Section I. The Philosophy Latent in the Religion
1. Hindostan a land of books. Pyramids, tombs, statues with inscriptions, deciphered or to be deciphered, contain all that we know from internal evidence of Egyptian and Chaldaic wisdom. In Hindostan we come again into the world of books; we find ourselves among a literary people, literary by profession. It is not a literature which explains a history, but one which is the substitute for a history. We know almost nothing of what the Hindoo has done, very much of what he has thought.
2. The Vedas. For an accurate knowledge of the Hindoo Vedas, the English scholar must still wait. Till of late years, even the most accomplished Sanscrit scholars have shrunk from the task of translating them. The great beauty of their style and language we must take for granted, on the authority of those who are competent to speak of it, and whose judgment cannot be wholly distorted by the love of a favourite pursuit. Invocations. But the specimens which we possess are sufficient to acquaint us with their general design and character. They are invocations. Different powers of air, or earth, or fire, are implored for aid in different emergencies. It is assumed that these powers are related to man and can attend to his cries. It is even hoped that they may have fellowship with him, that they may come and share his food and his wine. The worshipper has no doubt that they will be pleased with his offerings, that they may be influenced by his sacrifices.
3. Signs of a sacerdotal society. Here then we find ourselves at once in a sacerdotal region. The priest who prescribes the method of the invocation, the nature of the sacrifice, who presents the one or the other, is the leading man of the community. The orders and ranks of priests will evidently be defined first. By the offices which they perform all others will be measured. It is evident also that at this stage of Hindoo life, the objects of worship must have been various, determined by the influences which different powers in nature exert over man, the influences of these powers being defined and arranged by the priest.
4. Characteristics of Hindoo worship. But there is a feeling of communion between the worshipper and the beings whom he is addressing, which distinguishes this Hindoo adoration from the mere physical idolatry of the Egyptians. Fellowship with the gods. The Hindoo from the first seems to seek friendship with his divinities, not merely help from them. And presently we discover that the help which he seeks is not only in feeding his cattle, or subduing his enemies; that the friendship of the wine-cup will not satisfy his notions of intercourse with the Divinity. Search for purification. He invokes a Purifier, he desires purification for himself. His ceremonies and sacrifices, though they may have other subordinate ends, seem gradually to point more and more to this end.
5. The purifier. As they do so, one Being gradually seems to dawn upon him, through the different objects which have been distracting his attention. The name Agni comes out more and more conspicuously amidst the forms which the Vedas seek to propitiate. You feel that he is becoming the special object of Brahminical service, that very soon he may supplant all the other objects, and may be confessed as that Being which all the rest were bringing into light. Such a unity we believe is latent in these early books, strictly polytheistic as they are; a unity, it will be perceived, which seems to be the result of the worshipper’s experiments and discoveries; at all events, which reveals itself to him in the course of his thoughts and devotion, in strange contrast to all that variety which yet he is obliged to acknowledge as real, and which he had taught others as well as himself to look upon as divine.
6. The esoterical belief. Grounds of it. Here begins that distinction between the sacerdotal and the popular faith of the Hindoos, which has often been attributed to wilful imposture, which has no doubt been upheld by imposture, but which may have had a less culpable origin. The wish for purification implies the sense of something in ourselves which does not belong to this earth, which may be separated from it. As the man asks himself what this is, he discovers with wonder that the very effort of putting the question suggests the answer. The wonder of thinking. He thinks; thinks of all the things that are about him. Surely his thought makes him superior to them. If he can become a purely thinking being he is not any longer one of them. He has gained that which he wants. But who can make him such a thinking being? The God whom he calls upon must be himself a being of this kind. He must be the thinker. He must be close to the thinking man, his patron, his friend, his fellow-worker. Where can the union with him stop? Not till they become identical; not till the man actually sinks into the God, and is lost.
7. Brahm the thinker. Accordingly, in the next stage of Hindooism, Agni has become Brahm. A priest-god has come out clearly before us. It is impossible to give him any other name. He is emphatically the God of the priest, as distinguished from other men. He is the priest himself, raised and transfigured. It is the great effort and privilege of the priest to be absorbed in him.
8. The priest a philosopher. But has not the priest himself become changed during the process? Is he any longer the director of invocations and orderer of sacrifices? Has he not become the thinker, the intellectual man, whose business it is to use all those powers which the vulgar man has not, or has never cultivated? The priest is the philosopher, the seeker after wisdom which is hidden from other men. More than ever he must keep himself aloof from them, must distinguish himself from those who pursue the ordinary crafts and occupations of the world. He who merely acts, if he be the greatest of heroes or warriors, must be far beneath the thinker. The thinker must preserve sacred the privileges with which he has been endued; he must transmit them to an order of successors.
