It is dangerous to make sweeping statements about the huge mass of Indian literature, but I think that most Buddhist and Brahmanic systems assume that morality is merely a means of obtaining happiness[67] and is not obedience to a categorical imperative or to the will of God. Morality is by inference raised to the status of a cosmic law, because evil deeds will infallibly bring evil consequences to the doer in this life or in another. But it is not commonly spoken of as such a law. The usual point of view is that man desires happiness and for this morality is a necessary though insufficient preparation. But there may be higher states which cannot be expressed in terms of happiness.
The will receives more attention in European philosophy than in Indian, whether Buddhist or Brahmanic, which both regard it not as a separate kind of activity but as a form of thought. As such it is not neglected in Buddhist psychology: will, desire and struggle are recognized as good provided their object is good, a point overlooked by those who accuse Buddhism of preaching inaction[68].
Schopenhauer's doctrine that will is the essential fact in the universe and in life may appear to have analogies to Indian thought: it would be easy for instance to quote passages from the Pitakas showing that taṇhâ, thirst, craving or desire, is the force which makes and remakes the world. But such statements must be taken as generalizations respecting the world as it is rather than as implying theories of its origin, for though taṇhâ is a link in the chain of causation, it is not regarded as an ultimate principle more than any other link but is made to depend on feeling. The Mâyâ of the Vedanta is not so much the affirmation of the will to live as the illusion that we have a real existence apart from Brahman, and the same may be said of Ahaṃkâra in the Sânkhya philosophy. It is the principle of egoism and individuality, but its essence is not so much self-assertion as the mistaken idea that this is mine, that I am happy or unhappy.
There is a question much debated in European philosophy but little argued in India, namely the freedom of the will. The active European feeling the obligation and the difficulties of morality is perplexed by the doubt whether he really has the power to act as he wishes. This problem has not much troubled the Hindus and rightly, as I think. For if the human will is not free, what does freedom mean? What example of freedom can be quoted with which to contrast the supposed non-freedom of the will? If in fact it is from the will that our notion of freedom is derived, is it not unreasonable to say that the will is not free? Absolute freedom in the sense of something regulated by no laws is unthinkable. When a thing is conditioned by external causes it is dependent. When it is conditioned by internal causes which are part of its own nature, it is free. No other freedom is known. An Indian would say that a man's nature is limited by Karma. Some minds are incapable of the higher forms of virtue and wisdom, just as some bodies are incapable of athletic feats. But within the limits of his own nature a human being is free. Indian theology is not much hampered by the mad doctrine that God has predestined some souls to damnation, nor by the idea of Fate, except in so far as Karma is Fate. It is Fate in the sense that Karma inherited from a previous birth is a store of rewards and punishments which must be enjoyed or endured, but it differs from Fate because we are all the time making our own karma and determining the character of our next birth.
The older Upanishads hint at a doctrine analogous to that of Kant, namely that man is bound and conditioned in so far as he is a part of the world of phenomena but free in so far as the self within him is identical with the divine self which is the creator of all bonds and conditions. Thus the Kaushîtaki Upanishad says, "He it is who causes the man whom he will lead upwards from these worlds to do good works and He it is who causes the man whom he will lead downwards to do evil works. He is the guardian of the world, He is the ruler of the world, He is the Lord of the world and He is myself." Here the last words destroy the apparent determinism of the first part of the sentence. And similarly the Chândogya Upanishad says, "They who depart hence without having known the Self and those true desires, for them there is no freedom in all worlds. But they who depart hence after knowing the Self and those true desires, for them there is freedom in all worlds[70]."
Early Buddhist literature asserts uncompromisingly that every state of consciousness has a cause and in one of his earliest discourses the Buddha argues that the Skandhas, including mental states, cannot be the Self because we have not free will to make them exactly what we choose[71]. But throughout his ethical teaching it is I think assumed that, subject to the law of karma, conscious action is equivalent to spontaneous action. Good mental states can be made to grow and bad mental states to decrease until the stage is reached when the saint knows that he is free. It may perhaps be thought that the early Buddhists did not realize the consequences of applying their doctrine of causation to psychology and hence never faced the possibility of determinism. But determinism, fatalism, and the uselessness of effort formed part of the paradoxical teaching of Makkhali Gosala reported in the Pitakas and therefore well known. If neither the Jains nor the Buddhists allowed themselves to be embarrassed by such denials of free will, the inference is that in some matters at least the Hindus had strong common sense and declined to accept any view which takes away from man the responsibility and lordship of his own soul.
The reader will have gathered from what precedes that Hinduism has little room for the Devil[72]. Buddhism being essentially an ethical system recognizes the importance of the Tempter or Mâra, but still Mâra is not an evil spirit who has spoilt a good world. In Hinduism, whether pantheistic or polytheistic, there is even less disposition to personify evil in one figure, and most Indian religious systems are disposed to think of the imperfections of the world as suffering rather than as sin.
Yet the existence of evil is the chief reason for the existence of religion, at least of such religions as promise salvation, and the explanation of evil is the chief problem of all religions and philosophies, and the problem which they all alike are conspicuously unsuccessful in solving. I can assign no reason for rejecting as untenable the idea that the ultimate reality may be a duality—a good and an evil spirit—or even a plurality[73], but still it is unthinkable for me and I believe for most minds. If there are two ultimate beings, either they must be complementary and necessary one to the other, in which case it seems to me more correct to describe them as two aspects of one being, or if they are quite separate, my mind postulates (but I do not know why) a third being who is the cause of them both.
The problem of evil is not quite the same for Indian and European pantheists. The European pantheist holds that since God is all things or in all things, evil is only something viewed out of due perspective: that the world would be seen to be perfect, if it could be seen as a whole, or that evil will be eliminated in the course of development. But he cannot explain why the partial view of the world which human beings are obliged to take shows the existence of obvious evil. The Hindus think that it is possible and better for the soul to leave the vain show of the world and find peace in union with God. They are therefore not concerned to prove that the world is good, although they cannot explain why God allows it to exist. The Upanishads contain some myths and parables about the introduction of evil but they do not say that a naturally good world was spoilt[74]. They rather imply that increasing complexity involves the increase of evil as well as of good. This is also the ground thought of the Aggañña Sutta, the Buddhist Genesis (Dig. Nik. XXVII.).
I think that the substance of much Indian pantheism—late Buddhist as well as Brahmanic—is that the world, the soul and God (the three terms being practically the same) have two modes of existence: one of repose and bliss, the other of struggle and trouble. Of these the first mode is the better and it is only by mistake[75] that the eternal spirit adopts the latter. But both the mistake and the correction of it are being eternally repeated. Such a formulation of the Advaita philosophy would no doubt be regarded in India as wholly unorthodox. Yet orthodoxy admits that the existence of the world is due to the coexistence of Mâyâ (illusion) with Brahman (spirit) and also states that the task of the soul is to pass beyond Mâyâ to Brahman. If this is so, there is either a real duality (Brahman and Mâyâ) or else Mâyâ is an aspect of Brahman, but an aspect which the soul should transcend and avoid, and for whose existence no reason whatever is given. The more theistic forms of Indian religion, whether Sivaite or Vishnuite, tend to regard individual souls and matter as eternal. By the help of God souls can obtain release from matter. But here again there is no explanation why the soul is contaminated by matter or ignorance.
It is clearly illogical to condemn the Infinite as bad or a mistake. Buddhism is perhaps sometimes open to this charge because on account of its exceedingly cautious language about nirvana it fails to set it up as a reality contrasted with the world of suffering. But many varieties of Indian religion do emphatically point to the infinite reality behind and beyond Mâyâ. It is only Mâyâ which is unsatisfactory because it is partial.
Another attempt to make the Universe intelligible regards it as an eternal rhythm playing and pulsing outwards from spirit to matter (pravritti) and then backwards and inwards from matter to spirit (nirvritti). This idea seems implied by Śankara's view that creation is similar to the sportive impulses of exuberant youth and the Bhagavad-gîtâ is familiar with pravritti and nirvritti, but the double character of the rhythm is emphasized most clearly in Śâkta treatises. Ordinary Hinduism concentrates its attention on the process of liberation and return to Brahman, but the Tantras recognize and consecrate both movements, the outward throbbing stream of energy and enjoyment (bhukti) and the calm returning flow of liberation and peace. Both are happiness, but the wise understand that the active outward movement is right and happy only up to a certain point and under certain restrictions.
