230 Laws of Manu (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv), i. 31, 87.

231 Cf. Hearn, Kokora, chap. xii.

232 Laws of Manu, vi. 63.

233 Ibid. xii. 9, 53–58. The germs out of which this system was developed by the Brahmans formed a part of the animistic conception of the world held by the conquered natives. By the sixth century B.C. the system had been fully elaborated. See Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures (1881), pp. 16 f.

234 The theory was also undoubtedly in part the creation of the same ethical necessity that called into existence the purgatory of the medieval Church. The reincarnations have for aim and purpose not merely retribution, but expiation and purification.

235 The reader of Edward Beecher’s The Conflict of Ages, wherein the author attempts to explain the inequalities of earthly life by the theory of preëxistence, will be able to appreciate this effort of Indian philosophers to solve the same problem.

236 Indian pessimism is doubtless to be attributed in part to the hot, depressing climate, but more largely to the burdensome caste system and an oppressive government, which made free and joyous life impossible to the masses, shutting them up, without hope, to an existence of ache and pain and wretchedness. “Politics and society, in our opinion,” says Dr. Hopkins, “had more to do with altering the religion of India than had a higher temperature and miasma” (The Religions of India (1895), p. 199). But cf. Bloomfield, The Religion of the Veda (1908), pp. 263 ff.

237 Hopkins, The Religions of India (1895), p. 149.

238 Ibid. p. 187.

239 This Brahmanic notion of sacrifice, that the gods need food, is the underlying notion in all religions of which sacrifices form a part. “That the purpose of sacrifice was simply to feed the gods was admitted on all sides in the controversy which accompanied the diffusion of Christianity in the ancient world.... The altar, in the words of Dean Spenser, was merely the table on which food and drink were set before the languishing deity” (Payne, History of the New World called America (1892), vol. i, pp. xi f.). “It is on precisely the same principle that the Mexicans kept their great war-gods ... alive and vigorous by the blood of young human victims selected from their tributaries, and the Peruvians maintained the Creator, Sun, Moon, and Thunder, on whose favor their crops depended, in youth and vigor by the continual smoke of burnt llamas” (Ibid. vol. i, p. 484). Consult also Frazer, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. All these were divinities of vegetation, which were believed to die and to come to life again, as with the revolution of the seasons vegetation died and was renewed. Along with this belief went the notion that by magical ceremonies the worshipers of the gods could aid them in recovering their wasted energies.

240 Laws of Manu, i. 88–91.

241 Ibid. i. 93.

242 Ibid. ii. 32, 35.

243 The Gentoo Code (1776), xvi. 1.

244 Laws of Manu, iv. 80, 81.

245 Ibid. viii. 379.

246 Ibid. viii. 380.

247 Ibid. viii. 381.

248 Ibid. iv. 147.

249 Laws of Manu, xi. 247.

250 Ibid. iv. 148.

251 Even the sudra is not shut out from this hope. If he be pure, the faithful servant of his betters, gentle in his speech and free from pride, he will at death be reborn into a higher caste (Laws of Manu, ix. 335).

252 Laws of Manu, xi. 60, 69, 71, 72, 132–138, 140–142, 144. Especially severe is the penance imposed for killing a cow. See Ibid. xi. 109–117.

253 Ibid. vi. 68.

254 Ibid. vi. 69.

255 It is better, however, to abstain wholly from the use of meat, since this can be obtained only through pain to sentient beings (Laws of Manu, v. 48). There is no sin in eating meat, “but abstention brings great rewards” (Ibid. v. 56).

256 Laws of Manu, v. 40.

257 Ibid. v. 45.

258 Ibid. vii. 101.

259 Ibid. vii. 103.

260 Laws of Manu, vii. 90–93, 104.

261 Ibid. viii. 84.

262 Ibid. v. 106.

263 Ibid. xi. 231.

264 Ibid. vi. 48.

265 Ibid. viii. 312.

266 Laws of Manu, viii. 313.

267 Gautama or Buddha, “The Enlightened,” the founder of Buddhism, died about B.C. 480. Long before he began his teachings moral reform was in the air in India. Many reforming sects came into existence. The most important of these was the sect of the Jains. The central teaching of Jainism is the sacredness of all life, and its first and chief commandment, Do no harm to any living thing. Its spirit of universal benevolence left a deep impress not only upon Buddhism but also upon later Hinduism.

268 Dhammapada (Sacred Books of the East, 2d ed., vol. x), xiv. 190, 191. Cf. Oldenberg, Buddha (1882), p. 209.

269 Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 286.

270 Cf. Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures (1881), p. 21; Hopkins, The Religions of India (1895), pp. 316 f.