9. How he justifies his priestly office. In such a scheme, what place is there for his old occupation? What is to be the end of sacrifices and offerings, if thinking is to be the all in all? There may be several answers to the question besides the vulgarest and wickedest of all (to which the Brahmin had a continual tendency), that such a religion is needful for the fool, but not for the wise man. 1st. By concentrating divinity in Brahm, the universe was not deprived of its sacredness. All things thoughts or parts of Brahm. Every part of nature was a thought of Brahm’s. The cow, the elephant, the flower, were all some portions of him. There was no wrong then in paying homage to these; it might be considered a part of the service of Brahm. 2nd. There is something inexpressibly awful to a mind at all devout in that nearness in which it felt itself to Brahm, in the confusion between the worshipper and the object of his worship. Attempt to distinguish the worshipper from the god. Solemn invocations, habitual pronouncing of the name Om or Light, services of purification, might surely not be undesirable to keep the priest-student in mind that he was calling upon some being, and was not merely adoring himself, or an image thrown from himself. 3rd. Propitiation If the storms and convulsions of nature showed that there were dark thoughts in Brahm, there might be need of sacrifice or propitiation to remove these, even though the direct worship of dark beings might not yet have become a part of the mythology, or might be denounced by those who adhered to the purer conception of it. Still there were contradictions latent in the attempt to reconcile the philosophical and the sacerdotal position of the Brahmin, which were certain to make themselves evident in his subsequent history, and which were quite as likely to produce conflicts of opinion in his own schools as any popular resistance.
Section II. The Philosophy Developed—the Bhagavad Gita
1. The Brahminical caste and the other castes. Another great problem, or series of problems, also of the highest interest, occupied the Brahmin. Contemplation was the business of his tribe. Still something was to be done. He was himself obliged to act; the other castes existed for the sake of action. Contemplation and action. How were action and contemplation related to each other? In what way was the relation between the Brahmin and the other tribes to be kept up if they had a different worship from him, if they were aiming at a wholly distinct object? What circumstances forced this question upon the mind of the Hindoo, we have no means of ascertaining. The Bhagavad Gita. That it did, at some time or other, become a very substantive and practical part of his reflections, and gave a colour and shape to all his philosophy, we know from that remarkable poem (its unity and completeness entitle it to the name, though it is, in fact, only the episode of a much longer poem), the Bhagavad Gita. Its probable date. The date of this production is still a subject of debate among scholars. The late accomplished Latin translator of it, A. W. Schlegel, unfortunately never completed his promised essay on the subject; but he has very clearly intimated his opinion, which seems to have been formed after much reflection on its poetical structure and spirit, as well as upon its language, that it has a right to take precedence of all the efforts of Greek speculation. A much earlier origin than this remark would imply has been claimed for it by Hindoos. We cannot deny that a much later one, which would make it subsequent to the Christian era, and within a moderate distance of the numerous commentaries which were written upon it in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries after Christ, has been imagined by some authorities. Contains the essence of Brahminism. However strong our inclination, on general and abstract ground, in favour of Schlegel’s opinion, it must, of course, yield at once to any strong external evidence. But even if the question should be ultimately settled in that way which would exclude the Bhagavad Gita from the records of the old world, we should still feel that a document which is admitted to contain the very essence of Brahminical philosophy, and which sets forth, in a most lively manner, questions which must have agitated the Hindoo mind at all periods, cannot be an unfit subject for this sketch. We shall endeavour, therefore, to give an abstract of it, believing that it will lead our readers into the heart of the subject, and may save them from many pages of wearisome and unprofitable discourse.
2. Arjoon and Kreeshna. The scene opens on a field of battle. The Kooroos and the Pandoos, kindred tribes, are about to engage in a deadly war. Arjoon is one of the heroes of the Pandoos; he is standing in a chariot drawn by white horses. Near him is the divine Kreeshna, of whom at present we must only say that he is the mysterious counsellor of the prince. What his offices and nature are, he himself will tell us by and by.
Arjoon perplexed. Arjoon is looking on with dismay and horror upon a battle, in which there were uncles, tutors, cousins, sons, brothers, and bosom friends on both sides. He thinks there can be no happiness for him hereafter if he should be the murderer of people of his own race. Such a crime is likely to destroy the virtue of the whole family or tribe; hell is threatened by the Sankar both to those who fall and those who survive. The chief sits down in the chariot between the two armies, and casts away his bow and arrows.
3. Kreeshna’s lesson on the soul. This divine adviser reproves him for his weakness. It is his duty to fight. “Tell me what I shall do,” cries the young man. “I am confounded between two duties. I am overcome with the dread of sin. I see nothing to appease my grief, though I were to rule the earth or the hosts of heaven.” Then Kreeshna instructs him in the nature of the soul. Arjoon may go to the fight, for the soul neither killeth nor is killed. Its eternity. You cannot say of it, it hath been, it is about to be, or is to be hereafter. It is a thing without birth; it is ancient, constant, and eternal. As a man throweth away old garments and putteth on new, so the soul, having quitted its old mortal frames, entereth into others which are new. Its migrations. The weapon divideth it not, the fire burneth it not, the water corrupteth it not, the wind drieth it not away. It is indivisible, inconsumable, incorruptible; it is universal, permanent, immoveable. The former state of being is unknown; the middle state is evident; the future state is not to be discovered. The duty of thy tribe is to fight; a soldier of the Kshatree tribe has no higher.