That great poet Tulsi Das hints at an explanation of the creation or of God's expansion of himself which will perhaps commend itself to Europeans more than most Indian ideas, namely that the bliss enjoyed by God and the souls whom he loves is greater than the bliss of solitary divinity[76].
I will now turn to another point, namely the relations of Church and State. These are simplest in Buddhism, which teaches that the truth is one, that all men ought to follow it and that all good kings should honour and encourage it. This is also the Christian position but Buddhism has almost always been tolerant and has hardly ever countenanced the doctrine that error should be suppressed by force[77]. Buddhism does not claim to cover the whole field of religion as understood in Europe: if people like to propitiate spirits in the hope of obtaining wealth and crops, it permits them to do so. In Japan and Tibet Buddhism has played a more secular role than in other countries, analogous to the struggles of the mediaeval European church for temporal authority. In Japan the great monasteries very nearly became the chief military as well as the chief political power and this danger was averted only by the destruction of Hieizan and other large establishments in the sixteenth century. What was prevented in Japan did actually happen in Tibet, for the monasteries became stronger than any of the competing secular factions and the principal sect set up an ecclesiastical government singularly like the Papacy. In southern countries, such as Burma and Ceylon, Buddhism made no attempt to interfere in politics. This aloofness is particularly remarkable in Siam and Camboja, where state festivals are usually conducted by Brahmans not by Buddhist ecclesiastics. In Siam, as formerly in Burma, the king being a Buddhist is in some ways the head of the Church. He may reform lax discipline or incorrect observances, but apparently not of his own authority but merely as an executive power enforcing the opinion of the higher clergy.
Buddhism and Hinduism both have the idea that the monk or priest is a person who in virtue of ordination or birth lives on a higher level than others. He may teach and do good but irrespective of that it is the duty of the laity to support the priesthood. This doctrine is preached by Hinduism in a stronger form than by Buddhism. The intellectual superiority of the Brahmans as a caste was sufficiently real to ensure its acceptance and in politics they had the good sense to rule by serving, to be ministers and not kings. In theory and to a considerable extent in practice, the Brahmans and their gods are not an imperium in imperio but an imperium super imperium. The position was possible only because, unlike the Papacy and unlike the Lamas of Tibet, they had no Pope and no hierarchy. They produced no à'Beckets or Hildebrands and no Inquisition. They did not quarrel with science but monopolized it.
In India kings are expected to maintain the priesthood and the temples yet Hinduism rarely assumes the form of a state religion[78] nor does it admit, as state religions generally have to admit, that the secular arm has a co-ordinate jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters. Yet it affects every department of social life and a Hindu who breaks with it loses his social status. Hindu deities are rarely tribal gods like Athene of Athens or the gods of Mr Kipling and the German Emperor. There are thousands of shrines specially favoured by a divine presence but the worshippers think of that presence not as the protector of a race or city but as a special manifestation of a universal though often invisible power. The conquests of Mohammedans and Christians are not interpreted as meaning that the gods of Hinduism have succumbed to alien deities.
The views prevalent in China and Japan as to the relations of Church and State are almost the antipodes of those described. In those countries it is the hardly dissembled theory of the official world that religion is a department of government and that there should be regulations for gods and worship, just as there are for ministers and etiquette. If we say that religion is identified with the government in Tibet and forms an imperium super imperium in India, we may compare its position in the Far East to native states under British rule. There is no interference with creeds provided they respect ethical and social conventions: interesting doctrines and rites are appreciated: the Government accepts and rewards the loyal co-operation of the Buddhist and Taoist priesthoods but maintains the right to restrict their activity should it take a wrong political turn or should an excessive increase in the number of monks seem a public danger. The Chinese Imperial Government successfully claimed the strangest powers of ecclesiastical discipline, since it promoted and degraded not only priests but deities. In both China and Japan there has often been a strong current of feeling in the official classes against Buddhism but on the other hand it often had the support of both emperors and people, and princes not infrequently joined the clergy, especially when it was desirable for them to live in retirement. Confucianism and Shintoism, which are ethical and ceremonial rather than doctrinal, have been in the past to some extent a law to the governments of China and Japan, or more accurately an aspect of those governments. But for many centuries Far Eastern statesmen have rarely regarded Buddhism and Taoism as more than interesting and legitimate activities, to be encouraged and regulated like educational and scientific institutions.
In no point does Hinduism differ from western religions more than in its public worship and, in spite of much that is striking and interesting, the comparison is not to the advantage of India. It is true that temple worship is not so important for the Hindus as Church services are for the Christian. They set more store on home ceremonies and on contemplation. Still the temples of India are so numerous, so conspicuous and so crowded that the religion which maintains them must to some extent be judged by them.
At any rate they avoid the faults of public worship in the west. The practice of arranging the congregation in seats for which they pay seems to me more irreligious than the slovenliness of the heathen and makes the whole performance resemble a very dull concert.
Protestant services are in the main modelled on the ritual of the synagogue. They are meetings of the laity at which the scriptures are read, prayers offered, sermons preached and benedictions pronounced. The clergy play a principal but not exclusive part. The rites of the Roman and Eastern Churches have borrowed much from pagan ceremonial but still they have not wholly departed from the traditions of the synagogue. These have also served as a model for Mohammedan ritual which differs from the Jewish in little but its almost military regularity.
But with all this the ordinary ritual of Hindu temples[79] has nothing in common. It derives from another origin and follows other lines. The temple is regarded as the court of a prince and the daily ceremonies are the attendance of his courtiers on him. He must be awakened, fed, amused and finally put to bed. This conception of ritual prevailed in Egypt but in India there is no trace of it in Vedic literature and perhaps it did not come into fashion until Gupta times. Although the laity may be present and salute the god, such worship cannot be called congregational. Yet in other ways a Hindu temple may provide as much popular worship as a Nonconformist chapel. In the corridors will generally be found readers surrounded by an attentive crowd to whom they recite and expound the Mahabharata or some other sacred text. At festivals and times of pilgrimage the precincts are thronged by a crowd of worshippers the like of which is hardly to be seen in Europe, worshippers not only devout but fired with an enthusiasm which bursts into a mighty chorus of welcome when the image of the god is brought forth from the inner shrine.
The earlier forms of Buddhist ceremonial are of the synagogue type (though in no way derived from Jewish sources) for, though there is no prayer, they consist chiefly of confession, preaching and reading the scriptures. But this puritanic severity could not be popular and the veneration of images and relics was soon added to the ritual. The former was adopted by Buddhism earlier than by the Brahmans. The latter, though a conspicuous feature of Buddhism in all lands, is almost unknown to Hinduism. In their later developments Buddhist and Christian ceremonies show an extraordinary resemblance due in my opinion chiefly to convergence, though I do not entirely exclude mutual influence. Both Buddhism and Roman Catholicism accepted pagan ritual with some reservations and refinements. The worship has for its object an image or a shrine containing a relic which is placed in a conspicuous position at the end of the hall of worship[80]. Animal sacrifices are rejected but offerings of flowers, lights and incense are permitted, as well as the singing of hymns. It is not altogether strange if Buddhist and Catholic rituals starting from the same elements ended by producing similar scenic effects.
Yet though the scenic effect may be similar, there is often a difference in the nature of the rite. Direct invocations are not wanting in Tibetan and Far Eastern Buddhism but many services consist not of prayers but of the recitation of scripture by which merit is acquired. This merit is then formally transferred by the officiants to some special object, such as the peace of the dead or the prosperity of a living suppliant.