271 Oldenberg, Buddha (1882), p. 220.

272 Dhammapada, xx. 283. This doctrine that peace and contentment of mind come through suppression of desire was also the teaching of the Greek Cynics.

273 “No sentient being can tell in what state the karma that he possesses will appoint his next birth, though he may be now, and continue to be until death, one of the most meritorious of men. In that karma may be the crime of murder, committed many ages ago, but not yet expiated; and in the next existence its punishment may have to be endured. There will ultimately be a reward for that which is good, but it may be long delayed. It acts like an hereditary disease.”—Hardy, Manual of Buddhism (1880), p. 411.

274 “The difficulties attendant upon this peculiar dogma [karma] may be seen in the fact that it is almost universally repudiated.... In historical composition, in narrative, and in conversation, the common idea of transmigration is continually presented” (Hardy, Manual of Buddhism (1880), p. 412). By 250 B.C. “in the North and also in the South the old heresy of the soul-theory had crept back by side issue into the doctrine from which it had been categorically and explicitly excluded by Gautama and his earlier followers” (Rhys Davids, Buddhism (1896), p. 198).

275 Hibbert Lectures (1881), pp. 31, 206. Cf. Hopkins, The Religions of India (1895), p. 321.

276 But this, as we have just seen, is not the Buddhism of the Buddhist world in general. The masses in Buddhist lands have never accepted the doctrine of Nirvana in the sense of extinction of existence. The following conversation between Moncure Conway and a Singhalese priest discloses the meaning of the term to an orthodox Buddhist of Ceylon: “I asked, ‘Have those who are in Nirvana any consciousness?’ I was then informed that there is no Singhalese word for consciousness. Sumangala said, ‘To reach Nirvana is to be no more.’ I pointed to a stone step and said, ‘One is there only as that stone is here?’ ‘Not so much,’ answered the priest; ‘for the stone is actually here, but in Nirvana there is no existence at all’” (My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East (1906), p. 134).

277 These eight requirements are often condensed into four, and then the formula is called the fourfold path to deliverance.

278 Cf. Oldenberg, Buddha (1882), p. 211; Hopkins, The Religions of India (1895), p. 305.

279 There is in this teaching respecting desirelessness an apparent inconsistency, for with all other desires suppressed, there remains the desire for Nirvana. But the difficulty here is only apparent. A Buddhist priest, questioned respecting this, replied as follows: “The desire for Nirvana escapes from the mesh that entangles all other desires, because it is not desire for any object at all” (Conway, My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East (1906), p. 134). But all other desires aside from this desire for Nirvana are in a sense sins of covetousness. And this is the cardinal sin in the view of the true Buddhist, for covetousness “is a strong desire for something, and all desire is a hindrance in one’s way to Nirvana.”

280 This teaching that mental illumination comes through contemplation is the doctrine in general of the religious and moral teachers of the East, and of all mystics. It differs fundamentally from the scientific view, which makes observation and study the means of enlightenment.

281 Buddhism limits transmigration to the animal creation; Brahmanism, it will be recalled, supposes the soul to transmigrate into vegetable as well as into animal forms.

282 “To be a true Buddhist, one must renounce, as lust, all desire of evil, which brings evil; and must live without other hope than that of extinguishing all desire and passion, believing that in so doing he will at death be annihilated.”—Hopkins, The Religions of India (1895), p. 564.

283 Dhammapada, vii. 90–99.

284 But—and differing in this from Dr. Hopkins—Professor Rhys Davids makes this perfection which results in annihilation to consist not in the extinction of every desire, but only of craving desire and evil passions.

285 The Religions of India (1895), p. 322.

286 Hopkins, The Religions of India (1895), p. 317. Stoicism indeed approaches Buddhism in this respect; but its attitude toward the doctrine of a future life was in general merely agnostic—it made no positive denial of immortality.

287 Cf. Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures (1881), p. 123.

288 Zeller represents Pythagoreanism as springing from an effort to give an ethical content to life. “We may consider it proved,” he says, “that the school of Pythagoras, believing in the almighty favor of the gods, and in future retribution, enforced purity of life, moderation and justice, minute self-examination and discretion in all actions, and especially discouraged self-conceit” (History of Philosophy (1881), vol. i, p. 496). Oldenberg (Ancient India (1896), p. 87) conceives Pythagoreanism—together with the Orphic worship—as “a bit of Buddhism in the midst of Greek civilization.”

289 Gautama’s attitude toward ascetic practices is shown by the following: “Not nakedness, not platted hair, not dirt, not fasting, or lying on the earth, not rubbing with dust, not sitting motionless, can purify a mortal who has not overcome desires” (Dhammapada, x. 141).

290 Oldenberg, Buddha (1882), p. 366.

291 This is well illustrated in the following incident related by Moncure Conway. In the island of Ceylon he was visited by an aged Buddhist priest, who came in a sedan borne by men. Asked why he did not use a carriage drawn by horses, the priest replied that “he was afraid a horse might be vitally injured by carrying him.” “But,” said Mr. Conway, “might it not be the same with one of those men while he is carrying you?” After a moment’s silence the priest answered, “But a man can tell me if he is suffering” (My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East (1906), pp. 116 f.).

292 Thousands of rats were formerly kept at public expense in a hospital at the Indian town of Kutel.

293 Toleration is not even recognized as a virtue in the moral codes of ancient Judaism, dogmatic Christianity, and Islam.

294 Hibbert Lectures (1881), p. 231.

295 Under Asoka, it is true, Buddhism, like Christianity under Constantine the Great, became militant. But Asoka was a gentle warrior and made war gently. He neither killed his prisoners nor tortured them, a common practice with Oriental conquerors, nor did he sell them as slaves.

296 “Les paisibles sujets du Grand-Lama thibetain ont cessé d’aimer la guerre et presque de la faire” (Letourneau, La guerre dans les diverses races humaines (1895), p. 213).

297 Edward A. Ross, The Changing Chinese (1911), p. 29.

298 See above, p. 79.

299 Mozoomdar, a leader of the Brahmo-Somaj.

300 Buddhism, like Christianity, teaches that hatred must be overcome by love: “Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good” (Dhammapada, xvii. 223). “For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule” (Ibid. i. 5).

301 For the influence of Buddhism on the Japanese character, see Count Okuma, Fifty Years of New Japan (1909), vol. ii, chap. iv, “Japanese Religious Beliefs: Buddhism.”

302 Laws, tr. Jowett, x. 896. And the thought is near even in the latest philosophy: “But it feels like a real fight,” says Professor William James, “as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulness, are needed to reform.”

303 Is. xlv. 7.

304 This dualistic world philosophy is regarded by some students of the Zend-Avesta as being in the nature of a protest against “the inert asceticism of Buddhism and the ethical indifference of Brahmanism” (Darmesteter, “Introduction,” Sacred Books of the East, 2d ed., vol. iv, p. lxviii). Ranke views it as the product of environment: “If we keep well in view the contrasts between the various districts and nations included within the limits of Persia and her provinces, the incessant struggle between the settled populations and the inhabitants of the steppes, between the cultivated regions and the desolation of the desert, thrust back, indeed, yet ever resuming its encroachments, the ideas of the Zend-Avesta will appear to us natural and, as we may term it, autochthonic” (Universal History, vol. i (1885), p. 105).

305 The way in which such a conception acts upon the moral life is well illustrated in the history of English Puritanism. The ethical strenuousness of the Puritan was the outcome of his deeply felt consciousness of the ineradicable antagonism between good and evil. It is all brought vividly before us in Bunyan’s Holy War, in the struggle between Immanuel and Diabolus—of which the myth of Ahura and Ahriman was the prototype.

306 Mihir Yasht (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxiii), vii. 26.

307 See Jackson, Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran.

308 See above, p. 115.

309 Zoroastrian ethics, as Wedgwood says, is best understood when viewed as a protest against the Hindu conception of the universe and life. “The injunction to industry, the elaborate provisions for agriculture, the constant stimulus to exertion of every kind, are most intelligible when we see in them a recoil from the faith which appeared to this active race [the Iranian] a confusion of good and evil” (The Moral Ideal, 3d ed., p. 59).

310 Vendîdâd (Sacred Books of the East, 2d ed., vol. iv), Farg. iv. 47.

311 Ibid. Farg. iii. 33.

312 Ibid. Farg. iv. 49.

313 “Aryan morality came down from the heavens in a ray of light” (Selected Essays of James Darmesteter, ed. Morris Jastrow, p. 304).

314 Vendîdâd, Farg. ii. 29.

315 Ibid. Farg. iv. 49 (bis)-55.

316 Mihir Yasht, i. 2.

317 Ibid. xxix. 116, 117.

318 The Moral Ideal, 3d ed., pp. 71 ff. It is significant that the sacred standard of the early Persians was the apron of a blacksmith.

319 Vendîdâd, Farg. iii. 31.

320 Ibid. Farg. iii. 4.

321 Laws of Manu, x. 84.

322 Vendîdâd, Farg. iii. 38, 39.

323 The king who reigned in Persia at the time of Nero, going from Asia to Italy, traveled by land along the shore instead of going by ship, “because the Magi are forbidden to defile the sea” (James Darmesteter, Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv, p. xl). But the anxious observance by the Persians of the requirements of the code is best disclosed in the disposition which they made of their dead. Since corpses could neither be burned nor buried nor thrown into the water without defiling a sacred element, they were exposed on the summits of mountains or on the top of low towers (dakhmas), the so-called “Towers of Silence,” that the flesh might be eaten by birds of prey.

324 Zend-Avesta, pt. ii, Yasht xxii (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxiii, pp. 314 ff.).

325 Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxi, “Introduction,” p. xx.

326 “Their [the servitors of Mithra] dualistic system was particularly adapted to fostering individual effort and to developing human energy.”—Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra (1903), p. 141.

327 Herod. i. 139. We quote Rawlinson’s version.

328 Herod. i. 136.

329 Rawlinson’s Herodotus, vol. i, p. 214, n. 10. We omit the references.

330 Cf. Herod. ix. 109.

331 Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies (1871), vol. iii, p. 170. The exception was the case of the Barcæans. Cf. Herod. iv. 201.

332 The modern Persians, who have exchanged the truth-impelling creed of Zoroaster for that of Mohammed, seem to have lost this ancestral virtue. It is noteworthy, however, that the Indian Parsees, the inheritors and preservers of the faith of ancient Persia, are noted for their uprightness and veracity.

333 “They [the Parsees] form one of the most esteemed, wealthy, and philanthropic communities on the west coast of India, notably in the city of Bombay.”—Bloomfield, The Religion of the Veda (1908), p. 15.

334 “The whole history of the religion of Israel is a history of the development of the moral consciousness, and consequently of the deepening and widening of the opposition between that which ought to be and that which is.”—Edward Caird, The Evolution of Religion (1894), vol. ii, p. 92.

335 It may be urged that the moral character given to Yahweh was the creation of the moral consciousness of his worshipers; but even so, this conception of deity once formed would inevitably react upon the moral sense to deepen and purify the feelings that gave it birth.

336 Geschichte des Volkes Israel (1889), Bd. i, S. 429.

337 Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile (1899), pp. 35 ff.; Toy, Judaism and Christianity (1891), p. 307; W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (1894), pp. 75 ff.

338 W. Robertson Smith urges that sacrifice among the Hebrews had its origin in the sacramental communal idea. According to this belief the clansmen and their god are of the same stock, and the bond of kinship is renewed and strengthened through the human and the divine members of the community partaking together of the flesh and blood of an animal slain.

339 Job iii. 19.

340 Eccl. ix. 5; and so ix. 10: “For there is no work, nor desire, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in Sheol, whither thou goeth.”

341 Is. xxxviii. 18.

342 See below, pp. 165 f.

343 Cf. Chapter II.

344 The oldest form of the Decalogue is found in Ex. xxxiv; cf. Ex. xxxiii.

345 If we compare the morality of this Hebrew Decalogue with that of the Egyptian Negative Confession, we shall find it to belong to about the same stage of ethical development.

346 In the Book of Judges are preserved some traditions which are illustrative of the moral state of society at this time; for though all the details of these stories may not be historical, still they doubtless reflect the general condition of things during this period. There is a striking similarity between these traditions of gross and incredible crimes and the traditions of the atrocious immoralities of the Merovingian Age in European history.

347 The kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrian power 722 B.C.; the kingdom of Judah fell before Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, 586 B.C.

348 Cf. Kuenen, The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel.

349 The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel (1877), p. 344.

350 Cf. 1 Kings xxi—the story of Naboth’s vineyard.

351 “The life-work of Elijah was a turning-point in the history of the religion of Israel, similar in its consequences to those which followed the appearance of Zarathustra in Iran.... It was the ethical idea of God matured in the soul of the prophet by the need of his time which broke through with irresistible power to the demand for a final choice between Jehovah, the holy God, and the unholy nature gods of the heathen.”—Pfleiderer, Religions and Historic Faiths (1907), pp. 225 f.

352 History of the People of Israel (1892), vol. ii, p. 275.

353 Calamities were at this time befalling Israel. “The national distress served to awaken Israel’s conscience. The obligation covenanted at Sinai knocked again at the door of their hearts” (Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile (1899), p. 93).

354 Amos iii. 10.

355 Ibid. v. 11, 12.

356 Ibid. viii. 5, 6.

357 Ibid. v. 21.

358 Ibid. v. 22.

359 Ibid. v. 24.

360 Hosea vi. 6.