4. Reward and punishment. The belief of the soul’s immortality is thus connected with the practice of life. But is not that dread which Arjoon had of the future consequences of his action a reasonable one? Kreeshna intimates to him that it is not. The people who held out that kind of notion of reward and punishment looked for transient enjoyment in heaven, not for eternal absorption. The Veds, which seem to encourage it, are adapted to men in a threefold condition. Indifference to consequences. Turn to spiritual things, be firm in the higher path, and you will be free from care and trouble about the future as well as the present. Consider the deed, and not the event: let not the motive for action be the hope of reward. Yet let not thy life be spent in inaction. Perform thy duty, abandon all thought of the consequence; seek an asylum in wisdom alone. Men who are endued with true wisdom are unmindful of good or evil in this world. They who have abandoned all thought of the fruit which is produced from their actions are freed from the chains of birth, and go to the regions of eternal happiness.
5. The wise man. Arjoon wishes to know something more of the Moonee, or thoroughly wise man. Kreeshna answers, “The wisdom of that man is established, who, like the tortoise, can draw in all his members, and restrain them from their wonted purposes. His character. The tumultuous senses hurry away by force the heart even of him who striveth to restrain them. The inspired man, trusting in me, may quell them and be happy. Such a one walketh in the night when all things go to rest; he sleepeth in the day, the time when all things wake. His blessedness. A man trusting in the Supreme, goeth not astray; at the hour of death he shall mix with the incorporeal nature of Brahm.”
6. How man is led into evil. The subject of the relation of action to thought still disturbs Arjoon’s mind, and gives occasion for another lecture from Kreeshna. In the course of it, Arjoon asks how man is led to commit offences; it seems as if, contrary to his wishes, he was compelled by some secret force. Inclination. “It is the enemy, lust or passion,” replies the teacher, “insatiable and full of sin, by which this world is covered as the flame by the smoke, as the sword by rust, or as the fœtus by its membrane. This inveterate foe, in the shape of desire, raging like fire, and hard to be appeased, obscures the understanding of the wise man. This destroyer of wisdom and knowledge must be subdued. Resolution. It is possible; for though the organs are great, the mind is greater; the Resolution is greater than the mind, and there is One greater than that. When thou hast resolved what is superior to the resolution, and fixed thyself by thyself, then determine to abandon inclination or desire, thy great enemy.”
7. Who is above man’s resolution. There is a deep mystery in the last sentence. Who is this that is superior to the resolution in man? All the discipline seems to depend on this question. Kreeshna says that he taught it to one and another in former days, that it was handed down to the Rajarshees, and lost. But how is this, asks Arjoon, when thou, Kreeshna, hast come later into life than some of those to whom thou hast imparted this secret? His past and present existence. “Both I and thou,” answers Kreeshna, “have passed many births; mine are known to me, but thou knowest not of thine. Although I am not in my nature subject to birth or decay, yet as I have command over my own nature, I am made evident by my power. When there is a decline of virtue in the world, I make myself manifest; I appear from age to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the re-establishment of virtue.” His worshippers. Two kinds of worship are pointed out: those who acknowledge Kreeshna, do not when they quit their mortal frames enter into another, but enter into him. On the other hand, there are those who seek success for their works in this life; they worship the Devatas (demons or angels). The true Kreeshna worshipper sees rest in action, and action in rest; he performs all duties, yet he, as it were, does nothing; he seeks no reward—he is pleased with whatever he may by chance obtain; he is freed from the bonds of action,—the same in prosperity and adversity. God is attained by him who maketh God only the object of his works. There are various modes of worship, all purifying; but the worship of spiritual wisdom is far better than the worshipping with offerings of things. Methods of purification. In wisdom is to be found every work. Seek this wisdom with prostrations, with questions, and with attention; then thou wilt not again fall into folly, thou wilt behold all nature in me. The service of wisdom. Although thou wert the greatest of offenders, thou shalt be able to cross the gulf of sin with the bark of wisdom. There is not anything to be compared in this world with wisdom and purity. He who is perfected by practice, in due time findeth it in his own soul. He who has faith finds wisdom. The ignorant, and the man whose spirit is full of doubt, is lost. Faith. Those, continues the teacher, whose understandings are in the Deity, whose souls are in him, whose asylum is in him, are by wisdom purified from their offences, and go whence they shall never return. The Deity in visible things. The learned behold him alike in the reverent Brahmin perfected in knowledge, in the ox, in the elephant, in the dog, and in him who eateth of the flesh of dogs. Those whose minds are fixed on this equality, gain eternity even in this world.
