture, may have brought from Susa the fair Esther. For this is the famous Persepolis, and on those loftier platforms, where only ruinous heaps of stones now remain, stood that other palace, which Alexander burned in his intoxication three hundred and thirty years before Christ. “ Solitary in their situation, peculiar in their character,” says Heeren, “ these ruins rise above the deluge of years which has overwhelmed all the records of human grandeur around * Die Persischen Keilinscriften. (Leipzig, 1847.) See also the ac¬ count of the inscription at Behistun, in Lenormant’s “Manual of An¬ cient History.” + Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies. — Duncker, Geschichte des Alter- thums, B. II.—Heeren, The Persians.—Fergusson, Illustrated Hand-. Book of Architecture. — Creuzer, Schriften. See also the works of Op- pert, Hinks, Menant, and Lassen. 174 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. them, and buried all traces of Susa and Babylon. Their venerable antiquity and majestic proportions do not more command our reverence, than the mystery which involves their construction awakens the curiositv of the most un- */ observant spectator. Pillars which belong to no known order of architecture, inscriptions in an alphabet which continues an enigma, fabulous animals which stand as guards at the entrance, the multiplicity of allegorical figures which decorate the walls, — all conspire to carry us back to ages of the most remote antiquity, over which the traditions of the East shed a doubtful and wavering light.” Diodorus Siculus says that at Persepolis, on the face of the mountain, were the tombs of the kings of Persia, and that the coffins had to be lifted up to them along the wall of rock by cords. And Ctesias tells us that “ Darius, the son of Hystaspes, had a tomb prepared for himself in the double mountain during his lifetime, and that his parents were drawn up with cords to see it, but fell and were killed.” These very tombs are still to be seen on the face of the mountain behind the ruins. The figures of the kings are carved over them. One stands before an altar on which a fire is burning. A ball representing the sun is above the altar. Over the effigy of the king hangs in the air a winged half-length figure in fainter lines, and resembling him. In other places he is seen contending with a winged animal like a griffin. All this points at the great Iranic religion, the religion of Persia and its monarclis for many centuries, the religion of which Zoroaster was the great prophet, and the Avesta the sacred book. The king, as servant of Ormazd, is worshipping the fire and the sun, — symbols of the god ; he resists the impure griffin, the creature of Ahriman ; and the half-length figure over his head is the surest evidence of the religion of Zoroaster. For, ac¬ cording to the Avesta, every created being has its arche¬ type or Fereuer (Ferver, Fravashis), which is its ideal essence, first created by the thought of Ormazd. Even Ormazd himself has his Fravashis,* and these angelic * Yendidad, Fargard, XIX. - XLYI. Spiegel, translated into English by Bleek. ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AYESTA. 175 \ essences are everywliere objects of worship to the disciple of Zoroaster. We have thus found in Persepolis, not only the palace of the great kings of Persia, but the home of that most ancient system of Dualism, the system of Zoroaster. § 2. Greek Accounts of Zoroaster. Plutarch's Description of his Religion. But who was Zoroaster, and what do we know of him ? He is mentioned by Plato, about four hundred years before Christ. In speaking of the education of a Persian prince he says that “one teacher instructs him in the magic of Zoroaster, the son (or priest) of Ormazd (or Oromazes), in which is comprehended all the worship of the gods.” He is also spoken of by Diodorus, Plutarch, the elder Pliny, and many writers of the first centuries after Christ. The worship of the Magians is described by Herodotus before Plato. Herodotus gives very minute accounts of the ritual, priests, sacrifices, purifications, and mode of burial used by the Persian Magi in his time, four hundred and fifty years before Christ; and his ac¬ count closely corresponds with the practices of the Parsis, or fire-worshippers, still remaining in one or two places in Persia and India at the present day. “ The Persians,” he says, “ have no altars, no temples nor images ; they worship on the tops of the mountains. They adore the heavens, and sacrifice to the sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and winds.” * “ They do not erect altars, nor use libations, fillets, or cakes. One of the Magi sings an ode concern¬ ing the origin of the gods, over the sacrifice, which is laid on a bed of tender grass.” “ They pay great reverence to all rivers, and must do nothing to defile them; in burying they never put the body in the ground till it lias been torn by some bird or dog; they cover the body with wax, and then put it in the ground.” “ The Magi think they do a meritorious act when they kill ants, snakes, reptiles.” j* * Herodotus, I. 131. + Herodotus, in various parts of his history. 