The later phases of both Hinduism and Buddhism are permeated by what is called Tantrism[81], that is to say the endeavour to attain spiritual ends by ritual acts such as gestures and the repetition of formulae. These expedients are dangerous and may become puerile, but those who ridicule them often forget that they may be termed sacramental with as much propriety as magical and are in fact based on the same theory as the sacraments of the Catholic Church. When a child is made eligible for salvation by sprinkling with water, by the sign of the cross and by the mantra "In the Name of the Father," etc., or when the divine spirit is localized in bread and wine and worshipped, these rites are closely analogous to tantric ceremonial.
The Buddhist temples of the Far East are in original intention copies of Indian edifices and in the larger establishments there is a daily routine of services performed by resident monks. But the management of religious foundations in these countries has been much influenced by old pagan usages as to temples and worship which show an interesting resemblance to the customs of classical antiquity but have little in common with Buddhist or Christian ideas. A Chinese municipal temple is a public building dedicated to a spirit or departed worthy. If sacrifices are offered in it, they are not likely to take place more than three or four times a year. Private persons may go there to obtain luck by burning a little incense or still more frequently to divine the future: public meetings and theatrical performances may be held there, but anything like a congregational service is rare. Just so in ancient Rome a temple might be used for a meeting of the Senate or for funeral games.
One aspect of Indian religions is so singular that it demands notice, although it is difficult to discuss. I mean the worship of the generative forces. The cult of a god, or more often of a goddess, who personifies the reproductive and also the destructive powers of nature (for it is not only in India that the two activities are seen to be akin) existed in many countries. It was prominent in Babylonia and Asia Minor, less prominent but still distinctly present in Egypt and in many cases was accompanied by hysterical and immoral rites, by mutilations of the body and offerings of blood. But in most countries such deities and rites are a matter of ancient history: they decayed as civilization grew: in China and Japan, as formerly in Greece and Rome, they are not an important constituent of religion. It is only in India and to some extent in Tibet, which has been influenced by India, that they have remained unabashed until modern times.
If it is right to regard with veneration the great forces of nature, fire, sun and water, a similar feeling towards the reproductive force cannot be unphilosophic or immoral. Nor does the idea that the supreme deity is a mother rather than a father, though startling, contain anything unseemly. Yet it is an undoubted fact that all the great religions except Hinduism, though they may admit a Goddess of Mercy—Kuan-yin or the Madonna—agree in rejecting essentially sexual deities. Modern Europe is probably prudish to excess, but the general practice of mankind testifies that words and acts too nearly connected with sexual things cannot be safely permitted in the temple. This remark would indeed be superfluous were it not that many millions of our Hindu fellow-citizens are of a contrary opinion.
Such practices prevail chiefly among the Śâktas in Bengal and Assam but similar licence is permitted (though the theoretical justification and theological setting are different) in some Vishnuite sects. Both are reprobated by the majority of respectable Hindus, but both find educated and able apologists. And though it may be admitted that worship of the linga may exist without bad effects, moral or intellectual, yet I think that these effects make themselves felt so soon as a sect becomes distinctly erotic. Anyone who visits two such different localities as Kamakhya in Assam and Gokul near Muttra must be struck with the total absence in the shrines of anything that can be called beautiful, solemn or even terrible. The general impression is of something diseased, unclean and undignified. The figure of the Great Goddess of life and death might have fired[82] the invention of artists but as a matter of fact her worship has paralyzed their hands and brains.
Nor can I give much praise to the Tantras as literature[83]. It is true that, as some authors point out, they contain fine sayings about God and the soul. But in India such things form part of the common literary stock and do not entitle the author to the praise which he would win elsewhere, unless his language or thoughts show originality. Such originality I have not found in those Tantras which are accessible. The magical and erotic parts may have the melancholy distinction of being unlike other works but the philosophical and theological sections could have been produced by any Hindu who had studied these branches of Indian literature.
After reviewing the characteristics of a religion it is natural to ask what is its effect on those who profess it. Buddhism, Christianity and Islam offer materials for answering such a question, since they are not racial religions. In historical times they have been accepted by peoples who did not profess them previously and we can estimate the consequences of such changes. But Hinduism has racial or geographical limits. It proselytizes, but hardly outside the Indian area: it is difficult to distinguish it from Indian custom, as the gospel is distinguished from the practice of Europe: it is superfluous to enquire what would be its effect on other countries, since it shows no desire to impose itself on them and they none to accept it. It is, like Shinto in Japan, not a religion which has moulded the national character but the national character finding expression in religion. Shinto and Hinduism are also alike in perpetuating ancient beliefs and practices which seem anachronisms but otherwise they are very different, for many races and languages have contributed their thoughts and hopes to the ocean of Hinduism and they all had an interest in speculation and mysticism unknown to the Japanese.
The fact that Hinduism is something larger and more comprehensive than what we call a religion is one reason why it contains much of dubious moral value. It is analogous not to Christianity but to European civilization which produces side by side philanthropy and the horrors of war, or to science which has given us the blessings of surgery and the curse of explosives. There is a deep-rooted idea in India that a man's daily life must be accompanied by religious observances and regulated by a religious code, by no means of universal application but still suitable to his particular class. An immoral occupation need not be irreligious: it simply requires gods of a special character. Hence we find Thugs killing and robbing their victims in the name of Kali. But though the Hindu is not at ease unless his customs are sanctioned by his religion, yet religion in the wider sense is not bound by custom, for the founders of many sects have declared that before God there is no caste. A Hindu may devote himself to religion and abandon the world with all its conventions, but if like most men he prefers to live in the world, it is his duty to follow the customs and usages sanctioned for his class and occupation. Thus as Sister Nivedita has shown in her beautiful writings, cooking, washing and all the humble round of domestic life become one long ritual of purification and prayer in which the entertainment of a guest stands out as a great sacrifice. But though religion may thus give beauty and holiness to common things, yet inasmuch as it sanctifies what it finds rather than prescribes what should be, it must bear the blame for foolish and even injurious customs. Child marriages have nothing to do with the creed of Hinduism, yet many Hindus, especially Hindu women, would feel it irreligious, as well as a social disgrace, to let a daughter become adult without being married.
A comparison of Indian Mohammedans and Hindus suggests that the former are more warlike and robust, the latter more intellectual and ingenious. The fact that some Mohammedans belong to hardy tribes of invaders must be taken into account but Islam deserves the credit of having introduced a simple and fairly healthy rule of life which does not allow every caste to make its own observances into a divine law. Yet it would seem that the medical and sanitary rules of Hinduism deserve less abuse than they generally receive. Col. King, Sanitary Commissioner of the Madras Presidency, is quoted as saying in a lecture[84]: "The Institutes of Vishnu and the Laws of Manu fit in excellently with the bacteriology, parasitology and applied hygiene of the West. The hygiene of food and water, private and public conservancy, disease suppression and prevention, are all carefully dealt with."
Hinduism certainly has proved marvellously stimulating to the intellect or—shall we put it the other way?--is the product of profound, acute, and restless minds. It cannot be justly accused of being enervating or melancholy, for many Hindu states were vigorous and warlike[85] and the accounts of early travellers indicate that in pre-mohammedan days the people were humane, civilized and contented. It created an original and spiritual art, for Indian art, more than any other, is the direct product of religion and not merely inspired by it. In ages when original talent is rare this close relation has disadvantages for it tends to make all art symbolic and conventional. An artist must not represent a deity in the way that he thinks most effective: the proportions, attitude and ornaments are all prescribed, not because they suit a picture or statue but because they mean something.
Indian literature is also directly related to religion. Its extent is well-nigh immeasurable. I will not alarm the reader with statistics of the theological and metaphysical treatises which it contains. A little of such goes a long way even when they are first-rate, but India may at least boast of having more theological works which, if considered as intellectual productions, must be placed in the first class than Europe. Nor are religious writings of a more human type absent—the language of heart to heart and of the heart to God. The Ramayana of Tulsi Das and the Tiruvwçagam are extolled by Groâse, Grierson and Pope (all of them Christians, I believe) as not only masterpieces of literature but as noble expressions of pure devotion, and the poems of Kabir and Tukaram, if less considerable as literary efforts, show the same spiritual quality. Indian poetry, even when nominally secular, is perhaps too much under religious influence to suit our taste and the long didactic and philosophic harangues which interrupt the action of the Mahabharata seem to us inartistic, yet to those who take the pains to familiarize themselves with what at first is strange, the Mahabharata is, I think, a greater poem than the Iliad. It should not be regarded as an epic distended and interrupted by interpolated sermons but as the scripture of the warrior caste, which sees in the soldier's life a form of religion.
