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CHAPTER XXVI
FEATURES OF HINDUISM: RITUAL, CASTE, SECT, FAITH

1

In the last chapter I traced the growth of the great gods Śiva and Vishṇu. The prominence of these figures is one of the marks which distinguish the later phase of Indian religion from the earlier. But it is also distinguished by various practices, institutions and beliefs, which are more or less connected with the new deities. Such are a new ritual, the elaboration of the caste system, the growth of sects, and the tendency to make devotion to a particular deity the essence of religion. In the present chapter I shall say something of these phenomena.

Hinduism has often and justly been compared to a jungle. As in the jungle every particle of soil seems to put forth its spirit in vegetable life and plants grow on plants, creepers and parasites on their more stalwart brethren, so in India art, commerce, warfare and crime, every human interest and aspiration seek for a manifestation in religion, and since men and women of all classes and occupations, all stages of education and civilization, have contributed to Hinduism, much of it seems low, foolish and even immoral. The jungle is not a park or garden. Whatever can grow in it, does grow. The Brahmans are not gardeners but forest officers. To attempt a history or description of Indian creeds seems an enterprise as vast, hopeless and pathless as a general account of European politics. As for many centuries the life of Europe has expressed itself in politics, so for even longer ages the life of India, which has more inhabitants than western Europe,⁴⁰¹ has found expression in religion, speculation and philosophy, and has left of all this thought a voluminous record, mighty in bulk if wanting in dates and events. And why should it chronicle them? The truly religious mind does not care for the history of religion, just as among us the scientific mind does not dwell on the history of science.

Yet in spite of their exuberance Hinduism and the jungle have considerable uniformity. Here and there in a tropical forest some well-grown tree or brilliant flower attracts attention, but the general impression left on the traveller by the vegetation as he passes through it mile after mile is infinite repetition as well as infinite luxuriance. And so in Hinduism. A monograph on one god or one teacher is an interesting study. But if we continue the experiment, different gods and different teachers are found to be much the same. We can write about Vishnuism and Śivaism as if they were different religions and this, though incomplete, is not incorrect. But in their higher phases both show much the same excellences and when degraded both lead to much the same abuses, except that the worship of Vishṇu does not allow animal sacrifices. This is true even of externals. In the temples of Madura, Poona and Benares, the deities, the rites, the doctrines, the race of the worshippers and the architecture are all different, yet the impression of uniformity is strong. In spite of divergences the religion is the same in all three places: it smacks of the soil and nothing like it can be found outside India.

Hinduism is an unusual combination of animism and pantheism, which are commonly regarded as the extremes of savage and of philosophic belief. In India both may be found separately but frequently they are combined in startling juxtaposition. The same person who worships Vishṇu as identical with the universe also worships him in the form of a pebble or plant.⁴⁰² The average Hindu, who cannot live permanently in the altitudes of pantheistic thought, regards his gods as great natural forces, akin to the mighty rivers which he also worships, irresistible and often beneficent but also capricious and destructive. Whereas Judaism, Christianity and Islam all identify the moral law with the will and conduct of the deity, in Hinduism this is not completely admitted in practice, though a library might be filled with the beautiful things that have been said about man and God. The outward forms of Indian religion are pagan after the fashion of the ancient world, a fashion which has in most lands passed away. But whereas in the fourth century A.D. European paganism, despite the efforts of anti-Christian eclectics, proved inelastic and incapable of satisfying new religious cravings, this did not happen in India. The bottles of Hinduism have always proved capable of holding all the wine poured into them. When a new sentiment takes possession of men's souls, such as love, repentance, or the sense of sin, some deity of many shapes and sympathies straightway adapts himself to the needs of his worshippers. And yet in so doing the deity, though he enlarges himself, does not change, and the result is that we often meet with strange anachronisms, as if Jephthah should listen appreciatively to the Sermon on the Mount and then sacrifice his daughter to Christ. Many Hindu temples are served by dancing girls who are admittedly prostitutes,⁴⁰³ an institution which takes us back to the cultus of Corinth and Babylon and is without parallel in any nation on approximately the same level of civilization. Only British law prevents widows from being burned with their dead husbands, though even in the Vedic age the custom had been discontinued as barbarous.⁴⁰⁴ But for the same legislation, human sacrifice would probably be common. What the gods do and what their worshippers do in their service cannot according to Hindu opinion be judged by ordinary laws of right and wrong. The god is supra-moral: the worshipper when he enters the temple leaves conventionality outside.