176 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Plutarch’s account of Zoroaster * and liis precepts, is very remarkable. It is as follows : — “ Some believe that there are two Gods, — as it were, two rival workmen ; the one whereof they make to be the maker of good things, and the other bad. And some call the better of these God, and the other Dgemon; as doth Zoroastres, the Magee, whom they report to be five thou¬ sand years elder than the Trojan times. This Zoroastres therefore called the one of these Oromazes, and the other Arimanius; and affirmed, moreover, that the one of them did, of anything sensible, the most resemble light, and the other darkness and ignorance; but that Mithras was in the middle betwixt them. For which cause, the Persians called Mithras the mediator. And .they tell us that he first taught mankind to make vows and offerings of thanksgiving to the one, and to offer averting and feral sacrifice to the other. For they beat a certain plant called liomomy f in a mortar, and call upon Pluto and the dark; and then mix it with the blood of a sacrificed wolf, and convey it to a certain place where the sun never shines, and there cast it away. For of plants they believe, that some pertain to the good God, and others again to the evil Daemon ; and likewise they think that such animals as dogs, fowls, and urchins belong to the good; but water animals to the bad, for which reason they account him happy that kills most of them. These men, moreover, tell us a great many romantic things about these gods, whereof these are some : They say that Oromazes, spring¬ ing from purest light, and Arimanius, on the other hand, from pitchy darkness, these two are therefore at war with one another. And that Oromazes made six gods,;j; where¬ of the first was the author of benevolence, the second of truth, the third of justice, and the rest, one of wisdom, * “ Plutarch s Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. London. Printed for W. Taylor, at the Ship in Pater-noster Row. 1718.” This passage concerning Zoroaster is from the “ Isis and Osiris” in Yol. IY. of this old translation. We have retained the antique terminology and spelling. (See also the new American edition of this .translation. Boston, Little and Brown, 1871.) d This is the Haoma spoken of on page 202. J These, with Ormazd, are the seven Amshaspands enumerated on page 197. ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AVESTA. 177 one of wealth, and a third of that pleasure which accrues from good actions; and that Arimanius likewise made the like number of contrary operations to confront them. After this, Oromazes, having first trebled his own magni¬ tude, mounted up aloft, so far above the sun as the sun itself above the earth, and so bespangled the heavens with stars. But one star (called Sirius or the Dog) lie set as a kind of sentinel or scout before all the rest. And after he had made four-and-twenty gods more, he placed them all in an egg-shell. But those that were made by Ari¬ manius (being themselves also of the like number) breaking a hole in this beauteous and glazed egg-shell, bad things came by this means to be intermixed with good. But the fatal time is now approaching, in which Arimanius, who by means of this brings plagues and famines upon the earth, must of necessity be himself utterly extinguished and destroyed ; at which time, the earth, being made plain and level, there will be one life, and one society of man¬ kind, made all happy, and one speech. But Tlieopompus saith, that, according to the opinion of the Magees, each of these gods subdues, and is subdued by turns, for the space of three thousand years apiece, and that for three thousand years more they quarrel and fight and destroy each other’s works; but that at last Pluto shall fail, and mankind shall be happy, and neither need food, nor yield a shadow.* And that the god who projects these things doth, for some time, take his repose and rest; but yet this time is not so much to him although it seems so to man, whose sleep is but short. Such, then, is the mythol¬ ogy of the Magees.” We shall see presently how nearly this account corre¬ sponds with the religion of the Parsis, as it was devel¬ oped out of the primitive doctrine of Zoroaster.-f* Besides what was known through the Greeks, and some * See the account, on page 195, of these four periods of three thousand years each. t Kleuker (Anhang zum Zend-Avesta) has given a full resume of the references to Zoroaster and his religion in the Greek and Roman writers. More recentb r , Professor Rapp of Tiibingen has gone over the same ground in a very instructive essay in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandis- chen Gesellschaft. (Leipzig, 1865.) 8 * L 178 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. accounts contained in Arabian and Persian writers, there was, until the middle of the last century, no certain infor¬ mation concerning Zoroaster and his teachings. But the enterprise, energy, and scientific devotion of a young Frenchman changed the whole aspect of the subject, and w r e are now enabled to speak with some degree of certainty concerning this great teacher and his doctrines. § 3. Anqudil du Perron and liis Discovery of the Zend Avcsta. Anquetil du Perron, born at Paris in 1731, devoted him¬ self early to the study of Oriental literature. He mas¬ tered the Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian languages, and by his ardor in these studies attracted the attention of Ori¬ ental scholars. Meeting one day in the Eoyal Library with a fragment of the Zend Avesta, he was seized with the desire of visiting India, to recover the lost books of Zoroaster, “ and to learn the Zend language in which they were written, and also the Sanskrit, so as to be able to read the manuscripts in the Bibliotheque du Roi, which no one in Paris understood.” * His friends endeavored to procure him a situation in an expedition just about to sail; but their efforts not succeeding, Du Perron en¬ listed as a private soldier, telling no one of his intention till the day before setting out, lest he should be prevented from going. He then sent for his brother and took leave of him with many tears, resisting all the efforts made to dissuade him from his purpose. His baggage consisted of a little linen, a Hebrew Bible, a case of mathematical instruments, and the works of Montaigne and Cliarron. A ten days’ march, with other recruits, through wet and cold, brought him to the port from whence the expedition was to sail. Here he found that the government, struck with his extraordinary zeal for science, had directed that he should have his discharge and a small salary of five hun¬ dred livres. The East India Company (French) gave him a passage gratis, and he set sail for India, February 7, 1755, being then twenty-four years old. The first two years in * Anq. du Perron, Zend Avesta; Disc. Prelim., p. vi. ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AVESTA. 179 India were almost lost to him for purposes of science, on account of his sicknesses, travels, and the state of the country disturbed by war between England and France.* He travelled afoot and on horseback over a great part of Ilindostan, saw the worship of Juggernaut and the monu¬ mental caves of Ellora, and, in 1759, arrived at Surat, where was the Pars! community from which he hoped for help in obtaining the object of his pursuit. By perse¬ verance and patience he succeeded in persuading the Des- tours, or priests, of these fire-worshippers, to teach him the Zend language and to furnish him with manuscripts of the Avesta. With one hundred and eighty valuable manuscripts he returned to Europe, and published, in 1771, his great work, — the Avesta translated into French, with notes and dissertations. He lived through the French Revolution, shut up with his books, and immersed in his Oriental studies, and died, after a life of continued labor, in 1805. Immense erudition and indomitable industry were joined in Anquetil du Perron to a pure love of truth and an excellent heart. For many years after the publication of the Avesta its genuineness and authenticity were a matter of dispute among the learned men of Europe; Sir William Jones especially denying it to be an ancient work, or the produc¬ tion of Zoroaster. But almost all modern writers of emi¬ nence now admit both. Already in 1826 Heeren said that these books had “ stood the fiery ordeal of criticism.” “ Few remains of antiquity,” he remarks, “ have undergone such attentive examination as the books of the Zend Avesta. This criticism has turned out to their advantage ; the gen¬ uineness of the principal compositions, especially of the Vendidad and Izeschne (Ya^na), has been demonstrated; and we may consider as completely ascertained all that regards the rank of each book of the Zend Avesta.” * At the time Anquetil du Perron was thus laboring in the cause of sci¬ ence in India, two other men were in the same region devoting themselves with equal ardor to very different objects. Clive was laying the founda¬ tions of the British dominion in India ; Schwartz was giving himself up to a life of toil in preaching the Gospel to the Hindoos. How little would these three men have sympathized with each other, or appreciated each other’s work ! And yet how important to the progress of humanity was that of each J 180 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Bhode (one of the first of scholars of his day in this de¬ partment) says: “ There is not the least doubt that these are the books ascribed in the most ancient times to Zoro¬ aster.” Of the Yendidad he says: “It has both the in¬ ward and outward marks of the highest antiquity, so that we fear not to say that only prejudice or ignorance could doubt it.” * * * § § 4. Epoch of Zoroaster. What do we know of him ? As to the age of these hooks, however, and the period at which Zoroaster lived, there is the greatest difference of opinion. He is mentioned by Plato (Alcibiades, I. 37), who speaks of “ the magic (or religious doctrines) of Zoro¬ aster the Ormazdian” (jxayeiav — ZcopoaVrpou toD 'Qpopd^ou).-)- As Plato speaks of his religion as something established in the form of Magism, or the system of the Medes, in West Iran, while the Avesta appears to have originated in Bac- tria, or East Iran,| this already carries the age of Zoro¬ aster hack to at least the sixth or seventh century before Christ. When the Avesta was written, Bactria was an independent monarchy. Zoroaster is represented as teach¬ ing under King Vistaqpa. But the Assyrians conquered Bactria B. c. 1200, which was the last of the Iranic kingdoms, they having previously vanquished the Medes, Hyrcanians, Parthians, Persians, etc. As Zoroaster must have lived before this conquest, his period is taken hack to a still more remote time, about B. c. 1300 or B. c. 1250. § * And with this conclusion the later scholars agree. Burnouf, Lassen, Spiegel, Westergaard, Hang, Bunsen, Max Muller, Roth, all accept the Zend Avesta as containing in the main, if not the actual words of Zoroas¬ ter, yet authentic reminiscences of his teaching. The Gathas of the Yayna are now considered to be the oldest part of the Avesta, as appears from the investigations of Haug and others. (See Dr. Martin Haug’s transla¬ tion and commentary of the Five Gathas of Zarathustra. Leipzig, 1860.) T Even good scholars often follow each other in a false direction for want of a little independent thinking. The Greek of Plato was translated by a long succession of writers, “Zoroaster the son of Oromazes,” until some one happened to think that this genitive might imply a different relation. X Duncker (Gesch. des Alterthums, B. II.) gives at length the reasons which prove Zoroaster and the Avesta to have originated in Bactria. § Duncker (B. II. s. 483). So Dollinger. ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AYESTA. 181 It is difficult to. be more precise than this. Bunsen in¬ deed * * * § suggests that “ the date of Zoroaster, as fixed by Aristotle, cannot be said to be so very irrational. He and Eudoxus, according to Pliny, place him six thousand years before the death of Plato ; Hermippus, five thousand years before the Trojan war,” or about b. c. 6300 or b. c. 6350. But Bunsen adds: “At the present stage of the inquiry the question whether this date is set too high cannot be answered either in the negative or affirmative.” Spiegel, in one of his latest works ,'j considers Zoroaster as a neighbor and contemporary of Abraham, therefore as living b. c. 2000 instead of B. c. 6350. Professor Whit¬ ney of New Haven places the epoch of Zoroaster at “ least B. c. 1000,” and adds that all attempts to reconstruct Persian chronology or history prior to the reign of the first Sassanid have been relinquished as futile.J Doll- inger § thinks he may have been “ somewhat later than Moses, perhaps about b. c. 1300,” but says, “it