The History of Antiquity Volume Iv Part 31

The theory of the emanation of the world from Brahman established for ever the arrangement of the castes by the different partic.i.p.ation of the various orders in Brahman--an arrangement which otherwise, being the result of natural changes, would in turn have been removed in the course of development. The law and the state were arranged on the plan of the divine order of the world which had a.s.signed to every being his duties.

With the emanation of beings from Brahman came the demand for their return thither, and the doctrine of regenerations, which were to cleanse the creatures rendered impure by their nature and their sins till they attained the purity of the world-soul. As Brahman was essentially conceived as not-matter, not-nature, a severance of nature and spirit, a contrast of the natural and the intellectual man was set up, which subsequently became the turning-point in the religious and moral development of the Indians. Ethics pa.s.sed into asceticism, the courage of battle into the heroism of penance. But man could not rest content with the avoidance of sensuality or the mortification of the flesh. It was not enough to torment and crush the body, the _Ego_, the consciousness, must pa.s.s into Brahman. But, inasmuch as Brahman was all things and again nothing definite, it possessed no quality to be apprehended by thought; and along with the annihilation of individual being absorption in this impersonal deity required the surrender of the consciousness and perception of self, of the _Ego_ in order to obtain a pa.s.sage into this substance. Thus the crus.h.i.+ng of the body by a pitiless asceticism, the destruction of the soul by meditation without any object, became the highest command, the ethical ideal of the Indians; the devotion natural to their disposition became a self-annihilating absorption into a soul-less world-soul. The energy of the Indians began to consume itself in this contest; it was applied to the conquest of the appet.i.tes, the crus.h.i.+ng of the body, the annihilation of the soul. Under the most smiling sky, in the midst of a luxuriant vegetation, was enthroned a melancholy, gloomy, monastic view of the absolute corruption of the flesh, the misery of life on earth.

The theory that every creature must fulfil the vocation imposed upon it at birth, the commands of submissive observance of duties and patient obedience placed absolute and despotic power in the hands of the kings the more firmly because they also undermined activity and independence of feeling; and owing to the extent of the ceremonial, the usages of purification and penance, and the awful consequences of their neglect, the people became accustomed to think more of the next world than of this. As heaven alone was their home, the Indians had scarcely a real world, or practical objects which it was worth while to strive after.

Without purpose or activity they were perpetually changing, they obeyed an oppressive and exhausting despotism, which the theory of the Brahmans justified as divine, and provided with the most acute regulations for the maintenance and extension of its power. Thus the most beautiful and luxuriant land on earth seemed really to become a vale of misery.

The scholasticism of the Indians concentrated their efforts on framing ever new conceptions of the categories of spirit and nature, of matter and the _Ego_, which perpetually changed without ever breaking loose from them. Their philosophy gained no object beyond establis.h.i.+ng more firmly their hypothesis, separating ever more widely nature and spirit, body and soul, the fleshly and the supernatural, and rooting more deeply a perverse view of nature. No doubt the appet.i.tes compensated themselves for the pain and privation of penances, for the torments of asceticism, in luxurious enjoyment; the imagination sought relief from the necessity of thinking of Brahman and nothing but Brahman in painting a motley world of spirits beside and below Brahman, by confounding heaven and earth, by the restless invention of grotesque charms and miracles, by brilliant pictures on a measureless scale. In the same way the reason compensated itself for its exclusion from philosophy and the compulsion exercised upon it by the most acute distinctions; yet no healthy advance could be made by the alternation of asceticism and enjoyment, by oscillation between hollow abstractions and unbridled imagination, the most irrational view of the world and the most subtle reflections.

Full of compa.s.sion for the sorrows of the mult.i.tude, distressed at the sight of the oppression under which the people lay, repelled by the cruel asceticism, the pride and exclusive scholasticism of the Brahmans, Buddha undertook to provide the people with alleviation and bring help to their pains. With him the world is Evil, and regeneration is the eternity of evil. In order to escape this, as he was himself confined to the current view of the world and philosophical systems, he could only overthrow Brahman along with the G.o.ds; he could merely recommend the restraint of the appet.i.tes and desires, patient suffering and renunciation, flight from the world and the _Ego_, and in the last instance a more complete annihilation of the _Ego_. It was nevertheless a great gain that the body need no longer be tormented and destroyed, that the difference of the castes was thrown into the background, that the contempt of the higher born for the lower was laid aside. In the place of an exclusive sense of caste came equality and brotherly love; tolerance and gentleness in the place of ceremonial; expiations and penances were superseded by a rational morality, and beneficial sympathy with all creatures. To counteract the new doctrine which threatened the entire position obtained after long struggles by the Brahmans, the latter allowed the idea of Brahman to fall into the background, in order to restore to the people the wors.h.i.+p of living personal deities; they were at pains to show that their deities also had the weal and woe of mankind at heart; and if on the one hand they increased the merit of asceticism and its requirements, they reduced on the other the value of good works; they attempted to amalgamate Brahman and the theory of the Buddhists by new speculations, and by means of a simple asceticism and a mystical act of the spirit, to obtain readmission into the highest being, and reunion with the world-soul. But even Buddhism provided its doctrine, and its scepticism which denied everything beside matter and the _Ego_, with a form of wors.h.i.+p, not in the pilgrimages only, and the wors.h.i.+p of the relics of the Enlightened, but also in the apotheosis of the teacher, and his elevation above the G.o.ds of the Brahmans.