Yet it is unfair to represent Hinduism as characterized by licence and cruelty. Such tendencies are counterbalanced by the strength and prevalence of ideas based on renunciation and self-effacement. All desire, all attachment to the world is an evil; all self-assertion is wrong. Hinduism is constantly in extremes: sometimes it exults in the dances of Kṛishṇa or the destructive fury of Kâlî: more often it struggles for release from the transitory and for union with the permanent and real by self-denial or rather self-negation, which aims at the total suppression of both pleasure and pain. This is on the whole its dominant note.

In the records accessible to us the transition from Brahmanism—that is, the religion of the Vedas and Brâhmaṇas—to Hinduism does not appear as direct but as masked by Buddhism. We see Buddhism grow at the expense of Brahmanism. We are then conscious that it becomes profoundly modified under the influence of new ideas. We see it decay and the religion of the Brahmans emerge victorious. But that religion is not what it was when Buddhism first arose, and is henceforth generally known as Hinduism. The materials for studying the period in which the change occurred—say 400 B.C. to 400 A.D.—are not scanty, but they do not facilitate chronological investigation. Art and architecture are mainly Buddhist until the Gupta period (c. 320 A.D.) and literature, though plentiful, is undated. The Mahâbhârata and Râmâyaṇa must have been edited in the course of these 800 years, but they consist of different strata and it is not easy to separate and arrange them without assuming what we want to prove. From 400 B.C. (if not from an earlier date) onwards there grew up a great volume of epic poetry, founded on popular ballads, telling the stories of Râma and the Pâṇḍavas.⁴⁰⁵ It was distinct from the canonical literatures of both Brahmans and Buddhists, but though it was not in its essential character religious, yet so general in India is the interest in religion that whole theological treatises were incorporated in these stories without loss, in Indian opinion, to the interest of the narrative. If at the present day a congregation is seen in a Hindu temple listening to a recitation, the text which is being chanted will often prove to be part of the Mahâbhârata. Such a ceremony is not due to forgetfulness of the Veda but is a repetition of what happened long before our era when rhapsodists strung together popular narratives and popular theology. Such theology cannot be rigidly separated from Brahmanism and Buddhism. It grew up under their influence and accepted their simpler ideas. But it brought with it popular beliefs which did not strictly speaking belong to either system. By attacking the main Brahmanic doctrines the Buddhists gave the popular religion its opportunity. For instance, they condemned animal sacrifices and derided the idea that trained priests and complicated rites are necessary. This did not destroy the influence of the Brahmans but it disposed them to admit that the Vedic sacrifices are not the only means of salvation and to authorize other rites and beliefs. It was about this time, too, that a series of invasions began to pour into India from the north-west. It may be hard to distinguish between the foreign beliefs which they introduced and the Indian beliefs which they accepted and modified. But it is clear that their general effect was to upset traditional ideas associated with a ritual and learning which required lifelong study.

2

It has been well said⁴⁰⁶ that Buddhism did not waste away in India until rival sects had appropriated from it everything they could make use of. Perhaps Hinduism had an even stronger doctrinal influence on Buddhism. The deification of the Buddha, the invention of Bodhisattvas who are equivalent to gods and the extraordinary alliance between late Buddhism and Śivaism, are all instances of the general Indian view overcoming the special Buddhist view. But Buddhism is closely connected with the theory of incarnations and the development of the Advaita philosophy, and in the externals of religion, in rites, ceremonies and institutions, its influence was great and lasting. We may take first the doctrine of Ahiṃsâ, non-injury, or in other words the sanctity of animal life. This beautiful doctrine, the glory of India, if not invented by the Buddha at least arose in schools which were not Brahmanic and were related to the Jain and Buddhist movements. It formed no part of the Vedic religion in which sacrifice often meant butchery. But in Hinduism, it meets with extensive though not universal acceptance. With the Vaishṇavas it is an article of faith nor do the worshippers of Śiva usually propitiate him with animal sacrifices, though these are offered by the Śâktas and also by the small class of Brahmans who still preserve the Vedic ritual.⁴⁰⁷ Hardly any Hindus habitually eat meat and most abhor it, especially beef. Yet beef-eating seems to have been permitted in Vedic times and even when parts of the Mahâbhârata were composed.