8. The Yogi or perfect man. The next lecture on the subject of the exercises of the soul works out the same idea in a number of forms. To the Yogi, or devout man, it is said gold, iron, and stones are the same; he is the same with those who love and those who hate, in the company of saints or sinners. He delighteth in his own soul; he is in God, and free from sin; he believes in unity, and worships me present in all things, and dwelleth in me altogether, even on this earth. What becomes of the imperfect man. In the course of this conversation, Arjoon asks, “Whither, O Kreeshna, doth the man go after death, who, although he be endued with faith, hath not obtained perfection in his devotion: because his unsubdued mind wandered from the discipline, does he come to nothing?” Kreeshna answers, “No man who hath done good goeth unto an evil place: a man whose devotions have been broken off by death, having enjoyed for many years the reward of his virtues in the region above, is at length born again in some holy family; he is endued with the same degree of application that he held in his former body, and he begins again to labour for perfection.”
9. Kreeshna the life and essence of all things, and the principle of their destruction. But after all, who is Kreeshna? The question has already been awakened in Arjoon’s mind: he has arrived at the stage of discipline when it may be answered. I, says the teacher, am the creation and the dissolution of the whole universe. There is not anything greater than I; all things hang on me, even as precious gems upon a string; I am moisture in the water, light in the sun and moon, invocation in the Veds, sound in the firmament, sweet-smelling savour in the earth, glory in the source of light. I am life in all things, and zeal in the zealous. I am the eternal seed of nature; I am the understanding of the wise, the glory of the proud, the strength of the strong; free from lust and anger. There is a supernatural influence which bewilders the wicked, the foolish, and the low-minded, and hinders them from coming to me. I am not in these, though they proceed from me. Many seek me, but the wise man is constantly engaged in my service; I esteem the wise man as myself, for his spirit dependeth upon me alone. Those who worship the Devatas go to them; those who worship me alone, go to me. The Divine unity. The ignorant who are unacquainted with my supreme nature, which is superior to all things, believe me, who am invisible, to exist in the visible forms in which they see me. I know all the beings that have been, that are, that shall be; but there is not one amongst them that knoweth me. Those who trust in me know Brahm, the supreme and incorruptible; they know the emanations from which natural things are generated; they know the destroying nature. In this body I am the teacher of worship. He who thinks constantly of me will find me. He who finds me returns not again to mortal birth. The universe exists, dissolves, is reproduced; there is an incorruptible abode which is my mansion. The supreme Being is obtained by him who worshippeth no other gods; in him is included all nature. By him all things are spread abroad. Kreeshna in relation to human beings. I, continues Kreeshna, am the sacrifice; I am the worship, I am the spices, I am the fire, I am the victim, I am the father and mother of this world; I am the road of the good, the comforter, the creator, the witness, the asylum, and the friend. They who serve other gods with a firm belief, in doing so involuntarily worship me. I am the same to all mankind. They who serve me in adoration are in me. If one whose ways are ever so evil serve me alone, he becometh of a virtuous spirit, and obtaineth eternal happiness. Even women, and the tribes of Visya and Soodra, shall go the supreme journey if they take sanctuary with me; how much more my holy servants the Brahmins and the Rajarshees! Consider this world as a finite and joyless place, and serve me.
10. Ardour of the disciple. Arjoon begins to regard his teacher with wonder and adoration. He is taught that reason, knowledge, clear judgment, patience, truth, humility, meekness, birth, death, fear, courage, zeal, renown, and infamy, all come from him. The outward forms of Kreeshna. He is the soul which standeth in the bodies of all beings; he is the chief of all warriors, floods, animals; the Himmalaya among mountains, the Ganges among rivers; the science in science, the spring among seasons, gaming amongst frauds, the rod and policy among rulers. “Amongst the secret I am silence, amongst the wise I am wisdom.”
11. Kreeshna’s divine nature. All these are the forms of Kreeshna. Arjoon aspires to see his never-failing spirit. A mysterious revelation is granted. The pupil is overwhelmed with rapture and terror. He sees all creation proceeding from Kreeshna—swallowed up in him. With this vision is mingled one of the army by which he is surrounded. As troops of insects, with increasing speed, seek their own destruction in the flaming fire; as the rapid streams of flowing rivers roll on to meet the ocean’s bed,—so these heroes of the human race are rushing on towards the flaming mouth of the Divine Being. The whole world is filled with His grandeur. Kreeshna is the destroyer as well as the creator! Not one of these warriors save Arjoon is to live. They are already destroyed by the Divine power. Let him put forth his hand and be the immediate agent of their death. On to the battle!
12. Reverence and fellowship. But Arjoon’s terror increases. He bows down before him whom he had called Kreeshna and friend. I was ignorant, he says, of thy greatness; I was blinded by my affection and presumption; I have trifled with thee; I crave thy forgiveness. Thou art the Father of all things, animate and inanimate; the sage instructor of the whole, worthy to be adored. Bear with me as a father with his son, a friend with a friend, a lover with his beloved. I am pleased to behold things never before seen, but my mind is in awful fear. Kreeshna in his human form. He is bidden not to be disturbed, nor to let his faculties be confounded. The god assumes his benignant human shape: Arjoon is at peace.
13. After this wonderful discovery of himself, and some discourse upon the method in which he is to be served in his visible and invisible nature, Kreeshna proceeds to answer some of his pupil’s more difficult questions. The nature of body. First, what is Kshetra, or body? It consists of the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and æther), consciousness, understanding, spirit, the eleven organs, the powers of the five senses, love and hatred, pleasure and pain, sensibility and firmness. Wisdom. Secondly, what is Wisdom? It is freedom from self-esteem, hypocrisy, and injustice; patience, rectitude, respect for masters and teachers, exemption from attachment and affection to children, wife, and home; evenness of temper upon the arrival of every event, whether longed for or not; freedom from pride, worship paid to Kreeshna alone, love of solitude, constant study of the superior spirit. The object of wisdom. Thirdly, what is Gnea, or the object of Wisdom? It is that which hath no beginning and is supreme, which can neither be called being nor not being; it is all hands and feet; it is all faces, heads, and eyes; it is all ear; it sitteth in the midst of the world; without organs, it is the reflected light of every faculty of the organs; connected with nothing, it containeth all things; without quality, it partaketh of every quality. It is the inside and outside, the moveable and immoveable of all nature. It standeth at a distance, yet it is present; it is undivided, yet in all things it standeth divided. It is the ruler of all things; it is the light in light, and it is declared to be free from darkness.
14. The instrumental and directing faculties. There are two other principles which Kreeshna declares to be without beginning: Prakreetee and Pooroosh. The former would seem to be the mere instrument or agent in man; the other, the directing power in him. All things, animate and inanimate, are declared to be produced from the union of Kshetra and Kshetra-gna. I, says Kreeshna, am the Kshetra-gna in every mortal frame,—the living power which directs it.
15. The three qualities. From Prakreetee, or nature, three Goon, or qualities, proceed: the truth quality, the passionate quality, the dark quality. The Satwa-goon, or truth quality, leads to wisdom; the Raja-goon, or passionate quality, to ambition and covetousness; the Tama-goon, or dark quality, to madness, distraction, and ignorance. Those who are ruled by the first mount on high; the second stay in the middle; the last sink below. But the soul must rise above all these qualities into a Being who is superior to them, before he can drink of the water of immortality. How this ascent is to be obtained,—how a man is to rise above the particular Pooroosh, or soul, into the Poorooshottama, or supreme soul,—is the next subject of Kreeshna’s teaching; of which we need not speak, as it has been anticipated in several of the previous lectures.
16. An important subject still remains to be discussed. The belief of the three different qualities evidently presumes the existence of a different destiny for the creatures which are endued with them. This principle is now distinctly affirmed. Destiny. The Divine destiny is for absorption into the Divine nature; the evil destiny confines the soul to mortal birth. Those who are born under the influence of the evil destiny know not what it is to proceed in virtue, or recede in vice. They say the world is without beginning and without end,—without an Eeswar, or Divine light; that all things are conceived by the junction of the sexes. The sensual man. These men say that the gratification of their sensual appetites is the supreme good; His course and end. they say, “This to-day hath been acquired by me, and this I shall have also; I am powerful, I am happy, I am rich; I am endued with precedence among men. Where is there another like me? I will make presents at the feast, and be merry.” Such men are self-conceited, stubborn, and ever in pursuit of wealth and pride. They worship nominally and hypocritically. They place their trust in pride and power; they hate me in themselves and others; wherefore I cast them down into the wombs of evil spirits and unclean beasts. They go from birth to birth; at length, not finding me, they go into the most infernal regions. There are three ways to these: lust, anger, and avarice. Avoiding these gates of sin, thou wilt go the journey of the Most High.