I have touched in several places on the defects of Hinduism. They are due partly to its sanction of customs which have no necessary connection with it and partly to its extravagance, which in the service of the gods sees no barriers of morality or humanity. But suttee, human sacrifices and orgies strike the imagination and assume an importance which they have not and never had for Hinduism as a whole. If Hinduism were really bad, so many great thoughts, so many good lives could not have grown up in its atmosphere. More than any other religion it is a quest of truth and not a creed, which must necessarily become antiquated: it admits the possibility of new scriptures, new incarnations, new institutions. It has no quarrel with knowledge or speculation: perhaps it excludes materialists, because they have no common ground with religion, but it tolerates even the Sânkhya philosophy which has nothing to say about God or worship. It is truly dynamic and in the past whenever it has seemed in danger of withering it has never failed to bud with new life and put forth new flowers.
More than other religions, Hinduism appeals to the soul's immediate knowledge and experience of God. It has sacred books innumerable but they agree in little but this, that the soul can come into contact and intimacy with its God, whatever name be given him and even if he be superpersonal. The possibility and truth of this experience is hardly questioned in India and the task of religion is to bring it about, not to promote the welfare of tribes and states but to effect the enlightenment and salvation of souls.
The love of the Hindus for every form of argument and philosophizing is well known but it is happily counterbalanced by another tendency. Instinct and religion both bring them into close sympathy with nature. India is in the main an agricultural country[86] and nearly three-quarters of the population are villagers whose life is bound up with the welfare of plants and animals and lies at the mercy of rivers that overflow or skies that withhold the rain. To such people nature-myths and sacred animals appeal with a force that Europeans rarely understand. The parrots that perch on the pinnacles of the temple and the oxen that rest in the shade of its courts are not intruders but humble brothers of mankind, who may also be the messengers of the gods.
As I said above, it is easier to estimate the effects of Buddhism than of Hinduism, for its history is the chronicle of a great missionary enterprise and there are abundant materials for studying the results of its diffusion.
Even its adversaries must admit that it has many excellent qualities. It preaches morality and charity and was the first religion to proclaim to the world—not to a caste or country—that these are the foundation of that Law which if kept brings happiness. It civilized many nations, for instance the Tibetans and Mongols. It has practised toleration and true unworldliness, if not without any exception[87], at least far more generally than any other great religion. It has directly encouraged art and literature and, so far as I know, has never opposed the progress of knowledge. But two charges may be brought against it which deserve consideration. First that its pessimistic doctrines and monastic institutions are, if judged by ordinary standards, bad for the welfare of a nation: second that more than any other religion it is liable to become corrupt.
In all Buddhist lands, though good laymen are promised the blessings of religion, the monastic and contemplative life is held up as the ideal. In Christendom, this ideal is rejected by Protestants and for the Roman and Oriental Churches it is only one among others. Hence every one's judgment of Buddhism must in a large measure depend on what he thinks of this ideal. Monks are not of this world and therefore the world hateth them. If they keep to themselves, they are called lazy and useless. If they take part in secular matters, they meet with even severer criticism. Yet can any one doubt that what is most needed in the present age is more people who have leisure and ability to think?
Whatever evil is said of Buddhist monks is also said of Mt Athos and similar Christian establishments. I am far from saying that this depreciation of the cloistered life is just in either case but any impartial critic of monastic institutions must admit that their virtues avoid publicity and their faults attract attention. In all countries a large percentage of monks are indolent: it is the temptation which besets all but the elect. Yet the Buddhist ideal of the man who has renounced the world leaves no place for slackness, nor I think does the Christian. Buddhist monks are men of higher aspirations than others: they try to make themselves supermen by cultivating not the forceful and domineering part of their nature but the gentle, charitable and intelligent part. The laity treat them with the greatest respect provided that they set an example of a life better than most men can live. A monastic system of this kind is found in Burma. I do not mean that it is not found in other Buddhist lands, but I cite an instance which I have seen myself and which has impressed most observers favourably.
The Burmese monks are not far from the ideal of Gotama, yet perhaps by adhering somewhat strictly to the letter of his law they have lost something of the freedom which he contemplated. In his time there were no books: the mind found exercise and knowledge in conversation. A monastery was not a permanent residence, except during the rainy season, but merely a halting-place for the brethren who were habitually wanderers, continually hearing and seeing something new. Hermits and solitary dwellers in the forests were not unknown but assuredly the majority of the brethren had no intention of secluding themselves from the intellectual life of the age. What would Gotama have done had he lived some hundreds or thousands of years later? I see no reason to doubt that he would have encouraged the study of literature and science. He would probably have praised all art which expresses noble and spiritual ideas, while misdoubting representations of sensuous beauty.
The second criticism—that Buddhists are prone to corrupt their faith—is just, for their courteous acquiescence in other creeds enfeebles and denaturalizes their own. In Annam, Korea and some parts of China though there are temples and priests more or less deserving the name of Buddhist, there is no idea that Buddhism is a distinct religion or mode of life. Such statements as that the real religion of the Burmese is not Buddhism but animism are, I think, incorrect, but even the Burmese are dangerously tolerant.
This weakness is not due to any positive defect, since Buddhism provides for those who lead the higher life a strenuous curriculum and for the laity a system of morality based on rational grounds and differing little from the standard accepted in both Europe and China, except that it emphasizes the duties of mankind to animals. The weakness comes from the absence of any command against superstitious rites and beliefs. When the cardinal principles of Buddhism are held strongly these accessories do not matter, but the time comes when the creeper which was once an ornament grows into the walls of the shrine and splits the masonry. The faults of western religions are mainly faults of self-assertion—such as the Inquisition and opposition to science. The faults of Indian religions are mainly tolerance of what does not belong to them and sometimes of what is not only foreign to them but bad in itself.
Buddhism has been both praised and blamed as a religion which acknowledges neither God nor the soul[88] and its acceptance in its later phases of the supernatural has been regarded as proving the human mind's natural need of theism. But it is rather an illustration of that craving for personal though superhuman help which makes Roman Catholics supplement theism with the worship of saints.
On the whole it is correct to say that Buddhism (except perhaps in very exceptional sects) has always taken and still takes a point of view which has little in common with European theism. The world is not thought of as the handiwork of a divine personality nor the moral law as his will. The fact that religion can exist without these ideas is of capital importance[89]. But any statements implying that Buddhism divorces morality from the doctrine of immortality may be misunderstood for it teaches that just as an old man may suffer for the follies of his youth, so faults committed in one life may be punished in another. Rewards and punishments in another world were part of the creed of Asoka and tradition represents the missionaries who converted Ceylon as using this simple argument[90]. It would not however be true to say that Buddhism makes the value of morality contingent on another world. The life of an Arhat which includes the strictest morality is commended on its own account as the best and happiest existence.
European assertions about Buddhism often imply that it sets up as an ideal and goal either annihilation or some condition of dreamy bliss. Modern Buddhists who mostly neglect Nirvana as something beyond their powers, just as the ordinary Christian does not say that he hopes to become a saint, lose much of the Master's teaching but do it less injustice than such misrepresentations. The Buddha did not describe Nirvana as something to be won after death, but as a state of happiness attainable in this life by strenuous endeavour—a state of perfect peace but compatible with energy, as his own example showed.
We are now in a better position to answer the question asked at the beginning of this introduction, Is Indian thought of value or at least of interest for Europe?