Apart from animal sacrifices Buddhism was the main agent in effecting a mighty revolution in worship and ritual. One is tempted to regard the change as total and complete, but such wide assertions are rarely true in India: customs and institutions are not swept away by reformers but are cut down like the grass and like the grass grow up again. They sometimes die out but they are rarely destroyed. The Vedic sacrifices are still occasionally offered,⁴⁰⁸ but for many centuries have been almost entirely superseded by another form of worship associated with temples and the veneration of images. This must have become the dominant form of Hindu cultus in the first few centuries of our era and probably earlier. It is one of the ironies of fate that the Buddha and his followers should be responsible for the growth of image worship, but it seems to be true. He laughed at sacrifices and left to his disciples only two forms of religious exercise, sermons and meditation. For Indian monks, this was perhaps sufficient, but the laity craved for some outward form of worship. This was soon found in the respect shown to the memory of the Buddha and the relics of his body, although Hinduism never took kindly to relic worship. We hear too of Cetiyas. In the Piṭakas this word means a popular shrine unconnected with either Buddhist or Brahmanic ceremonial, sometimes perhaps merely a sacred tree or stone, probably honoured by such simple rites as decorating it with paint or flowers. A little later, in Buddhist times, the Cetiya became a cenotaph or reliquary, generally located near a monastery and surrounded by a passage for reverential circumambulation.

Allusions in the Piṭakas also indicate that then as now there were fairs. The early Buddhists thought that though such gatherings were not edifying they might be made so. They erected sacred buildings near a monastery, and held festivals so that people might collect together, visit a holy place, and hear sermons. In the earliest known sanctuaries, the funeral monument (for we can scarcely doubt that this is the origin of the stûpa)⁴⁰⁹ has already assumed the conventional form known as Dagoba, consisting of a dome and chest of relics, with a spire at the top, the whole surrounded by railings or a colonnade, but though the carving is lavish, no figure of the Buddha himself is to be seen. He is represented by a symbol such as a footprint, wheel, or tree. But in the later school of sculpture known as Gandhara or Græco-Buddhist he is frequently shown in a full length portrait. This difference is remarkable. It is easy to say that in the older school the Buddha was not depicted out of reverence, but less easy to see why such delineation should have shocked an Indian. But at any rate there is no difficulty in understanding that Greeks or artists influenced by Greeks would think it obvious and proper to make an effigy of their principal hero.

In these shrines we have if not the origin of the Hindu temple, at any rate a parallel development more nearly allied to it than anything in the Vedic religion.⁴¹⁰ For the Buddhist shrine was a monument built over a receptacle containing relics and the essential feature of Hindu temples is a cell containing an image or emblem and generally surmounted by a tower. The surrounding courts and corridors may assume gigantic proportions, but the central shrine is never large. Images had no place in the Vedic sacrifices and those now worshipped in temples are generally small and rude, and sometimes (as at Bhuvaneshwar and Srirangam) the deity is represented by a block or carved stone which cannot be moved, and may have been honoured as a sacred rock long before the name of Vishṇu or Śiva was known in those regions.⁴¹¹ The conspicuous statues often found outside the shrine are not generally worshipped and are merely ornaments. Buddhism did not create the type of ritual now used in Hindu temples, yet it contributed towards it, for it attacked the old Brahmanic sacrifices, it countenanced the idea that particular places and objects are holy, and it encouraged the use of images. It is strange that these widespread ideas should find no place in the Vedic religion, but even now-a-days whenever the old Vedic sacrifices are celebrated they are uncontaminated by the temple ceremonial. More than this, the priests or Pujâris who officiate in temples are not always Brahmans and they rarely enjoy much consideration.⁴¹² This curious and marked feature may be connected with the inveterate Indian feeling that, though it is well to multiply rites and rules for neophytes, no great respect is due to men occupied with mere ceremonial. But it also testifies to a dim consciousness that modern temples and their ceremonies have little to do with the thoughts and mode of life which made the Brahmans a force in India. In many ways the Brahmans dissociate themselves from popular religion. Those of good family will not perform religious rites for Śûdras and treat the Brahmans who do so as inferiors.⁴¹³