17. The true orderly worship. The irregular worship. Distinction of qualities leads to a distinction in the kinds of faith or worship. All worship; but the nature and object of the worship are determined by their different qualities. The worship which is directed by Divine precept, without the desire of reward, and with an attentive mind, is of the Satwa-goon. That which is performed irregularly, without regard to the precepts of the law, without the distribution of bread, without the usual invocations, without gifts to the Brahmins at the conclusion, and without faith, is of the Raja-goon. That which is performed with a view to the fruit, and with hypocrisy, is of the Tama-goon. The formal or false worship. Whatever is performed without faith—whether it be sacrifices, deeds of charity, or mortification of the flesh—is called Asat, and is not for this world nor that which is above. The three kinds of action. These same qualities exhibit themselves in works. He who has the Satwa-goon forsakes the fruit of action, but not action itself. He who has the Raja-goon forsakes the work because it is painful; he who has the Tama-goon neglects action through folly and distraction of mind. So of Wisdom: the wisdom of the Satwa-goon sees one infinite principle in nature; the wisdom of the Raja-goon sees manifold principles prevailing in nature; the wisdom of the Tama-goon sees only self-interest in all things. So of Pleasure: the pleasure which a man enjoys from his labour, and wherein he finds the ends of his pains, that which in the beginning is as poison, and in the end is as the water of life, is of the Satwa-goon: this arises from the consent of the understanding. The pleasure which arises from the mere meeting of the organs with their objects, which in the beginning is as sweet as the water of life, and in the end is a poison, is of the Raja-goon. The pleasure, which in the beginning and end, tends to stupify the soul, is of the Tama-goon. There is not anything, Kreeshna declares, in heaven or earth which is free from the influence of these three qualities.
18. The tribes. Upon these qualities depend the respective duties of the four tribes of Brahmin, Kshatree, Visya, and Soodra. The natural duties of the Brahmin are peace, self-restraint, zeal, purity, patience, rectitude, learning, theology. Their distinct vocations. The natural duties of the Kshatree are bravery, glory, rectitude, not to fly from the field, generosity, princely conduct. The natural duty of the Visya is to cultivate the lands, tend the cattle, and buy and sell. The natural duty of the Soodra is servitude. Duty of following them. A man who is contented with his own particular lot and duty obtaineth perfection; for he offers his own works to that Being from whom the principles of all beings proceed. The duty of a man’s own calling is far preferable to the duty of another, let it be ever so well pursued. A man’s own calling, with all its faults, ought not to be forsaken. With thy heart place all thy works in me; by so doing thou shalt surmount every difficulty. But if through pride, thou wilt not listen to my words, thou wilt undoubtedly be lost. From a confidence in thyself, thou mayest think thou wilt not fight. This is a fallacious determination, for the principles of thy nature will impel thee; thou wilt do that through necessity, which thou seekest through ignorance to avoid.
19. This conclusion, though perfectly in accordance with the commencement of the story, and giving it a unity, may seem inconsistent with what has been said of the special glory of the Brahmin. Eeswar, the indweller. But Kreeshna adds, “Eeswar resideth in the bosom of every mortal being, revolving with his supernatural power the universal wheel of time. Take sanctuary with him upon all occasions, oh! offspring of Bahrat; by his divine pleasure thou shalt obtain supreme happiness, and an eternal abode.”
20. The leading thought of the poem. It would have been easy to select sentences from this poem, and from a number of other Hindoo books, and out of them to construct a scheme of Hindoo philosophy. But such a scheme would not at all have represented the actual thoughts and conflicts in the minds of those to whom it would be attributed. We might form a high or a low notion of this remarkable people, or of their teachers; but we should know nothing of one or the other. The occasion of the poem, its scenery, the method in which the thoughts work themselves out, are at least as important for this purpose as the results to which Arjoon or Kreeshna, or the narrator of the story, arrives. The final moral, in which the Kshatree tribe is shown to have its own work and dignity, which are not incompatible with the superior glory of the Brahmin, evidently goes through the poem. To it all the dramatic interest, and all the speculations are linked. The darkness in Arjoon’s mind arises from his fancying that the work which belongs to the priest also belongs to the warrior; or that there is no escape from this conclusion but in supposing that there is a different standard for each to recognise, a different object for each to pursue, a different God for each to adore. Such an opinion had, no doubt, been taught in the Brahminical schools, and seemed a natural inference from the idea of Brahminism. The author of the poem evidently felt how opposed it was to that which he regarded as pure Brahminism; how it must force the Brahmin himself to acknowledge a number of different objects, while his business was to search for unity; how it must lead to a hopeless division of the castes, which should be bound together in obedience to that which was most refined and spiritual. Evidently, then, the book is the work of a reformer who wished to make the Brahminical tribe conscious of its own vocation, as the guide, and not the tyrant, of the rest. In the effort for this object, he brings out the highest form of Hindooism,—a form of it which never had been nor could be realised, but by which we may understand its lower and vulgarer manifestations far better than by contemplating them alone.