While the doctrines of the Brahmans and Buddhism strove with each other, the extension of the Aryas in the south and the occupation of the coasts of the Deccan went steadily on, and the first shock which an external enemy brought upon India, the attack upon and reduction of the land of the Indus by Alexander the Great, after the most vigorous resistance, exercised the most beneficial influence on the states of India.

Chandragupta succeeded not only in breaking down the rule of the foreigner over the Indus, but in uniting the territory of India from the Indus to the Gulf of Bengal, from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas, into one mighty kingdom. His grandson extended his kingdom over Surashtra, Orissa, Kalinga; in the south his influence extended beyond the G.o.davari. From this throne, three hundred years after the death of the Enlightened, he announced his conversion to his faith, and proclaimed his rules as laws of the state. This seemed to be the dawn of a happy day for India. The combination of all the tribes could not but secure the independence of the country; the oppression of the hereditary despotism seemed to be softened by the prescripts of a rational morality; a brisk trade with the West appeared to give the last blow to the exclusiveness and rigidity of Brahmanism, and the religion of equality and brotherly love seemed to a.s.sure the rise of a new social order and a free movement of the intellectual powers of the people.

A sterner fate overtook the Indians. It is true that even at the time of Ac.o.ka the powerful neighbouring kingdom of the Seleucidae had begun to fall to pieces; Parthia and Bactria had already attempted to a.s.sert their independence, and though Antiochus the Great once more succeeded in subjugating Bactria, and in the year 206 B.C. appeared with a powerful army in the region of the Indus, Ac.o.ka's son and successor Subhagasena (Polybius calls him Sophagasenus) was able at the price of a number of elephants and some treasure to renew the league which his grandfather Chandragupta had concluded with the first Seleucus, the great-grandfather of Antiochus.[818] The re-established authority of the Seleucidae over Bactria was of very brief continuance. It was not attacks from without, but the dissensions of the grandsons of Ac.o.ka that rent asunder the great Indian empire; the dynasty of the Mauryas fell. A new race, that of the cungas, ascended the throne of Magadha in the year 178 B.C. with the kings Pushpamitra and Agnimitra, which thirty years after had in turn to give place to the Guptas. Neither the power of the cungas nor that of the Guptas was sufficient to maintain the national unity, and protect the regions of the West from the foreigner. The Greek princes who ruled in Bactria conquered the lands of the Indus--native Indian tradition presents us with armies of Yavanas on the right bank of the Indus at this time[819]--and established a Graeco-Indian empire, which in the course of the second century B. C. carried its arms to the Yamuna, and subjugated Cashmere as well as Surashtra to its rule.[820]

From the supremacy of Greek princes and the Greek character India received various impulses of the most lively kind, especially in architecture and plastic art; the influence of the Greek models extends not only over the Panjab but even to Cashmere. This dominion of the Greeks over the west of India was succeeded by other foreign empires, that of the Sacae from Arachosia (Sejestan), that of the Tibetan nomads, the Yuechis, the Indo-scyths from Bactria. If Buddhism had advanced to Bactria under the Mauryas, elements of the religious views of Iran now forced their way from Sejestan, the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.d Mithra, on which they laid especial stress, by means of the Maga-Brahmans, _i.e._ the Magian Brahmans, into the Panjab and Cashmere.[821] But the land of the Ganges maintained its independence, the civilisation of the Deccan was not interrupted, and the national forces still sufficed to remove at length the power of the foreigner even in the West.