The simplest ceremonial in use at the present day is that employed in some Śivaite temples. It consists in placing leaves on the linga and pouring holy water over it. These rites, which may be descended from prehistoric stone worship, are generally accompanied by the reading of a Purâna. But the commonest form of temple ritual consists in treating the image or symbol as an honoured human being.⁴¹⁴ It is awakened, bathed, dressed and put to bed at the close of day. Meals are served to it at the usual hours. The food thus offered is called prasâd (or favour) and is eaten by the devout. Once or twice a day the god holds a levee and on festivals he is carried in procession. These ceremonies are specially characteristic of the worship of Kṛishṇa whose images receive all the endearments lavished on a pet child. But they are also used in the temples of Śiva and Parvatî, and no less than twenty-two of them are performed in the course of the day at the temple of Bhuvaneshwar in Orissa. It is clear that the spirit of these rites is very different from that which inspires public worship in other civilized countries at the present day. They are not congregational or didactic, though if any of the faithful are in the temple at the time of the god's levee it is proper for them to enter and salute him. Neither do they recall the magical ceremonies of the Vedic sacrifices.⁴¹⁵ The waving of lights (arati) before the god and the burning of incense are almost the only acts suggestive of ecclesiastical ritual. The rest consists in treating a symbol or image as if it were a living thing capable of enjoying simple physical pleasures. Here there are two strata. We have really ancient rites, such as the anointing or ornamenting of stones and offerings of food in sacred places. In this class too we may reckon the sacrifice of goats (and formerly of human beings) to Kâlî.⁴¹⁶ But on the other hand the growing idea of Bhakti, that is faith or devotion, imported a sentimental element and the worshipper endeavoured to pet, caress and amuse the deity.

It is hard to see anything either healthy or artistic in this emotional ritual. The low and foolish character of many temple ceremonies disgusts even appreciative foreigners, but these services are not the whole of Hindu worship. All Hindus perform in the course of the day numerous acts of private devotion varying according to sect, and a pious man is not dependent on the temple like a Catholic on his church. Indian life is largely occupied with these private, intimate, individual observances, hardly noticeable as ceremonies and concerned with such things as dressing, ablution and the preparation of food.

The monastic institutions of India seem due to Buddhism. There were wandering monks before the Buddha's time, but the practice of founding establishments where they could reside permanently, originated in his order. There appears to be no record of Hindu (as opposed to Buddhist) monasteries before the time of Śaṅkara in the ninth century, though there must have been places where the learned congregated or where wandering ascetics could lodge. Śaṅkara perceived the advantage of the cenobitic life for organizing religion and founded a number of maṭhs or colleges. Subsequent religious leaders imitated him. At the present day these institutions are common, yet it is clear that the wandering spirit is strong in Hindus and that they do not take to monastic discipline and fixed residence as readily as Tibetans and Burmese. A maṭh is not so much a convent as the abode of a teacher. His pupils frequent it and may become semi-resident: aged pilgrims may make it their last home, but the inmates are not a permanent body following a fixed rule like the monks of a Vihâra. The Sattras of Assam, however, are true monasteries (though even there vows and monastic costume are unknown) and so are the establishments of the Swâminârâyaṇa sect at Ahmedabad and Wartâl.