Let me confess that I cannot share the confidence in the superiority of Europeans and their ways which is prevalent in the west. Whatever view we take of the rights and wrongs of the recent war, it is clearly absurd for Europe as a whole to pose in the presence of such doings as a qualified instructor in humanity and civilization. Many of those who are proudest of our fancied superiority escape when the chance offers from western civilization and seek distraction in exploration, and many who have spent their lives among what they consider inferior races are uneasy when they retire and settle at home. In fact European civilization is not satisfying and Asia can still offer something more attractive to many who are far from Asiatic in spirit. Yet though most who have paid even a passing visit to the East feel its charm, the history, art and literature of Asia are still treated with ignorant indifference in cultured circles—an ignorance and indifference which are extraordinary in Englishmen who have so close a connection with India and devote a disproportionate part of their education to ancient Greece and Rome. I have heard a professor of history in an English university say that he thought the history of India began with the advent of the British and that he did not know that China had any history at all. And Matthew Arnold in speaking of Indian thought[91] hardly escaped meriting his own favourite epithets of condemnation, Philistine and saugrenu.
Europeans sometimes mention it as an amazing and almost ridiculous circumstance that an educated Chinese can belong to three religions, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. But I find this attitude of mind eminently sensible. Confucianism is an admirable religion for State ceremonies and College chapels. By attending its occasional rites one shows a decent respect for Heaven and Providence and commits oneself to nothing. And though a rigid Confucianist may have the contempt of a scholar and statesman for popular ideas, yet the most devout Buddhist and Taoist can conform to Confucianism without scruple, whereas many who have attended an English coronation service must have wondered at the language which they seemed to approve of by their presence. And in China if you wish to water the aridity of Confucianism, you can find in Buddhism or Taoism whatever you want in the way of emotion or philosophy and you will not be accused of changing your religion because you take this refreshment. This temper is not good for creating new and profound religious thought, but it is good for sampling and appreciating the "varieties of religious experience" which offer their results as guides for this and other lives.
For religion is systematized religious experience and this experience depends on temperament. There can therefore be no one religion in the European sense and it is one of the Hindus' many merits that they recognize this. Some people ask of religion forgiveness for their sins, others communion with the divine: most want health and wealth, many crave for an explanation of life and death. Indian religion accommodates itself to these various needs. Nothing is more surprising than the variety of its phases except the underlying unity.
This power of varying in sympathetic response to the needs of many minds and growing in harmony with the outlook of successive ages, is a contrast to the pretended quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus[92] of Western Churches, for in view of their differences and mutual hostility it can only be called a pretence. Indians recognize that only the greatest and simplest religious questions can be asked now in the same words that came to the lips more than two thousand years ago and even if the questions are the same, the answers of the thoughtful are still as widely divergent as the pronouncements of the Buddha and the Brahmans. But nearly all the propositions contained in a European creed involve matters of history or science which are obviously affected by research and discovery as much as are astronomy or medicine, and not only are the propositions out of date but they mostly refer to problems which have lost their interest. But Indian religion eschews creeds and will not die with the spread of knowledge. It will merely change and enter a new phase of life in which much that is now believed and practised will be regarded as the gods and rites of the Veda are regarded now.
I do not think that there is much profit in comparing religions, which generally means exalting one at the expense of the others, but rather that it is interesting and useful to learn what others, especially those least like ourselves, think of these matters. And in religious questions Asia has a distinct right to be heard.
For if Europeans have any superiority over Asiatics, it lies in practical science, finance and administration, not in thought or art. If one were collecting views about philosophy and religion in Europe, one would not begin by consulting financiers and engineers, and the policeman who stands in the middle of the street and directs the traffic to this side and that is not intellectually superior to those who obey him as if he were something superhuman. Europeans in Asia are like such a policeman: their gifts are authority and power to organize: in other respects their superiority is imaginary.
I do not think that Christianity will ever make much progress in Asia, for what is commonly known by that name is not the teaching of Christ but a rearrangement of it made in Europe and like most European institutions practical rather than thoughtful. And as for the teaching of Christ himself, the Indian finds it excellent but not ample or satisfying. There is little in it which cannot be found in some of the many scriptures of Hinduism and it is silent on many points about which they speak, if not with convincing authority, at least with suggestive profundity. Neither do I think that Europe is likely to adopt Buddhist or Brahmanic methods of thought on any large scale. Theosophical and Buddhist societies have my sympathy but it is sympathy with lonely workers in an unpopular cause and I am not sure that they always understand what they try to teach. There is truth at the bottom of the dogma that all Buddhas must be born and teach in India: Asiatic doctrine may commend itself to European minds but it fits awkwardly into European life.
But this is no reason for refusing to accord to Indian religion at least the same attention that we give to Plato and Aristotle. Every idea which is held strongly by any large body of men is worthy of respectful examination, although I do not think that because an opinion is widespread it is therefore true. Thus the idea that in the remote past there was some kind of paradise or golden age and that the span of human life was once much longer than now is found among most nations. Yet research and analogy suggest that it is without foundation. The fact that about half the population of the world has come under the influence of Hindu ideas gives Indian thought historical importance rather than authority. The claim of India to the attention of the world is that she, more than any other nation since history began, has devoted herself to contemplating the ultimate mysteries of existence and, in my eyes, the fact that Indian thought diverges widely from our own popular thought is a positive merit. In intellectual and philosophical pursuits we want new ideas and Indian ideas are not familiar or hackneyed in the west, though I think that more European philosophers and mystics have arrived at similar conclusions than is generally supposed.
Indian religions have more spirituality and a greater sense of the Infinite than our western creeds and more liberality. They are not merely tolerant but often hold that the different classes of mankind have their own rules of life and suitable beliefs and that he who follows such partial truths does no wrong to the greater and all-inclusive truths on which his circumstances do not permit him to fix his attention. And though some Indian religions may sanction bad customs, sacrifice of animals and immoral rites, yet on the whole they give the duty of kindness to animals a prominence unknown in Europe and are more penetrated with the idea that civilization means a gentle and enlightened temper—an idea sadly forgotten in these days of war. Their speculative interest can hardly be denied. For instance, the idea of a religion without a personal God may seem distasteful or absurd but the student of human thought must take account of it and future generations may not find it a useless notion. It is certain that in Asia we find Buddhist Churches which preach morality and employ ritual and yet are not theistic, and also various systems of pantheism which, though they may use the word God, obviously use it in a sense which has nothing in common with Christian and Mohammedan ideas.
India's greatest contribution to religion is not intellectual, as the mass of commentaries and arguments produced by Hindus might lead us to imagine, but the persistent and almost unchallenged belief in the reality and bliss of certain spiritual states which involve intuition. All Indians agree that they are real, even to the extent of offering an alternative superior to any ordinary life of pleasure and success, but their value for us is lessened by the variety of interpretations which they receive and which make it hard to give a more detailed definition than that above. For some they are the intuition of a particular god, for others of divinity in general. For Buddhists they mean a new life of knowledge, freedom and bliss without reference to a deity. But apart from such high matters I believe that the mental training preliminary to these states—what is called meditation and concentration—is well worth the attention of Europeans. I am not recommending trances or catalepsy: in these as in other matters the Hindus are probably prone to exaggerate and the Buddha himself in his early quest for truth discarded trances as an unsatisfactory method. But the reader can convince himself by experiment that the elementary discipline which consists in suppressing "discursive thought" and concentrating the mind on a particular object—say a red flower—so that for some time nothing else is present to the mind and the image of the flower is seen and realized in all its details, is most efficacious for producing mental calm and alertness. By such simple exercises the mind learns how to rest and refresh itself. Its quickness of apprehension and its retentive power are considerably increased, for words and facts imprinted on it when by the suppression of its ordinary activities it has thus been made a tabula rasa remain fixed and clear.
Such great expressions of emotional theism as the Râmâyana of Tulsi Das are likely to find sympathetic readers in Europe, but the most original feature of Indian thought is that, as already mentioned, it produces systems which can hardly be refused the name of religion and yet are hardly theistic. The Buddha preached a creed without reference to a supreme deity and the great Emperor Asoka, the friend of man and beast, popularized this creed throughout India. Even at the present day the prosperous and intelligent community of Jains follow a similar doctrine and the Advaita philosophy diverges widely from European theism. It is true that Buddhism invented gods for itself and became more and more like Hinduism and that the later Vedantist and Sivaite schools have a strong bent to monotheism. Yet all Indian theism seems to me to have a pantheistic tinge[93] and India is certainly the classic land of Pantheism. The difficulties of Pantheism are practical: it does not lend itself easily to popular cries and causes and it finds it hard to distinguish and condemn evil[94]. But it appeals to the scientific temper and is not repulsive to many religious and emotional natures. Indeed it may be said that in monotheistic creeds the most thoughtful and devout minds often tend towards Pantheism, as witness the Sufis among Moslims, the Kabbalists among the Jews and many eminent mystics in the Christian Church. In India, the only country where the speculative interest is stronger than the practical, it is a common form of belief and it is of great importance for the history and criticism of religion to see how an idea which in Europe is hardly more than philosophic theory works on a large scale.
