Hindu Gods And Heroes Part 2

Now the moral law, in order that it may be feared, needs to be embodied in the personality of a G.o.d. Most of their G.o.ds inspire no fear at all in the souls of the Brahmans; but there is one of whom they have a dread, which is all the greater for being illogical.

Praj.a.pati is a vast impersonality, too remote and abstract to inspire the soul with either fear or love. The other G.o.ds--Indra, Agni, Soma, Varu?a, Vish?u, and the rest--are his offspring, and are moved like puppets by the machinery of the ritual of sacrifice created by him.

However much they may seem to differ one from another in their attributes and personalities, they are in essence one and negligible in the eyes of the master of the ritual lore. In the beginning, say the Brahma?as, all the G.o.ds (except Praj.a.pati, of course) were alike, and all were mortal; then they performed sacrifices and thereby became immortal, each with his peculiar attributes of divinity.[18] Thus at bottom they are all the same thing, merely phases of the universal G.o.dhead, waves stirred up by the current of the cosmic sacrifice. They have no terrors for the priesthood. But there is one deity who obstinately refuses to accommodate himself to this convenient point of view, and that is Rudra, or Siva. By rights and logically he ought to fall into rank with the rest of the G.o.ds; but there is a crossgrained element in his nature which keeps him out. As we have seen, he comes from a different source: in origin he was a demon, a power of terror, whose realm of wors.h.i.+p lay apart from that of the G.o.ds of higher cla.s.s, and now, although it has extended into the domains of orthodox religion, an atmosphere of dread still broods over it.[19] Rudra wields all his ancient terrors over a much widened area. The priests have a.s.signed him a regular place in their liturgies, and fully recognise him in his several phases as Bhava, Sarva, Ugra, Maha-deva or the Great G.o.d, Rudra, Isana or the Lord, and Asani or the Thunderbolt (KB. VI. 2-9). Armed with his terrors, he is fit to be employed in the service of conscience. Hence a myth has arisen that in order to punish Praj.a.pati for his incest with his daughter the G.o.ds created Bhuta-pati (who is Pasu-pati or Rudra under a new name), who stabbed him. The rest of the myth is as immaterial to our purpose as it is unsavoury; what is important is that the conscience of the Brahmans was beginning to feel slight qualms at the uncleanness of some of their old myths and to look towards Rudra as in some degree an avenger of sin. In this is implied an immense moral advance.

Henceforth there will be a gradual enn.o.blement of one of the phases of the G.o.d's character. Many of the best minds among the Brahmans will find their imaginations stirred and their consciences moved by contemplation of him. To them he will be no more a mere demon of the mountain and the wild. His destructive wrath they will interpret as symbolising the everlasting process of death-in-life which is the keynote of nature; in his wild dances they will see imaged forth the everlasting throb of cosmic existence; to his terrors they will find a reverse of infinite love and grace. The horrors of Rudra the deadly are the mantle of Siva the gracious. Thus, while the G.o.d's character in its lower phases remains the same as before, claiming the wors.h.i.+p of the basest cla.s.ses of mankind, and nowise rising to a higher level, it develops powerfully and fruitfully in one aspect which attracts grave and earnest imaginations. The Muni, the contemplative ascetic, penetrates in meditation through the terrors of Siva's outward form to the G.o.d's inward love and wisdom, and beholds in him his own divine prototype. And so Siva comes to be figured in this n.o.bler aspect as the divine Muni, the supreme saint and sage.

[Footnote 18: For the original mortality of the G.o.ds see TS. VII. iv.

2, 1, SB. X. iv. 33 f., XI. i. 2, 12, ii. 3, 6; for their primitive non-differentiation, TS. VI. vi. 8, 2, SB. IV. v. 4, 1-4.]

[Footnote 19: Cf. e.g. KB. III. 4 & 6, VI. 2-9, and Ap. SS. VI. xiv.

11-13.]