is impossi¬ ble to fix precisely” when he lived. Rawlinson|| merely remarks that Berosus places him anterior to B. c. 2234. Haug is inclined to date the Gathas, the oldest songs of the Avesta, as early as the time of Moses. IF Eapp, ** after a thorough comparison of ancient writers, concludes that Zoroaster lived B. c. 1200 or 1300. In this he agrees with Duncker, who, as we have seen, decided upon the same date. It is not far from the period given by the oldest Greek writer who speaks of Zoroaster, — Xanthus of Sardis, a contemporary of Darius. It is the period given by Cephalion, a writer of the second century, who takes it from three independent sources. We have no sources now open to us which enable us to come nearer than this to the time in which he lived. Nor is anything known with certainty of the place where he lived or the events of his life. Most modern * Egypt’s Place in Universal History, Yol. ITT. p. 471. + Eran, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris. J Journal of the Am. Or. Soc., Vol. V. No. 2, p. 353. § The Gentile and Jew, Yol. I. p. 380. || Five Great Monarchies, Vol. III. p. 94. H Essays, &c., by Martin Haug, p. 255. ** Die Religion und Sitte der Perser. Yon Dr. Adolf Rapp. (1865.) 182 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. writers suppose that he resided in Bactria. Haug main¬ tains that the language of the Zend books is Bactrian.* A highly mythological and fabulous life of Zoroaster, translated by Anquetil du Perron, called the Zartusht- Namaly)" describes him as going to Iran in his thirtieth year, spending twenty years in the desert, working mira¬ cles during ten years, and giving lessons of philosophy in Babylon, with Pythagoras as his pupil. All this is based on the theory (now proved to be false) of his living in the time of Darius. “ The language of the Avesta,” says Max Mttller, “ is so much more primitive than the inscriptions of Darius, that many centuries must have passed between the two periods represented by these two strata of lan¬ guage.” I These inscriptions are in the Achsemenian dia¬ lect, which is the Zend in a later stage of linguistic growth. § 5. Spirit of Zoroaster and of his Religion. It is not likely that Zoroaster ever saw Pythagoras or even Abraham. But though absolutely nothing is known of the events of his life, there is not the least doubt of his existence nor of his character. He has left the impress of his commanding genius on great regions, various races, and long periods of time. His religion, like that of the Buddha, is essentially a moral religion. Each of them was a revolt from the Pantheism of India, in the interest of morality, human freedom, and the progress of the race. They differ in this, that each takes hold of one side of morality, and lets go the opposite. Zoroaster bases his law on the eternal distinction between right and wrong; Sakya-muni, on the natural laws and their consequences, either good or evil. Zoroaster’s law is, therefore, the law of justice ; Sakya-muni’s, the law of mercy. The one makes the supreme good to consist in truth, duty, right ; the other, in love, benevolence, and kindness. Zoroaster teaches providence: the monk of India teaches prudence. * Bunsen, Egypt, Vol. III. p. 455. + Written in the thirteenth century after Christ. An English transla¬ tion may be found in Dr. J. Wilson’s “Parsi Religion.” :£ Chips, Yol. I. p. 88. ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AYESTA. 183 Zoroaster aims at holiness, the Buddha at merit. Zoro¬ aster teaches and emphasizes creation : the Buddha knows nothing of creation, but only nature or law. All these oppositions run back to a single root. Both are moral reformers; but the one moralizes according to the method of Bishop Butler, the other after that of Archdeacon Paley. Zoroaster cognizes all morality as having its root within, in the eternal distinction between right and wrong motive, therefore in God; but Sakya-muni finds it out¬ side of the soul, in the results of good and evil action, therefore in the nature of things. The method of sal¬ vation, therefore, according to Zoroaster, is that of an eternal battle for good against evil; but according to the Buddha, it is that of self-culture and virtuous activity. Both of these systems, as being essentially moral systems in the interest of humanity, proceed from per¬ sons. For it is a curious fact, that, while the essentially spiritualistic religions are ignorant of their founders, all the moral creeds of the world proceed from a moral source, i. e. a human will. Brahmanism, Gnosticism, the Sufism of Persia, the Mysteries of Egypt and Greece, Eeo-Platonism, the Christian Mvsticism of the Middle Ages, — these have, strictly speaking, no founder. Every tendency to the abstract, to the infinite, ignores person¬ ality.* Individual mystics we know, but never the founder of any such system. The religions in which the moral element is depressed, as those of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Borne, are also without personal founders. But moral religions are the religions of persons, and so we have the systems of Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Moses, Mohammed.*!" The Protestant Beformation was a protest of the moral nature against a religion which had become divorced from morality. Accordingly we have Luther as the founder of Protestantism; but mediaeval Christianity grew up with no personal leader. * So Mr. Emerson, in one of those observations which give us a sys¬ tem of philosophy in a sentence, says, “The soul knows no persons.” Perhaps he should have said, “The Spirit.” + Islam is, in this sense, a moral religion, its root consisting in obe¬ dience to Allah and his prophet. Sufism, a Mohammedan mysticism, is a heresy. 