21. Unbelief in the Veds not implied in the poem. The difference of this form from that which we find in the Veds, has led many to conclude that the poem is throughout a protest, though a hidden one, against the scheme of belief which is embodied in them. But there seems no sufficient reason to doubt that the author is sincere in the respect which he professes for them, and that he believed that he was drawing out the sense which was latent in them. Nor, perhaps, was he wholly wrong in that opinion. Though the writers of the Veds would have been absolutely unable to follow him in a single step of his philosophical speculations; though there is no reason to doubt that they did mean to ask Indra, and the other gods whom they invoked, to come and drink with them,—yet their cries for communion and friendship with the gods, and for purification, grounded as they are upon religious aspirations of the creature, not upon a revelation of the Creator, do contain implicitly those ideas which are developed in the Bhagavad Gita. In one respect the writer of the poem seems to return from the more exclusive Brahminism to the earlier teaching of the Vedas. Kreeshna and Brahm. Kreeshna, not Brahm, is his hero. Now it is true that Kreeshna is Brahm, and claims the name for himself: but he presents himself first to us in a human shape; he comes forth as the warrior, not merely as the thinker. This difference is involved in the whole conception of the poem. The sudden manifestation of his spiritual and divine glory which overwhelms Arjoon, does not swallow up his human form, or hinder him from appearing in it again. However great the difficulty, the Hindoo philosopher perceives that, in some way or other, this union must be realised,—that there can be no sufficient teacher of man’s spirit in whom both these conditions do not meet.
22. The soul the ultimate object of this philosophy. But, deep and sincere as the acknowledgment of such a teacher is, the soul of man is still the ultimate object in this poem, as much as in the more narrow, merely meditative religion. In one and the other it is equally true that the soul or spiritual part of man is always unawares becoming the God, even while there is the strongest effort to escape from this identification,—a really earnest struggle of the man to sink in awe, to confess One mightier than himself, to become nothing in his presence. What is his presence? Where is it? Consequences. Here the Hindoo becomes lost; he sees images of himself everywhere—he is sure that there is something which is not the image of himself. To discover what it is, is worth the toil and sorrow of a life; to know it must be the great reward hereafter. But while that difficult problem is solving itself,—while he is devising the means which are best for attaining the complete fruition,—Earth is going on with her processes of growth, decay, and destruction; the man himself is born, has to live, fight, and die. There is nothing to connect himself or Nature with God, unless he worships himself or Nature, and makes the God comprehend both. This, consequently, is the result—the downward result—to which everything in Hindoo life and society always has been tending.
23. The Hebrew and the Hindoo. The Hebrew was prohibited from connecting God with anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. He was taught to look up to the Lord as his God, the God of his fathers, the King of his land, the Creator of things, the Lawgiver of himself. He was taught to wage war with all the tendencies to worship natural gods, which he found in himself, which he saw in others. He was taught to acknowledge the Lord as the ever-present guide, and ruler, and teacher of his whole nation; every Jew being in the covenant; priests, lawgivers, prophets, being God’s ministers to them. The relation between them. This is what is called their narrow, exclusive faith. But out of it, as we have seen, there grew a philosophy, the recognition of a Divine teacher of man, of a wisdom which is to be the object of his search and love. The Hindoo starts from the discovery to which the Hebrew had been led by such a long and painful discipline. The contrast between them. He is conscious of a mysterious Teacher near him, of one working upon his spirit, of one who is at the same time ruler over nature. But his search begins from himself, and, in spite of his conviction that it ought not to be so, it ends in himself. The purification of his individual soul becomes practically the highest end he can pursue or conceive of; he must make it his aim; he must separate from society, to which nevertheless he feels bound, that he may pursue it. The more he learns about himself, the more he discovers that he must get rid of himself; yet he is always pursued by that demon. To sink and be lost is his only hope,—to sink in Brahm. But is Brahm anything save a projection from himself? To sink in him, does it mean the same as to be nothing?
24. Worth and interest of the Hindoo philosophy to a believer in the Hebrew records. Reflections such as these, upon which the whole condition of Hindoo society for thousands of years is the commentary, might suggest some doubts to those who think that the acknowledgment of wisdom received is unfavourable to the search after it; that the soul of man is most likely to be free when it is working out its freedom for itself, or under the guidance of a set of wise men. But we who do acknowledge the Hebrew principle, who have that vantage-ground for contemplating the history of the universe, are not obliged to rest in this merely negative conclusion. We are bound to look upon the whole course of human thought as directed by a wisdom above man’s—by One who, as the Apostle speaks, “orders the times before appointed and the bounds of men’s habitations, that they may seek Him, if haply they may feel after Him and find Him.” To one holding this faith, the seekings of the Bhagavad Gita, and of the whole Hindoo world, must be of profoundest interest. Spirit in which it should be studied. He must perceive, indeed, that they were baffled continually; but he makes the discovery with sympathy, not exultation,—with the certainty that they were struggling with questions which belong to him and to the whole universe; to which he too has to seek an answer, and cannot rest till he finds one. And far from seeing only contradictions either in the method of the search or the result of it, he will have continually to be humbled by perceiving how much has been made known to these inquirers; what glimpses of light they have caught, what visions of good have cheered their dreary path, what strength has been given them for thought, for suffering, even at times for manly action. If he feels even a wish to deny or to explain away this fact, he will suspect himself of a secret atheism—of having studied the Hebrew books to no profit.