Later Buddhism—the so-called Mahayana—may be justly treated as one of the many varieties of Indian religion, not more differentiated from others than is for instance the creed of the Sikhs. The speculative side of early Buddhism (which was however mainly a practical movement) may be better described as an Indian critique of current Indian views. The psychology of the Pitakas has certainly enough life to provoke discussion still, for it receives both appreciative treatment and uncompromising condemnation at the hands of European scholars. To set it aside as not worth the labour spent on elucidating it, seems to me an error of judgment. As a criticism of the doctrine developed in the Upanishads, it is acute and interesting, even if we hold the Upanishads to be in the right, and no serious attempt to analyze the human mind can be without value, for though the facts are before every human being such attempts are rare. It is singular that so many religions should prescribe and prophecy for the soul without being able to describe its nature. Hesitation and diffidence in defining the Deity seem proper and natural but it is truly surprising that people are not agreed as to the essential facts about their own consciousness, their selves, souls, minds and spirits: whether these are the same or different: whether they are entities or aggregations. The Buddha's answers to these questions cannot be dismissed as ancient or outlandish, for they are practically the conclusions arrived at by a distinguished modern psychologist, William James, who says in his Psychology[95], "The states of consciousness are all that psychology requires to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the soul to exist, but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous" and again "In this book the provisional solution which we have reached must be the final one: The thoughts themselves are the thinkers."
Equally in sympathy with Buddhist ideas is the philosophy of M. Bergson, which holds that movement, change, becoming is everything and that there is nothing else: no things that move and change and become[96]. Huxley too, speaking of idealism, said "what Berkeley does not seem to have so clearly perceived is that the non-existence of a substance of mind is equally arguable.... It is a remarkable indication of the subtlety of Indian speculation that Gautama should have seen deeper than the greatest of modern idealists[97]."
Even Mr Bradley says "the soul is a particular group of psychical events in so far as those events are taken merely as happening in time[98]." There is a smack of the Pitakas about this, although Mr Bradley's philosophy as a whole shows little sympathy for Buddhism but a wondrous resemblance both in thought and language to the Vedânta. This is the more remarkable because there is no trace in his works of Sanskrit learning or even of Indian influence at second hand. A peculiarly original and independent mind seems to have worked its way to many of the doctrines of the Advaita, without entirely adopting its general conclusions, for I doubt if Sankara would have said "the positive relation of every appearance as an adjective to reality and the presence of reality among its appearances in different degrees and with different values—this double truth we have found to be the centre of philosophy." But still this is the gist of many Vedantic utterances both early[99] and late. Gauḍapâda states that the world of appearance is due to svabhâva or the essential nature of Brahman and I imagine that the thought here is the same as when Mr Bradley says that the Absolute is positively present in all appearances.
Among many coincidences both in thought and expression, I note the following. Mr Bradley[100] says "The Perfect ... means the identity of idea and existence, accompanied by pleasure" which is almost the verbal equivalent of saccidânanda. "The universe is one reality which appears in finite centres." "How there can be such a thing as appearance we do not understand." In the same way Vedantists and Mahayanists can offer no explanation of Maya or whatever is the power which makes the universe of phenomena. Again he holds that neither our bodies nor our souls (as we commonly understand the word) are truly real[101] and he denies the reality of progress "For nothing perfect, nothing genuinely real can move." And his discussion of the difficulty of reconciling the ideas of God and the Absolute and specially the phrase "short of the Absolute, God cannot rest and having reached that goal he is lost and religion with him" is an epitome of the oscillations of philosophic Hinduism which feels the difficulty far more keenly than European religion, because ideas analogous to the Absolute are a more vital part of religion (as distinguished from metaphysics) in India than in Europe[102].
Nor can Indian ideas as to Maya and the unreality of matter be dismissed as curious dreams of mystical brains, for the most recent phases of Physics—a science which changes its fundamental ideas as often as philosophy—tend to regard matter as electrical charges in motion. This theory is a phrase rather than an explanation, but it has a real affinity to Indian phrases which say that Brahman or Śakti (which are forces) produce the illusion of the world.
I am not venturing here on any general comparison of European and Indian thought. My object is merely to point out that the latter contains many ideas to which British philosophers find themselves led and from which, when they have discovered them in their own way, they do not shrink. It can hardly then be without interest to see how these ideas have been elaborated, often more boldly and thoroughly, in Asia.
In this book I shall briefly sketch the condition of religion in India prior to the rise of Buddhism and in so doing shall be naturally led to indicate several of the fundamental ideas of Hinduism. For few old ideas have entirely perished: new deities, new sects and new rites have arisen but the main theories of the older Upanishads still command respect and modern reformers try to justify their teaching from the ancient texts.
But I do not propose to discuss in detail the religion of the Vedic hymns for, so far as it can be distinguished from later phases, it looks backward rather than forward. It is important to students of comparative mythology, of the origins of religion, of the Aryan race. But it represents rather what the Aryans brought into India than what was invented in India, and it is this latter which assumes a prominent place in the intellectual history of the world as Hinduism and Buddhism. The ancient nature gods of the wind and the dawn have little place in the mental horizon of either the Buddha or Bhagavad-gîtâ and even when the old names remain, the beings who bear them generally have new attributes. Still, Vedic texts are used in modern worship and in many respects there is a real continuity of thought.
In the first chapter I enquire whether there is any element common to the religions of India and to the countries of Eastern Asia and find that the worship of nature spirits and the veneration of ancestors prevail throughout the whole of this vast region and have not been suppressed by Buddhism or Brahmanism. Then coming to the purely Indian sphere, I have thought it might not be amiss to give an epitome of such parts of Indian history as are of importance for religion. Next I endeavour to explain how the social institutions of India and the unique position acquired by the Brahman aristocracy have determined the character of Hindu religion—protean and yet unmistakeably Indian in all its phases—and I also investigate the influence of the belief in rebirth, which from the time of the Upanishads onwards dominates Indian thought. In the fourth and fifth chapters I trace the survival of some ancient ideas and show how many attributes of the Vedic gods can be found in modern deities who are at first sight widely different and how theories of salvation by sacrifice or asceticism or knowledge have been similarly persistent. In the sixth chapter I attempt to give a picture of religious life, both Brahmanic and non-Brahmanic, as it existed in India about the time when the Buddha was born. Of the non-Brahmanic sects which then flourished most have disappeared, but one, namely the Jains, has survived and left a considerable record in literature and art. I have therefore devoted a chapter to it here.
My object in this book is to discuss the characteristics of Indian religion which are not only fundamental but ancient. Hence this is not the place to dwell on Bhakti or relatively modern theistic sects, however great their importance in later Hinduism may be.
The countries with which this work deals are roughly speaking India with Ceylon; Indo-China with parts of the Malay Archipelago; Japan and China with the neighbouring regions such as Tibet and Mongolia. All of them have been more or less influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism and in hardly any of them is Mohammedanism the predominant creed[103], though it may have numerous adherents. The rest of Asia is mainly Mohammedan or Christian and though a few Buddhists may be found even in Europe (as the Kalmuks) still neither Hinduism nor Buddhism has met with general acceptance west of India.