While the wors.h.i.+p of Siva is slowly making its way into the heart of Brahmanic ritualism, another movement is at work which is gradually drawing many of the keenest intellects among the Brahmans away from the study of ritual towards an idealistic philosophy which views all ritual with indifference. Its literature is the Upanishads.

The pa.s.sing of the ?igvedic age has left to the Brahmans a doctrinal legacy, which may be thus restated: a single divine principle through a prototypic sacrifice has given birth to the universe, and all the processes of cosmic nature are controlled by sacrifices founded upon that primeval sacrifice. In short, the ritual symbolises and in a sense actually _is_ the whole cosmic process. The ritual implies both the knowledge of the law of sacrifice and the proper practice of that law, _both understanding and works_. This is the standpoint of the orthodox ritualist. But there has also arisen a new school among the Brahmans, that of the Aupanishadas, which has laid down for its first doctrine that _works are for the sake of understanding_, that the practice of ritual is of value only as a help to the mystic knowledge of the All. But here they have not halted; they have gone a further step, and declared that _knowledge once attained, works become needless_. Some even venture to hint that perhaps the highest knowledge is not to be reached through works at all. And the knowledge that the Aupanishadas seek is of Brahma, and _is_ Brahma.

The word _brahma_ is a neuter noun, and in the ?ig-veda it means something that can only be fully translated by a long circ.u.mlocution.

It may be rendered as "the power of ritual devotion"; that is to say, it denotes the mystic or magic force which is put forth by the poet-priest of the ?ig-veda when he performs the rites of sacrifice with appropriate chanting of hymns--in short, ritual magic. This mystic force the ?igvedic poets have represented in personal form as the G.o.d B?ihaspati, in much the same way as they embodied the spirit of the sacrifice in Vish?u. Their successors, the orthodox ritualists of the Brahma?as, have not made much use of this term; but sometimes they speak of Brahma as an abstract first principle, the highest and ultimate source of all being, even of Praj.a.pati (Samav. B. I. 1, Gop.

B. I. i. 4); and when they speak of Brahma they think of him not as a power connected with religious ceremony but as a supremely transcendent and absolutely unqualified and impersonal First Existence. But the school of the Aupanishadas has gone further.

Seeking through works mystic knowledge as the highest reality, they see in Brahma the perfect knowledge. To them the absolute First Existence is also transcendently full and unqualified Thought. As knowledge is power, the perfect Power is perfect Knowledge.

Brahma then is absolute knowledge; and all that exists is really Brahma, one and indivisible in essence, but presenting itself illusively to the finite consciousness as a world of plurality, of most manifold subjects and objects of thought. The highest wisdom, the greatest of all secrets, is to know this truth, to realise with full consciousness that there exists only the One, Brahma, the infinite Idea; and the sage of the Upanishads is he who has attained this knowledge, understanding that he himself, as individual subject of thought, is really identical with the universal Brahma. He has realised that he is one with the Infinite Thought, he has raised himself to the mystic heights of transcendental Being and Knowledge, immeasurably far above nature and the G.o.ds. He knows all things at their fountain-head, and life can nevermore bring harm to him; in his knowledge he has salvation, and death will lead him to complete union with Brahma.

The Aupanishadas have thus advanced from the pantheism of the orthodox ritualists to a transcendental idealism. The process has been gradual.

It was only by degrees that they reached the idea of salvation in knowledge, the knowledge that is union with Brahma; and it was likewise only through slow stages that they were able to conceive of Brahma in itself. Many pa.s.sages in the Upanishads are full of struggles to represent Brahma by symbols or forms perceptible to the sense, such as ether, breath, the sun, etc. Priests endeavoured to advance through ritual works to the ideas which these works are supposed to symbolise: the ritual is the training-ground for the higher knowledge, the leading-strings for infant philosophy. Gradually men become capable of thinking without the help of these symbols: philosophy grows to manhood, and looks with a certain contempt upon those supports of its infancy.