25. Its relation to the after history. These remarks belong especially, but not exclusively, to the subject we are now considering. For modern inquiries have made it clear that the Sanscrit is the source of most of the European languages. We have, therefore, a right to expect that the habit of thought and feeling in the Sanscrit books may be traced, under different modifications, in the nations of which we shall have hereafter to speak. We may find, in fact, that these Hindoo books are the commencement of a course of inquiry which we shall have to trace in many windings through Greek and through modern philosophy. The spirit of man, which in the Hebrew books has been presented to us under a Divine discipline and education, will henceforth be seen asking a multitude of questions respecting itself, its destiny, its relations to the visible and invisible world, feeling after some object near it which might be its guide or helper in the search, losing that object again and again, questioning earth and heaven to tell whither it is gone, how it may be recovered. Whether this Indo-Germanic course of inquiries ever meets at any point that Semitic teaching of which we have been hearing; whether the unity which is revealed to the Hebrew is to explain or contradict the unity which is sought for by the Brahmin, our future history may show. But in the meantime we may remark, that the problems which we shall meet with among Ionian, Eleatic, Platonic philosophers, will be far less perplexing to us if we have listened attentively to the dialogue between Arjoon and Kreeshna.
Section III. The Philosopher Separating Himself from the Priest
1. Any allusion to the formal schools of Hindoo philosophy will belong more properly to the second part of this sketch. But there is one great Eastern revolution, assigned by most authorities to the fifth or sixth century B.C., which stands in the closest connection with the history of philosophy. Indeed, the few glimpses which we possess concerning the external facts of a conflict that has led to the most surprising results, would be absolutely unintelligible to us if we were not helped by some previous knowledge of Hindoo speculations.
2. The Buddhist school. The Buddhist is constantly spoken of in Hindoo books as if he were the member of a philosophical sect. We know him as the professor of a religion which is received by nearly a third of the inhabitants of the globe. To reconcile two such opposite descriptions, we must recollect the remarks which have been made upon the apparently unsociable characters which are united in the Brahmin, and upon the nature of Brahm himself. The priest is the man who uses his soul or intellect, in distinction from the mass of men, who use only their senses. Brahm is the Intellect or Buddha. That there should be a sect of Brahmins who dwelt upon the idea of an intelligence in man, till they began to suspect that their own pretension to an exclusive monopoly of it was, in fact, a denial of Brahm’s presence, might easily have been conjectured; that these same persons should exalt the meditative part of religion above the sacrificial would be most likely from the specimen of the same feeling we have discovered in the Bhagavad Gita. The Buddhist revolution. But there was a period very memorable and critical, it would seem, in the history of mankind generally, connected with the appearance of reformers and legislators in various countries, perhaps marking the commencement of European society and civilization, when Brahminism was shaken to its centre in Hindostan, and when the worship of the One Intelligence was proclaimed aloud as incompatible with the pretensions of an hereditary caste.
3. Not the original Hindoo doctrine, as some have affirmed, in plain contradiction both to the letter and spirit of the Veds, but certainly the idea which lay hid in that doctrine, and ever and anon had threatened to break loose from it, did now become the inspiring idea of whole countries. The philosophy, disentangling itself from the old faith, became itself a faith. The inward meaning of Buddhism. Buddhism is the most surprising effort of the human intellect to assert its own supremacy of which there ever has been, or perhaps ever will be, any record. European sages in the last century, and in the present, have cried out, “When will philosophy break loose from the fetters which priests have imposed upon it?” Philosophy in Asia performed that task two thousand years ago. It threw off a yoke which was become quite intolerable; it affirmed that man’s soul is capable of unlimited expansion; it claimed for that soul the homage due to a divinity: it made no mere idle boast of power; it actually won the allegiance of multitudes.
4. Its different aspects. Is the result one on which the lover of wisdom, or of his kind, can delight to dwell? All possible forms in which the intellect can express its belief in itself and in its own powers have been discovered and tried. The Buddhist worships sometimes the pure, absolute unity; sometimes he sees a soul above his own soul, himself transfigured; sometimes he adores men who have done great works on earth, the one Buddha distributed in numerous Buddhas. Its outward clothing. Now he denies all symbols, now every thing is symbolical. He is the purest of theists, he is the most complete of atheists. He can conceive nothing too vast for human wisdom, he sees it all gathered up in an infant. He is always flying from himself, he can find nothing but images of himself. Its final results. The philosophy which began by emancipating itself from religion has created for itself a religion,—one especially narrow, artificial, material. Those who would not be priests or have priests practise all priestly impostures, are slavishly priestridden. The adored intellect makes no progress, the seeker after wisdom finds no resource but in identifying the search with the object, and confessing that he finds nothing. Can this be the process destined for the emancipation of mankind?