184 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. The whole religion of the Avesta revolves around the person of Zoroaster, or Zarathustra. In the oldest part of the sacred books, the Gathas of the Yagna, he is called the pure Zarathustra, good in thought, speech, and work. It is said that Zarathustra alone knows the precepts of Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd), and that he shall be made skil¬ ful in speech. In one of the Gathas he expresses the de¬ sire of bringing knowledge to the pure, in the power of Ormazd, so as to be to them strong joy (Spiegel, Gatha Ustvaiti, XLII. 8), or, as Haug translates the same pas¬ sage (Die Gathas des Zarathustra, II. 8) : “I will swear hostility to the liars, but be a strong help to the truthful.” He prays for truth, declares himself the most faithful ser¬ vant in the world of Ormazd the Wise One, and therefore begs to know the best thing to do. As the Jewish proph¬ ets tried to escape their mission, and called it a burden, and went to it “ in the heat and bitterness of their spirit,” so Zoroaster says (according to Spiegel): “ When it came to me through your prayer, I thought that the spreading abroad of your law through men was something difficult.” Zoroaster was one of those who was oppressed with the sight of evil. But it was not outward evil which most tormented him, but spiritual evil, — evil having its origin in a depraved heart and a will turned away from goodness. His meditations led him to the conviction that all the woe of the world had its root in sin, and that the origin of sin was to be found in the demonic world. He might have used the language of the Apostle Paul and said, “ We wrestle not with flesh and blood,” — that is, our struggle is not with man, but with principles of evil, rulers of darkness, spirits of wickedness in the super¬ natural world. Deeply convinced that a great struggle was going on between the powers of light and darkness, he called on all good men to take part in the war, and battle for the good God against the dark and foul tempter. Great physical calamities added to the intensity of this conviction. It appears that about the period of Zoro¬ aster, some geological convulsions had changed the climate of Northern Asia, and very suddenly produced severe cold where before there had been an almost tropical tern- ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AVESTA. 185 perature. The first Fargard of the Yendidad has been lately translated by both Spiegel and Hang, and begins by speaking of a good country, Aryana-Yaejo, which was created a region of delight by Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd). Then it adds that the “ evil being, Angra-Mainyus (Ahri- man), full of death, created a mighty serpent, and winter, the work of the Devas. Ten months of winter are there, two months of summer.” Then follows, in the original document, this statement: “ Seven months of summer are (were ?) there; five months of winter were there. The latter are cold as to water, cold as to earth, cold as to trees. There is the heart of winter; there all around falls deep snow. There is the worst of evils.” This pas¬ sage has been set aside as an interpolation by both Spiegel and Haug. But they give no reason for supposing it such, except the difficulty of reconciling it with the preceding passage. This difficulty, however, disappears, if we sup¬ pose it intended to describe a great climatic change, by which the original home of the Aryans, Aryana-Yaejo, be¬ came suddenly very much colder than before. Such a change, if it took place, was probably the cause of the emigration which transferred this people from Aryana- Yaejo (Old Iran) to New Iran, or Persia. Such a history of emigration Bunsen and Haug suppose to be contained in this first Fargard (or chapter) of the Yendidad. If so, it takes us back further than the oldest part of the Yeda, and gives the progress of the Aryan stream to the south from its original source on the great plains of Central Asia, till it divided into two branches, one flowing into Persia, the other into India. The first verse of this venerable document introduces Ormazd as saying that he had created new regions, desirable as homes; for had he not done so, all human beings would have crowded into this Aryana-Yaejo. Thus in the very first verse of the Yendidad appears the affectionate recollection of these emigrant races for their fatherland in Central Asia, and the Zoroasterian faith in a creative and protective Provi¬ dence. The awful convulsion which turned their sum¬ mer climate into the present Siberian winter of ten months’ duration was part of a divine plan. Old Iran would have been too attractive, and all mankind would have crowded 186 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. into that Eden. So the evil Aliriman was permitted to glide into it, a new serpent of destruction, and its seven months of summer and five of winter were changed to ten of winter and two of summer.* This Aryana-Vaejo, Old Iran, the primeval seat of the great Indo-European race, is supposed by Haug and Bunsen to be situated on the high plains northeast of Samarcand, between the thirty-seventh and fortieth degrees of north latitude, and the eighty-sixth and ninetieth of east longi¬ tude. This region has exactly the climate described, — ten months of winter and two of summer. The same is true of Western Thibet and most of Central Siberia. Malte- Brun says: “ The winter is nine or ten months long through almost the whole of Siberia.” June and July are the only months wholly free from snow. On the parallel of 60°, the earth on the 28th of June was found frozen, at a depth of three feet. But is there reason to think that the climate was ever different ? Geologists assure us that “ great oscillations of climate have occurred in times immediately antecedent to the peopling of the earth by man.”-)* But in Central and Northern Asia there is evidence of such fluctuations of temperature in a much more recent period. In 1803, on the banks of the Lena, in latitude 70°, the entire body of a mammoth fell from a mass of ice in which it had been entombed perhaps for thousands of years, but with the flesh so perfectly preserved that it was immediately de¬ voured by wolves. Since then these frozen elephants have been found in great numbers, in so perfect a condition that the bulb of an eye of one of them is in the Museum at Moscow. | They have been found as far north as 75°. Hence Lyell thinks it “ reasonable to believe that a large region in Central Asia, including perhaps the southern half of Siberia, enjoyed at no very remote period in the earth’s history a temperate climate, sufficiently mild to af¬ ford food for numerous herds of elephants and rhinoceroses.” * Vendidad, Farg. I. 3. “Therefore Angra-Mainyus, the death-dealing, created a mighty serpent and snow.” The serpent entering into the Iranic Eden is one of the curious coincidences of the Iranic and Hebrew traditions. t Lyell, Principles of Geology (eighth edition), p. 77. X Idem., p. 83. A similar change from a temperate climate to ex¬ treme cold has taken place in Greenland within five or six centuries. ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AVESTA. 187 Amid these terrible convulsions of the air and ground, these antagonisms of outward good and evil, Zoroaster developed his belief in the dualism of all things. To his mind, as to that of the Hebrew poet, God had placed all things against each other, two and- two. No Pantheistic optimism, like that of India, could satisfy his thought. He could not say, “ Whatever is, is right ”; some things seemed fatally wrong. The world was a scene of war, not of peace and rest. Life to the good man w 7 as not sleep, but battle. If there was a good God over all, as he de¬ voutly believed, there was also a spirit of evil, of awful power, to whom we were not to yield, but with whom we should do battle. In the far distance he saw the triumph of good; but that triumph could only come by fighting the good fight now. But his weapons were not carnal. “ Pure thoughts ” going out into “true words ” and result¬ ing in “ right actions ”; this was the whole duty of man. § 6. Character'‘of the Zend Avesta. A few passages, taken from different parts of the Zend Avesta, will best illustrate these tendencies, and show how unlike it is, in its whole spirit, to its sister, the Vedic lit¬ urgy. Twin children of the old Aryan stock, they must have struggled together like Esau and Jacob, before they were born. In such cases we see how superficial is the philosophy which, beginning with synthesis instead of analysis, declares the unity of all religions before it has seen their differences. There is indeed, what Cudwortli has called “ the symphony of all religions,” but it cannot be demonstrated by the easy process of gathering a few similar texts from Confucius, the Vedas, and the Gospels, and then announcing that they all teach the same thing. We must first find the specific idea of each, and we may then be able to show how each of these may take its place in the harmonious working of universal religion. If, in taking up the Zend Avesta, we expect to find a system of theology or philosophy, we shall be disap¬ pointed. It is a liturgy,— a collection of hymns, prayers, invocations, thanksgivings. It contains prayers to a mul¬ titude of deities, among whom Ormazd is always counted supreme, and the rest only his servants. 188 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. “ I worship and adore,” says Zarathustra (Zoroaster), * the Creator of all things, Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd), full of light! I worship the Amesha-^pentas (Amshaspands, the seven archangels, or protecting spirits) ! I worship the body of the primal Bull, the soul of the Bull! I in¬ voke thee, 0 Fire, thou son of Ormazd, most rapid of the Immortals! I invoke Mithra, the lofty, the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the quick Horse, the eye of Ormazd ! I invoke the holy Sraosha, gifted with holiness, and Ba^nu (spirit of justice), and Arstat (spirit of truth)! I invoke the Fravashi of good men, the Fravaslii of Or¬ mazd, the Fravashi of my own soul! I praise the good men and women of the whole world of purity ! I praise the Haoma, health-bringing, golden, with moist stalks. I praise Sraosha, whom four horses carry, spotless, bright- shining, swifter than the storms, who, without sleeping, protects the world in the darkness.” The following passages are from the oldest part of the Avesta, the Gathas: — “ Good is the thought, good the speech,, good the work of the pure Zarathustra.” “ I desire by my prayer with uplifted hands this joy, —the pure works of the Holy Spirit, Mazda, .... a disposition to perform good actions, .... and pure gifts for both worlds, the bodily and spiritual.” “ I have intrusted my soul to Heaven, .... and I will teach what is pure so long as I can.” “ I keep forever purity and good-mindedness. Teach thou me, Ahura-Mazda, out of thyself; from heaven, by thy mouth, whereby the world first arose.” “ Thee have I thought, 0 Mazda, as the first, to praise with the soul, .... active Creator, .... Lord of the worlds, . . . . Lord of good things, .... the first fashioner, . ; .. who made the pure creation, .... who upholds the best soul with his understanding.” “ I praise Ahura-Mazda, who has created the cattle, created the water and good trees, the splendor of light, the earth and all good. We praise the Fravashis of the pure men and wo¬ men, — whatever is fairest, purest, immortal.” “We honor the good spirit, the good kingdom, the good law, — all that is good.” _ “ Here we praise the soul and body of the Bull, then our ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND A VESTA. 189 own souls, the souls of the cattle which desire to maintain us in life, .... the good men and women, .... the abode of the water, .... the meeting and parting of the ways, .... the mountains which make the waters flow, .... the strong wind created by Ahura-Mazda, .... the Hadma, giver of increase, far from death.” “ Now give ear to me, and hear ! the Wise Ones have cre¬ ated all. Evil doctrine shall not again destroy the world.” “ In the beginning, the two heavenly Ones spoke — the Good to the Evil — thus \ 1 Our souls, doctrines, words, w r orks, do not unite together.’ ” “ How shall I satisfy thee, 0 Mazda, I, who have little wealth, few menl How may I exalt thee according to my wish! .... I will be contented with your desires; this is the decision of my understanding and of my souL” The following is from the Khordah Avesta: — * “ In the name of God, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, praise be to the name of Ormazd, the God with the name, ‘ Who always was, always is, and always will be ’; the heavenly amongst the heavenly, with the name ‘ From whom alone is derived rule.’ Ormazd is the greatest ruler, mighty, wise, cre¬ ator, supporter, refuge, defender, completer of good works, overseer, pure, good, and just. “ With all strength (bring I) thanks ; to the great among beings, who created and destroyed, and through his own de¬ termination of time, strength, wisdom, is higher than the six Amshaspands, the circumference of heaven, the shining sun, the brilliant moon, the wind, the w T ater, the fire, the earth, the trees, the cattle, the metals, mankind. “ Offering and praise to that Lord, the completer of good works, who made men greater than all earthly beings, and through the gift of speech created them to rule the creatures, as warriors against the Daevas.* “ Praise the omniscience of God, who hath sent through the holy Zarathustra peace for the creatures, the wisdom of the law,—the enlightening derived from the heavenly under¬ standing, and heard with the ears, — wisdom and guidance for all beings who are, were, and will be, (and) the wisdom of wis¬ doms ; w T hich effects freedom from hell for the soul at the bridge, and leads it over to that Paradise, the brilliant, sweet¬ smelling of the pure. * The Daevas, or evil spirits of the Zend hooks, are the same as the Devas, or Gods of the Sanskrit religion. 190 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. “ All good do I accept at thy command, 0 God, and think, speak, and do it. I believe in the pure law; by every good work seek I forgiveness for all sins. I keep pure for myself the ser¬ viceable work and abstinence from the unprofitable. I keep pure the six powers, — thought, speech, work, memory, mind, and understanding. According to thy will am I able to accom¬ plish, 0 accomplisher of good, thy honor, with good thoughts, good words, good works. “ I enter on the shining way to Paradise; may the fearful terror of hell not overcome me ! May I step over the bridge Chinevat, may I attain Paradise, with much perfume, and all enjoyments, and all brightness. “Praise to the Overseer, the Lord, who rewards those who accomplish good deeds according to his own wish, purifies at last the obedient, and at last purifies even the wicked one of hell. All praise be to the creator, Ormazd, the all-wise, mighty, rich in might; to the seven Amshaspands; to Ized Bahram, the victorious annihilator of foes.” “ HYMN TO A STAR,. “ The star Tistrya praise we, the shining, majestic, with pleasant good dwelling, light, shining, conspicuous, going around, healthful, bestowing joy, great, going round about from afar, with shining beams, the pure, and the water which makes broad seas, good, far-famed, the name of the bull created by Mazda, the strong kingly majesty, and the Frava- shi of the holy pure, Zarathustra. “ For his brightness, for his majesty, will I praise him, the star Tistrya, with audible praise. We praise the star Tistrya, the brilliant, majestic, with offerings, with Haoma bound with flesh, with Mauthra which gives wisdom to the tongue, with word and deed, with offerings with right-spoken speech.” “ The star Tistrya, the brilliant, majestic, we praise, who glides so softly to the sea like an arrow, who follows the heav¬ enly will, who is a terrible pliant arrow, a very pliant arrow, worthy of honor among those worthy of honor, who comes from the damp mountain to the shining mountain.” “HYMN TO MITHRA. “ Mithra, whose long arms grasp forwards here with Mithra- strength ; that which is in Eastern India he seizes, and that which [is] in the Western he smites, and what is on the steppes of Rauha, and what is at the ends of this earth. ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AVESTA. 191 “ Thou, 0 Mithra, dost seize these, reaching out thy arms. The unrighteous destroyed through the just is gloomy in soul. Thus thinks the unrighteous : Mithra, the artless, does not see all these evil deeds, all these lies. “ But I think in my soul : No earthly man with a hundred¬ fold strength thinks so much evil as Mithra with heavenly strength thinks good. No earthly man with a hundred-fold strength speaks so much evil as Mithra with heavenly strength speaks good. No earthly man with a hundred-fold strength does so much evil as Mithra with heavenly strength does good. “ With no earthly man is the hundred-fold greater heavenly understanding allied as the heavenly understanding allies it¬ self to the heavenly Mithra, the heavenly. No earthly man with a hundred-fold strength hears with the ears as the heavenly Mithra, who possesses a hundred strengths, sees every liar. Mightily goes forward Mithra, powerful in rule marches he onwards ; fair visual power, shining from afar, gives he to the eyes.” “A CONFESSION, OR PATET* “ I repent of all sins. All wicked thoughts, words, and works which I have meditated in the world, corporeal, spiritual, earthly, and heavenly, I repent of, in your presence, ye be¬ lievers. 