The nature of Brahma as conceived in the Upanishads is a subject on which endless controversies have raged, and we need not add to them.

Besides, the Upanishads themselves are not strictly consistent on this point, or on others, for that matter; for they are not a single h.o.m.ogeneous system of philosophy, but a number of speculations, from often varying standpoints, and they are frequently inconsistent. But there are some ideas which are more or less present in all of them.

They regard Brahma as absolute and infinite Thought and Being at once, and as such it is one with the consciousness, soul or self, of the individual when the latter rids himself of the illusion of a manifold universe and realises his unity with Brahma. Moreover, Brahma is bliss--the joy of wholly perfect and self-satisfied thought and being.

Since Brahma as universal Soul is really identical with each individual soul or _atma_, and vice versa, it follows that each individual soul contains within itself, _qua_ Brahma, the whole of existence, nature, G.o.ds, mankind, and all other beings; it creates them all, and all depend upon it. Our Aupanishadas are thoroughgoing idealists.

Another new idea also appears for the first time in the early Upanishads, and one that henceforth will wield enormous influence in all Indian thought. This is the theory of _karma_ and _sa?sara_, rebirth of the soul in accordance with the nature of its previous works. Before the Upanishads we find no evidence of this doctrine: the nearest approach to it is in some pa.s.sages of the Brahma?as which speak of sinful men dying again in the next world as a punishment for their guilt. But in the Upanishads the doctrine appears full-fledged, and it is fraught with consequences of immense importance. Sa?sara means literally a "wandering to and fro," that is, the cycle of births through which each soul must everlastingly pa.s.s from infinite time, and Karma means the "acts" of each soul. Each work or act performed by a living being is of a certain degree of righteousness or unrighteousness, and it is requited by a future experience of corresponding pleasure or pain. So every birth and ultimately every experience of a soul is determined by the righteousness of its previous acts; and there is no release for the soul from this endless chain of causes and effects unless it can find some supernatural way of deliverance. The Aupanishadas point to what they believe to be the only way: it is the Brahma-knowledge of the enlightened sage, which releases his soul from the chain of natural causation and raises him to everlasting union with Brahma.

The teaching of the Upanishads has had two very different practical results. On the one hand, it has moved many earnest thinkers to cast off the ties of the world and to wander about as homeless beggars, living on alms and meditating and discoursing upon the teachings of the Upanishads, while they await the coming of death to release their souls from the prison of the flesh and bring it to complete and eternal union with Brahma. These wandering ascetics--_sannyasis_, _bhikshus_, or _parivrajakas_ they are called--form a cla.s.s by themselves, which is destined to have an immense influence in moulding the future thought of India. The teaching of Brahmanism is beginning to recognise them, too. It has already divided the life of the orthodox man into three stages, or _asramas_, students.h.i.+p, the condition of the married householder, and thirdly the life of the hermit, or _vanaprastha_, to which the householder should retire after he has left a son to maintain his household; and now it is beginning to add to these as fourth stage the life of the homeless ascetic awaiting death and release. But this arrangement is for the most part a fiction, devised in order to keep the beggar-philosophers within the scheme of Brahmanic life; in reality they themselves recognise no such law.

The other current among the Aupanishadas is flowing in a very different direction. We have seen how the wors.h.i.+p of Rudra-Siva has grown since the old ?igvedic days, and how some souls have been able to see amidst the terrors of the G.o.d a power of love and wisdom that satisfies their deepest hopes and longings, as none of the orthodox rituals can do. A new feeling, the spirit of religious devotion, _bhakti_ as it is called, is arising among them. To them--and they number many Brahmans as well as men of other orders--Siva has thus become the highest object of wors.h.i.+p, Isvara or "the Lord"; and having thus enthroned him as supreme in their hearts, they are endeavouring to find for him a corresponding place in their intellects. To this end they claim that Siva as Isvara is the highest of all forms of existence; and this doctrine is growing and finding much favour. Among the Aupanishadas there are many who reconcile it with the teaching of the Upanishads by identifying Siva with Brahma. Thus a new light begins to flicker here and there in the Upanishads as the conception of Siva, a personal G.o.d wielding free grace, colours the pale whiteness of the impersonal Brahma; and at last in the Svetasvatara, which though rather late in date is not the least important of the Upanishads, this theistic movement boldly proclaims itself: the supreme Brahma, identified with Siva, is definitely contrasted with the individual soul as divine to human, giver of grace to receiver of grace. Later Upanishads will take up this strain, in honour of Siva and other G.o.ds, and finally they will end as mere tracts of this or that theistic church.