In one sense, the common element in the religion of all these countries is the presence of Indian ideas, due in most cases to Buddhism which is the export form of Hinduism, although Brahmanic Hinduism reached Camboja and the Archipelago. But this is not the element on which I wish now to insist. I would rather enquire whether apart from the diffusion of ideas which has taken place in historical times, there is any common substratum in the religious temperament of this area, any fund of primitive, or at least prehistoric ideas, shared by its inhabitants. Such common ideas will be deep-seated and not obvious, for it needs but little first-hand acquaintance with Asia to learn that all generalizations about the spirit of the East require careful testing and that such words as Asiatic or oriental do not connote one type of mind. For instance in China and Japan the control of the state over religion is exceptionally strong: in India it is exceptionally weak. The religious temperaments of these nations differ from one another as much as the Mohammedan and European temperaments and the fact that many races have adopted Buddhism and refashioned it to their liking does not indicate that their mental texture is identical. The cause of this superficial uniformity is rather that Buddhism in its prime had no serious rivals in either activity or profundity, but presented itself to the inhabitants of Eastern Asia as pre-eminently the religion of civilized men, and was often backed by the support of princes. Yet one cannot help thinking that its success in Eastern Asia and its failure in the West are not due merely to politics and geography but must correspond with some racial idiosyncrasies. Though it is hard to see what mental features are common to the dreamy Hindus and the practical Chinese, it may be true that throughout Eastern Asia for one reason or another such as political despotism, want of military spirit, or on the other hand a tendency to regard the family, the clan or the state as the unit, the sense of individuality is weaker than in Western Asia or Europe, so that pantheism and quietism with their doctrines of the vanity of the world and the bliss of absorption arouse less opposition from robust lovers of life. This is the most that can be stated and it does not explain why there are many Buddhists in Japan but none in Persia.
But apart from Buddhism and all creeds which have received a name, certain ideas are universal in this vast region. One of them is the belief in nature spirits, beings who dwell in rocks, trees, streams and other natural objects and possess in their own sphere considerable powers of doing good or ill. The Nagas, Yakshas and Bhutas of India, the Nats of Burma, the Peys of Siam, the Kami of Japan and the Shen of China are a few items in a list which might be indefinitely extended. In many countries this ghostly population is as numerous as the birds of the forest: they haunt every retired spot and perch unseen under the eaves of every house. Theology has not usually troubled itself to define their status and it may even be uncertain whether respect is shown to the spirits inhabiting streams and mountain peaks or to the peaks and streams themselves[104].
They may be kindly (though generally requiring punctilious attention), or mischievous, or determined enemies of mankind. But infinite as are their variations, the ordinary Asiatic no more doubts their existence than he doubts the existence of animals. The position which they enjoy, like their character, is various, for in Asia deities like men have careers which depend on luck. Many of them remain mere elves or goblins, some become considerable local deities. But often they occupy a position intermediate between real gods and fairies. Thus in southern India, Burma and Ceylon may be seen humble shrines, which are not exactly temples but the abodes of beings whom prudent people respect. They have little concern with the destinies of the soul or the observance of the moral law but much to do with the vagaries of rivers and weather and with the prosperity of the village. Though these spirits may attain a high position within a certain district (as for instance Maha Saman, the deity of Adam's Peak in Ceylon) they are not of the same stuff as the great gods of Asia. These latter are syntheses of many ideas, and centuries of human thought have laboured on their gigantic figures. It is true that the mental attitude which deifies the village stream is fundamentally the same as that which worships the sun, but in the latter case the magnitude of the phenomenon deified sets it even for the most rustic mind in another plane. Also the nature gods of the Veda are not quite the same as the nature spirits which the Indian peasants worship to-day and worshipped, as the Pitakas tell us, in the time of the Buddha. For the Vedic deities are such forces as fire and light, wind and water. This is nature worship but the worship of nature generalized, not of some bold rock or mysterious rustling tree. It may be that a migratory life, such as the ancient Aryans at one time led, inclined their minds to these wider views, since neither the family nor the tribe had an abiding interest in any one place. Thus the ancestors of the Turks in the days before Islam worshipped the spirits of the sky, earth and water, whereas the more civilized but sedentary Chinese had genii for every hamlet, pool and hillock.
It is difficult to say whether monotheism is a development of this nature worship or has another origin. In Japanese religion the monotheistic tendency is markedly absent. The sun-goddess is the principal deity but remains simply prima inter pares. But in the ancient religion of China, T'ien or Heaven, also called Shang-ti, the supreme ruler, though somewhat shadowy and impersonal, does become an omnipotent Providence without even approximate rivals. Other superhuman beings are in comparison with him merely angels. Unfortunately the early history of Chinese religion is obscure and the documents scanty. In India however the evolution of pantheism or theism (though usually with a pantheistic tinge) out of the worship of nature forces seems clear. These gods or forces are seen to melt into one another and to be aspects of one another, until the mind naturally passes on to the idea that they are all manifestations of one force finding expression in human consciousness as well as in physical phenomena. The animist and pantheist represent different stages but not different methods of thought. For the former, every natural object which impresses him is alive; the latter concurs in this view, only he thinks the universe is instinct with one and the same life displaying itself in infinite variety.
One difficulty incidental to the treatment of Asiatic religions in European languages is the necessity, or at any rate the ineradicable habit, of using well-known words like God and soul as the equivalents of Asiatic terms which have not precisely the same content and which often imply a different point of view. For practical life it is wise and charitable to minimize religious differences and emphasize points of agreement. But this willingness to believe that others think as we do becomes a veritable vice if we are attempting an impartial exposition of their ideas. If the English word God means the deity of ordinary Christianity, who is much the same as Allah or Jehovah—that is to say the creator of the world and enforcer of the moral law—then it would be better never to use this word in writing of the religions of India and Eastern Asia, for the concept is almost entirely foreign to them. The nature spirits of which we have been speaking are clearly not God: when an Indian peasant brings offerings to the tomb of a deceased brigand or the Emperor of China promotes some departed worthy to be a deity of a certain class, we call the ceremony deification, but there is not the smallest intention of identifying the person deified with the Supreme Being, and odd as it may seem, the worship of such "gods" is compatible with monotheism or atheism. In China, Shang-ti is less definite than God[105] and it does not appear that he is thought of as the creator of the world and of human souls. Even the greater Hindu deities are not really God, for those who follow the higher life can neglect and almost despise them, without, however, denying their existence. On the other hand Brahman, the pantheos of India, though equal to the Christian God in majesty, is really a different conception, for he is not a creator in the ordinary sense: he is impersonal and though not evil, yet he transcends both good and evil. He might seem merely a force more suited to be the subject matter of science than of religion, were not meditation on him the occupation, and union with him the goal, of many devout lives. And even when Indian deities are most personal, as in the Vishnuite sects, it will be generally found that their relations to the world and the soul are not those of the Christian God. It is because the conception of superhuman existence is so different in Europe and Asia that Asiatic religions often seem contradictory or corrupt: Buddhism and Jainism, which we describe as atheistic, and the colourless respectable religion of educated Chinese, become in their outward manifestations unblushingly polytheistic.
Similar difficulties and ambiguities attend the use of the word soul, for Buddhism, which is supposed to hold that there is no soul, preaches retribution in future existences for acts done in this, and seeks to terrify the evil doer with the pains of hell; whereas the philosophy of the Brahmans, which inculcates a belief in the soul, seems to teach in some of its phases that the disembodied and immortal soul has no consciousness in the ordinary human sense. Here language is dealing with the same problems as those which we describe by such phrases as the soul, immortality and continuous existence, but it is striving to express ideas for which we have little sympathy and no adequate terminology. They will be considered later.
But one attitude towards that which survives death is almost universal in Eastern Asia and also easily intelligible. It finds expression in the ceremonies known as ancestor worship. This practice has attracted special attention in China, where it is the commonest and most conspicuous form of religious observance, but it is equally prevalent among the Hindus, though less prominent because it is only one among the many rites which engage the attention of that most devout nation. It is one of the main constituents in the religions of Indo-China and Japan, though the best authorities think that it was not the predominant element in the oldest form of Shinto. It is less prominent among the Tibeto-Burmese tribes but not absent, for in Tibet there are both good and evil ghosts who demand recognition by appropriate rites. It is sometimes hard to distinguish it from the worship of natural forces. For instance in China and southern India most villages have a local deity who is often nameless. The origin of such deities may be found either in a departed worthy or in some striking phenomenon or in the association of the two.
The cult of ghosts may be due to either fear or affection, and both motives are found in Eastern Asia. But though abundant examples of the propitiation of angry spirits can be cited, respect and consideration for the dead are the feelings which usually inspire these ceremonies at the present day and form the chief basis of family religion. There is no need to explain this sentiment. It is much stronger in Asia than in Europe but some of its manifestations may be paralleled by masses and prayers for the dead, others by the care bestowed on graves and by notices in memoriam. As a rule both in China and India only the last three generations are honoured in these ceremonies. The reason is obvious: the more ancient ancestors have ceased to be living memories. But it might be hard to find a theoretical justification for neglecting them and it is remarkable that in all parts of Asia the cult of the dead fits very awkwardly into the official creeds. It is not really consistent with any doctrine of metempsychosis or with Buddhist teaching as to the impermanence of the Ego. In China may be found the further inconsistency that the spirit of a departed relative may receive the tribute of offerings and salutations called ancestor worship, while at the same time Buddhist services are being performed for his deliverance from hell. But of the wide distribution, antiquity and strength of the cult there can be no doubt. It is anterior not only to Brahmanism but to the doctrines of transmigration and karma, and the main occupation of Buddhist priests in China and Japan is the performance of ceremonies supposed to benefit the dead. Even within Buddhism these practices cannot be dismissed as a late or foreign corruption. In the Khuddaka-pâṭha which, if not belonging to the most ancient part of the Buddhist canon, is at least pre-Christian and purely Indian, the dead are represented as waiting for offerings and as blessing those who give them. It is also curious that a recent work called Raymond by Sir O. Lodge (1916) gives a view of the state after death which is substantially that of the Chinese. For its teaching is that the dead retain their personality, concern themselves with the things of this world, know what is going to happen here and can to some extent render assistance to the living[106]. Also (and this point is specially remarkable) burning and mutilation of the body seem to inconvenience the dead.
Early Chinese works prescribe that during the performance of ancestral rites, the ghosts are to be represented by people known as the personators of the dead who receive the offerings and are supposed to be temporarily possessed by spirits and to be their mouthpieces. Possession by ghosts or other spirits is, in popular esteem, of frequent occurrence in India, China, Japan and Indo-China. It is one of the many factors which have contributed to the ideas of incarnation and deification, that is, that gods can become men and men gods. In Europe the spheres of the human and divine are strictly separated: to pass from one to the other is exceptional: a single incarnation is regarded as an epoch-making event of universal importance. But in Asia the frontiers are not thus rigidly delimitated, nor are God and man thus opposed. The ordinary dead become powers in the spirit world and can bless or injure here: the great dead become deities: in another order of ideas, the dead immediately become reincarnate and reappear on earth: the gods take the shape of men, sometimes for the space of a human life, sometimes for a shorter apparition. Many teachers in India have been revered as partial incarnations of Vishnu and most of the higher clergy in Tibet claim to be Buddhas or Bodhisattvas manifest in the flesh. There is no proof that the doctrine of metempsychosis existed in Eastern Asia independently of Indian influence but the ready acceptance accorded to it was largely due to the prevalent feeling that the worlds of men and spirits are divided by no great gulf. It is quite natural to step into the spirit world and back again into this.
It will not have escaped the reader's attention that many of the features which I have noticed as common to the religions of Eastern Asia—such as the worship of nature spirits and ancestors—are not peculiar to those countries but are almost, if not quite, universal in certain stages of religious development. They can, for instance, be traced in Europe. But whereas they exist here as survivals discernible only to the eye of research and even at the beginning of the Christian era had ceased to be the obvious characteristics of European paganism, in Asia they are still obvious. Age and logic have not impaired their vigour, and official theology, far from persecuting them, has accommodated its shape to theirs. This brings us to another point where the linguistic difficulty again makes itself felt, namely, that the word religion has not quite the same meaning in Eastern Asia as in Mohammedan and Christian lands. I know of no definition which would cover Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism and the superstitions of African savages, for the four have little community of subject matter or aim. If any definition can be found it must I think be based on some superficial characteristic such as ceremonial. Nor is there any objection to refusing the title of religion to Buddhism and Confucianism, except that an inconvenient lacuna would remain in our vocabulary, for they are not adequately described as philosophies. A crucial instance of the difference in the ideas prevalent in Europe and Eastern Asia is the fact that in China many people belong to two or three religions and it would seem that when Buddhism existed in India the common practice was similar. Paganism and spiritual religion can co-exist in the same mind provided their spheres are kept distinct. But Christianity and Islam both retain the idea of a jealous God who demands not only exclusive devotion but also exclusive belief: to believe in other Gods is not only erroneous; it is disobedience and disloyalty. But such ideas have little currency in Eastern Asia, especially among Buddhists. The Buddha is not a creator or a king but rather a physician. He demands no allegiance and for those who disobey him the only punishment is continuance of the disease. And though Indian deities may claim personal and exclusive devotion, yet in defining and limiting belief their priests are less exacting than Papal or Moslim doctors. Despite sectarian formulas, the Hindu cherishes broader ideas such as that all deities are forms and passing shapes of one essence; that all have their proper places and that gods, creeds and ceremonies are necessary helps in the lower stages of the religious life but immaterial to the adept.
It does not follow from this that Hindus are lukewarm or insincere in their convictions. On the contrary, faith is more intense and more widely spread among them than in Europe. Nor can it be said that their religion is something detachable from ordinary life: the burden of daily observances prescribed and duly borne seems to us intolerable. But Buddhism and many forms of Hinduism present themselves as methods of salvation with a simplicity and singleness of aim which may be paralleled in the Gospels but only rarely in the national churches of Europe. The pious Buddhist is one who moulds his life and thoughts according to a certain law: he is not much concerned with worshipping the gods of the state or city, but has nothing against such worship: his aims and procedure have nothing to do with spirits who give wealth and children or avert misfortune. But since such matters are of great interest to mankind, he is naturally brought into contact with them and he has no more objection to a religious service for procuring rain than to a scientific experiment for the same purpose. Similarly Confucians follow a system of ethics which is sufficient for a gentleman and accords a decorous recognition to a Supreme Being and ancestral spirits. Much concession to superstition would be reprehensible according to this code but if a Confucian honours some deity either for his private objects or because it is part of his duties as a magistrate, he is not offending Confucius. He is simply engaging in an act which has nothing to do with Confucianism. The same distinction often applies in Indian religion but is less clear there, because both the higher doctrine as well as ordinary ceremonial and mythology are described under one name as Hinduism. But if a native of southern India occasionally sacrifices a buffalo to placate some village spirit, it does not follow that all his religious notions are of this barbarous type.
Asiatic ideas as to the relations between religions are illustrated by an anecdote related to me in Assam. Christianity has made many converts among the Khasis, a non-Hindu tribe of that region, and a successful revival meeting extending over a week was once held in a district of professing Christians. When the week was over and the missionaries gone, the Khasis performed a ceremony in honour of their tribal deities. Their pastors regarded this as a woeful lapse from grace but no disbelief in Christianity or change of faith was implied. The Khasis had embraced Christianity in the same spirit that animated the ancient disciples of the Buddha: it was the higher law which spoke of a new life and of the world to come. But it was not understood that it offered to take over the business of the local deities, to look after crops and pigs and children, to keep smallpox, tigers and serpents in order. Nobody doubted the existence of spirits who regulate these matters, while admitting that ethics and the road to heaven were not in their department, and therefore it was thought wise to supplement the Christian ceremonies by others held in their honour and thus let them see that they were not forgotten and run no risk of incurring their enmity.
My object in this chapter is to point out at the very beginning that in Asia the existence of a duly labelled religion, such as Buddhism or Confucianism, does not imply the suppression of older nameless beliefs, especially about nature spirits and ghosts. In China and many other countries we must not be surprised to find Buddhists honouring spirits who have nothing to do with Buddhism. In India we must not suppose that the doctrines of Râmânuja or any other great teacher are responsible for the crudities of village worship, nor yet rashly assume that the villager is ignorant of them.