0 Lord, pardon through the three words. “ I confess myself a Mazdaya^ian, a Zarathustrian, an oppo¬ nent of the Daevas, devoted to belief in Ahura, for praise, adoration, satisfaction, and laud. As it is the will of God, let the Zaota say to me, Thus announces the Lord, the Pure out of Holiness, let the wise speak. “ I praise all good thoughts, words, and works, through thought, word, and deed. I curse all evil thoughts, words, and works away from thought, word, and deed. I lay hold on all good thoughts, words, and works, with thoughts, words,* and works, i. e. I perform good actions, I dismiss all evil thoughts, words, and works, from thoughts, words, and works, i. e. I commit no sins. “ I give to you, ye who are Amshaspands, offering and praise, with the heart, with the body, with my own vital powers, body and soul. The whole powers which I possess I possess in de¬ pendence on the Yazatas. To possess in dependence upon the * The Patets are formularies of confession. They are written in Parsi, with occasional passages inserted in Zend. 192 TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Yazatas means (as much as) this: if anything happens so that it behoves to give the body for the sake of the soul; I give it to them. “ I praise the best purity, I hunt away the Devs, I am thank¬ ful for the good of the Creator Ormazd, with the opposition and unrighteousness which come from Gana-mainyo, am I contented and agreed in the hope of the resurrection. The Zarathustrian law created by Ormazd I take as a plummet. For the sake of this way I repent of all sins. “ I repent of the sins which can lay hold of the character of men, or which have laid hold of my character, small and great which are committed amongst men, the meanest sins as much as is (and) can be, yet more than this, namely, all evil thoughts, words, and works which (I have committed) for the sake of others, or others for my sake, or if the hard sin has seized the character of an evil-doer on my account, — such sins, thoughts, words, and works, corporeal, mental, earthly, heavenly, I repent of with the three words: pardon, 0 Lord, I repent of the sins with Patet. “ The sins against father, mother, sister, brother, wife, child, against spouses, against the superiors, against my own rela¬ tions, against those living with me, against those who possess equal property, against the neighbors, against the inhabitants of the same town, against servants, every unrighteousness through which I have been amongst sinners, — of these sins repent I with thoughts, words, and works, corporeal as spir¬ itual, earthly as heavenly, with the three words: pardon, 0 Lord, I repent of sins. “ The defilement with dirt and corpses, the bringing of dirt and corpses to the water and fire, or the bringing of fire and water to dirt and corpses; the omission of reciting the Avesta in mind, of strewing about hair, nails, and toothpicks, of not washing the hands, all the rest which belongs to the category of dirt and corpses, if I have thereby come among the sinners, so repent I of all these sins with thoughts, words, and works, corporeal as spiritual, earthly as heavenly, with the three words: pardon, 0 Lord, I repent of sin. “ That which was the wish of Ormazd the Creator, and I ought to have thought, and have not thought, what I ought to have spoken and have not spoken, what I ought to have done and have not done ; of these sins repent I with thoughts, words, and works,” etc. “ That which was the wish of Ahriman, and I ought not to ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AVESTA. 193 have thought and yet have thought, what I ought not to have spoken and yet have spoken, what I ought not to have done and yet have done ; of these sins I repent,” etc. “ Of all and every kind of sin which I have committed against the creatures of Ormazd, as stars, moon, sun, and the red burning fire, the dog, the birds, the five kinds of animals, the other good creatures which are the property of Ormazd, be¬ tween earth and heaven, if I have become a sinner against any of these, I repent,” etc. “ Of pride, haughtiness, covetousness, slandering the dead, anger, envy, the evil eye, shamelessness, looking at with evil intent, looking at with evil concupiscence, stiff-neckedness, discontent with the godly arrangements, self-willedness, sloth, despising others, mixing in strange matters, unbelief, opposing the Divine powers, false witness, false judgment, idol-worship, running naked, running with one shoe, the breaking of the low (midday) prayer, the omission of the (midday) prayer, theft, robbery, whoredom, witchcraft, worshipping with sorcer¬ ers, unchastity, tearing the hair, as well as all other kinds of sin which are enumerated in this Patet, or not enumerated, which I am aware of, or not aware of, which are appointed or not appointed, which I should have bewailed with obedience before the Lord, and have not bewailed, — of these sins repent I with thoughts, words, and works, corporeal as spiritual, earth¬ ly as heavenly. 0 Lord, pardon, I repent with the three words, with Patet. “ If I have taken on myself the Patet for any one and have not performed it, and misfortune has thereby come upon his soul or his descendants, I repent of the sin for every one with thoughts,” etc. “With all good deeds am I in agreement, with all sins am I not in agreement, for the good am I thankful, with iniquity am I contented. With the punishment at the bridge, with the bonds and tormentings and chastisements of the mighty of the law, with the punishment of the three nights (after) the fifty- seven years am I contented and satisfied.” The Avesta, then, is not a system of dogmatics, but a book of worship. It is to be read in private by the laity, or to be recited by the priests in public. Nevertheless, just such a book may be the best help to the knowledge of the religious opinions of an age. The deepest convic¬ tions come to light in such a collection, not indeed in a 9 M 194 ' TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. systematic statement, but in sincerest utterance. It will contain the faith of the heart rather than the speculations of the intellect. Such a work can hardly be other than authentic; for men do not forge liturgies, and, if they did, could hardly introduce them into the worship of a reli¬ gious community. The A vesta consists of the Vendidad, of which twenty- two Fargards, or chapters, have been preserved ; the Vis- pered, in twenty-seven; the Yaqna, in seventy ; and the Khordah Avesta, or Little-Avesta, which contains the Yashts, Patets, and other prayers for the use of the laity. Of these, Spiegel considers the Gathas of the Ya