For centuries after this date Buddhists and Brahmans stood side by side in the Indian states of the West and East. Only the Guptas of Magadha had wors.h.i.+pped Vishnu and civa;[822] the Sacan and Indo-Scythian princes of the West were devoted to Buddhism. Yet Buddhism was unable finally to triumph over the reformed doctrine of the Brahmans, supported as this was by the wors.h.i.+p of Vishnu or civa and the speculation and mysticism of the Yoga. It had become divided into sects, of which the bases were almost wholly of a dogmatic character; they rested on the different philosophic foundations of the system. But the adherents of these sects hated each other more than they hated the Brahmans, and the ethics of the Buddhists preached only obedience, patience, submission, and retirement from the world. It was no more adapted than the ethics of the Brahmans to supply new impulses to the volition and activity of the Indians, and in the end the bright world of G.o.ds and spirits of Brahmanism, the magic powers and miracles of their ancient saints, exercised a greater power of attraction on the hearts of the Indians than the simpler doctrine of the Buddhists. The Veda, the Epos, and all tradition was on the side of the Brahmans. The genuine Kshatriya could not be satisfied with Buddha's peaceful doctrine; the Brahmans maintained their position as presidents at the funeral feasts of the tribes, and common interests of a very practical nature kept the sects and even the schools of the Brahmans more closely together than was possible among the various divisions of the Buddhists. When it had been shown that Buddhism was not strong enough to overpower the old system, the Brahmans succeeded in entirely overthrowing and expelling that religion. The faith of the Enlightened maintained its ground in Cashmere and Ceylon alone. Before its expulsion from its native home it had taken such firm root in Nepal and Tibet, in further India and China, that it was able from thence to humanise the manners of the nomads of Upper Asia, and in the East to gain the most numerous adherents for the religion of patience.

In the extent of their territory and the numbers of the population the Indians possessed an adequate natural basis for periodical regenerations. The despotic power which the princes had attained not without the a.s.sistance of the Brahmans, and which had the more injurious consequences, the more completely the will of the subjects was absorbed in the governing caprice rather than elevated to any moral communion, found on the one hand a certain counterpoise in the close communities and families, and on the other was far from being strong enough, from having sufficient activity and development, to repress and dominate all spheres of life. It had not kept the rich gifts of the Indians at the point which they reached at the time of the conquest of Buddhism; it had not been able to prevent new attempts, a new rise, and the elevation of the depressed powers of will and body. The strongest check was the establishment of the system of castes in full power, the restriction of the circulation of the blood in the body of the nation, the severe repression of free activity and purpose by the supposed divine arrangement of the vocations and orders, the exclusive direction of the heart and will to objects beyond this world. In this way a lasting prohibition was imposed on the free play of the powers, and a false aim was set up; while the physical health of the national body, the moral health of the national spirit, which can only be maintained by the counterpoise and reciprocal action of moral and intellectual impulses, and the exertion of the will for attainable objects, was destroyed and undermined to such a degree that stagnation prevailed and the soil became sterile.

Thus it happened that the state of the Aryans in the divided condition in which they found themselves, and the limitations to which the Brahmans had condemned their powers of will, in spite of the protected position of their country and the numbers of the population, had not the power to resist the attacks of Islam, and to prevent the erection of a lasting alien empire on their soil, which finally subjugated the lands of the Indus and the Ganges, and even the Deccan to a large extent, almost indeed the whole of India, while it transplanted to the soil numerous hordes of a foreign population. Precisely these districts which had given the impulse to the development of the Indian nature, became in the end the centre of this foreign dominion, while regions of the Deccan peopled mainly by non-Arian races, who had been won over at a comparatively late period by colonisation, made the most stubborn resistance. The empire of the Great Mogul in the Deccan was able only for a brief period to pa.s.s the Krishna to the south.

Though the Indians were not powerful enough to resist the arms of Islam they did resist its mania for conversion. Heavily as this pressed upon them from time to time, the habit of asceticism, the hope of escaping from the fetters of the soul with the death of the body, enabled them to withstand the fiercest tyranny. Even now the most cowardly Bengalee can die with the most dauntless courage. Thus the Indians were able to maintain their religion, the results of their history and civilisation, their whole intellectual possessions, against their Moslem masters. It is true that all advance was at an end, that the limits were fixed irrevocably, and could not be overstepped; but the mobility of the Indian spirit within these was not suppressed. Indian poetry could develop into artistic lyrics, into the drama, and didactic works; the formal subtlety of the nation laboured with effect in grammar, algebra, and logic. Even if the services of philosophy were mainly extensions, developments, and variations of the old ideas, though theology maintained her supremacy, and put and discussed anew the old questions, by such activity and such labours, the intellectual life of the Indians was preserved from sterility; they have placed the Indians in possession of a considerable literature of the second growth, and maintained unbroken their peculiar civilisation.

The Pharaohs engraved the memorials of their reigns on artificial mountains of stone, in order to preserve their deeds to the most remote future; their subjects chiselled, painted, and wrote the remembrance of their lives in their tombs, in order that no incident that had befallen the dead might be forgotten. The Indians have not written their history, because at a very early period they began to dedicate their lives to the future world, and convinced themselves that the state was nothing and religion everything. If among the Egyptians the name of a man was to live for ever, and his body was to rest to all eternity in its rocky grave, the Indians were tormented with exactly the opposite desire: they wished to attain the end of the individual as quickly as possible, to blot out existence without any return, and destroy the remains of it as completely and rapidly as possible. The Egyptians became painters, builders, masons, and sculptors; the Indians were philosophers, ascetics, interpreters of dreams, mendicants, and poets.

The history of the Indians has pa.s.sed into the acts of G.o.ds and saints; it is lost in the chaos in which heaven and earth are confounded. Only at home in heaven, in poetry, in philosophy, and imaginary systems, the Indians had no ethical world on this side the grave, and therefore no achievements of their princes, statesmen, or nations were worth the trouble of recording.

Religion has dominated the life of the Indians more thoroughly than that of almost any other nation. This result would not have been attained by the Brahmans, who never rose to an organised hierarchy, and were always limited to the advantages of their order, the influence of wors.h.i.+p and doctrine, had not the feeling and heart of the people met them half way.

The victory of Brahman over Indra decided the fate of the Indians. All attempts, even the most vigorous, to abandon Brahman merely led to modifications of the leading idea; they did not remove it. This pantheistic theory weakened the resolution of the Indians in the region of politics and action; the consequences so severely and zealously drawn from it have checked the ethical productiveness of the Indian spirit and prevented its advance.

The foundations of the Brahmanic system remain unmoved to this day. In wors.h.i.+p the Brahmans are tolerant. Every one is free to choose his protecting deity; he may invoke Vishnu or civa, or any other G.o.d; he may or may not go a pilgrimage to the Ganges, to Hurdwar, Jagannatha, and other holy places; he may practise asceticism or omit it. In their philosophy and schools they are also tolerant; one man may follow this system, another that, provided that the world-soul is still retained.

But in the question of purification and the social question of caste they are intolerant. The fixed scheme of the chief castes, to which the Dvija is linked by invest.i.ture with the holy girdle, together with the lower castes, the close castes of occupation within the main and subordinate castes, and their numberless gradations, still remains. Even now the castes which Manu's law destined to be servants observe this command both towards natives of higher caste and foreigners. This unnatural system is retained because in the eyes of the Indians it is neither unrighteous nor unjust, but is rather the expression of divine justice; birth in a higher or lower caste is the recompense for merit or sin in earlier existences. Moreover, with the exception of the lowest cla.s.ses, the Pariahs and Chandalas, every man has an advantage over some other cla.s.s, and would lose by expulsion from his birthright as well as by the suppression of the whole system. In India expulsion from the caste means the surrender of all the relations of life; the loss of social existence, of family, of the nearest connections; it implies a fall to the lowest level, that of the expelled casteless man. No man has any dealings with the expelled person; even his nearest relatives would be denied if they gave him a draught of water. So careful are the Indians of purity. The lowest Bengalee at the present day does not hesitate, courteously but decidedly, to request the officer of the ruling nation who visits his hut to leave it, that it may not be defiled.

In their national life the Indians have exhibited down to our days their long-practised and often-tried courage of patience. As the old system of religion and morals has bidden defiance to centuries, so do we find in the Indians that tenacity which long and severe oppression is wont to create in originally vigorous natures, that power of resistance which bends but does not break, united with a cunning and love of intrigue by which the oppressed revenges himself on the oppressor, against whom force avails nothing. With this they have retained a costly possession, that inclination towards the highest intellectual attainments which runs through their whole history. This treasure is still vigorous in the hearts of the best Indians, and appears the more certainly to promise a brighter future, as the government which now controls the nation has come to an earnest though late resolution to rule with the help of the Indians for the good of the people, while the intellectual force and cultivation of their western tribesmen are disclosing themselves ever more clearly to the eager activity of eminent Hindus.

FOOTNOTES:

[818] Polyb. 11, 34. _Supra_, 452.

[819] Wilson, "Vishnu-Purana," p. 470, 471.

[820] Strabo, p. 516.

[821] Communication from Prof. Albrecht Weber.

[822] _Supra_, p. 331, _n._

END OF VOL. IV.