3

The vast and complicated organization of caste is mainly a post-Vedic growth and in the Buddha's time was only in the making.⁴¹⁷ His order was open to all classes alike, but this does not imply that he was adverse to caste, so far as it then prevailed, or denied that men are divided into categories determined by their deeds in other births. But on the whole the influence of Buddhism was unfavourable to caste, especially to the pretensions of the Brahmans, and an extant polemic against caste is ascribed (though doubtfully) to Aśvaghosha.⁴¹⁸ On the other hand, though caste is in its origin the expression of a social rather than of a religious tendency, the whole institution and mechanism have long been supported and exploited by the Brahmans. Few of them would dispute the proposition that a man cannot be a Hindu unless he belongs to a caste. The reason of this support is undisguised, namely, that they are the first and chief caste. They make their own position a matter of religion and claim the power of purifying and rehabilitating those who have lost caste but they do not usually interfere with the rules of other castes or excommunicate those who break them.⁴¹⁹ That is the business of the Pancayat or caste council.

Sometimes religion and caste are in opposition, for many modern religious leaders have begun by declaring that among believers there are no social distinctions. This is true not only of teachers whose orthodoxy is dubious, such as Nânak, the founder of the Sikhs, and Basava, the founder of the Lingâyats,⁴²⁰ but also of Vallabhâcârya and Caitanya. But in nearly all cases caste reasserts itself. The religious teachers of the sect receive extravagant respect and form a body apart. This phenomenon, which recurs in nearly all communities, shows how the Brahmans established their position. At the same time social distinctions make themselves felt among the laity, and those who claim to be of good position dissociate themselves from those of lower birth. The sect ends by observing caste on ordinary occasions, and it is only in some temples (such as that of Jagannath at Puri)⁴²¹ that the worshippers mix and eat a sacred meal together. Sometimes, however, the sect which renounces caste becomes itself a caste. Thus, the Sikhs have become almost a nation and other modern castes arising out of sects are the Atiths, who are Śivaites, the Saraks, who appear to have been originally Buddhists, and the Baishnabs (Vaishnavas), a name commonly given in Bengal to those followers of Caitanya who persist in the original rule of disregarding caste regulations within the sect, and hence now form a separate community. But as a rule sect and caste are not co-extensive and the caste is not a religious corporation. Thus the different subdivisions of the Baniyas belong to different sects and even in the same subdivision there is no religious uniformity.⁴²²

Caste in its later developments is so complex and irregular, that it is impossible to summarize it in a formula or explain it as the development of one principle. In the earliest form known two principles are already in operation. We have first racial distinction. The three upper castes represent the invading Aryans, the fourth the races whom they found in India. In the modern system of caste, race is not a strong factor. Many who claim to be Brahmans and Kshatriyas have no Aryan blood, but still the Aryan element is strongest in the highest castes and decreases as we descend the social scale and also decreases in the higher castes in proportion as we move from the north-west to the east and south. But secondly in the three upper castes the dividing principle, as reported in the earliest accounts, is not race but occupation. We find in most Aryan countries a division into nobles and people, but in India these two classes become three, the priests having been able to assume a prominence unknown elsewhere and to stamp on literature their claim to the highest rank. This claim was probably never admitted in practice so completely as the priests desired. It was certainly disputed in Buddhist times and I have myself heard a young Rajput say that the Brahmans falsified the Epics so as to give themselves the first place.

It is not necessary for our purpose to describe the details of the modern caste system. Its effect on Indian religion has been considerable, for it created the social atmosphere in which the various beliefs grew up and it has furnished the Brahmans with the means of establishing their authority. But many religious reformers preached that in religion caste does not exist—that there is neither Jew nor Gentile in the language of another creed—and though the application of this theory is never complete, the imperfection is the result not of religious opposition but of social pressure. Hindu life is permeated by the instinct that society must be divided into communities having some common interest and refusing to intermarry or eat with other communities. The long list of modern castes hardly bears even a theoretical relation to the four classes of Vedic times.⁴²³ Numerous subdivisions with exclusive rules as to intermarriage and eating have arisen among the Brahmans and the strength of this fissiparous instinct is seen among the Mohammedans who nominally have no caste but yet are divided into groups with much the same restrictions.