Yet another current is now beginning to stir men's minds, and it is one that is also destined to a great future. It starts from K?ish?a.

The teaching of the Upanishads, that all being is the One Brahma and that Brahma is the same as the individual soul, has busied many men, not only Brahmans but also Kshatriyas, n.o.blemen of the warrior order.

Some even say that it arose among the Kshatriyas; and at any rate it is likely that they, being less obsessed with the forms of ritual than the Brahmans and therefore able to think more directly and clearly, have helped the Brahmans in their discussions to clear their minds of ritual symbolism, and to realise more definitely the philosophic ideas which hitherto they had seen only dimly typified in their ceremonies.

K?ish?a was one of these Kshatriyas. He belonged to the Satvata or V?ish?i tribe, living in or near the ancient city of Mathura.

Sometimes in early writings he is styled K?ish?a Devakiputra, K?ish?a Devaki's son, because his mother's name was Devaki; sometimes again he is called K?ish?a Vasudeva, or simply Vasudeva, which is a patronymic said to be derived from the name of his father Vasudeva. In later times we shall find a whole cycle of legend gathering round him, in which doubtless there is a kernel of fact. Omitting the miraculous elements in these tales, we may say that the outline of the K?ish?a-legend is as follows: K?ish?a's father Vasudeva and his mother Devaki were grievously wronged by Devaki's cousin Ka?sa, who usurped the royal power in Mathura and endeavoured to slay K?ish?a in his infancy; but the child escaped, and on growing to manhood killed Ka?sa. But Ka?sa had made alliance with Jarasandha king of Magadha, who now threatened K?ish?a; so K?ish?a prudently retired from Mathura and led a colony of his tribesmen to Dvaraka, on the western coast in Kathiawar, where he founded a new State. There seems to be no valid reason for doubting these statements. Sober history does not reject a tale because it is embroidered with myth and fiction.

Now this man K?ish?a in the midst of his stirring life of war and government found time and taste also for the things that are of the spirit. He talked with men learned in the Upanishads about Brahma and the soul and the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d; and apparently he set up a little Established Church of his own, in which was combined something of the idealism of the Upanishads with the wors.h.i.+p of a supreme G.o.d of grace and perhaps too a kind of religious discipline, about which we shall say more later on. It must be confessed that we know sadly little about his actual doctrine from first hand. All that we hear about it is a short chapter in the Chhandogya Upanishad (iii. 17), where the Brahman Ghora A?girasa gives a sermon to K?ish?a, in which he compares the phases of human life to stages in the _diksha_ or ceremony of consecration, and the moral virtues that should accompany them to the _daks.h.i.+?a_ or honorarium paid to the officiating priests, and he concludes by exhorting his hearer to realise that the Brahma is imperishable, unfailing, and spiritual, and quoting two verses from the ?ig-veda speaking of the Sun as typifying the supreme bliss to which the enlightened soul arises. This does not tell us very much, and moreover we should remember that here our author, being an Aupanishada, is more interested in what Ghora preached to K?ish?a than in what K?ish?a accepted from Ghora's teaching. But we shall find centuries later in the Bhagavad-gita, the greatest textbook of the religion of K?ish?a, some distant echoes of this paragraph of the Chhandogya.

The beginnings of the religion of K?ish?a are thus very uncertain. But as we travel down the ages we find it growing and spreading. We see K?ish?a himself regarded as a half-divine hero and teacher, and wors.h.i.+pped under the name of _Bhagavan_, "the Lord," in a.s.sociation with other half-divine heroes. We see him becoming identified with old G.o.ds, and finally rising to the rank of the Supreme Deity whose wors.h.i.+p he had himself taught in his lifetime, the Brahma of the philosophers and the Most High G.o.d of the theists. As has happened many a time, the teacher has become the G.o.d of his Church.

CHAPTER III

THE EPICS, AND LATER

I. VISH?U-K?ISH?A

We now enter upon an age in which the old G.o.ds, Indra and Brahma, retire to the background, while Vish?u and Siva stand in the forefront of the stage.

The Hindus are of the same opinion as the Latin poet: _ferrea nunc aetas agitur_. We are now living in an Iron Age, according to them; and it began in the year 3102 B.C., shortly after the great war described in the Mahabharata. The date 3102, I need hardly remark, is of no historical value, being based merely upon the theories of comparatively late astronomers; but the statement as a whole is important. The Great War marks an epoch. It came at the end of what may be called the pre-historic period, and was followed by a new age.

To be strictly correct, we must say that the age which followed the Great War was not new in the sense that it introduced any startling novelties that had been unknown previously; but it was new in the sense that after the Great War India speedily became the India that we know from historical records. A certain fusion of different races, cultures, and ideals had to take place in order that the peculiar civilisation of India might unfold itself; and this fusion was accomplished about the time of the Great War, and partly no doubt by means of the Great War, some ten centuries before the Christian era.

The story of the Great War is told with a wild profusion of mythical and legendary colouring in the Mahabharata, an epic the name of which means literally "The Great Tale of the Bharata Clan." It relates how the blind old King Dh?itarash?ra of Hastinapura had a hundred sons, known as the Kuru or Kaurava princes, the eldest of whom was Duryodhana, and Dh?itarash?ra's brother Pa??u had five sons, the Pa??ava brethren; how the Pa??avas were ousted by the Kauravas from the kingdom, the eldest Pa??ava prince Yudhish?hira having been induced to stake the fortunes of himself and his brethren on a game of dice, in which he was defeated; how the five Pa??avas, with their common wife Draupadi (observe this curious and ugly feature of polyandry, which is quite opposed to standard Hindu morals, but is by no means unparalleled in early Indian literature[20]) retired into exile for thirteen years, and then came back with a great army of allies, and after fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y battles with the Kauravas and their supporters in the plain of Kurukshetra at last gained the victory, slew the Kauravas, and established Yudhish?hira as king in Hastinapura. Among the Pa??avas the leading part is played by the eldest, Yudhish?hira, and the third, Arjuna; of the others, Bhima, the second, is a Hercules notable only for his strength, courage, and fidelity, while the twins Nakula and Sahadeva are colourless figures.

K?ish?a plays an important part in the story; for on the return of the Pa??avas to fight the Kauravas he accompanies Arjuna as his charioteer, and on the eve of the first battle delivers to him a discourse on his religion, the Bhagavad-gita, or Lord's Song, which has become one of the most famous and powerful of all the sacred books of India.

[Footnote 20: See H. Raychaudhuri, _Materials for the Study of the Early History of the Vaishnava Sect, p. 27_.]

Now if the Mahabharata were as h.o.m.ogeneous even as the Iliad and Odyssey, which give us a fairly consistent and truthful picture of a single age, we should be in a very happy position. Unfortunately this is not the case. Our epic began as a Bharata, or Tale of the Bharata Clan, probably of very moderate bulk, not later than 600 B.C., and perhaps considerably earlier; and from that time onward it went on growing bigger and bigger for over a thousand years, as editors stuffed in new episodes and still longer discourses on nearly all the religious and philosophic doctrines admitted within the four walls of Hinduism, until it grew to its present immense bulk, which it claims to amount to 100,000 verses. Thus it pictures the thought not of one century but of more than ten, and we cannot feel sure of the date of any particular statement in it. Nevertheless we can distinguish in a general way between the old skeleton of the story, in which the theme is treated in simple epic fas.h.i.+on, society is far freer than in later days and no one objects to eating beef, from the additional matter, in which the tale is recast in a far more grandiose vein and is padded out with enormous quant.i.ties of moral, religious, and philosophic sermons. The religion too is different in the different parts. In the older portions the G.o.ds who are most popular are Indra, Agni, and Brahma--not the neuter abstract Brahma, but the masculine Brahma, the Demiurge, who corresponds more or less to Praj.a.pati of the Brahma?as and is represented in cla.s.sical art as a four-headed old man reciting the Vedas--and K?ish?a seems to figure only as a hero or at best as a demiG.o.d; but the later parts with fine impartiality claim the supremacy of heaven variously for Siva, Brahma, and Vish?u; and Vish?u, as we have seen, is sometimes identified with K?ish?a, notably in the chapters known as the Bhagavad-gita.

The G.o.ds have changed somewhat since earlier days. Indra has settled down in the const.i.tutional monarchy of Paradise a.s.signed to him by the Brahma?as; he now figures as the prototype of earthly kings, leading the armies of the G.o.ds to war against the demons when occasion requires, and pa.s.sing the leisure of peace in the enjoyment of celestial dissipation. His morals have not improved: he is a debonair debauchee. Brahma the Creator, a more popular version of Praj.a.pati, is still too impersonal to have much hold on the popular imagination; the same is the case with Agni the Fire-G.o.d. Plainly there was a vacancy for a supreme deity whose character was powerful enough to move men's souls, either through awe or love; and for this vacancy there were two strong candidates, Vish?u and Siva, who in course of time succeeded to the post and divided the supremacy between them.

Vish?u has altered immensely since last we met him. First, after an extraordinary change in his own character, he has been identified with Naraya?a, and then both of them have been equated with K?ish?a. The development is so portentous that it calls for a little study.

We have seen that in the Vedas Vish?u appears to be, and in the Brahma?as certainly is, the embodied Spirit of the Sacrifice, and that ritual mysticism has invented for him a supreme home in the highest heaven. But in the Epics he has developed into a radiant and gracious figure of ideal divinity, an almighty saviour with a long record of holy works for the salvation of mankind, a G.o.d who delights in moral goodness as well as in ritual propriety, and who from time to time incarnates himself in human or animal form so as to maintain the order of righteousness. Symbolism has further endowed him with a consort, the G.o.ddess Sri or Lakshmi, typifying fortune; sometimes also he is represented with another wife, the Earth-G.o.ddess. The divine hawk or kite Garu?a, who seems to have been originally the same as the eagle who in the ?igvedic legend carried off the soma for Indra, has been pressed into his service; he now rides on Garu?a, and bears his figure upon his banner. I have already suggested a possible explanation of this evolution (above, p. 41): owing to his close a.s.sociation with Indra, the most truly popular of ?igvedic deities, the laic imagination transfused some of the live blood of Indra into the veins of the priestly abstraction Vish?u. To the plain man Indra was very real; and as he frequently heard tales of Indra being aided in his exploits by Vish?u, he came to regard Vish?u as a very present helper in trouble. The friend of Indra became the friend of mankind. The post of Indra had already been fixed for him by the theologians; but the functions of Vish?u, outside the rituals, were still somewhat vaguely defined, and were capable of considerable expansion. Here was a great opportunity for those souls who were seeking for a supreme G.o.d of grace, and were not satisfied to find him in Siva; and they made full use of it, and wholly transformed the personality of Vish?u.

One of the stages in this transformation was the absorption of Naraya?a in Vish?u. Naraya?a was originally a G.o.d of a different kind.

The earliest reference to him is in a Brahma?a which calls him Purusha Naraya?a, which means that it regards him as being the same as the Universal Spirit which creates from itself the cosmos; it relates that Purusha Naraya?a pervaded the whole of nature (SB. XII. iii. 4, 1), and that he made himself omnipresent and supreme over all beings by performing a _pancha-ratra sattra_, or series of sacrifices lasting over five days (ib. XIII. vi. 1, 1). Somewhat later we find prayers addressed to Naraya?a, Vasudeva, and Vish?u as three phases of the same G.o.d (Taitt. Ara?. X. i. 6). But was Naraya?a in origin merely a variety of the Vedic Purusha or our old acquaintance Praj.a.pati? His name must give us pause. The most simple explanation of it is that it is a family name: as Karsh?aya?a means a member of the K?ish?a-family and Ra?ayana a man belonging to the family of Ra?a, so Naraya?a would naturally denote a person of the family of Nara. But Nara itself signifies a _man_: is the etymology therefore reduced to absurdity?

Not at all: Nara is also used as a proper name, as we shall see.[21]

Probably the name really means what naturally it would seem to mean, "a man of the Nara family"; that Naraya?a was originally a divine or deified saint, a _?is.h.i.+_, as the Hindus would call him; and that somehow he became identified with Vish?u and the Universal Spirit.

[Footnote 21: It must be admitted that ancient writers give different etymologies of the name: thus, a poet in the Mahabharata (III.

clx.x.xix. 3) derives it from _nara?_, "waters," and _ayanam_, "going,"

understanding it to mean "one who has the waters for his resting-place"; Manu (I. 10, with Medhat.i.thi's commentary), accepting the same etymology, interprets it as "the dwelling-place of all the Naras"; and in the Mahabharata XII. cccxli. 39, it is also explained as "the dwelling-place of mankind." But these interpretations are plainly artificial concoctions.]

This theory really is not by any means as wild as at first sight it may seem to be. Divine saints are sometimes mentioned in the ?ig-veda and Brahma?as as being the creators of the universe[22]; and they appear again and again in legend as equals of the G.o.ds, attaining divine powers by their mystic insight into the sacrificial lore. But there is more direct evidence than this.

[Footnote 22: RV. X. cxxix. 5, SB. VI. i. 1, 1-5. Cf. Charpentier, _Supar?asage_, p. 387.]

In the Mahabharata there are incorporated two doc.u.ments of first-rate importance for the doctrines of the churches that wors.h.i.+pped Vish?u.

One of these is the Bhagavad-gita, or Lord's Song (VI. xxv.-xlii.); the other is the Naraya?iya, or Account of Naraya?a (XII.

cccx.x.xvi.-cccliii.). Their teachings are not the same in details, though on most main points they agree; for they belong to different sections of the one religious body. Leaving aside the Bhagavad-gita for the moment, we note that the Naraya?iya relates a story that there were born four sons of Dharma, or Righteousness, viz. Nara, Naraya?a, Hari or Vish?u, and K?ish?a. In other places (I. ccx.x.x. 18, III. xii.

45, xlvii. 10, V. xlviii. 15, etc.) we are plainly told that Nara is a previous incarnation of Arjuna the Pa??ava prince, and Naraya?a is, of course, the supreme Deity, who in the time of Arjuna was born on earth as K?ish?a Vasudeva, and that in his earlier birth Nara and Naraya?a were both ascetic saints. This tradition is very important, for it enables us to see something of the early character of Naraya?a. He was an ancient saint of legend, who was connected with a hero Nara, just as K?ish?a was a.s.sociated with Arjuna; and the atmosphere of saintliness clings to him obstinately. Tradition alleges that he was the _?is.h.i.+_, or inspired seer, who composed the Purusha-sukta of the ?ig-veda (X. 90), and represents him by choice as lying in a _yoga-nidra_, or mystic sleep, upon the body of the giant serpent Sesha in the midst of the Ocean of Milk. Thus the wors.h.i.+p of Vish?u, like the wors.h.i.+p of Siva, has owed much to the influence of live yogis idealised as divine saints; though it must be admitted that the yogis of the Vaish?ava orders have usually been more agreeable and less ambiguous than those of the Saiva community.

We must briefly consider now the religious teachings of the Bhagavad-gita and the Naraya?iya, and then turn to the inscriptions and contemporary literature to see whether we can find any sidelights in them. We begin with the Bhagavad-gita, or The Lord's Song.

The Bhagavad-gita purports to be a dialogue between the Pa??ava prince Arjuna and K?ish?a, who was serving him as his charioteer, on the eve of the great battle. In order to invent a leading motive for his teaching, the poet represents Arjuna as suddenly stricken with overwhelming remorse at the prospect of the fratricidal strife which he is about to begin. "I will not fight," he cries in anguish. Then K?ish?a begins a long series of arguments to stimulate him for the coming battle. He points out, with quotations from the Upanishads, that killing men in battle does not destroy their souls; for the soul is indestructible, migrating from body to body according to its own deserts. The duty of the man born in the Warrior-caste is to fight; fighting is his caste-duty, his _dharma_, and as such it can entail upon him no guilt if it be performed in the right spirit. But how is this to be done? The answer is the leading motive of K?ish?a's teaching. For the maintenance of the world it is necessary that men should do the works of their respective castes, and these works do not operate as _karma_ to the detriment of the future life of their souls if they perform them not from selfish motives but as offerings made in perfect unselfishness to the Lord. This is the doctrine of _Karma-yoga_, discipline of works, which is declared to lead the soul of the wors.h.i.+pper to salvation in the Lord as effectually as the ancient intellectualism preached in the Upanishads and the Sa?khya philosophy. But there is also a third way to salvation, the way through loving devotion, or _bhakti_, which is as efficacious as either of the other two; the wors.h.i.+ppers of Siva had already preached this for their own church in the Svetasvatara Upanishad. Besides treating without much consistency or method of many incidental questions of religious theory and practice, K?ish?a reveals himself for a few instants to Arjuna in his form as Viraj, the universal being in which all beings are comprehended and consumed. Finally Arjuna is comforted, and laying the burden of all his works upon K?ish?a, he prepares in quiet faith for the coming day of battle.

There are four main points to notice in this teaching. (1) The Supreme G.o.d, superior to Brahma, he who rules by grace and comprehends in his universal person the whole of existence, is Vish?u, or Hari, represented on earth for the time being by K?ish?a Vasudeva. The author makes no attempt to reconcile the fatalism implied in the old theory of _karma-sa?sara_ with his new doctrine of special and general grace: he allows the two principles to stand side by side, and leaves for future generations of theologians the delicate task of harmonising them. (2) Three roads to salvation are recognised in principle, the intellectual gnosis of the old Upanishads and the Sa?khya, the "way of works" or performance of necessary social duties in a spirit of perfect surrender to G.o.d, and the "way of devotion," continuous loving wors.h.i.+p and contemplation of G.o.d. In practice the first method is ignored as being too severe for average men; the second and third are recommended, as being suitable for all cla.s.ses. (3) The way of salvation is thus thrown open directly to men and women of all castes and conditions. The Bhagavad-gita fully approves of the orthodox division of society into castes; but by its doctrine that the performance of caste-duties in a spirit of sacrifice leads to salvation it makes caste an avenue to salvation, not a barrier. (4) The Bhagavad-gita has nothing to say for the animal-sacrifices of the Brahmans. It recognises only offerings of flowers, fruits, and the like. The doctrine of _ahi?sa_, "thou shalt do no hurt," was making much headway at the time, and the wholesale animal-sacrifices of the Brahmans roused general disgust, of which the Buddhists and Jains took advantage for the propagation of their teachings.