This remarkable tendency to form exclusive corporations is perhaps correlated with the absence of political life in India. Such ideas as nationality, citizenship, allegiance to a certain prince, patriotic feelings for a certain territory are rarer and vaguer than elsewhere, and yet the Hindu is dependent on his fellows and does not like to stand alone. So finding little satisfaction in the city or state he clings the more tenaciously to smaller corporations. These have no one character: they are not founded on any one logical principle but merely on the need felt by people who have something in common to associate together. Many are based on tribal divisions; some, such as the Marathas and Newars, may be said to be nationalities. In many the bond of union is occupation, in a few it is sectarian religion. We can still observe how members of a caste who migrate from their original residence tend to form an entirely new caste, and how intertribal marriages among the aborigines create new tribes.

4

Sect⁴²⁴ must not be confounded with caste. Hindu sects are of many kinds; some, if not militant, are at least exceedingly self-confident. Others are so gentle in stating their views that they might be called schools rather than sects, were the word not too intellectual. The notion that any creed or code can be quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, is less prevalent than in Europe and even the Veda, though it is the eternal word, is admitted to exist in several recensions. Hinduism is possible as a creed only to those who select. In its literal sense it means simply all the beliefs and rites recognized in India, too multifarious and inconsistent for the most hospitable and addled brain to hold. But the Hindus, who are as loth to abolish queer beliefs and practices as they are to take animal life, are also the most determined seekers after a satisfying form of religion. Brahmanic ritual and Buddhist monasticism demand the dedication of a life. Not everyone can afford that, but the sect is open to all. It attempts to sort out of the chaos of mythology and superstition something which all can understand and all may find useful. It selects some aspect of Hinduism and makes the best of it. Sects usually start by preaching theism and equality in the sight of God, but in a few generations mythology and social distinctions creep in. Hence though the prevalence of sect is undoubtedly a feature of modern Hinduism it is also intelligible that some observers should assert that most Hindus belong to the same general religion and that only the minority are definitely sectarian. The sectarian tendency is stronger in Vishnuism than in Śivaism. The latter has produced some definite sects, as, for instance, Lingâyats, but is not like Vishnuism split up into a number of Churches each founded by a human teacher and provided by him with a special creed.

Most Indian sects are in their origin theistic, that is to say, they take a particular deity and identify him with the Supreme Being. But the pantheistic tendency does not disappear. Popular religion naturally desires a personal deity. But it is significant that the personal deity frequently assumes pantheistic attributes and is declared to be both the world and the human soul. The best known sects arose after Islam had entered India and some of them, such as the Sikhs, show a blending of Hindu and Moslem ideas. But if Mohammedan influence favoured the formation of corporations pledged to worship one particular deity, it acted less by introducing something new than by quickening a line of thought already existing. The Bhagavad-gîtâ is as complete an exposition of sectarian pantheism as any utterances posterior to Mohammedanism.

The characteristic doctrine of sectarian Hinduism is bhakti, faith or devotion. The older word śraddhâ, which is found in the Vedas, is less emotional for it means simply belief in the existence of a deity, whereas bhakti can often be rendered by love. It is passionate, self-oblivious devotion to a deity who in return (though many would say there is no bartering) bestows his grace (prasâda or anugraha). St. Augustine in defining faith says: "Quid est credere in Deum? credendo amare, credendo diligere, credendo in eum ire, et ejus membris incorporari."⁴²⁵ This is an excellent paraphrase of bhakti and the words have an oriental ring which is not quite that of the New Testament. Though the doctrine of bhakti marks the beginning of a new epoch in Hinduism it is not necessary to regard it as an importation or due to Christianity. About the time of the Christian era there was felt in many countries a craving for a gentler and more emotional worship and though the history of Bhaktism is obscure, Indian literature shows plainly how it may be a development of native ideas. Its first great text-book is the Bhagavad-gîtâ, but it is also mentioned in the last verse of the Śvetâśvatara Upanishad and Pâṇini appears to allude to bhakti felt for⁴²⁶ Vâsudeva. The Kaṭhâ Upanishad⁴²⁷ contains the following passage: