HE CANADIAN
The George A. Warburton
Memorial Collection
Presented to
The Canadian School of Missions
by John W. Ross, Esq., LLD., Montreal
FRQM-THE- LIBRARY-OF
TRINITYCOLLEGETORDNTO
STUDIES IN EARLY INDIAN
THOUGHT
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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STUDIES IN EARLY INDIAN
THOUGHT
BY
DOROTHEA JANE STEPHEN, S.TH.
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1918
U0683
FEB 1 1986
PREFACE
ERRATA
p. 17 1. 6
for iv. 32, 4
ra&/ iv. 32, 20
55 1.6
for 3, 10, i
mz^ 3, 6 10, i
1.29
for 3, 10, 5
r*W 3, 10, 5, 6
581. 3
for i, 15
mi*/ i, i, 15
88 11. 15, 1 6
for. 8, 7, i 12, 5
read 8, 7, i 12, 3
89 1. 19
/or 3, 2
read 3, 2, 2
96 footnote i
for 2, i, 15 ff.
nW 2, i, 13, 14
footnote 2
>r 5> 3 1
rairf 5, 3, 7
for 5, ii, 4
ra?^ 5, ii, 4, 5,
97 footnote
/or 3
r^^/ 2
98 11. 5, 6
/or Gan-dharvas
read Gandh-arvas
107 1. 25
yr 3
read 4
jo8 1. 10
for Self, that
raz/ Self. What
112 . 8
/or A
read a
. 20
for But when
r^W When
117 .12
/or i, 3. 3-
read i, 3, 3 to 9.
150 . 21
for pharaoh
r^W Pharaoh
153 27
for 3, 5
mi</ 3, 4, 7, 8
163 footnote 2
for 1 8
read 14
express her thanks to her publishers at the Uni
versity Press for much kind help, which her absence
from England has made specially valuable to her.
September, 1918.
U0683
FEB 1 1986
PREFACE
THIS book has been written in India and some
parts of it have formed material for lectures
given by the author at and near Bangalore. It has
been her hope to interest those whose profession or
calling has brought them into personal contact with
the natives of India by an account of the influence
still exercised by early Indian literature on the Indian
thought of the present day. She hopes too that
some English readers may be interested in the
book, and that Indian students may care to have
an account of the impression made by the ancient
literature of their country on an English student
of comparative religion. She owes thanks for ad
vice and help to many friends in India, and special
thanks to Professor Rapson, Professor of Sanskrit
in the University of Cambridge, who has been so
good as to read the proof-sheets. She wishes also to
express her thanks to her publishers at the Uni
versity Press for much kind help, which her absence
from England has made specially valuable to her.
September, 1918.
TO
K. S. AND R. E. S.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE DIVINE NATURE IN THE RIGVEDA . i
CHAPTER II
THE DIVINE NATURE IN THE UPANISHADS . 33
CHAPTER III
HUMAN NATURE IN THE UPANISHADS 80
CHAPTER IV
THE BHAGAVADGITA . 114
CHAPTER V
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS 149
INDEX *73
STUDIES IN EARLY INDIAN
THOUGHT
CHAPTER I
THE DIVINE NATURE IN THE RIGVEDA
TNTRODUCTION
THE object of this essay is to follow the course of
Indian thought from the Vedic period to the period
of the Bhagavadgita, to find what account it gives of
the world, of men, and of that power of which the
world and men are the outcome. We shall trace this
course by means of I ndian literature, taking it in three
stages, that of the Vedas, of the Upanishads, and of
the Bhagavadgita itself.
These books contain the record of the best thought
of India on the subjects most vital to it from the
earliest time till now. They are closely connected
with each other. The Vedic hymns are the earliest
literature of the race. They were used at sacrifices,
and in order to adapt them for that purpose the Brah-
manas were compiled. These are practically com
mentaries, giving explanations and directions, and
their last chapters are the Aranyakas, or c Forest
Books, intended for the Sages, who had left the
s. i
2 THE DIVINE NATURE
world and retired to the forest. The last chapters of
the Aranyakas are the Upanishads, which are con
cerned with the search for the truth behind the ritual.
These writings arose in various places, and among
different schools, and they differ among themselves ;
but there is a general likeness among them, which
may be taken to show what is characteristically
Indian. Finally the Bhagavadgita is founded on
the Upanishads, and gathers up the various streams
of thought which appear in them. It is thus the
flower of the whole process ; and it remains to this
day the standard expression of Indian thought.
Although we propose to trace the thought of
India through books, the books of the Aryan race,
we have always to remember that India does not
only mean the Aryans, nor is the line of thought
opened to us in these books the only line followed,
even among them. All Aryans were not philoso
phers in search of the truth. Some were in search
of a protector, some merely in search of amusement;
and the epic poems grew up at the same time as
the philosophical treatises. But there are also the
Dravidians to be remembered. The thoughts and
practices of the conquered people have affected the
thoughts and practices of the conquerors. The wor
ship of spirits in stones and trees, of* heroes, of
snakes, of mountains, and the superstitions of the
jungle tribes go on, recognised and sanctioned by
IN THE RIGVEDA 3
Hinduism, absorbed into its system; but, if we may
judge by similar ways of thought in other countries,
they remain very much the same as they were when
the Aryans first came over the mountains. The
mark made on the lower religion by the higher is
external. The local godling becomes the son of
iva or Vishnu, or a form of Parvatl ; and there
the matter ends. The ritual and the thought, or
belief that moulds the ritual, go on as before. On
the other hand, the mark of the lower religion on
the higher is internal : the ideas on which it was
founded are taken up and assimilated, and what
was unconscious in the lower race is realised and
worked out in the higher.
The present work is an essay, not an encyclo
pedia ; and much will have to be left out the Dra-
vidians, with all the theories and problems, old and
new, which gather about the mention of their name,
and which may yet require us to revise from the
beginning our accepted ideas of Indian society, the
Epics, the Protestant movements of the Buddhists
and Jains, and much else. Nor shall we have occa
sion to dwell on the Brahmanas, which are the record
less of thought than of practice ; but the beliefs of
the unthinking masses of the people will force them
selves on our attention from time to time, for the
reason that they provide the raw material of which
thought is made.
i 2
4 THE DIVINE NATURE
Indian religion is tolerant, as Chinese religion is
tolerant, even more so. A Chinaman may hold
three religions at once : the Indian combines them;
and when their fundamental ideas are contradictory,
he holds both. Thus it is held according to one
set of views that the dead pass into a new life on
earth, in a new body, human or otherwise, and that
this process depends on a fixed law as to merit,
from which there is no possible appeal. It is held,
according to another system, that the dead pass into
a world beyond this one, where they depend for
support on the living. raddha ceremonies must
be performed for the repose and well-being of at
least three generations of ancestors ; and it is of the
first importance for every man to have a son, be
cause only a son can perform these ceremonies. The
two sets of ideas are quite irreconcilable, and they
are never reconciled ; but they go on side by side,
in full vigour, in the same family, and in the same
individual.
We must touch for a moment on the question
of date. The Vedas belong to the time of the first
Aryan settlements. Tribes of Aryan invaders were
probably settled in India in the second half of the
second millennium B.C., that is to say, in the period
from about 1500 to about IOOOB.C. roughly speak
ing, the time of the settlement of Israel in Egypt,
the Exodus, and the Judges. It is generally agreed
IN THE RIGVEDA 5
that we can say that the early Vedic period came
to an end at about 1000 B.C. 1
The Rigveda is the acknowledged foundation of
Indian thought. Of the other three collections, the
Sama and Yajur Vedas are only adaptations of it
for liturgical purposes ; and the Atharva Veda is al
together different, consisting of a collection of spells,
which are probably older than the hymns of the
Rigveda, together with theosophical speculations,
which are later. It has very likely a closer connec
tion with the Dravidian view of life than with the
Aryan ; and it has not quite the same authority as
the three other Vedas. We are therefore concerned
here only with the Rigveda.
To the Rigveda then we shall go to find out
what the earliest Indian view was of the world and
of the divine power that rules it ; and we shall find
in it several different lines of thought. But in these
earliest days one conception is missing which is later
one of the most marked in India. The divine nature
has no unity. Now one God, and now another, is
hailed as supreme; but his supremacy is only a mat
ter of compliment at the moment, not of essence.
There is an obscure indication that at some point
Varuna occupied a chief place in the regard of his
worshippers, which he lost to Indra; but we have
no distinct myth or legend on the subject, only a
1 Macdonell, Sanskrit Literature, p. 12.
6 THE DIVINE NATURE
reference to the fact in a few hymns 1 . Neither Indra
nor Varuna holds the place in India that Zeus held
in Greece as father of gods and men. They are
greeted, and so are others, as supreme, or first, or
as being worshipped by the others ; but we never,
as a matter of fact, see them giving orders, or hold
ing conversations with other gods, except in the
most general terms. Indra and the Maruts appear
as having had a quarrel 2 , which, seeing that they
represent rain and storm, is perhaps not surprising;
but by the time the hymn begins it is already over,
and we hear no details. Nor do we hear the actual
story of Varuna s fall, so as to gain an idea of the
nature of Indra s supremacy. Indeed if we are left
with the impression that Indra is supreme at all, it
is only because there are more hymns addressed to
him than to any one else. The idea of ultimate
unity was reached at last, but not by the exaltation
of any god above the rest, not in connection with
the Vedic gods at all.
The eleven hundred and twenty-eight hymns of
the Rigveda lie before us like a vast sea, full of
currents and cross currents. Of these we shall dis
tinguish nine ; and we shall find that they fall into
three groups, representing roughly the views of
three classes of men, the poet, the priest, and the
philosopher.
2 i. 165. i. 171.
IN THE RIGVEDA 7
The poet, the man who looks at the world, and
tries to tell what he sees, recognises the divine
nature :
as the source of the moral law ;
as the source of physical law ;
as the principle of physical life.
The priest who is concerned to know how he is to
deal with what he sees, recognises it :
as the source of material prosperity ;
as itself the priest ;
as itself the sacrifice.
The philosopher, who is looking for the truth be
hind the visible things, seeks it:
as an abstraction ;
as the one behind the many;
as the ultimate, the unknowable source of
being.
THE DIVINE NATURE AS THE SOURCE OF
MORAL LAW
We consider first the divine as the source of the
moral law, and the reason why we take this view
first is that there seems to be some reason to think
that it is the oldest, and represents a line of thought
that was about to be abandoned. We shall not find
this particular way of looking at things again ; and
the worship of Varuna, the god who especially
8 THE DIVINE NATURE
belongs to it, is changed for that of Indra, the god
of material prosperity.
The idea appears only in a small group of hymns
addressed to Varuna, in which he appears in his
peculiar character as the god of righteousness, as well
as the maker of the world. His worshipper is the
rishi Vasishtha, who confesses that sin has alienated
him from Varuna, but is not sure what sin, though
he is deeply conscious of the inward discord result
ing from it, and suggests a variety of the commonest
sins. He feels that he is in bondage, but looks for
ward to a speedy and easy release. He pleads for
forgiveness :
It was not our own will, O Varuna, it was seduction,strong
drink, passion, dice, carelessness ;
The elder is a stumbling-block to the younger, and not
even sleep keeps lying away. vii. 86, 6.
We do not find this distinct self-accusation again. In
another hymn Vasishtha admits that he has sinned,
but without going into particulars :
What has become of those friendships of ours, that we
once shared, free of offence ?. . .
Since thine ally of old is dear to thee, O Varuna, though
he has sinned, let him be thy friend, vii. 88, 5, 6.
Elsewhere it appears that sin has been committed ;
but the tone of regret and compunction has dis
appeared :
Whatever law of thine, O divine Varuna, we as men
transgress day by day,
IN THE RIGVEDA 9
Do not consign us to slaughter and destruction when thou
art offended, to wrath when thou art angry
Pull off our upper cord, untie the middle one, drop the
lowest one that we may live. i. 25, I, 2, 21.
In a great many hymns Varuna appears as the
punisher of sin in general, but the singer is con
scious of no guilt in himself. Varuna, with his
companions, Aryaman and Mitra, are :
Bonds of the liar, with many snares, which are hard for
the wicked man to escape, vii. 65, 3.
But the wicked man is only any wicked man.
There are, however, at least two instances of hymns,
not addressed to Varuna, in which sins are confessed,
and described, so that we may be sure that they are
not only ritual, but moral, sins. In one case the
waters are called on to remove the sin of having
injured anyone, cursed, or lied 1 ; in the other the
hymn is to be an expiation for sins committed against
the gods, friends, or the chieftain 2 . In these instances
it again appears that the singer is himself the sin
ner. There are a few more scattered instances of
the same thing ; but, on the whole, the sense of sin
lies lightly on these ancient singers, nor does it
develop in the course of the Vedic period in fact
rather the contrary ; for Varuna, who diminishes in
importance, is the most moral of the gods. Morality
marks the difference between a person and a force:
1 i. 23, 22. 2 i. 185, 8.
io THE DIVINE NATURE
a force merely acts without choice, but a person
chooses. Varuna, therefore, is the only really per
sonal god in the Veda ; and when he disappears,
the Divine is no more the source of moral law, but
is thought of as the source of physical law, the
principle of order.
THE DIVINE NATURE AS THE SOURCE OF
PHYSICAL LAW
This sense of the divine as the principle of order
is very strong in the Rigveda ; we are shown the
universe founded on law (rita\ moving in it :
The foundations of order are strong, many graces are in
its beauty, iv. 23, 9.
The sun obeys it, heaven and earth exist according
to it, and all living things. Varuna with Mitra and
Aryaman are still its special deities :
Truthful, born in truth, exalting truth, terrible enemies
of falsehood,
In their favour, the best defence, may we and our lords
abide, vii. 66, 13.
But this is not truth of thought. The sphere of
rita is, in the first place, the material world. We
see a majestic law, and heaven and earth following
it. Man falls into his place as a fragment of the
general scheme, he finds safety in obeying ; but it
is not in the human heart that the law is most fully
revealed. It is more concerned with astronomy than
IN THE RIGVEDA n
with character, and it is also closely bound up with
the sacrifice ; for in the Vedic view, as we shall see
later, the cosmic order depended on the right per
formance of sacrifice. We can see an example of this
in the most famous of the many hymns to Ushas,
the Dawn 1 . In it the arrival of morning is described
with great beauty and pathos, as the singer thinks
of the endless succession of dawns past and to come,
of all those who wake, and those who wake no more;
and his words are as true and as moving to-day as
on that distant morning when he watched the sun
rise, while the fires were being kindled all over the
land for the morning sacrifice. He goes on to the
thought of the law from which dawn comes, and
which, he says, she protects, and of the bounty she
supplies in response to the songs of the priests; and
the hymn ends with a prayer for wealth. Higher
than this the hymn does not take us.
THE DIVINE NATURE AS THE PRINCIPLE
OF PHYSICAL LIFE
From the thought of the divine power as Law,
we pass to that of the divine power as Life. It now
appears, not as a controlling force from without, but
as a vitalising force within. This conception occu
pies more space than any other in the Veda, indeed
it is Pantheism, and is the most permanent element
12 THE DIVINE NATURE
in all Hindu thought. We find it everywhere. Thus
Agni is
The light of all, the germ of existence. When he was
born, filled earth and heaven, x. 45, 6.
Or we are told of Surya :
The bright face of the gods has risen, the eye of Mitra,
Varuna and Agni ; he has filled heaven and earth, the soul
of what moves or is still, i. 115, I.
And so on, in countless instances. The divine
nature is the ocean of vitality, in which particular
men, animals, plants, rocks, and also gods, are only
drops passing forms, embodying the great power
from which they rise for a moment, and then falling
back into it ; all alike, and all equally the outward
expressions of one and the same force. Whatever
outward appearances may suggest there is no in
dependent existence among them. There is life,
but not purpose. The gods are still credited with
human forms in these hymns. They drive in their
chariots, they wear armour and ornaments, their
bodily appearance is fully described ; but they have
no power of choice, and therefore no moral character.
They are concerned with material things, they make
the sun rise, and they bring the rain. They take
no part in affairs of love and war on their own
account (we are speaking of the Vedas only, not
the Epics), though Indra may be drawn to one side
or the other by the wise use of hymns. They are
IN THE RIGVEDA 13
not immoral, like the gods of Greece, nor are they
moral ; for we cannot count as morality the liberality
of earth and sky, the giving of wealth and abundance,
and these only in return for sacrificial offerings, gifts
of ghi and soma with hymns and ceremonial.
The gods follow the course of order with the un
troubled regularity of stars or seasons, and through
them flows the stream of vitality, which prudent
men turn towards themselves. With all this, we
have in the hymns such a keen delight in the beauty
of nature, its greatness, its splendour and its pathos,
that, even when we meet it in the chilly medium
of a translation, our attention is caught, and in the
pleasure of the moment we are sometimes ready
to read into the poetry ideas that are not actually
there ; for those to whom such words as law, order,
and life have other and fuller meanings than they
had for the rishis translate the thoughts of the mo
dern world into the poetry of the ancient world, a
process which is just to neither.
It is a relief when the pretence of personality is
dropped, as happens sometimes in the hymns to
Agni and those to the Maruts, and we have the
plain literal description of raging fire and whirling
storm rushing heavenwards or earthwards, leaping
flames devouring and hissing, laying low the forest,
bright and golden and always young ; or of the
rain pelting down with destruction in its path and
i 4 THE DIVINE NATURE
a blessing to follow 1 . If only the love of fact had
been added to the sense of beauty, if the poet had
seen that fact is more beautiful than fancy, there
would be no finer songs in the world ; but no
nation has all the gifts at once.
This view of life finds its fullest expression in
one of the three greatest hymns of the Rigveda.
It is almost too well known to quote but it is a com
plete summary of the teaching at which we have
arrived.
1. In the beginning the golden Germ came into being,
he was the one born lord of all that is. He upheld earth
and this heaven. To what god must we offer sacrifice ?
2. Who gives life, who gives strength, whose command
all creatures and the gods obey, whose shadow is immor
tality, whose shadow is death. To what god must we offer
sacrifice ?
3. Who indeed was king of the breathing living world
by his might, who rules over these men and beasts. To
what god must we offer sacrifice?
4. By whose might are these snowy mountains, the great
waters and the stream, they say; of whom these regions
are the arms. To what god must we offer sacrifice?
5. By whom the sky is terrible, and the earth firm, by
whom the firmament stands, who put the clouds between
heaven and earth. To what god must we offer sacrifice?
6. To whom heaven and earth, standing firm, look up
for protection, awe-struck; over whom the risen sun shines.
To what god must we offer sacrifice?
7 . The great waters went everywhere, holding the germ,
generating fire; thence arose the one life of the gods. To
what god must we offer sacrifice?
1 i. 58. viii. 20 and others.
IN THE RIGVEDA 15
8. Who looked by his power over the waters around,
holding energy, generating sacrifice, who above the gods
was one god. To what god must we offer sacrifice?
9. May he not hurt us, generator of earth, true law
giver, who brought forth heaven; and who brought forth
the great shining waters. To what god must we offer
sacrifice ?
The last verse is thought by some to be a later
addition :
O Prajapati, by no other than thee have all these been
begotten ; the things we desire as we sacrifice to thee may
we have; may we be lords of riches.
THE DIVINE NATURE AS THE SOURCE
OF MATERIAL PROSPERITY
So far we have followed the thought of the poet,
the man who looks at the world as he finds it, and
states what he sees. We now turn to the line of
thought which we have associated with the priest.
A priest in the ancient world is a man who acts for
others in the sacrifice, a mediator between men and
gods. It seems that sacrifice has in it four ideas,
which appear among different races in various pro
portions : sometimes it is a magical process which
secures prosperity, or it is a tribute to the god who
is lord of the soil, or it is a propitiation for sin, or
it is the means of strengthening the bond of a com
mon nature between the god and his worshipper.
The idea of paying tribute does not appear in the
Vedic sacrifice, perhaps the land was too fertile
1 6 THE DIVINE NATURE
everywhere to give rise to the notion that certain
places were the peculiar dwelling-place of some
special god ; the idea of propitiation is only found
in those few passages where repentance appears
on the whole it is markedly absent ; the idea of a
common nature does appear, but with a peculiar
character which we shall notice presently. It is the
first idea, that sacrifice secures prosperity, that it
either enables or compels the gods to do their work
in making earth fruitful and keeping off enemies,
which holds by far the largest place in the hymns.
The idea is found in all races and at all times as
well as in Vedic India. The Brahmans have no
monopoly of it; but they have carried it out with
more consistency than most people. It is therefore
difficult to choose illustrations of it : it appears in
most of the references chosen to illustrate other
subjects. Every god is appealed to in turn even
Varuna is no exception 1 but it is in the appeal to
Indra that there is least admixture of any other
motive.
We have taken thy right hand, O Indra, longing for
riches; rich lord of riches, we know thee, lord of cows;
hero, give us varied wealth of cows and bulls, x. 47, i.
The deity is sometimes well scolded for not being
active enough in the matter :
1 vii. 88, i.
IN THE RIGVEDA 17
If I might reign, O Indra, as them, I, the giver of wealth,
should want to enrich my worshipper;
I would not leave him to misery, vii. 32, 18.
Here is another, sufficiently outspoken :
Giver of much, give much, bring us not little, bring
much ; surely, Indra, thou wishest to give much. iv. 32, 4.
Sometimes the poet becomes vindictive :
Slay him who brings no oblation, hard to reach, not
pleasing to thee.
To us give his wealth: this is what thy worshippers
expect, i. 176, 4.
In passing let me recommend anyone who is too
much depressed by this display of unblushing greed,
to turn to the hymn to Liberality, where we read
the praises of a generous spirit and of kindness to
the poor sung with genuine feeling ; for
truly the wealth of the liberal man does not waste, truly
there is no comforter for the miser, x. 117, I .
Though the love of money has been the besetting
sin of the Brahmans from time immemorial, yet
there is no land in which the duty of providing for
one s own family has been more faithfully observed
than in India. But so far as the Rigveda is to be
taken to represent the mind of the race, there can be
no doubt that an enormous proportion of the atten
tion of the worshipper, and especially of the priest,
was directed to material things. Indra, the special
provider of wealth, is scolded, coaxed, flattered,
1 8 THE DIVINE NATURE
supplied with Soma, in pails, in rivers, in lakes, in
oceans, in order that he may give more abundantly.
It is a matter of complete indifference what his
personal character is : he is not a person, he is not
something higher than a man, nor yet so high, he
is not much more than a money-bag, with the
strings in the hands of the priests. There is, how
ever, a strange transformation in store for Indra, as
we shall see later.
THE DIVINE NATURE AS PRIEST
The divine nature as Priest is seen chiefly in
the person of Agni. He appears constantly as the
greatest of priests, who knows all the rules, the
cheerful, wise priest in every house, beautiful, with
ruddy face and flaming hair, beloved by all. His
priesthood consists in his being the messenger be
tween the gods and men. He goes up from the
altar, taking the gifts of men, and brings down the
gods themselves to accept the offerings of Soma,
and to bestow the coveted wealth. The same ideas
are repeated in hymn after hymn, with endless
variety of phrase. The opening words of the Rig-
veda will do as an example of the rest :
1. I hail Agni, the priest of the sacrifice, the shining
priest, the invoker, supreme abode of riches;
2. Agni praised by the former rishis and indeed by the
living, may he bring the gods hither.
IN THE RIGVEDA 19
3. Through Agni may we attain day by day wealth and
plenty, bringing fame and many sons.
4. O Agni, that inviolate sacrifice which thou sur-
roundest on all sides, it alone goes to the gods.
5. Agni, invoker, discerner, true, of most wonderful
fame, may he come, a god among the gods. i. I, 1-5.
Brihaspati, Savitri, the A^vins, Vi^vakarman, and
even Indra act as priests 1 . In one hymn we have
an account of the gods making the world by means
of sacrifice, from the various sacred metres, accord
ing to the model observed by the priests on earth 2 .
This hymn throws much light on the Indian view
of sacrifice, as not necessarily a means of communi
cation between gods and men, but something which
is incumbent on the gods themselves, quite inde
pendently of men, and on which the existence of
the world depends.
THE DIVINE NATURE AS SACRIFICE
And this divine nature acts not only as priest, but
as sacrifice ; and when we reach this point we seem,
as often happens in the study of Indian thought,
to be coming very near to Christian doctrine. And
then at the moment when we expect to see it un
fold before us, we find the path turn, and lead us
in the opposite direction.
We find the divine nature giving itself for the
1 ii. 24, 9. v. 81, i. viii. 10, 2. viii. 21, i, 2. x. 81, i.
2 x. 130.
2 2
20 THE DIVINE NATURE
life of the world in three forms. The first of these
is the Soma, by means of which the gods, and
especially Indra, are strengthened for their work.
But the Soma is not a mere drink, not even a sacra
mental drink ; it is a god. One hymn gives us a
list of gods, Indra, Rudra, Vishnu and others, de
scribed by riddles ; and the first of these is Soma,
a youth, brown, changeful, and merry, viii. 29, I.
Elsewhere wisdom, omniscience, a heart and a mind
are attributed to Soma 1 . The language used about
him eludes us. Often it is only descriptive : we
hear about the process of making Soma, the pressing-
stones, the woollen filter, the vats. Often it is
allegorical, and might be matched by the drinking-
songs of any nation. But from time to time we
have this suggestion, that the Soma is at least as
much a person as the other gods ; so that, in being
offered for their refreshment, he is giving himself.
It is a passing thought, but it is there.
The divine nature appears again in the Sacred
Horse, whose sacrifice is minutely described in two
hymns, i. 162 and 163. The conception appears
here with an added touch of feeling ; for, whether
or not we are to think of Soma as a real person,
there is no doubt that the horse is quite a real horse.
His sacrifice was one of the great events of the
1 viii. 79, 4. ix. i. ix. 28, i. ix. 65, 29. ix. 66, i.
IN THE RIGVEDA 21
Vedic world, and lingers among us in shadowy
fashion still, when horses are led in procession at
the Dassera ceremonies. In these two hymns we
have a detailed account both of the ritual of the
sacrifice, and of the thought that guided it. We
hear about the post to which the victim was tied,
the hatchet that killed him, the way the body was
divided, the way in which every fragment was ac
counted for, the approval of the worshippers who
ate him. He is praised and honoured with every
endearing term, and is assured that he likes being
sacrificed very much indeed, and has joined his
heavenly companions who draw the chariots of the
gods. But he is not only an offering to the gods,
he is also divine, and god-descended. In one verse
we are told that :
given by Yama, harnessed by Trita only, mounted first
only by Indra, the Gandharva seized his bridle, the Vasus
made the horse from the sun.
and in the next :
Thou art Yama, thou art Aditya, O Horse, thou art
Trita by secret working... thou seemest to me to be
Varuna.... i. 163, 2, 3.
But the horse is not the highest divine victim. In
one of the hymns of the tenth book there is an
obscure verse, in which we dimly see the self-
sacrifice of the divine life :
He who for the gods sake chose death, he who for man s
sake did not -choose immortality,
22 THE DIVINE NATURE
Brihaspati the rishi was made a sacrifice, Yama gave up
his precious body. x. 13, 4.
But the best-known and most striking hymn on the
subject is the Purusha Snkta, which describes the
sacrifice of Purusha by the gods, who make heaven
and earth from his body. It is a most remarkable
hymn for many reasons. Purusha is at once a divine
being, the raw material of the world and of all living
creatures, and the archetype of human nature ; yet
the account of existence is not complete, for the
world is spoken of not only as being made from the
sacrifice, but as existing before it. Purusha is not
self-existent, for he grows greater by food. The
gods appear suddenly and without explanation. It
is not said how they came into being ; they merely
appear as sacrificers. In fact, though the hymn to
some extent gives an account of creation, this is not
its main intention. In reality it explains a ritual.
The actual Purusha was a victim, it seems a human
victim ; the gods are the officiating priests ; and, as
the world is formed from the parts of the original
Purusha, so it is to be renewed by the sacrifice of
the actual one. Here perhaps we catch sight of the
Dravidians, for we can hardly read the hymn with
out remembering the human sacrifices that took
place among the jungle tribes not long ago, and
may take place among them still in regions where
the law does not reach. We can scarcely see the
IN THE RIGVEDA 23
place of Brahman priests in such a ceremony ; but
it seems as if at any rate they could philosophise
about it. The hymn is specially noticeable because
it contains the only mention in the Rigveda of
Caste, as we know it ; the last verse gives the result
of the sacrifice, that by it the gods obtained heaven.
One detail is wanting : no mention is made of the
person to whom, if to anyone, the sacrifice is
offered.
The hymn is as follows :
1. Purusha had a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a
thousand feet ; he covered the earth on all sides and went
ten fingers breadth further.
2. In truth Purusha is all this, what is and what is to
be, the lord of immortality, who grows yet greater by food.
3. So far he extends, and yet greater is Purusha, one
quarter of him is all creatures, three quarters of him, im
mortality in heaven.
4. With three quarters Purusha went up, again one
quarter of him was here; then he strode over things living
and lifeless.
5. Viraj was born from him, Purusha from Viraj ; when
he was born he went through the earth, westward and
eastward.
6. When the gods offered sacrifice with Purusha, spring
was the butter, summer the fuel, autumn the oblation ;
7. They consecrated him as a sacrifice on the grass, Pu
rusha born in earliest time ; the gods, the sadhyas and rishis
sacrificed by him.
8. From that sacrifice, offered entire, when the curdled
butter was collected, were made cattle, birds, creatures of
forest and field.
9. From that sacrifice, offered entire, the Rik and the
24 THE DIVINE NATURE
Sama were born ; the lights were born from it, the Yajur
was born from it.
10. From it horses were born, and creatures with teeth
in both jaws ; yes, cows were born from it ; from it sheep
and goats were born.
n. In how many parts did they distribute Purusha?
In how many parts arrange him ? What do they call his
mouth, what his arms, what his thighs and feet ?
12. The Brahman was his mouth; his arms made the
Rajanyas ; his thighs were the Vai9yas ; from his feet the
(Judras were born.
13. The moon was born of his mind ; from his eyes the
sun was born; from his mouth Indra and Agni; and from
his breath the wind was born.
14. From his navel was the sky; from his head heaven
came; from his feet earth; the regions from his ear. Thus
the worlds were set in order.
1 5. Seven were his fencing-sticks, three times seven fagots
were laid, when the gods sacrificed Purusha as a victim.
1 6. By sacrifice the gods sacrificed the sacrifice. These
were the first rites. Those wise ones reached heaven, where
of old the sadhyas were gods. x. 90.
The priestly cycle of thought is complete : we see
a life poured out for the life of the world, not offered
to anyone, but itself the source of life. In Soma and
Purusha it has no moral character whatever ; in the
Horse it has just enough to awake pity; but in no
case does it make any demand on the worshipper.
He only takes the benefits that follow the sacrifice,
but has no idea of following the example of the
victim. So poet and priest have come to the same
conclusion by different paths ; and the divine nature
as the sacrifice is again the vital principle.
IN THE RIGVEDA 25
THE DIVINE NATURE AS AN ABSTRACTION
We have still to hear the philosopher. There
were men who could be satisfied with none of the
earlier ideas, and yet who had no thought of
breaking with the old ways. We are now to see
the attempts they made to meet scepticism, and to
reach a more satisfying idea of the divine nature for
themselves. Of scepticism there are various traces
in the hymns. We have assertions about Indra s ex
istence and supremacy 1 which show that these were
questioned ; there are references to unbelievers,
who say: Indra is not 2 ; we have also a frankly comic
description of the Brahmans, chattering round the
Soma-vats, like frogs in the rains 3 , for a Brahman
generally has the merit of being ready to enjoy, or
to perpetrate, a joke at his own expense.
But if some denied, more were concerned to
assert, and of these some tried to find the divine
nature in an abstraction. A group of gods appear
who are still presented under more or less human
form ; but they represent, not the powers of phy
sical nature, but the powers of the intellect, not
storm or sun, but the power that makes, the power
that begets, speech, the power of prayer. They have
artificial names, evidently the result of reflection ;
and, even when they take over the myths belonging
1 x. 86, i. 2 viii. ioo, 3. 3 vii. 103.
26 THE DIVINE NATURE
to other gods, they remain dignified but unconvin
cing figures, more to be studied than worshipped.
The greatest of them are Brihaspati, the c Lord of
Prayer,* who takes the place of Indra as the slayer
of the drought demon, Vritra; Vic/vakarman, c the
maker of the world ; Vak, the goddess of c Speech ;
Prajapati, ( lord of living creatures ; Ka, Who, a
god who owes his existence to the hymn which asks,
To what god must we offer sacrifice ? Who ? asks
the hymn, and theBrahmans answer: Who. Of these
gods Brihaspati is a sort of sublimated Brahman,
in the name of Vak we see a shadow of the doctrine
of the divine word, the Logos ; Prajapati represents
again the vital impulse, consciously realised ; Ka
may stand for the ceaseless question in the Indian
mind, which goes on for ever asking, and never
arrives at action, waiting till the day for all doubts
to be taken away before it will adventure itself.
THE DIVINE NATURE AS THE ONE
BEHIND THE MANY
But a philosopher is never content to believe in
many gods ; and these thinkers saw, and declared,
that it was one power which lay behind the many
names that men had given, i. 164, is one of the
most interesting hymns in the Veda ; it consists for
the most part of a series of riddles about numbers,
IN THE RIGVEDA 27
and metaphorical descriptions of the year and the
sun ; suddenly the poet breaks out :
I do not know what kind of thing I am, mysterious,
bound, my mind wanders;
and then goes on to the famous saying :
Indra, Varuna, Agni, they say, yes divine Garutmat with
heavenly wings;
Inspired men speak in many ways of what is one, they
say Agni, Yama, Matarivan. i. 164, 37, 46.
Elsewhere we see the same idea in connection with
Indra; there is only one power, it is only illusion
that makes us think we see many, or that they can
ever clash :
Indra takes many shapes quickly by his illusions, vi. 47, 1 8.
Illusion in truth were all thy battles, they say, thou hast
known no enemies, either now or formerly, x. 54, 2.
Another hymn consists of three verses ; the first
and the last deal with the ritual of the sacrifice and
the wealth that is to result from it, but the middle
verse connects it with the thought of the underlying
unity of existence :
There is one fire only, wherever it is kindled; one sun
shines through the world; one dawn lightens all this; truly
one has become all this. viii. 58, 2.
28 THE DIVINE NATURE
THE DIVINE NATURE AS THE ULTIMATE
SOURCE OF BEING
But what is this One ? The answer to this, the
great question at the end of all questions, is given
us only in the tenth book of the hymns, where we
find the flower of Vedic thought. Having rejected
the thought that the divine power is moral, which
would lead to its recognition as a person, India has
passed through every half-way house, and is about
to develop the opposite theory, that the divine is
something of which we can have no direct know
ledge. Its working we know, but in itself it is dark
to us ; and before we can know it we must put away
all that makes life for us. We can imagine a per
sonality which is a reflection of ours, or we can
form some sort of notion of a personality of which
ours is a reflection ; but if anything is not a person
at all, but a thing, or a force, we can only know,
or try to know, it from the outside. We cannot
understand it, or begin to understand it, though
we may know about it, from the way in which it
affects us or other persons whom we do know.
According to Indian reasoning the divine power
cannot be a person, for that implies limitation. A
person is so by reason of the power of choice, the
will, which chooses one thing and rejects another.
We are persons by virtue of this faculty, in so far
IN THE RIGVEDA 29
as we possess it ; but the divine nature must be
beyond making distinctions, all things must be alike
to it, for it is the source of them all. It cannot be
a mere natural force that is obvious to any edu
cated man : the system of priest and sacrifice must
itself be explained before it can explain. It holds
society together, and satisfies simple people ; but
we grow beyond it, and the wise man will at last
abandon it : he will leave off the study of the Vedas
and will offer no more sacrifice. As for the abstrac
tions, they are nothing real, only phrases, used for
picturesqueness sake, to clothe bare speculation and
keep up the link with the ignorant. What then is
the real truth ?
Four hymns give us the answer. The first, x. 72,
is a very difficult one. It gives three answers, one
after the other. First we are told that Brahmana-
spati made the world, welding it like a smith ; or
else the gods made it, by dancing, as the hot dust
rose under their feet ; or again, existence sprang
from non-existence : there was a productive power
in existence, and the world came from that. It
seems a bald statement ; but it is as far as we shall
ever get on these premises. The poet feels its
baldness so much that he falls back on the dancing
gods ; and yet it is a stumbling attempt at finding
words from the unimaginable.
In another hymn, x. 82, the poet begins by
30 THE DIVINE NATURE
saying that Vi9vakarman made the world. He
compares the work to that of a builder or carpenter;
and he then tries to imagine what there was before.
He thinks there was a primeval germ, containing
all the gods, and :
That one, in which were all creatures, rested on the
navel of the unborn ;
You will not find him who brought forth these, there
is another among you.
Covered with mist and muttering, chanters of hymns
wander, entangled in this life. x. 82, 6, 7.
Alas, poor chanter of hymns ! Like all Indians
he is confused by his own metaphors ; the unborn
has a human shape ; he cannot find words to express
what the unborn is, except such as obscure him at the
same time ; he knows his own failure, and ends un
satisfied, with a singularly apt cry.
Yet another hymn, x. 190, attributes all things
to tapas, which means heat in the outward world,
and also devotional zeal and austerity. From that
glow come law and truth, as we might say order ;
and from this principle come material things. We
find this teaching more fully expressed in the
last hymn of the four, x. 129, the greatest hymn
of the whole Veda, and the completion of all its
teaching. Nor is it the end of Vedic teaching in
the Rigveda only ; for as long as we follow this way
we shall never get beyond it. This hymn sums up
IN THE RIGVEDA 31
the whole thought of India, so far as philosophers
can carry it. Before they had well begun the search
after truth they came to the end, and realised that
we cannot have absolute knowledge; and indeed,
we never do know anything except by faith, which
is one form of love ; love waiting is hope, love
seeking is faith, love acting is morality ; and as a
matter of daily experience we find that our most
certain knowledge, in the end all our knowledge,
comes through our affections. But all early thought,
and especially Indian thought, is repelled by the
corruption of the affections, and seeks knowledge
byway of intellectual effort only, deliberately setting
aside anything akin to emotion. In this hymn we
see the endeavour to form an idea of a state in
which nothing exists, the state before the beginning;
before matter and before desire we see formless
water and darkness ; then there is a further attempt
made to imagine what came before that, and this
is abandoned as soon as formulated. The poet was
too great a thinker, and too honest a man, to
suppose that he had done what he had not done.
The Hebrew, looking at the same problem, asserts
that he knows a person ; if he does, the origin of
matter is not explained, but life becomes possible.
The Indian must have everything explained before he
can live, and is in the position of the centipede, who
died of starvation, because he could not understand
32 THE DIVINE NATURE
how he moved all his legs, and therefore failed to
move any. The Hebrew can, and indeed must, live,
and lets explanations, for which he does not care
as they deserve, wait. We get no explanation either
way, but one way we get life.
The hymn is as follows :
1. There was neither nothing nor manifest being, neither
air nor space beyond. What covered? Where? For whose
pleasure? Was water the deep abyss?
2. There was no death, therefore no immortality ; there
was no knowledge of day and night; that one breathed
without breath, by its own nature ; beside it there was no
thing, other or beyond.
3. In the beginning there was darkness, hidden in dark
ness ; all this was waters, unknown. That one, void wrapped
in emptiness, was brought forth by the power of brooding
heat.
4. That in the beginning became desire, that which
first was the seed of mind; seers, searching by thought,
found in the heart the link between being, unmanifest and
manifest.
5. Was their ray, as it stretched across, below? Was
it above ? There was life, there was power, matter below,
will above.
6. Who knows truly, who here declares, whence it came,
whence this universe? The gods were later than it, the
lords of creation, who knows whence it was ?
7. Whence this creation was, whether he made it or
not, he who overlooks it in highest heaven, surely he knows,
or he does not know.
CHAPTER II
THE DIVINE NATURE IN THE UPANISHADS
IN the Upanishads we find a doctrine not only
of the divine, but also of human nature. In the
Vedas there is not much said about this ; human
nature was taken as something simple, familiar and
obvious. It is the change on this point that marks
the difference between the ages of the Vedas and
the Upanishads.
Each Veda was followed by its own Brahmana.
These were long books, giving minute directions
for the right performance of ritual, in ceremonies
which were intended to go on for days, sometimes
for months, elaborate beyond belief. The Brah-
manas end in philosophical treatises, the work of
men who wanted to find truth and reason behind
the wearisome proceedings to which custom bound
them ; and these treatises are the Upanishads. The
derivation of the word Upanishad is not known; it
is generally supposed to be from upa-ni-sad^ to sit
down, because the doctrine would be taught to the
s - 3
34 THE DIVINE NATURE
students as they sat round their teacher. Another
derivation makes the word mean c the destroyer/
that by which ignorance is destroyed. The number
of Upanishads is generally reckoned as a hundred
and eight, but of these only twelve matter in the
present connection. These are the most authori
tative, and some of them are the oldest ; and they
were commented on by the great scholar, (^amka-
racharya. It is not possible to put any exact date
to them ; but the oldest are older than Buddhism,
for the Buddhist books refer to them, whereas they
do not refer to the Buddhists ; but they do refer to
the Vedas as a completed whole, so that we may
say that the oldest Upanishads were composed be
tween the completion of the Vedas and the preach
ing of Buddha, that is before the sixth century B.C.,
perhaps about the time of the kingdoms of Israel
and Judah. The latest of the twelve may not be
very much older than the Christian era.
The six oldest are in prose 1 , and are called Bri-
hadaranyaka, Chhandogya,Taittiriya, Aitareya, Kau-
shltaki, and Kena (or Talavakara). Brihadaranyaka
and Chhandogya are the longest of any, and contain
a great many passages of the first importance. In
Brihadaranyaka is the teaching of the rishi Yajna-
valkya, in whom we may recognise a real man, and
at times a distinctly humorous one, through the
1 The order followed in this arrangement is Deussen s.
IN THE UPANISHADS 35
remote and tangled controversies which he carries
on. His teaching is summed up in the formula
f Netty Netty c No, no, the denial of qualities or
attributes in the ultimate self. Chhandogya contains
the teaching given to (^vetaketu by his father Ud-
dalaka, when he returned from his schooling c con
ceited, considering himself well-read and stern.
This teaching is summed up in the other great
formula of Indian philosophy, c tat tvam asi, c thou
art that. Taittirlya finds the ultimate Self in food;
Aitareya contains a great amount of magic, and a
specially important account of creation ; Kaushltaki
gives us the doctrine of the supreme as prana,
c breath ; Kena, in some ways the most attractive
of the Upanishads, is remarkable for its sense of
wonder at the mystery of existence.
The next four are in verse, their names are Katha,
I9a, C^veta^vatara, Mundaka. Ic^a is the shortest of
all, only eighteen verses, but of great interest. It
contains a long definition of the true Self, and ends
with invocations to the old Vedic gods. Katha gives
us the story of Nachiketas, who visited Death in
his house, and learnt from him what comes after
this life. (^veta9vatara throws light on a time when,
it seems, there was a revival of the old religion, and
the philosophers took up the names of the old gods,
and the old ceremonies, and put a new life into them.
Mundaka is unusually clear and well-arranged ; it
32
36 THE DIVINE NATURE
has two chapters on the nature of the Self, and one
on man s relation to it.
The two last Upanishads are in prose, Pra9na
and Maitrayana. They consist largely of recapitu
lations from the older books, combined anew for
the use of later times.
Before we attempt to look at the Upanishads in
detail we must realise what the object was with
which they were written. They were not meant to
make things easy or clear, or to set forth any system
of doctrine as public property ; they are addressed
to a special class of highly trained men, who have
learnt all that common life can teach and not found
it enough ; and are meant to show them a better
truth that had been hidden under the popular teach
ing. And this truth is given in technical terms,
parables, and mysteries,
For the gods love what is mysterious, and dislike what
is obvious. Brih. 4, 2, 2. 1
They are obscure for another reason, because they
are based on contradictory theories ; and the recon
ciliation between these theories is only apparent, a
point which will have to be made clear as we go
on; while the account of the physical facts with which
the reasoning is enforced is so wild that we can
attach no literal meaning to it, yet so vital to the
1 The quotations throughout are from the translation in the
Sacred Books of the East.
IN THE UPANISHADS 37
argument that it cannot be left out. When we are
told that :
There are one hundred and one arteries of the heart, one
of them penetrates the crown of the head: moving upwards
by it a man reaches the immortal ; the others serve for de
parting in different directions. Chh. 8, 6, 5.
Such a statement does not help us at all, especially
when it is also said that these arteries are brown,
white, blue, yellow and red, and when in another
place 1 we are told that there are seventy-two thou
sand of them. One might go on for ever quoting
examples ; but what concerns us is not so much the
thing that is said, as the temper of mind in which
it is said ; and though at moments we may be in
clined to cry out that this sort of thing has no value,
yet as it had one in the minds of its authors, we
must make an attempt to enter into their meaning,
if we wish to understand what they did in the
world.
The authors of the Upanishads were looking at
the world in the light of a new faculty : they had
begun to reflect on themselves, not only on the
things outside themselves. At first, man s attention
was all directed to the outside ; men thought about
business and pleasure, sun, wind and rain; and these
things supplied their idea of the divine nature. God,
like everything else, was a power outside them; and
1 Brih. 2, i, 19.
38 THE DIVINE NATURE
it had not occurred to them that there was a world
within. So Death taught Nachiketas :
Death said : The Self-existent pierced the openings (of
the senses) so that they turn forward : therefore man looks
forward, not backward into himself. Some wise man, how
ever, with his eyes closed and wishing for immortality, saw
the Self behind. Katha 2, 4, I.
The Indian mind realises with startling distinctness
that what we see with our eyes is not absolutely
true ; and then, instead of following the apparent
or partial truth in the hope that it may lead to a
fuller one, turns away from it altogether, troubles
no more about physical fact, and looks inward only,
trying to see immortality and the Self.
The Indians of the Vedic times, both Aryan and
Dravidian, had left to their sons a tradition of gods,
legends, myths, spells and magic rites ; and these
the sons had no intention of losing. Hinduism
never rejects anything that it can possibly absorb,
and it rejected nothing of its traditional lore ; but
it took a new attitude towards it. Instead of merely
repeating, it reflected, and tried to interpret. In
the Upanishads therefore, we shall find no destruc
tive criticism, and no reforming zeal, but a new
sense of wonder, and a new method of interpretation.
Another characteristic of Indian thought that we
must notice is that the teaching of the Upanishads
is addressed to individuals, and treats of individuals,
IN THE UPANISHADS 39
not of the community. In India salvation is thought
of only from the individual point of view :
When all desires that dwell in his heart cease, then the
mortal becomes immortal, and obtains Brahma.
When all the ties of the heart are severed here on earth,
then the mortal becomes immortal, here ends the teaching.
Katha 2, 6, 14, 15.
It is each man by himself that is the centre of in
terest ; it is his relation to the world and to reality
that we are to study ; his relation to the community
is only a means to an end. If he shows kindness
and compassion it is because such a temper is the
most wholesome for one in search of liberation; and
he shows them, not to any body of men, but to other
individual men. Towards a community as such, a
nation, a city, a tribe or a brotherhood of any sort, he
has no relation. Even his caste is only a natural dis
tinction, involving no responsibility and no loyalty;
even his family is to be cast off at last. We shall
consider this point of view again when we come to
think about the view taken of human nature ; now
we notice it in passing.
THE DIVINE NATURE AS VITAL PRINCIPLE
In the last chapter we saw that the teaching of
the Vedas gathered itself into three groups, repre
senting tendencies which we shall now follow into
the later teaching.
40 THE DIVINE NATURE
We think first of the divine nature as Vital Prin
ciple. The Divine in this conception has lost any
moral character which it may once have had, and
has kept only that of energy. Hiranyagarbha, in x.
121, works, but makes no comment or moral judg
ment on his work; he gives no commands, and has no
intercourse with it. Attention centres on the world
without ; and even when we come to the Upani-
shads,we find that the world of thought and emotion
is a kind of afterthought, fitted into the explanation
that has been put forth with a view to the world of
earth and sky. The creating force is described under
terms that suggest a person; but his power of choice
is limited to the one primal choice of whether he
will create at all or not. After that he works by
experiment, dealing with some force of which he
is not wholly master. As he does so, the names of
the old gods reappear, but they are now only the
senses, the various powers of the body. Agni has
become speech, Vayu, the wind, is breath, Aditya,
the sun, is sight, and so on.
To show the working of this principle we will
take one of the numerous myths about the begin
ning of things. It is given us in Aitareya 2, 4, i.
Verily in the beginning all this was Self, one only ; there
was nothing else living whatsoever.
He thought : Shall I send forth worlds ? He sent forth
these worlds.
IN THE UPANISHADS 41
Having formed the worlds, that is the water above
the heaven, the heaven, the earth, and the water
under the earth :
He thought: there are these worlds; shall I send forth
guardians of the worlds?
He then formed Purusha, the c Male, brooding
over him, so that one by one his different members
burst forth. This Purusha is, as in Rigveda x. 90,
a sort of archetypal man, not an actual man, nor
yet divine, but described under human terms, and
summing up in himself all forms of existence. From
each of Purusha s members as they appeared, came
a power and a deity ; the power of speech and the
deity of fire from the mouth ; sight and the sun
from the eyes ; hearing and the four regions of space
from the ears; hairs and plants from the skin ; mind
and the moon from the heart ; down-breathing (the
wind of the stomach) and death from the navel ;
seed and water from the generative organ. These
deities were tormented by hunger and thirst, so the
Self made cows and horses for them ; but these were
not enough, so the Self made man, and the deities
said: Well done! each deity entered the part of man
appropriate to him, and was satisfied, while hunger
and thirst entered as partners with them. The Self
then made food for the worlds, by brooding over the
water, from which matter or form was then born,
42 THE DIVINE NATURE
not apparently having come into existence before.
Finally :
He thought : How can all this be without me ?
and at last :
Opening the suture of the skull, he got in by that door.
Ait. 2, 4, 3, 7.
What does all this strange account stand for? Is
there any attempt in it after historical truth ? We
may smile at the bare suggestion, and yet the absence
of such an attempt is worth noticing. There are
attractive suggestions of something further the
correspondence between man and nature, the short
coming of the animals, the Self entering into what
he has made ; but the system has no foundation in
natural fact, even in fact wrongly observed, and the
suggestion remains a suggestion, leading to nothing
more. No motive is given for creation. The Self
merely thinks : Shall I send forth ? and does send
forth. The motive appears later, when the worlds,
having come into existence, begin to want guardians,
and the guardians to feel hunger and thirst, and
the creatures, made to satisfy the guardians, them
selves want food. Need is the motive of all creation
after the first act. The chapter on the creation of
food 1 tells us a great deal. Matter or form is pro-
i Ait. 2, 4, 3.
IN THE UPANISHADS 43
duced by the Self, brooding over the water which
he had sent forth before :
When this food had thus been sent forth, it wished to
flee, crying and turning away. He tried to grasp it by
speech. He could not grasp it by speech. If he had grasped
it by speech, man would be satisfied by naming food.
He then tried to grasp it by one power or function
after another, the different senses, the mind, the
generative organ, and down-breathing, by means
of which he at last got it ; and therefore man can
not be satisfied by seeing, hearing, or thinking about
food, but has to swallow it. India raises difficul
ties for the pleasure of getting over them. To the
western man, who has never thought of trying to
absorb his dinner by looking at it, this seems a most
unnecessary speculation ; and the objections of the
unfortunate food to being consumed add to the
difficulty. Is the food then one person, and the
Self another ? Did the Self make the food with a
will of its own ? Or what is the idea with which
the rishi appears to be struggling ? Perhaps we
shall find some sort of answer in the Self s self-com
muning after he has got hold of the food :
He thought: How can all this be without me?
And then he thought : By what way shall I get there ?
And then he thought: If speech names, if scent smells,
if the eye sees, if the ear hears, if the skin feels, if the
mind thinks, if the off-breathing digests, if the organ sends
forth, then what am I?
44 THE DIVINE NATURE
It is the very question of the Upanishads ; the Self
cannot distinguish between himself and his faculties;
are they himself, or something else ? He seems to
have abandoned his meditations, for in the next
verse :
Opening the suture of the skull, he got in by that door,
entering as we all must on practical life.
When born he looked through all things, in order to
see whether anything wished to proclaim here another.
He saw this person only as the widely-spread Brahma.
* I saw it/ thus he said. Therefore he was Idam-dra ( see
ing this ).
Being Idam-dra by name, they call him Indra mysteri
ously. For the Devas love mystery, yea, they love mystery.
Ait. 2, 4, 3, ii.
In another myth we find the sense of need as the
motive of creation. The Self in his solitary existence
felt fear; then, having argued himself out of fear
(As there is nothing but myself, why should I fear?),
he felt loneliness, and created for the sake of com
pany 1 . In another account the world was created by
hunger itself, to supply its own need 2 , or by death
which is hunger. This story is strangely inter
rupted for a moment to explain why we have no
hair in our mouths.
The next line of thought which we shall follow
is that which tries to unify all things by deriving
them all, both material and immaterial, from one
1 Brih. i, 4, i. 2 Brih. i, 2, i.
IN THE UPANISHADS 45
material element. This element comes from the
Self, and is the only thing which does so come.
The original element is sometimes water, or fire,
or ether. We read how :
In the beginning there was nothing here whatsoever. By
Death indeed all this was concealed, by hunger; for death
is hunger. Death thought : Let me have a body. Then
he moved about, worshipping. From him thus worshipping
water was produced. Brih. I, 2, I 1 .
or else :
In the beginning, my dear, there was that only which
is, one only without a second, . . .It thought: May I be many,
may I grow forth. It sent forth fire. Chhand. 6, 2, 3.
or else :
From that Self sprang ether; from ether, air; from air,
fire; from fire, water ; from water, earth ; from earth, herbs;
from herbs, food; from food, seed; from seed, man. Taitt.
2, i 2 .
The value of these theories lies in their recognition
of the world as a unity. We get beyond the many
gods, each with his own kingdom, and see the same
power working in the tree and in the lightning that
strikes it. This single element is sometimes one of
the functions of the body. It is the person in the
eye. The little* figure of ourselves which we see
reflected in our neighbour s eye has always attracted
the attention of primitive people as being possibly
1 See also Brih. 5, 5, i. Ait. 2, 4, 3, i. Kaushl. i, 7.
2 See also Chhand. i, 9, i.
46 THE DIVINE NATURE
the man s soul. This old idea was carried on, and
a new meaning given to it by the new teachers of
India :
The person that is seen in the eye, that is the Self. This
is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahma. Chhand. 4,
15, i.
Or again it is in the heart that the person lives:
He is my self within the heart, smaller than a corn of
rice, smaller than a corn of barley, smaller than a mustard
seed, smaller than a millet 1 seed or the kernel of a millet
seed. He also is my self within the heart, greater than the
earth, greater than the sky, greater than heaven, greater
than all these worlds. Chhand. 3, 14, 3.
This passage is one of the gems of the Upanishads,
where poetry illuminates a true experience.
Another form under which the vital principle is
found is the breath, Prana. At all times we think
of the breath as very nearly the same thing as the
life ; here they are quite the same. Kaushitaki gives
the fullest account of this teaching :
Indra said : I am prana, meditate on me as the conscious
self, as life, as immortality. As long as prana dwells in this
body, so long, surely, there is life.... He who meditates on
me as life and immortality, gains his full life in this world,
and obtains in the Svarga-world immortality and inde
structibility. Kaushl. 3, 2.
We cannot help wondering what has come over our
old friend Tndra, whose merry days by the Soma-
1 S. B. E. translates canary seed.
IN THE UPANISHADS 47
vats seem here to have become strangely remote.
His present notion, however, is plain enough, that
breath is life, which is obvious, and therefore must
be worshipped, or thoughtfully contemplated, so
that it may in the end be appropriated.
We have the same idea given us four times over
in different Upanishads in the form of a story, the
contest of the senses 1 . The liveliest version is in
Brihadaranyaka :
These senses, when quarrelling together as to who was
the best, went to Brahma, and said : Who is the richest of
us? He replied: He by whose departure this body seems
worst, he is the richest.
The tongue departed, and having been absent for a year,
it came back and said : How have you been able to live
without me ? They replied : Like unto people not speaking
with the tongue, but breathing with the breath, seeing
with the eye, hearing with the ear, knowing with the mind,
generating with seed. Thus have we lived. Then speech
entered in....
Each sense departed in turn, and the rest lived an
incomplete life without it, but when it came to the
turn of the breath :
The breath, when on the point of departing, tore up
these senses, as a great excellent horse of the Sindhu country
might tear up the pegs to which he is tethered. They said
to him : Sir, do not depart, we shall not be able to live
without thee. He said : Then make me an offering. They
said: Be it so.
1 Brih. 6, i, 7. Chhand. 5, i, i. Ait. 2, i, 4, 9. Pra9na 2, i.
48 THE DIVINE NATURE
We can scarcely suppose that we are not meant to
be amused at the dilemma of the quarrelsome senses,
their six years discomfort, and the final catastrophe
when they find themselves on the point of being
suffocated. This is a sample of the playfulness that
meets us continually in the Upanishads, and indeed
in all Indian writings. It is not the attitude of men
engaged in a search the end of which is life or death
to them ; a seeker after truth may be playful, and
generally is so, over side issues; he may be humorous
with a somewhat bitter humour over the main issue,
and the wonderful perversity of things. But this
vein of gentle mockery at the heart of religious
speculation is a peculiarly Indian characteristic.
The imagery with which we have been dealing
is very suggestive, so long as we take it as imagery.
We all know the world within; St Augustine went
there, and described its * fields and spacious palaces
... a large and boundless chamber 1 ! When we want
to see our friend s very self, or to show him ours,
we look straight into his eyes. The connection of
life with blood or breath needs no emphasis; but,
for all that, Western races know that connection
is not identity. These things may be images, or
metaphors, or again they may be sacraments, an
outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual
reality ; but there is one side of their being on which
1 Confessions x.
IN THE UPANISHADS 49
eye and heart, blood and breath are physical organs,
living tissue or passing air, wonderful beyond our
understanding, but not personal. There is no space
arranged in the heart or eye where any little man
lives. Air in the lungs cannot possibly talk and
have a will of its own. We have no idea what
matter is, either living or inanimate ; but we do
know that however we may come in contact with
it, yet we ourselves are not it. We can neither
define nor ignore the distinction between ourselves
and it. Popular Western thought has been too
ready to suppose that it could understand this
difference, and to say that of course matter was just
stuff that you can perceive with your senses, and
deal with by means of your hands or other organs,
while spirit is a sort of a something, like a trans
parent body, shut up inside the material body, or
perhaps floating about on its own account after death.
Yet one thing even the most popular Western
thought has acknowledged, through all confusion
and short-coming, that the spirit is something which
is good or bad, and that what makes it either is its
power of choice or will. If it cannot choose between
good and evil it is not a spirit but a force, and will
probably turn out to be a product of material things.
To reach this conclusion it is necessary to take a
leap from the things that can be proved, and to put
faith in something that can never be proved in human
50 THE DIVINE NATURE
language, because language is built up out of meta
phors taken from material things, and in the last
resort has to go back to the things from which it
was taken. We can never get away from the fact
that spirit means air, except by a leap of our minds
to the realisation that, whatever we call it, there is
something which is spirit and is not air.
We find the Indian sages struggling with the
problem in a chapter on the material and the im
material 1 . They try to express the distinction by
similes ; and the similes catch them back again : at
the end they are left struggling in the toils of their
own words. The chapter is a short one, only six
verses, but it shows us the fate of a man trying to
jump off his own shadow.
There are two forms of Brahma, the material
and the immaterial, it tells us ; and then comes the
attempt to distinguish which things belong to which
order in the outer world c with regard to the Devas,
the gods :
Everything except air and sky is material, is mortal, is
solid, is definite. The essence of that which is material...
is the sun that shines.
But air and sky are immaterial, are immortal, are fluid,
are indefinite. The essence of that which is immaterial...
is the person in the disk of the sun 2 ....
1 Brih. 2, 3,
2 That is the heavenly being who corresponds to the person in
the eye.
IN THE UPANISHADS 51
Now with regard to the body. Everything except the
breath and the ether within the body is material, is mortal,
is solid, is definite. The essence of that which is material
...is the eye....
But breath and the ether within the body are immaterial,
are fluid, are indefinite. The essence of that which is im
material... is the person in the right eye.
And what is the appearance of that person ? Like a
saffron-coloured raiment, like white wool, like cochineal,
like the flame of fire, like the white lotus, like sudden
lightning. He who knows this, his glory is like unto
sudden lightning. Brih. 2, 3, I to 6.
A bright colour, an intense light, such is the image
through which the Self is interpreted ; but there is
no word of justice or wisdom, and c immateriar is
one with fluid* or * indefinite.
To understand how consistently the idea of the
divine power as vital principle is carried out in the
Upanishads, we must consider the place given in
their teaching to food. We touch our bodies, and
are aware of a heat within them, which we are to
recognise as one with the life of the world :
That light which shines above this heaven, higher than
all,... that is the same light which is within man.
Or we may discover its presence by stopping our
ears, and listening
to what is like the rolling of a carriage, or the bellowing
of an ox, or the sound of a burning fire. Chhand. 3, 13,
7 and 8.
By these primitive methods we may detect the
42
52 THE DIVINE NATURE
Vai^vanara Self, which is the actual fire of digestion,
the name meaning common to all. This power is
described in several places as what is to be wor
shipped. We have a full account of it in the story
of the five great householders 1 . There were once
five great householders and theologians who came
together to consider what is our true self and what
is Brahma, and they invited a friend to join them,
Uddalaka, a great sage, whom we hear of elsewhere
in Chhandogya, and who was then engaged in study
ing the Vaivanara Self; Uddalaka was afraid they
might ask him more than he knew, and suggested
that they should all go together to King A9vapati,
the lord of horses, who also knew the Vaicvanara
Self, and ask him. He received them kindly, and be
gan his instructions. He asked each of them in turn:
Whom do you meditate on as the Self?
The first answered: Heaven only, venerable
King ; the second, the sun only ; the third, air;
the fourth, ether ; the fifth, water ; and Uddalaka,
the earth. To each of these answers the King re
plies that it is part of the truth, and that in con
sequence blessing and prosperity follow those who
believe so :
You eat food and see your desire, and whoever thus
meditates on that Vaivanara Self eats food and sees his
desire, and has Vedic glory in his house.
1 Chhand. 5, 1 1 to 24.
IN THE UPANISHADS 53
To each believer comes an appropriate blessing ; but
because the truth is only partial, the very blessing it
brings is in danger of being lost. The King says
to the man who worships heaven :
The Self which you meditate on is the Vai9vanara Self,
called Sutejas, having good light. Therefore every kind of
Soma libation is seen in your house... that however is but
the head of the Self, and thus your head would have fallen,
if you had not come to me.
In the same way the sun is the eye of the Self, the
air is its breath, ether is the trunk, water is the
bladder, earth the feet ; but in each case :
If you had not come to me, you would have become
blind... your breath would have left you... your trunk
would have perished... your bladder would have burst...
your feet would have given way.
The King then proceeds to give to the wise men a
complete description of the Vaic/vanara Self:
He said to them all : You eat your food, knowing that
Vaicvanara Self as if it were many. But he who worships
the Vaicvanara Self as a span long, and as identical with
himself, he eats food in all worlds, in all beings, in all Selfs.
When once we recognise ourselves as one with the
One Self, whatever being eats food, in whatever
world, we are one with it. Even if our particular
body should die of starvation, our real Self is that
Self which eats food. Wherever food is eaten, we
share, if not in the communion of saints, at least
54 THE DIVINE NATURE
in the communion of living things. This is the
true Agnihotra, the fire-sacrifice :
He who offers this Agnihotra with a full knowledge of
its true purport, he offers it in all worlds, in all beings, in
all Selfs....As hungry children here on earth sit round their
mother, so do all beings sit round the Agnihotra, yea, round
the Agnihotra. Chhand. 5, 24, 4.
And so the story ends, with the picture of all
creatures gathering round the altar of sacrifice to
receive nourishment in peace.
This idea, that the divine principle can find its
seat in food, startles us at first from its unfamiliarity ;
and yet if that principle is the vital impulse in living
things, and nothing else, it is reasonable enough.
At any rate this view gives us a fixed point to
work from. If a man s chief duty is to get food,
he has at any rate a rule of life, and a definite aim.
The point of view is most clearly put forward in
Taittirlya. This Upanishad is divided into three
chapters, called Vallis, and the third of these is the
Valli of the rishi Bhrigu. We read how Bhrigu was
instructed by his father, Varuna, to know Brahma.
He is to find out what it is from which beings are
born, by which tfyey live, and into which they enter
at death. He does penance five times, and each
time perceives a new view of Brahma, and recognises
five such things, food, breath, mind, understanding
and bliss. We go on with the practical application :
IN THE UPANISHADS 55
He who knows this becomes exalted,... let him never
abuse food,... let him never shun food, ...let him acquire
much food.... If he gives food amply, food is given to him
amply. If he gives food fairly, food is given to him fairly.
If he gives food meanly, food is given to him meanly 1 .
Taitt. 3, 10, I.
The wise man gives freely, that he may receive
abundance in return. He recognises Brahma in
every function of his own life, and in all the opera
tions of nature, the same in both :
He who is this in man, and he who is that in the sun,
both are one. Taitt. 3, 10, 4.
And at last :
When he has departed this world, after reaching and
comprehending the Self which consists of food, the Self
which consists of breath, the Self which consists of mind,
the Self which consists of understanding, the Self which
consists of bliss, enters and takes possession of these worlds ;
and having as much food as he likes, and assuming as many
forms as he likes, he sits down singing this Saman : Havu,
havu, havu ! I am food, I am food, I am food ! I am the
eater of food, I am the eater of food, I am the eater of
food ! I am the poet, I am the poet, I am the poet ! I am
the first-born of the Right. Before the Devas I was in
the centre of all that is immortal. He who gives me away
he alone preserves me; him who eats food, I eat as food.
I overcome the whole world, I, endowed with golden light.
He who knows this (attains all this). This is the Upani-
shad. Taitt. 3, 10, $.
A strange song, and couched in unfamiliar lan
guage, sung to this day by the Brahmans as they
1 Compare Luke vi. 38.
56 THE DIVINE NATURE
sit round, waiting to be feasted and to reward their
host with blessings ; the perfect life attained, the
soul sitting at ease in the centre of all things, the
great wave of vitality, rising unchecked through
all existence, freely given and freely taken ; life
strong and abundant, life without struggle, lived
for its own sake. Such is the ideal set before us
by thinkers of this school.
THE DIVINE NATURE IN THE SACRIFICE
We have already tried to trace the thought of
India on the subject of sacrifice in Vedic times, and
have found it to be closely connected with the idea
of the Divine as the source of material prosperity.
In the Brahmanas it is connected as well with the
idea of, not a common nature, but the identity
between divine and human ; but its purpose is still
to secure benefits. Whatever the thought of the
average Indian might be about the purpose and
meaning of the sacrifice, its place in his life was, as
it still is, of the first importance. The public sacri
fice brought rain and fertility ; and the offerings of
ghi three times a day in the household fires, with
other forms of private sacrifice, secured the wel
fare of the family. These ceremonies and others
made the framework on which the national religion
and philosophy grew. Ordinary life and advanced
IN THE UPANISHADS 57
thought both took shape from it, the rishis of the
Upanishads grew up in the midst of it ; and their
new faculty of self-consciousness drove them to
make their account with it.
For the most part they wished things to go on
as they were, having indeed no particular reason
for altering them. Reformers in India are seldom
destructive ; they want to retain as much as possible,
and only to reinterpret. This first attitude displays
itself in the description of the Mantha rite, and in
the story of how the Nachiketas rite was instituted.
The obj ect of the Mantha rite is to c reach greatness 1 .
It consists of collecting various sorts of food in a
bowl, c a mash of all kinds of herbs with curds and
honey, and ghi, at particular times and with the
recitation of particular formulas, and finally eating
it. The proper rules for doing this were handed
on from one sage to another, with the comment
that:
If a man were to pour it on a dry stick, branches would
grow, and leaves spring forth. Brih. 6, 3, 7.
The Nachiketas rite 2 was taught by Yama, Death,
to Nachiketas, saying :
When thou understandest that fire-sacrifice which leads
to heaven, know, O Nachiketas, that it is the attainment
of the endless worlds, and their support hidden in darkness.
Yama then told him that fire-sacrifice, the beginning of
1 See Brih. 6, 3, i, and Chhand. 5, 2, 4. 2 Katha i, 15.
5 THE DIVINE NATURE
all the worlds, and what bricks are required for the altar,
and how many, and how they are to be placed. And Nachi-
ketas repeated all as it had been told to him. Katha I, 15.
We find no comment or explanation beyond this.
The importance of the rites is simply taken for
granted. If you want to attain greatness, or to gain
the endless worlds, this is what you must do.
But this attitude was not enough for all ; some
minds required an explanation, a reason why, for
the childish and tedious ceremonies which had to
be performed. They not unnaturally wanted to
know how these had come into existence. The true
history of them was unknown, and if known would
have appeared to the wise men of those days most
uninteresting and also unedifying. They wanted
some mysterious and supernatural inj unction, promi
sing rewards for the performance, and threatening
penalties for the non-performance, of them ; and
what they wanted they got ; and they found, no doubt,
the same satisfaction in their achievement that a
student of folklore might find when compelled to
dance round an imaginary mulberry-bush, a thing
that has to be done c to amuse the children, by
reflecting on the antiquity and original meaning of
the ceremony ; with this difference, that the modern
student can show some reason for believing in the
approximate correctness of his imaginations, while
the ancient Brahman neither had nor wanted any.
IN THE UPANISHADS 59
These explanations are attempts, not at explaining
the sacrifice as a whole, but at putting sense into
the details of it. They deal with the matter piece
meal, and throw no light on the divine nature that
lies behind, except in so far as it is thought to be
the kind of nature that responds to this sort of
appeal.
A good example of such myth-making is found
in the rules for making and using a swing 1 . They
begin with the question of how many planks are
to be used for the seat and why :
Some say that there should be one plank, because the
wind blows in one way, and it should be like the wind.
This is not to be regarded. Some say there should be three
planks, because there are these three threefold worlds, and
it should be like them. That is not to be regarded.
Let there be two, for the two worlds (the earth and
heaven) are seen as if most real, while the ether between
the two- is the sky. Therefore let there be two planks.
Having thus provided for the two planks of the
seat and the crack between them, we deal in the
same spirit with the kind of wood to be used, the
kind of rope, the height above the ground of the
seat, the way in which the priest is to get into the
swing and out again :
Let him touch the swing with his chin. The parrot
thus mounts a tree, and he is of all birds the one who eats
most food. Therefore let him touch it with his chin.
1 Ait. i, 2, 3.
60 THE DIVINE NATURE
Let him mount the swing with his arms. The hawk
swoops thus on birds, and on trees, and he is of all birds
the strongest. Therefore let him mount with his arms.
The object of the whole action is to get offspring
and cattle, food and fortune ; and all these are
shadowed in the various details, the offspring by
the union between the masculine swing and the
feminine seat, the cattle by use of proper ropes, food
and fortune as indicated above. In all this there is
a steady adherence to the old forms, but with a
sense that they require some informing reason to
make them live. There is about it a touch of sacra
mental feeling, a sense that the outward sign requires
or implies an inward, though in this case hardly, a
spiritual, part. Sympathetic magic is universal; the
most civilized wedding guests will hurl rice after the
departing bride and bridegroom ; wine still goes
round the table the way of the sun ; while the savage
man conducts all his business on this principle.
When that instinct in human nature which expresses
itself in such practices has become moral, it is ready
for real sacramental teaching. That point had not
been reached in India in the age of the Upanishads ;
and the magic remains mere magic, for the want of
morality. But at its lowest there is in this school
of thought some attempt to view the inward and
outward as one.
A third order of minds were dissatisfied, and even
IN THE UPANISHADS 61
oppressed with the whole apparatus of sacrifice, and
yet wanted to keep the idea, and looked for a truer
expression of it. With them the ritual was to be
the shadow not of outward things, offspring or cattle,
food or fortune, but of something better ; and yet
it does not seem to have occurred to them to take
it as having a moral meaning. Their thought still
rested on physical life, vitality. They acknowledge
the old ritual in language, but put the actual practice
aside. In one case all religious observances are re
duced to one, and that one the control of the breath :
Therefore let a man perform one observance only, let
him breathe up and let him breathe down, that the evil
death may not reach him.... Then he obtains through it
union and oneness with that deity (i.e. breath). Brih. I,
5,23.
Elsewhere it is life itself, without any observance,
that is the true sacrifice :
This is indeed the highest penance, if a man laid up
with sickness suffers pain. He who knows this, conquers
the highest world.
This is indeed the highest penance, if they carry a dead
person into the forest. He who knows this, conquers the
highest world.
This is indeed the highest penance, if they place a dead
person on the fire. He who knows this, conquers the
highest world. Brih. 5, u, I.
And similarly:
Man is sacrifice. His first twenty-four years are the
morning libation... the next forty years are the midday
62 THE DIVINE NATURE
libation... the next forty-eight years are the third libation....
He too who knows this, lives on to a hundred and sixteen
years. Chhand. 3, 16, I ff.
At our first introduction to Yajnavalkya we find the
same teaching. The story is so characteristic of the
man, and so peculiarly Indian in its humour, that it
is worth telling in full. Yajnavalkya appeared at a
great sacrifice, offered by the king of the Videhas.
The king had provided a herd of a thousand cows,
with weights of gold tied to their horns, as a reward
for the most learned Brahman. He said :
Ye venerable Brahmanas,hewho among you is the wisest,
let him drive away these cows.
Yajnavalkya, without a moment s hesitation, said
to his attendant scholar :
Drive them away, my dear.
This conduct provoked the other Brahmanas, who at
once began a series of arguments with Yajnavalkya,
who, however, reduced them one by one to silence.
The first to attack him was the king s own hotri
priest, who said :
Are you indeed the wisest among us, O Yajnavalkya?
Yajnavalkya replied :
I bow before the wisest, but I wish indeed to have those
cows.
The priest asks how the sacrificer is freed beyond
the reach of death. Yajnavalkya answers that it is
IN THE UPANISHADS 63
by the work of the four priests, the Hotri, Adhvaryu,
Udgatri and Brahman priests, and that these four
are speech, the eye, the breath, and the mind ; or
they are fire, the sun, the moon, and the wind. The
true priests are not men muttering formulas, but
the powers of life or of nature 1 . These thinkers
do not try to express the inward by the outward,
they belittle the outward act. Indeed we shall see
in following the teaching of Yajnavalkya that they
belittle outward nature, accepting it as inevitable.
They despise it as not true. The priest with them
is no longer the mediator who links life and symbol;
he is a fraud, to be either disregarded or laughed at.
There is yet another school of rationalist thinkers
on the sacrifice, who so far as they are concerned
themselves reject it altogether. We find their most
decided utterances in Mundaka. The Mundaka
Upanishad is unusually clear and consistent, and is
devoted to this very subject, the value of sacrifice.
It is short, three parts of two chapters each. In the
first chapter the question is asked :
Sir, what is that through which, if it is known, every
thing else becomes known?
The answer is an instruction on the nature of the
Self, and the method of coming to the knowledge
of it ; and we are told that :
Two kinds of knowledge must be known, this is what
1 Brih. 3, i, i. See also Chhand. i, 10 and n.
64 THE DIVINE NATURE
all who know Brahma tell us, the higher and the lower
knowledge.
The lower knowledge is gained by the diligent
practice of sacrifice :
Practise them (sacrificial works) diligently, ye lovers of
truth; this is your path that leads to the world of good works.
Then, after a description of the advantages of sacri
fice, the teacher suddenly throws his argument aside,
and says :
But frail, in truth, are those boats, the sacrifices, the
eighteen, in which this lower ceremonial has been told.
Fools who praise this as the highest good are subject again
and again to old age and death.
Fools, dwelling in darkness, wise is their own conceit,
and puffed up with vain knowledge, go round and round,
staggering to and fro, like blind men, led by the blind....
Considering sacrifice and good works as the best, these
fools know no higher good, and having enjoyed their re
ward on the height of heaven gained by good works, they
enter again this world or a lower one. Mun<J. I, 2, I to 10.
We could scarcely have a more complete denuncia
tion of ceremonial religion in itself : it is mere folly
and darkness, to be flung away root and branch by
the wise and enlightened man ; but for all that it is
to be both allowed and enforced as a discipline for
men who are not yet enlightened, and cannot receive
the higher wisdom.
These teachers are rationalists, but they are not
Protestants. They make no effort against the
doctrine they disbelieve ; on the contrary, it is to
IN THE UPANISHADS 65
be carefully preserved, and no one is to go on, or
can go on, to the higher knowledge till he has ful
filled all the requirements of the lower.
The perplexing point in this scheme is that it
appears to be thought that a certain doctrine can
be a preparation for another to which it is directly
opposed. We are all driven by force of circumstan
ces to express truths in very different forms when
we are explaining them to a more or less primitive
understanding. The account of the battle of Water
loo, or of the making of bread, which will be of
use to a child of three, of twelve, or a grown person,
to an expert historian or a baker, must differ, but
they need not be contradictory ; whereas with these
teachers those who have the lower knowledge only
are fools, and their knowledge is vain ; if they stay
so they are hopelessly condemned, and have to look
forward to a constant renewal of old age and death.
Not that they are to be blamed for this. In all the
Upanishads there is no touch of moral indignation
about anything. The more enlightened offer a way
of illumination for the less enlightened ; but no one
is urged into it ; and if people like to follow the
lower way, and go on with the long round of birth
and death, it is entirely their own affair. A blessing
and a curse are set before them, but no injunction
to choose the blessing, unless they happen to
prefer it.
s. 5
66 THE DIVINE NATURE
The idea of the divine nature as present in the
sacrifice does not take us very far; indeed our sym
pathy will probably turn rather to those who deny
than to those who find it. But it has this merit, that
it is an attempt to provide for the community as a
whole. Even the c fools/ who are left to walk on
the lower way, are recognised to some extent, and
provision is allowed for their low needs.
THE DIVINE NATURE AS THE ULTIMATE
We have followed the line of thought that finds
the Divine in the vital impulse ; but the explanation
did not cover the whole of life. We might carry
Asvapati s teaching a step further, and imagine him
saying : The Self which you meditate on is the
world as a living whole. That, however, is but the
body of the Self ; and your bodily life will fail if
you cannot find a better teacher than me.
Again we have followed the line of thought which
finds the Divine in the sacrifice ; but sacrifice with
out morality ends in magic, strained apology, or re
jection. Neither of these lines could satisfy the
best minds in India. Man still wants to know the
Divine as it is, apart from the use we propose to
make of it. The world will not give the wise man
what he wants ; rather it prevents his finding it.
IN THE UPANISHADS 67
So, when he is old enough, and has finished all the
preparatory stages, and done all that must be done
to fulfil the lower righteousness, he will retire to
the forest, and give himself altogether to the search.
But meanwhile there is one form of leaving the
world that is common enough, and open to all, and
that is sleep ; here is escape ; for a few hours every
day man is actually free, away from the distracting
world by himself; and, seeing that his true self is
one with the true Self of all the world, it is from
sleep that he will learn most about that. The deeper
his sleep, the more complete is his escape. It is
better to dream than to wake ; and better to sleep
without dreams than with. Here we begin to look
for the Self not in its manifestations, but in itself,
as the ultimate.
We have an account of sleep from the more emo
tional side in Chhandogya. It is given us in a very
beautiful chapter, where we can hardly miss the note
of personal experience. It tells us how we look for
our true desires, which are hidden by what is false :
Thus whoever belonging to us has departed this life, him
we cannot gain back, so that we should see him with our
eyes.
Those who belong to us, whether living or departed,
and whatever else there is which we wish for and do not
obtain, all that we find there,... that Self abides in the
heart.... He who knows this goes day by day into heaven.
Chhand. 8, 3, I to 3.
68 THE DIVINE NATURE
The passage recalls again St Augustine s descrip
tion of the power of memory, in which he speaks
with extraordinary eloquence and beauty of that
inner world, more wonderful than even the outer
world of mountains, seas and stars ; like the Self
in Aitareya, though with a profound difference, he
asks :
What am I then, O my God?... Where then did I find
thee?...Thouwert within and I abroad, and there I searched
for thee....Thou wert with me, but I was not with thee.
Things held me far from thee, which, unless they were in
thee, were not at all. Conf. x.
In all his meditations St Augustine speaks to God ;
and this is what the rishi never does. He, too, is
trying to reach the ultimate reality, but he does
not call out by the way.
We have a more speculative account of the re
velation of the Self through sleep in Yajnavalkya s
teaching 1 . King Janaka and Yajnavalkya are talking,
and the King asks : What is the light of man ?
Yajnavalkya answers that it is sun, moon, fire, or
sound ; and the King asks again : When the sun
has set... and the moon has set and the fire has gone
out, and the sound hushed, what then is the light
of man ? Yajnavalkya answers that it is the Self;
and the King asks : Who is the Self? Yajnavalkya
describes him, first as being in the heart surrounded
1 Brih. 4, 3, 7 ff.
IN THE UPANISHADS 69
by the senses, next as in sleep beyond this world and
making it over again for himself; he creates the out
ward world again with its happiness, and enjoys it by
himself, tasting all experiences, till at last he has had
enough, and sinks into the deeper sleep, where he
desires no more desires, and dreams no more dreams;
and this deep sleep is the highest state of being :
This, indeed, is his true form, free from desires, free from
evil, free from fear.
And now nothing can trouble him any more, for
nothing seems any more to be real :
Then a father is not a father, a mother not a mother,
the worlds not worlds, the gods not gods....
An ocean is that one seer without any duality. This
is the Brahma-world, O King This is his highest goal,
this is his highest success, this is his highest world, this is
his highest bliss. All other creatures live on a small portion
of that bliss.
So the soul escapes gradually from its individual
existence in the heart, where it lives as one man
among others, till it realises itself as the one ocean
without any duality; and all other creatures are
only those which have not yet realised themselves.
If to be fast asleep is the highest life, it is a per
fection from which we fall easily and often ; but if
it is only the image of that life the Self will have
to be explained in clearer language; and the best
thought in the Upanishads is spent on the attempt
so to state the doctrine, without image or allegory,
yo THE DIVINE NATURE
and in language that admits of no error. It was the
Indians who first of any thinkers entered on the
struggle of man with his own intellectual limitations,
and first fell in that age-long conflict.
What then is the Ultimate Being ? What did it
come from ? Was it something that existed, or did
it not exist ? Some said one and some the other :
In the beginning there was that only which is 1 .
So Uddalaka told his son (^vetaketu with vehemence,
contradicting those who said :
In the beginning this was non-existent 2 .
It may be a mere question of words whether we
call a thing existent or not, while it is latent, not
actual; and the argument throws no light. We
cannot conceive the state that was before the be
ginning.
But the Self is sought not only by enquiring into
origins, but by exploring ourselves as we are, and
trying to find out where it now conceals itself. The
first necessity is that it must be beyond any limita
tions. It cannot be thought of as subject to any
affection not to pain, for that is inconceivable, and
therefore not to pleasure; for to be subject to
pleasure is to be subject to the possibility of pain
in the loss of that pleasure. All this is expressed
1 Chhand. 6, z, i. 2 Chhand. 3, 19, i.
IN THE UPANISHADS 71
as usual in a story 1 . The Sage, Narada, has learnt
all the knowledge of the Vedas ; and, still unsatis
fied, he comes to Sanatkumara to be taught; Sa-
natkumara tells him that all the wisdom he has
learnt is a mere name ; but there is something
better than name, speech ; and better than speech,
mind ; and so on, through a list of powers. The
list is long and unconvincing. There is no sequence
in it ; and it seems meant only to show how long
the way is, and how each power is incomplete in
itself. Speech is better than name, mind than speech,
will than mind, consideration than will, reflection
than consideration, understanding than reflection,
power than understanding, food than power, water
than food, fire than water, ether than fire, memory
than ether, hope than memory, spirit, the spirit by
which men live, than hope ; and he who knows
this is an ativddin y one who knows much. But there
is a still higher knowledge, and Narada has more
to learn. He must know the true ; to understand
the true he must understand his understanding,
that is he must perceive and understand his percep
tion, that is he must believe and understand his
belief; in order to believe he must attend on a
spiritual tutor ; and to understand his attention on
the tutor, he must perform the sacred duties of a
student, which cannot be done unless he obtains
1 Chhand. 7, i to 24.
72 THE DIVINE NATURE
bliss. This bliss he must desire to understand.
Sir, says poor Narada, I desire to understand it.
The infinite is bliss. There is no bliss in anything finite.
Infinity only is bliss. This infinity, however, we must
desire to understand.
Sir, I desire to understand it.
And here we come to the end of the pilgrimage :
Where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, under
stands nothing else, that is the infinite. Where one sees
something else, hears something else, understands something
else, that is the finite. The infinite is immortal, the finite
is mortal.
Sir, in what does the infinite rest?
In its own greatness, or not even in greatness.
There is no rest in anything that is incomplete in
itself, in anything that rests in something else. The
infinite must not even be said to rest in its own
greatness, lest we should think that greatness is
something different from itself, and start off again
on our wanderings. The thinker is lost in the maze
of his own notions, each as it rises in turn suggest
ing another, till he reaches the thought of something
of which all that can be said is that it is not to lead
to something else ; and even then he is checked by
the fear that he may be misunderstood, and some
fresh conception may come in. Thought breaks
down in the effort to grasp the incomprehensible.
We cannot imagine the infinite, but we can name
it. We are left with the sense of baffled wonder :
IN THE UPANISHADS 73
we have tried to attain the ultimate knowledge,
and it is beyond us 1 . It is Yajnavalkya who brings
all this teaching to a point, and sets it clearly before
us.
Yajnavalkya is still carrying on his conversation
with King Janaka. It is a conversation, we are told,
which he was reluctant to begin, but the King
compelled him by an old promise. When Yajna
valkya had given him the doctrine of the ocean
without any duality, he went on to describe what
happens to the individual self at death ; how he
gathers the senses together in the heart, and departs;
the way in which he then makes a new shape for
himself ; and what the Self is that acts so :
And he is that great unborn Self, who consists of know
ledge, is surrounded by the pranas, the ether within the
heart. In it there reposes the ruler of all, the lord of all,
the king of all. He does not become greater by good works,
or smaller by evil works. He is the lord of all, the king of
all things, the protector of all things. He is a bank and a
boundary, so that these worlds may not be confounded.
Brahmanas seek to know him by the study of the Veda,
by sacrifice, by gifts, by penance, by fasting, and he who
knows him becomes a muni. Wishing for that world only,
mendicants leave their homes.
Knowing this, the people of old did not wish for offspring.
What shall we do with offspring, they said, we who have
this Self, and this world ? And they, having risen above
the desire for sons, wealth and new worlds, wander about
as mendicants. For desire for sons is desire for wealth, and
1 For a similar passage see Katha i, 3, 10 and also 2, 6, 7.
74 THE DIVINE NATURE
desire for wealth is desire for worlds. Both these are indeed
desires only. He, the Self, is to be described by No, no !
he is incomprehensible, for he cannot be comprehended ;
he is imperishable, for he cannot perish ; he is unattached,
for he does not attach himself; unfettered, he does not
suffer, he does not fail. Him who knows, these two do not
overcome, whether he says that for some reason he has
done evil, or for some reason he has done good, he over
comes both, and neither what he has done, nor what he
has omitted to do, burns him. Brih. 4, 4, 22.
This long definition is especially valuable for the
fulness of solution that it offers. It shows us the
Self as the vital impulse, living in the heart ; and
again as the principle of law, c a bank and a boundary/
by virtue of which all things have and keep the
right relation to each other. The image is a homely
one, and all the better for that; we may see it
illustrated any day in the paddy fields, divided by
little banks that hold up the water, and make the
soil from a mere marsh into an ordered world.
We find here also the personal terms which must
illustrate for some men the activity of the Self,
lord, king, and protector, and the practical means by
which only the knowledge of Self can be approached,
that lower way/ by which, as we were told in
Mundaka, all must go, study, sacrifice, gifts,
penance, fasting, and renunciation. The last is the
chief. All ties are a hindrance, the desire for sons
is only a desire for wealth ; for the muni must be
saved alone, he does not save his son as well. And
IN THE UPANISHADS 75
then Yajnavalkya goes on to speak of the Self as
he is in himself. He stands beyond all distinction,
pain and pleasure, good and evil. To any suggested
definition we can only answer No, no.
This phrase, Neti, netij is found only in Yajfia-
valkya s teaching, in the Upanishads ; but it is one
of their most characteristic phrases 1 . It appears as
the summing up of the teaching that he gives to
his wife Maitreyl, when he was leaving her for the
forest. Before he goes away Yajnavalkya proposes
to divide his money between his two wives ; but
Maitreyl, who was conversant with Brahma/ asks
him instead to tell her how she may become im
mortal. He answers that nothing is dear except for
the sake of the Self:
Verily, a husband, . . .wife, . . .sons,. . .wealth, . . .everything
is not dear that you may love everything; but that you
may love the Self, therefore everything is dear....
That Self (our individual self), is altogether a mass of
knowledge,. . .when he has departed there is no more know
ledge, I say, O Maitreyl. Thus spoke Yajnavalkya.
Maitreyl takes this to mean that the individual
self does not survive death, which is not the answer
she expected :
Then Maitreyl said: Here, Sir, thou hast landed me in
utter bewilderment, indeed I do not understand him.
1 We have it four times in Yajfiavalkya s own teaching, and
once it is quoted. See 3, 9, 26. 4, 2, 4. 4, 4, 22 (as above).
4 5> 1 5 ( as below), and 2, 3, 6.
76 THE DIVINE NATURE
But he replied: O Maitreyl, I say nothing that is be
wildering. Verily, beloved, that Self is imperishable, and
of an indestructible nature.
For when there is as it were duality, then one sees the
other, one smells the other, one tastes the other, one salutes
the other, one hears the other, one perceives the other, one
touches the other, one knows the other ; but when the
Self only is all this, how should he see another, how should
he smell another, how should he taste another, how should
he touch another, how should he know another? How
should he know him by whom he knows all this? That
Self is to be described by No, no ! He is incomprehensible,
for he cannot be comprehended ; he is imperishable, for he
cannot perish; he is unattached, for he does not attach
himself; unfettered, he does not suffer, he does not fail.
How, O beloved, should he know the knower? Thus,
O Maitreyl, thou hast been instructed. Thus far goes
immortality. Having said so, Yajnavalkya went away into
the forest. Brih. 4, 5, 14, 15.
What did Maitreyl think as she watched him go ?
He had brought her to the same conclusion that
Narada and Janaka had reached : where all is one
there can be no relation between that One and any
thing else, for there is nothing else. Maitreyl was
afraid that she herself would be lost in that ocean
without any duality; and Yajnavalkya answered
that this could not be so when she came to see that
she herself was that ocean ; she was imperishable,
and unfettered ; she was also unattached, perfect
and solitary ; she could never see or know another,
for there was no other. We think of Maitreyl, left
sitting among her household possessions, rather
IN THE UPANISHADS 77
sadly, looking towards the forest, from which the
old man, who is really only herself, will never come
back. His arguments seem to be unassailable, but
do they really give the answer to the whole of what
was in her mind ? Can there be more than one real
being, and if not how can it have relations? How
could it stand apart from itself, and see or know
anything ? How would it be possible for it to mind
whether Yajfiavalkya, who was itself, slept at home
with Maitreyl, who was also itself, or in the forest,
which was also, after a fashion, itself? How could
there be any caring, still less any anxiety, when all
existence is one, and c thou art that ? No; these
things are, they must be, just the illusions which
somehow or other play on the surface of that ocean,
and please or distress us as long as we think we are
anything else but the One Being. And yet have
not the colours on the surface of the ocean a sort
of reality ? They vanish as soon as we take up the
water ; but there they are again, as soon as we look
for them. Why should the One Being have illusions
about itself, especially painful ones ? The chances
are that Maitreyl obeyed the call of habit, and went
to see about her supper, and tried not to listen
for such manifestations of the One Real Being as
thunderstorms or tigers, and so went on, with a
divided mind, unsatisfied.
Meanwhile Yajfiavalkya has attained. He does
78 THE DIVINE NATURE
not mind if he does meet a tiger. He is contented
with what he can find to eat, or what some passer
by gives him. He is not troubled even about
Maitreyl. Why should he be sorry because for a
little she thinks she is sorry? Sorrow and joy are
nothing real ; once we are free from desire nothing
can touch us. Yajnavalkya may speak so for him
self, and probably will speak so. He has trained
himself for many years to know that the King s
court, the argumentative Brahmans, the cows with
gold upon their horns, and the wife who was dear
to him, could all alike disappear as an illusion, and
leave him alone with his Self. He can be at one in
his mind, and at peace ; and it must remain to be
seen if what satisfies one man can satisfy a whole
race of men, if Yajnavalkya can speak not only for
himself, but for India, or for the world.
There is still one member of the family, of whose
views we have only the slightest indication in the
Upanishad, and concerning whom we may therefore
allow our fancy a little law :
Yajnavalkya had two wives, Maitreyl and Katyayanl;
of these Maitreyl was conversant with Brahma, but Kat
yayani possessed such knowledge as only women possess.
Brih. 4, 5, i.
Katyayani very likely beat her head upon the floor,
and cried herself ill, and spoke bitterly to her co-
wife into the bargain on the occasion of her husband s
IN THE UPANISHADS 79
departure. She probably also called on Rama to
witness her distress, and had no hesitation about
addressing him as a powerful person, distinct from
herself, and who could help her if he would. She
neither doubted nor speculated about his nature or
her own ; and her feelings were uncontrolled by
reason. Yajnavalkya s reason was independent of
feeling, for he had deliberately put that on one
side ; and Maitreyl hesitated between the two,
silenced, and almost convinced.
CHAPTER III
HUMAN NATURE IN THE UPANISHADS
OUR knowledge of everything outside ourselves
depends, in the last resort, on our knowledge of our
selves. Therefore in forming an idea of the Great
Self we should expect to begin by asking. What is
man ? or What am I ? As a matter of fact this ques
tion is invariably left till the last. The first thought,
whether of the child or of the race, turns outwards ;
and we have eventually to revise the ideas already
formed, when we have come to a slightly clearer
conception of the haphazard way in which we have
formed them. In the Vedas we find no questions
asked about human nature. In the Upanishads it
is looked at from five points of view : as being the
reproduction of the divine nature ; as being the seat
of desire, which is eventually to be either satisfied
or destroyed ; as controlled by caste, which fixes its
condition in this life ; as controlled by transmigra
tion, which fixes its condition after death; and lastly
as capable of salvation, which it hopes to attain in
the end, and of sin, which hinders that salvation.
IN THE UPANISHADS 8r
HUMAN NATURE AS THE REPRODUCTION OF
THE DIVINE
Each man is the manifestation on a small scale
of what is manifested on a large scale in the whole
world. This idea is so frequent that almost any of
the examples we have looked at already would do
to show it. The human body acts as a kind of mem-
oria technica^ or rosary, by which to tabulate all ex
istence ; either you explain the Great Self by the
joints of the body, or you explain the joints of the
body by the Great Self. When the world was made
from the sacrifice of Purusha, each part of him be
came a part of it ; and we find the same list of cor
responding parts again and again. It seems that the
mind of man cannot conceive of anything except in
relation to itself; so each conception, as it turns
up, we set against something in ourselves, some
need, or power, or affection of our own ; and these
thinkers of the Upanishads measured things against
their bodies. The eye is the sun ; the ear, with its
power of gathering sounds by no visible means from
remote distances, becomes the fo ur quarters of space ;
hairs become plants ; the mind, which is least easily
expressed in terms of the body, becomes the moon,
perhaps because the moon was the source of the
heavenly Soma, the giver of strength and intelli
gence. This way of looking at the world is to some
s. 6
82 HUMAN NATURE
extent a material one ; it is not that the Great Self
has really a body like ours, but that all existing
things are its body ; and our attention is drawn to
it in this bodily aspect rather than as having a will,
thought or emotion. That of which the moon is
the mind does not present itself as purely spiritual.
At the same time, this conception has the great merit
of showing us man as being in relation with the whole
world. The relation may not be a very exalted one,
but it is there ; and we can say that, according to
it, nothing that exists is alien to humanity.
HUMAN NATURE AS THE SEAT OF DESIRE
The position of Indians with regard to desire is
peculiar. Most races seem to find the struggle for
the attainment of desire in itself satisfying up to a
certain point. But the Indians find little zest in the
struggle, and only look to the attainment of the end.
This attitude maybe attributed partly to the climate;
but the political circumstances of the country, how
ever they arose, have helped to produce it. In India
race and nationality have never gone together : they
could not and did not form a common bond. The
states of India comprised people of various races,
only held together by their common ruler, and united
to him by ties of circumstance, not of race. Political
life is far less interesting than in the West : the
IN THE UPANISHADS 83
organisations that grew up were cruder. Absolute
monarchy or tribal oligarchy, and a system of trade-
guilds made, not for the growth of new and more
developed forms, but only for stability. Art, especi
ally architecture and sculpture and the domestic arts,
flourished greatly ; but literature, having attained a
certain point, ceased to develop, and went on deal
ing with old legends and stories of passion and
adventure, in which the actors, animal or human,
have simple characters and motives, and remain the
same from age to age. In other nations men have
found interest enough for one lifetime in some
secondary object, patriotism, art, the righting of
some special wrong. Art may have provided such
an interest for Indians, but not political life; and
the men who might elsewhere have found the mate
rial for a happy life in such things where left, with
desire working, and with no object outside their
private affairs for it to take hold of. They tried
to find a true satisfaction for the desire ; and when
this failed, they took the other line, and hoped to
destroy the desire itself. We find both tendencies
in the Upanishads.
The things which are classed as the objects of
desire are not of a high order ; they are the pleasures
of this life, innocent pleasures sometimes, some
times not. The highest desire of the rishi is peace,
but that is not usually counted as a desire ; and in
62
84 HUMAN NATURE
this fact lies one weakness of the whole argument.
They do not recognise any possible worth in desire,
but blame the faculty for it, in itself as well as in
its actual working.
In Brihadaranyaka and Taittirlya we have two
scales of bliss, which showus how desire was thought
of; they reckon from the happiest imaginable human
life as a unit :
If a man is healthy, wealthy, and lord of others, sur
rounded by all human enjoyments, that is the highest
blessing of men. Brih. 4, 3, 33.
Let there be a noble young man, who is well-read, very
swift, firm and strong, and let the whole world be full of
wealth for him, that is one measure of human bliss. Taitt.
2, 8, i.
All higher degrees of bliss are found by multiply
ing the degree below by a hundred at each stage,
so as to find the amount of bliss belonging to a
human Gandharva, a divine Gandharva,the Fathers,
the Devas by birth, the sacrificial Devas, the thirty-
three Devas, Indra, Brihaspati,Prajapati,or Brahma.
The scales differ as to the number of stages and the
names given to them ; in Brihadaranyaka the world
of Brahma enjoys a bliss a billion times that of the
happiest man ; in Taittirlya, Prajapati s bliss is one
hundred thousand billion times that of the same
man. But in each scale we find the statement that
as is the bliss of these worlds, so is the bliss of c a
great sage, who has no desires, so that we are left
IN THE UPANISHADS 85
to choose whether we should prefer to enjoy satis
faction of desire with Brahma or Prajapati, or the
end of desire, attained by the sage.
The great advocate for the satisfaction of desire
is the author of the Eighth Book of Chhandogya,
who gives us the doctrine of true desires. In the
o
first chapter of this book we are told that the Brahma
lives in the c city of Brahma, the ether in the heart ;
and then the question arises;
If every thing that exists is contained in thecityof Brahma,
all beings and all desires, then what is left of it when old
age reaches it, and scatters it, or when it falls to pieces?
The answer is :
That is the true Brahma-city (i.e. the Brahma itself,
not the body, is really the city). In it all desires are con
tained... Those who depart from hence without having
discovered the Self and those true desires, for them there
is no freedom in all the worlds. But those who depart from
hence after having discovered the Self and those true desires,
for them there is freedom in all the worlds. Chhand. 8, I,
i to 6.
The true Brahma is that which has true desires ; it
desires what we really want. We are next told what
the true desires are, and they make a sufficiently
concrete list: fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters,
friends, perfumes and garlands, food and drink, song
and music, women.
Whatever object he is attached to, whatever object he
desires, by his mere will it comes to him, and having attained
it he is happy.
86 HUMAN NATURE
As a matter of fact this is not what we find in out
ward life ; but we are now told how we may do it,
while we are warned by the way that :
These true desires, however, are hidden by what is false.
It is in our own hearts that we find these desires,
not in the outer world ; if we will but believe it,
we shall find them all in our hearts; and it is sleep
that will set us free from the obsession of daily life,
and let us see them, as we saw in the last chapter
in another connection.
The same teaching is given us in another story
in Chhandogya :
Prajapati said: The Self which is free from sin... That
it is which we must search out; that it is which we must
try to understand.... He who has searched out that Self and
understands it obtains all worlds and all desires.
The Gods and Demons, attracted by this teaching,
sent respectively Indra and Virocana to learn its
meaning from Prajapati ; they stayed with him for
thirty-two years; and he then gave them an explana
tion of the Self, which satisfied Virocana, but failed
to satisfy Indra. He told them that this Self, whom
they had come to search out and understand, was
the person seen reflected in the eye or in the water:
That is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless, this
is Brahma.
So Virocana taught this doctrine to the Asuras ; and
to this day they worship the body, and hope in vain
IN THE UPANISHADS 87
by this means to gain this world and the next. But
Indra, as he went away, reflected that, though, when
he wore his best clothes, the Self reflected in the
water had appeared very fine, yet if he had been in
rags, crippled or lame, or even dead, the reflected
Self would have suffered with him :
Therefore, (he thought), I see no good in this doctrine.
He went back to Prajapati, and stayed with him
another thirty-two years, when he received another
explanation : the true Self is the Self who enjoys
himself in dreams. Again he went away dissatisfied,
and again he bethought himself that if he had bad
dreams the Self must suffer :
Therefore I see no good in this.
Again he went back to Prajapati, and again he stayed
for thirty-two years, and then he was told :
When a man being asleep, reposing, and at perfect rest,
sees no dreams, this is the Self, this is the immortal, the
fearless, this is Brahma.
Again he saw a difficulty :
In truth he thus does not know himself that he is I, nor
does he know anything that exists. He is gone to utter
annihilation. I see no good in this.
On this point the teaching of Chhandogya is opposed
to that of Brihadaranyaka. Here we are expected
to look forward to knowing something, not to that
state in which, according to Yajnavalkya,the knower
88 HUMAN NATURE
cannot know. There is no good in such a condition :
Indra wants a life with relation to something.
Five years more discipleship bring him the final
revelation. The Self, Prajapati says, lives in the
body, and :
When in the body... is held by pleasure and pain, ...but
when he is free of the body, then neither pleasure nor pain
touches him.
When the Self in the heart approaches the highest
light, the knowledge of its true self, it is in the
highest state. It then enjoys itself independently
of the body :
He moves about there, laughing, playing, and rejoicing
in his mind, be it with women, carriages or relatives, never
minding that body into which he was born. Chhand. 8, 7,
i to 12, 5.
The revelation ends surprisingly, with a sudden
drop back to earthly things. We arrive after all
only at the idea that the Self is just a thinner kind
of body, satisfied with the recollection or fancy of
bodily things, and really chiefly concerned with the
employment of the senses. We are still in the
material world, though it is reduced to a shadow.
It is a shock ; and yet there are moments when we
seem to find a certain saving common sense in this
view. It is at least imaginable, if commonplace.
The Self who rejoices in this sort of highest state
remains to some extent akin to us, though it may
IN THE UPANISHADS 89
not be a very edifying relationship, while we can
not make any rational conception of the nature of
Yajnavalkya s Knower.
From Chhandogya we turn to Mundaka. Mund-
aka is coherent and clear; it begins with teaching the
lower knowledge ; and while we follow that lower
way, we are to look for the fulfilment of desire,
which is the reward for the fulfilment of duty :
Whatever state a man whose nature is purified imagines,
and whatever desire he desires, that state he conquers, and
those desires he obtains. Therefore let every man who
desires happiness worship the man who knows the Self.
Mund. 3, i, 10.
But in the next chapter we learn about the higher
way:
He who forms desires in his mind, is born again through
his desires here and there. But to him whose desires are
fulfilled and who is conscious of the true Self, all desires
vanish, even here on earth. Mund. 3, 2.
The weak point of this teaching is, as we noticed
before, that the higher knowledge is not the develop
ment, but the contradiction of the lower ; the very
powers that have been trained on the lower level
have to be destroyed on the higher ; two opposite
conceptions are set side by side ; and harmony is
sought by first accepting one, and then throwing it
over and accepting the other. Inadequate teaching
may lead up to more adequate teaching ; but false
teaching cannot lead up to anything ; and if it has
90 HUMAN NATURE
to be thrown overboard, what is the use of having
it at all ? If we want to harmonise two apparently
opposite doctrines, we must find some wider view
in which we see that they are not contrary, but com
plementary. To state them and leave them lying
side by side, or to believe them one after the other,
does not reconcile them.
Lastly we come to Yajnavalkya s view of desire,
which we have already met in the last chapter. With
him, more than with anyone else, there is no dis
tinction whatever between divine and human, there
is no process to be worked through before their
unity can be realised ; what the divine is that the
human is, a Knower, with nothing to be known,
unattached and unfettered. We are told that the
man who desires things, gets them :
To whatever object a man s own mind is attached, to
that he goes strenuously, together with his deed. . . .
And eventually he comes back from the other
world, where he reaps the results of his deed, to
this world of action :
So much for the man who desires. But as to the man
who does not desire... being Brahma, he goes to Brahma.
Brin. 4, 4, 6.
We have thus three views of human nature as
the seat of desire. In Chhandogya, where desire is
to be fulfilled, the result, after much that is fine
and suggestive, is a disappointment : we cannot get
IN THE UPANISHADS 91
beyond the idea of some kind of material enjoyment,
and human nature is left to satisfy itself, if it can,
with women, carriages and relatives. In Mundaka
we find the ideas of satisfaction and annihilation
coupled but not reconciled. In Brihadaranyaka we
reach a consistent idea of human nature by sacri
ficing the very things by which we recognise it.
When human personality is given up, all existence
can be conceived of as at any rate one, and we have
a vision which is attractive in its simplicity, but
which succeeds no better than any other theory in
supplying the explanations we want. It is no ex
planation to say that the many are passing mani
festations of the One ; for what is it in the One
that leads to the passing manifestations ? How is
it that the One wants to relate itself to anything ?
We may succeed in reasoning ourselves back into
our original oneness ; but that does not explain why
we ever left it, or secure us against falling again
into our illusion of separate being.
HUMAN NATURE AS CONTROLLED BY CASTE
Caste is the provision made in India for man as
a member of a community. As we have already
noticed, this was not the aspect of a man s life that
had the greatest interest for Indian thinkers ; and
the form that the institution eventually took is
92 HUMAN NATURE
founded on few ideas, but those few are powerful.
It is not marked by a power of growth or develop
ment into fresh forms, but by a great power of
stability. Fresh castes may come into existence,
or old ones change their status ; but the general
form of society remains unchanged so long as caste
is the ruling force. Anyone interested in this sub
ject should read the excellent account given of it
in Sir Herbert Risley s People of India 1 . We have
a mythical account of the origin of caste given us
in the Rigveda, and also in Brihadaranyaka 2 , in
which we are told how the four castes arose from
the different members of Brahma ; but Sir Herbert
Risley tells us that we should be wrong in thinking
that there were actually four original castes, which
were divided and subdivided till there came to be
the vast number we now have. On the contrary,
the people were divided into a great number of
hereditary trade-guilds, from which the leading
castes drew out one by one, first the Brahman
families of learned men and priests, declaring them
selves holier than the rest, demanding peculiar
respect, and refusing any longer to allow their
women to marry men outside their own circle. The
military Kshatriya families followed this example,
and so by degrees did other classes. The rule that
occupation must be hereditary took an unusually
1 Chapter vi and Appendix v. 2 Rigv. 10, 90. Brih. i, 4, u.
IN THE UPANISHADS 93
strong hold in India. There is always a natural
tendency in this direction ; but in most nations it
is modified by the tendency towards individual de
velopments, whereas in India the individual bent
that enables a son to break away from his father s
occupation was not strong enough to resist the
growing force of caste. Caste is also deeply in
fluenced by race feeling, the higher race always
struggling to preserve the purity of its descent.
Where there were no territorial distinctions this
motive would gain in strength ; as people must
divide themselves somehow, caste distinction took
the place of national distinction.
Looking at human nature as controlled by caste,
we find that it forms itself into communities neither
local nor racial, nor yet founded on any personal
characteristic. The difference between one man and
another consists in birth, which binds him to a
particular occupation ; to be born a Chandala makes
a man not only socially, but essentially inferior to
another, born a Kshatriya or a Brahman. This view
consistently carried out, as it is not generally done
in other lands, produces a peculiar estimate of human
nature. In communities based on racial or local
considerations public spirit shows itself, indeed it
is the chief characteristic that does show itself.
Whether in a wandering tribe, or in a settled society,
living in a city or state, military service comes on
94 HUMAN NATURE
all, whatever other duties they may have. The
whole free population has to a greater or less extent
a share in public affairs ; and this general duty is
expressed in some form of public and general wor
ship. All classes have their share in the national
god, and are expected to take part in ceremonies
which express a natural or political relation. The
god is sometimes the actual ancestor of his people,
and the relationship between them a family bond.
The value of the individual is measured by his
position as a citizen ; the military leader, the fighting
man, the counsellor and the priest, who has access
to the god, are all of the first value. The god him
self is a military chief, and often seems little more
than a slightly idealised man. In the Upanishads
the sense of public duty and the military deity do
not appear ; even Indra, the god who comes nearest
to this type in Vedic days, has taken to philosophy,
and studies the doctrine of the True Self with
Prajapati.
Other communities have been founded on the
common bond of some personal characteristic
voluntary armies, trade-guilds, where the member
ship was not hereditary, monastic institutions, col
leges of scholars, benevolent societies, any body to
which anyone belongs in order to find fuller oppor
tunities for the exercise of some quality of his own.
These do not necessarily shut people out from
IN THE UPANISHADS 95
communities based on local distinctions ; indeed in
some cases, as in that of armies, they strengthen
the other bond : a devoted soldier is in most cases
a devoted citizen. In other cases, especially where
religion or learning is the bond, one claim may
very likely clash with the other ; and the monk or
scholar has a bond with people of the same way of
thinking in some other country than his own. In
such a case the individual has to decide for himself
which bond is stronger. Communities of this sort
bring out and strengthen that personal characteristic
on which they are based. A soldier of fortune in
the middle ages was purely a righting man ; his per
sonal character might be neither pious nor patriotic,
but it was martial. A scholar, in times of peace,
finds himself at home among scholars in every
land, and becomes more and more purely a man of
learning. Such a character may harden into a type ;
a man becomes very much a soldier, a monk, or a
scholar ; but if his individual character cuts across
his community character, one of the two will give
way. In the West, the question is decided some
times one way and sometimes the other. In India,
caste has almost always proved too strong for per
sonal character, which at last it stifles. We get a
clearly marked caste character, a stable society, and
a dim sense of personal worth.
We find the caste system recognised all through
96 HUMAN NATURE
the Upanishads, but there is one curious point about
it : the Brahmans are the highest caste, but the
Kshatriyas are the possessors of certain doctrines,
which they teach to the Brahmans, sometimes with
an apology for undertaking to teach their betters,
sometimes with none. The doctrine that the true
Self is revealed in sleep, the doctrine of the two
ways by which man goes away, and of his return
to this world, and the doctrine of the Vai^vanara
self, come from the Kshatriyas. In the difficulty
and uncertainty of their relation to the Brahmans,
personal character is revealed. In one case we hear
about the conceit of the Brahman who wants to
show off before his royal pupil and is reduced to
silence by him 1 ; in others about the humility of
the Brahmans who ask instruction, and the courtesy
of the kings who give it 2 . But for the lower castes
there is no question, and personal character is not
expected in them, one may as well be born a hog
as a Chandala.
HUMAN NATURE AS CONTROLLED BY
TRANSMIGRATION
There are two forms of transmigration doctrine
in the Upanishads that of Brihadaranyaka and that
of Chhandogya, one in which there is no mention
1 Brih. 2, i, 15 ff. Kaushl. 4, i ff.
2 Chhand. 5, 31. Kaushl. i, i. Chhand. 5, n, 4.
IN THE UPANISHADS 97
of animals, and one in which there is 1 . Of this
latter doctrine there are again two forms, according
to one of which creatures are reproduced again and
again in the same forms, while according to the
other they pass to higher or lower births. In
Brihadaranyaka Yajnavalkya is holding a debate
with Jaratkarava, who asks him what becomes of
a dead person, whose various parts have gone back
into fire, sun, moon, space and so on. He answers :
Take my hand, my friend. We two alone shall know
of this; let this question of ours not be discussed in public.
Then those two went out and argued ; and what they said
was karma, what they praised was karma, viz. that a man
becomes good by good work, and bad by bad work. Brih.
3> 2 > J 3-
Here there is no mention of animals, nor of an
elaborate machinery to secure exact retribution.
Again we have images to illustrate the fact that
man is born again :
That person, after separating himself from his mem
bers, ...hastens back again, as he came, to the place from
which he started to new life. And as a caterpillar, after
having reached the end of a blade of grass, and after having
made another approach (to another blade) draws itself to
gether towards it, thus does this Self, after having thrown
off this body and dispelled all ignorance, and after making
another approach (to another body), draw himself together
towards it.
1 Animals are however mentioned in Brih. 6, 3, 16, but not in
Yajftavalkya s teaching which ends with the fourth book.
s. 7
98 HUMAN NATURE
And as a goldsmith, taking a piece of gold, turns it into
another and more beautiful shape, so does this Self, after
having thrown off this body and dispelled all ignorance,
make unto himself another, newer, and more beautiful
shape, whether it be like the Fathers, or like the Gan-
dharvas or like the Devas, or like Prajapati, or like Brahma,
or like other beings. Brih. 4, 4, 3, 4.
The Self is said to be like a king, who is greeted
on his return home by all his ministers ; so do the
elements wait on the Self. We see the process of
transmigration as a sort of regal circuit from birth
to birth, an exploration of all forms of life. This
joyousness does not appear in other schemes.
In Chhandogya we hear how the dead go one of
two ways. They may go by the way of the Devas,
which leads to the light half of the moon, to the
sun, and at last to Brahma, whence they do not
return ; this is the best way, followed by those who
have attained perfect knowledge. Or they may go
by the way of the Fathers, to the dark half of the
moon :
Having dwelt there till their good works are consumed,
they return again that way as they came,
and come down as rain :
Then he is born as rice and corn, herbs and trees, sesa-
mum and beans. From thence the escape is beset with
most difficulties. For whoever the persons may be that eat
the food, and beget offspring, he henceforth becomes like
unto them.
Those whose conduct has been good, will quickly attain
IN THE UPANISHADS 99
some good birth, the birth of a Brahmana, or a Kshatriya
or a Vaicya. But those whose conduct has been evil will
quickly attain an evil birth, the birth of a dog, or a hog,
or a Chandala. Chhand. 5, 10, 5 to 7.
The author appears to have been unduly sanguine
in saying that this would happen c quickly/ for the
great commentator, (^amkaracharya says, writing on
this passage, that :
The great difficulty or danger in the round of transmigra
tion arises when the rain has fructified the earth, and passes
into herbs and trees, rice, corn and beans. For first of all,
some of the rain does not fructify at once, but falls into
rivers and into the sea, to be swallowed up by fishes and
sea-monsters. Then, only after these have been dissolved
in the sea, and after the sea-water has been attracted by
the clouds, the rain falls down again, it may be on desert
or stony land. Here it may be swallowed by snakes or deer,
and these may be swallowed by other animals, so that the
round of existence seems endless. Nor is this all. Some
rain may dry up, or be absorbed by bodies that cannot be
eaten. Then if the rain is absorbed by rice, corn, etc. and
this is eaten, it may be eaten by children, or by men who
have renounced marriage, and thus again lose the chance
of a new birth. Lastly there is the danger arising from
the nature of the being in whom the food. . .becomes a new
seed, and likewise from the nature of the mother. All these
chances have to be met before a new birth as a Brahmana,
Kshatriya or Vaiya can be secured.
We have another account of the same thing a few
chapters further on, but there we are told that the
creatures are always of the same kind ; they emerge
into individual life from one True Being, and are
72
ioo HUMAN NATURE
merged into it again ; while merged, they lose their
individuality, but when they emerge again they
become the same that they were before. This is
explained by two examples : the juices of the trees
become one honey, and :
Have no discrimination, so that they might say, I am the
juice of this tree or that. Chhand. 6, 9, 2.
Or again, the rivers run into the sea, and :
When they are in the sea do not know, I am this or
that river. Chhand. 6, 10, I.
This scheme is a direct contradiction of the other;
there is no retribution in it; the stream of life merely
moves out and in, like a pulse, and a creature alter
nates between actual and latent being, with no further
end or prospect. The illustrations of the tree and
the river have a suggestiveness and a beauty about
them which hides, but does not take away, the con
fusion of the original thought. For the moment
we think something is made clearer; but the more
we look into the illustration, the more confused we
are. We ask, What is a tree, or the sap of a tree ?
What is a river, or water ? Where does the identity
of a river reside ? in the water or the banks, or the
combination of water and banks ? Here it seems to
reside in one particular body of water, once present
between banks, and now existing in the sea. Really
the image illustrates no one point of the question
IN THE UPANISHADS 101
exactly, and only leaves us with a vague impression
instead of a definite idea.
In all this the point of interest for us to-day lies
in the nature of the being that has these adventures:
What is it that is sometimes a man, sometimes rain,
rice, sea-water or an animal ? In the next verse we
are told that whatever it is, it is always the same :
Whatever these creatures are here, whether a lion or a
wolf, or a boar or a worm, or a midge, or a gnat, or a mos
quito, that they become again and again. Chhand. 6, 10, 2.
But in this none of the other accounts agree ; what
ever it is they tell us, it is always changing. What
we do see is the great, and indeed insurmountable
difficulty that besets anyone who tries to go into
details ; to this day every believer in the doctrine
will readily produce his own explanation of the pro
cess; and no two explanations will be found to agree,
while each of them involves its supporter in an in
extricable tangle. The subtlety of his mind may
enable him to keep up the argument with fresh
details ; but the longer he goes on, the further he
wanders from any connection with recognisable re
ality. Trying, with the imperfect understanding of
mortal man, and without the systematic observation
of facts, to trace the working of justice, and see the
harmony which he believes in, he ends in bewilder
ment and confusion.
The being which is thus carried round and round
102 HUMAN NATURE
the different forms of existence, can only be de
scribed as a person during those rare intervals when
he either inhabits a human body, or is enjoying him
self in the moon. His will and intellect, his affections
and even his consciousness, slip from him at every
interval and are no part of his essential being, if
indeed we should not speak rather of c it than c him.
It is easy enough to meet this difficulty, after a
fashion, if we are content to imagine a man putting
on one disguise after another, and remaining a man
all the time ; but this is not what we are told. The
rice is real rice, the rain, real rain ; personality is a
mere temporary characteristic ; the man, or whatever
the being is who wanders, has personality sometimes,
but it is not in itself a person ; while it has con
sciousness, will and memory it behaves like a person;
but at other times it is only a power, a principle of
identity, uniting a number of different existences.
Transmigration destroys human personality; the
world described consists of blind forces, among which
personality appears occasionally as a passing inci
dent.
HUMAN NATURE AS CAPABLE OF SALVATION
OR SIN
It is when we begin to consider what is meant
by sin and by salvation that we get nearest to what
people think about the nature of man. In every
IN THE UPANISHADS 103
form of religion there is some ideal perfection to
which men hope to attain, which one may call sal
vation; and there is something hindering that attain
ment, which may be called sin, though it does not
always amount to what we usually mean by that
name. It may be that men s desires do not go be
yond the attainment of material good things, and
these are sought by magical means. Such men in
what they do are concerned with themselves only,
and are indifferent as to what the power is which
they try to move, so long as they can get what they
want from it. Magic is a process by which man
proposes to control the divine nature, and compel
it to serve his own ends ; and the hindrance to get
ting this control consists in making a mistake. Mis
take takes the place of sin in such a system. There
are whole races, and many individuals in every race,
who do not go beyond this level. There are stages
in the lives of most individuals when thought can
reach no further. Such a system may use the forms
or language belonging to a much more spiritual
religion as mere charms, so that a spectator might
not be able to tell whether the particular act he saw
was religious or magical, till he knew the intention
in the mind of the actor.
But the salvation at which this system aims leaves
off satisfying ; man in all progressive races wants
not only to enjoy, but also to know. While the
104 HUMAN NATURE
lower level of thought expresses itself in magic,
this desire to know expresses itself in philosophy,
and the hindrance is ignorance. Yet on this level,
as on the lower one, the mind is still shut up in
itself; a man knows nothing immediately except
himself; and his salvation will be found in the per
fect realisation and knowledge of that self, in living
for that self, contented and at peace in it, perfectly
balanced, disturbed by no outside influence, know
ing indeed that it can know nothing of any outside
influence. Some other man, or some scruple of his
own mind, might object that such a view leaves the
thinker a prisoner to himself, a prey to selfishness,
with the best part of his nature stifled, because he
lives for himself alone ; and he might reply with a
show of justice, that he was not living for himself
alone in the sense of the objector. The Self of which
he is thinking, the Self he has found, is not merely
a self that lives cut off from the rest of the world,
and trying to lay hold of an unduly large share of
the good things of life ; far otherwise, it is the only
one conceivable being, it cannot want more than
its just share, or deprive others of theirs, for all
things are it, and when we know that we are it, we
know that whatever we meet, or whatever we want,
is it, and is ourselves. This is the end to which the
pursuit of knowledge, pure and simple, brings us :
a man knows his own self and nothing else, and
IN THE UPANISHADS 105
therefore all that he knows is himself. This is the
sphere of Indian thought ; and we shall find that
most of the teaching of the Upanishads illumi
nates it.
There is another view of salvation and of sin,
and in it we find another conception of human nature.
Whether this view is on a higher level or not is the
question to be met. Another faculty of human nature
is brought into play ; and whether that faculty is or
is not essential to human nature in its fullest de
velopment is exactly the point to be decided. This
faculty is loyalty, the relation of one person to
another. Neither in magic nor in philosophy does
this element appear ; but where religion is thought
of as the relation to a person, salvation is the per
fect harmony of that relation, and the hindrance to
salvation is treachery. Loyalty may be more or less
intense in its manifestation. It may be the charac
teristic of a partial, but quite genuine, relation, such
as the relation of the general public to a policeman,
or other public servant. In its intensest form it is
love, in which every element in either personality
is in perfect harmony with every element in the
other. We shall find this conception of salvation
and sin only in a few passages of the Upanishads ;
but it is not absent.
io6 HUMAN NATURE
Salvation as prosperity , Sin as ritual mistake
We need not stay long over the first idea, of
salvation as material prosperity, and sin as mistake,
or ritual error. It is found in Indian thought, and in
all other also ; if it is characteristic, it is not speci
ally so. Everywhere and at all times most of us
want to be prosperous, and think, deliberately or
instinctively, that magic will help us. We might
find many examples of this spirit, but one will be
enough :
Let a man sing praises, without making mistakes in
pronunciation. Chhand. 2, 22, 2.
Salvation as knowledge. Sin as ignorance
The conception of salvation as knowledge is
found, as we have said, all through the Upanishads.
Constantly we meet the formula : c He who knows
this will obtain such and such benefits. So we find
in one place :
A man who steals gold, who drinks spirits, who dis
honours his Guru s bed, who kills a Brahman, these four
fall, and as a fifth he who associates with them.
But he who thus knows the five fires is not defiled by
sin, even though he associates with them. He who knows
this is pure, clean, and obtains the world of the blessed.
Chhand. 5, 10, 9, 10.
The knowledge of the five fires can save, even
in spite of the sin. What these five fires are does
IN THE UPANISHADS 107
not appear from the immediate context ; but what
ever they are, this passage shows that the knowledge
of a t doctrine is more powerful to save than the
commission of a moral fault is powerful to destroy.
And almost every cycle of doctrine is closed by the
remark that to know this will bring happiness ; to
know, not to do, something is the way of salvation.
In Kaushltaki we have the trial of the soul, cor
responding to the Egyptian judgment in the Hall
of Osiris, or the Persian test at the Bridge of the
Separator. The myth given us here describes the
journey of a soul that goes out on the way of the
Gods, after having learnt the truth. He goes through
many worlds to the world of Brahma, and comes to
the lake of Ara :
And he crosses it by the mind, while those who come
to it without knowing the truth are drowned. ...He comes
to the river Vijara, and crosses it by the mind alone, and
there shakes off his good and evil deeds. His beloved rela
tives obtain the good, his unbeloved relatives the evil, he
has done. And as a man, driving in a chariot, might look
at the two wheels, thus he will look at day and night, thus
at good and evil deeds, and at all pairs. Being freed from
good and freed from evil he, the knower of Brahma, moves
towards Brahma. Kaushl. i, 3.
The method of disposing of good and evil deeds
is singular ; but the relation to each other of good
and evil, as merely complementary halves of char
acter, is plainly stated. When the soul arrives at last
at the end of his journey, he finds Brahma sitting
io8 HUMAN NATURE
on a couch, and prepares to sit with him, knowing
himself to be Brahma ; but first he has to answer
a series of questions. Brahma says : Who art thou?
And he answers that he is the child of the seasons,
sprung from the womb of endless space ; that is,
it seems, he is the child of this lower world, in
which the unmanifested becomes manifest in time
and space ; and he adds that the light, which is the
origin of all, is the Self:
Thou art the Self, that thou art, that am I.
Brahma says to him :
Who am I ? He shall answer, That which is, the true.
Kaushl. i, 6.
Good and evil deeds do not affect the knowledge
of truth; they are a mere pair of opposites. So long
as the soul knows who he is himself and who Brahma
is, he has attained salvation, and can sit on the
couch which is built of the Vedas, with the moon
beam for a cushion, and prosperity for a pillow.
Aitareya gives us the clearest and concisest say
ing on the subject, in answer to the question : Which
is the Self ? It replies :
It rests on knowledge. The world is led by knowledge.
Knowledge is its cause. Knowledge is Brahma. Ait. 2,
6, i, 6, 7.
The doctrine that the perfect soul passes beyond
the distinction between good and evil is often found.
IN THE UPANISHADS 109
Indra teaches it to Pratardana ; Yajnavalkya teaches
it too 1 ; and in Taittiriya we find an expression of
it which might sometimes awaken a pang almost
of envy :
He who knows the bliss of that Brahma, from whence
all speech with the mind turns away, unable to reach it,
he fears nothing.
He does not distress himself with the thought, Why did
I not do what is good? Why did I do what is bad? He
who thus knows these two frees himself. This is the Upani-
shad. Taitt. 2, 9.
It seems that the voice of remorse was not quite
easily silenced. The Upanishads hold up before
us a certain ideal of great attractiveness ; we see a
character drawn, of which the most striking feature
is peace. It is beyond disturbance, beyond the cares,
the troubles, the passionate pleasures of this life ;
it wills evil to no creature. Such a character has
often been contrasted with the eager active spirit
that is never satisfied, but always straining after
new gain. It is said that we have here a high ideal
set before us, and we certainly have something that
suggests such an ideal. But before we accept this
teaching we must make sure that we understand it,
and especially that those of us who come from the
West are not unconsciously forcing it into harmony
with conceptions taken from another source. The
1 Kaushl. 3, 8. Brih. 4, 4, 22.
no HUMAN NATURE
rishi who has attained peace has passed beyond good
and evil deeds ; and what are the deeds in question ?
The good deeds seem to be those which win the
world of the Devas, sacrifice; and the evil deeds,
the omission of sacrifice. There is very little de
scription of what good or evil consists in ; we do
not find such lists of evil deeds as Vasishtha once
gave us, except in the one passage quoted above,
about the sins from which knowledge can deliver
us. It seems to be taken for granted that everyone
knows what a good or evil deed is ; there is no en
quiry as to whether the evil is in the outward or
the inward thought. Zarathushtra, and the Magi
after him, in Persia dwell on the triad of good or
evil thoughts, words, and acts. Here deeds only
are mentioned; it seems as if the rishis only noticed
the completed act as seriously good or bad.
Nor is there much pain to be gone through in
throwing off evil ; there is struggle in entering on
the way of peace, in casting off desires, a struggle
chiefly against the flesh. The wise man counts the
cost, decides that the result is worth the effort, makes
it, and finds his reward ; he gains peace by the loss
of personality, and ends where there is no person
ality either in himself, in others, or in that with
which he has become one. The first characteristic
of a person is choice, desire ; in India desire is for
something unworthy, its satisfaction leaves the soul
IN THE UPANISHADS in
craving for something else ; but to have no desire
is to lose personality, and therefore personality is
something unworthy. But this is not a necessary
argument. Let us once suppose the possibility of
a worthy desire, and its satisfaction may bring that
peace, that harmony, which is the aim of every
seeker, East and West. Then, after all, the way of
Chhandogya may prove to be the right one; and
we may find that what it needed was not destructive
criticism, but a right value for morality, deeper in
sight and longer patience.
Salvation as loyalty, Sin as treachery
The temper which tends to look on salvation as
a personal relation is not altogether wanting in the
Upanishads. The natural human ties of family
feeling and the specially Indian bond of duty to
the teacher, are recognised ; and indeed we should
expect to find them recognised, seeing that these
bonds receive such marked recognition in Indian
life ; but they are not the subject of much reflection
or argument. They are taken as a matter of course,
and not dwelt upon.
We have already noticed the passage in which
even the heaviest offences against a neighbour may
be done away by knowledge of a doctrine. The
other references to such relations are also in Chhan
dogya, a book which always inclines more to the
ii2 HUMAN NATURE
personal view than the others. In the story of
Satyakama, who confesses that he cannot tell who
his father was, the Guru to whom he makes this
admission says :
No one but a true Brahmana would thus speak out.
Chhand. 4, 4, 5.
A testimony to the value of speaking the truth. In
a later chapter of the same book, we come to some
thing rather similar. It is in the story of Narada s
instruction by Sanatkumara, which we have met be
fore, and which leads up to one of the definitions
of the Ultimate Self. Narada is being taught that
spirit is better than hope, and it seems from the
context that spirit here means life :
For if one says anything unbecoming to a father, mother,
brother, sister, tutor, or Brahmana, then people say : Shame
on thee ! thou hast offended thy father, mother, brother,
sister, tutor, or a Brahmana. Chhand. 7, 15, 2.
But when the spirit is gone, one may shove them
together with a poker, and burn them to pieces,
and it does not matter ; but while they live, it is
a shame to offend them. The expression c people
say comes in curiously, there is in it an appeal to
the common instinct : people in a general way feel
that it is not right to offend those to whom one is
bound. But the philosophers have never enquired
into this instinct ; it is to them part of that lower,
unexamined life which comes before the true life
IN THE UPANISHADS 113
of knowledge and contemplation, and in itself is
only fit to be abandoned.
These few passages are the only ones in which
loyalty to a personal relationship is set up as the
duty of man. In all the explanations given to show
that man s true self is one with the Self of the whole
world, the place of other people in the scheme of
existence is not mentioned. We are left to suppose
that we are one with them as we are with the earth,
air, fire, water, and ether, in which the Great Self
is revealed so much one that loyalty disappears
and only self-realisation is left ; so much one that
while ignorance may still cloud our vision of the
truth there is no thought of treachery ; though we
must admit that in practice it seems that our neigh
bour offers a stouter resistance to the process of
assimilation than merely material objects do. We
can see over our bad deeds as we see over the wheel
of a chariot; and there is no horror at what has been,
no sense of shrinking from the evil, no thought that
anyone else has suffered from it.
CHAPTER IV
THE BHAGAVADGITA
WHEN Yajnavalkya went away into the forest, he
left behind him his two wives, Maitreyl, the disciple
of the Brahmans, and Katyayanl, who had such
knowledge only as women possess. We imagined
Katyayanl as a follower of the Epics, a believer in
the reality of outward things, and a seeker after a
powerful, friendly, personal God ; nor was it only
from the Epics that she drew her ideas, for while
Yajnavalkya and Maitreyl were discoursing wisdom
together, she went to her servants, and out into
the village, and learnt the teachings of another and
yet older religion than that of the Vedas ; and,
without reasoning about it, she took Krishna, Ga-
ne^a, Durga, perhaps even (Jiva, and others into
her theory of life, and found comfort and fear in
many an old wild story, told under the peepuls, or
by the well at evening. Maitreyl and Katyayanl
have now to rule their house, which is India, to
gether; to look for a way to make Maitreyl s
wisdom available for Katyayanl ; and to find a place
THE BHAGAVADGITA 115
for Katyayanl s beliefs and practices in Maitreyl s
thought. Maitreyl looks for the extinction of de
sire, for the Knower without anything to know,
for the ocean without any duality ; while Katyayanl
looks for the satisfaction of desire, and in the end,
for a relation with a person.
The book in which the reconciliation of these
two views is offered us is the Bhagavadgita, a
Brahman episode, founded on a Kshatriya story,
and inserted in a Kshatriya Epic, the Mahabharata.
THE STORY OF THE GITA
The outline of the story is well known, but we
will go through it for the sake of bringing out
certain points that concern us here.
The Mahabharata consists of the story of the
dispute between the five Pandava brothers and
their cousins, the Kurus. Matters come to a head
in the battle on the plain of Kurukshetra, near the
modern Delhi ; and the enormous armies belonging
to either side destroy each other in the course of
eighteen days : every combatant is killed, except
the Pandavas, their friend Krishna and his charioteer.
The old king, Dhritarashtra, ancestor of both sets
of princes, wants to know how the battle is going ;
and after ten days fighting, a messenger, Sanjaya,
goes to him to report the progress of events. He
tells how, at the last moment, when the conches
82
n6 THE BHAGAVADGITA
had blown, and the armies were in the act of
joining, Arjuna, the second of the Pandavas, and
their greatest champion, struck with remorse at the
prospect of slaughtering his relations in the opposite
army, appealed to Krishna, who is acting as his
charioteer, and who is an incarnation of Vishnu,
for guidance. Krishna then answered him in seven
teen discourses, and convinced him that it was his
duty to fight.
The setting of the story shows us some of the
lessons we are to learn from it. It is told by San-
jaya to Dhritarashtra aboutwhat Krishna and Arjuna
said to each other, while both armies waited with
uplifted weapons ; and Dhritarashtra listens, though
he knows that he has to hear the account of ten
days fighting, in which almost all his family have
already perished. Thus twice over the action is
interrupted to make way for discourse; and ac
cording to the temper of Indian story-telling this
is not only tolerable but natural ; the motive of
action matters more than the action itself.
The Glta rises from two sources ; it is not only
based on an incident in the Epics, but on a passage
in the Upanishads. In the Katha Upanishad we
have a description of a chariot and a charioteer,
which is evidently reflected in the description of
Krishna, acting as charioteer for Arjuna.
Know the Self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to
THE BHAGAVADGITA 117
be the chariot, the intellect the charioteer, and the mind
the reins.
The senses they call the horses, the objects of the senses
their roads. When he is in union with the body, the senses
and the mind, then wise people call him the enjoyer.
He who has no understanding and whose mind is never
firmly held, his senses are unmanageable, like vicious horses
of a charioteer.
But he who has understanding, and whose mind is always
firmly held, his senses are under control, like good horses
of a charioteer He reaches the end of his journey, and
that is the highest place of Vishnu. Katha. I, 3, 3.
In the Upanishad the charioteer is intellect,
buddhi) a function of the self who owns the chariot,
in the Glta there is a difference, for the charioteer
is Krishna, who reveals himself as Arjuna s teacher,
Arjuna saying to him :
I am thy disciple; 2, 7.
as his true self:
Among the Pandavas I am Dhananjaya (that is Arjuna) ;
!o> 37-
and as the supreme being.
The interest attached to speculation through the
whole book is plain ; but in spite of this, the poem
is above and before all things practical. The question
of action is all through more urgent than the question
of thought. Five times over 1 Krishna urges on
Arjuna that he must fulfil his duty and fight ; and
all the discourses have this object only, to show
1 2> 37- 33o. 8,7. 11,33. 1 8, 47, 59 or 73.
n8 THE BHAGAVADGlTA
him the reason why this duty is binding on him.
It happens to many a man, as it happened to Arjuna,
in the very crisis of his fate to be seized with mis
giving, to hesitate in the moment of action and ask
himself c Why ? Whatever the impulse is that rules
him in that moment deliberate choice, loyalty to
his fellows, custom, habit, or obedience, it comes
from what is most real in him, and will prove to
be the rule of his life afterwards, as the answer to
Arj una s appeal has since proved to be the rule of
life and of thought in India. What then is Krishna s
answer ?
The teaching of the Gita falls into two parts,
each describing a certain view of life, and the two
views being contradictory. We need not go into
the question of whether we ought to regard the
Gita as originally by one author, or as belonging
to one time. Whoever actually wrote it, it has
been accepted in India as a unity, and is offered to
us by India as a harmonious expression of Indian
thought. We must therefore at first accept all
parts of it as of equal value, and see for ourselves
afterwards whether the differences between them
are such as can be reconciled in the end or not.
THE BHAGAVADGITA 119
THE CONTENTS OF THE GITA
The first part takes us from the eleventh verse
of the second discourse, where Krishna begins to
speak, to the end of the fifteenth discourse, this
chapter being a summary of the whole of the first
part.
The second part takes us through the sixteenth,
seventeenth and half of the eighteenth discourses.
All that is essential to this teaching is given in the
sixteenth discourse ; the rest is explanatory ; so
that if we want a summary of the whole teaching,
we need only read the fifteenth and sixteenth dis
courses. But to get any real grasp of it we must
study two other passages as well, the first twenty
verses spoken by Krishna, 2, 1 1 to 30, and the
great vision of the eleventh discourse.
In the first of these passages, 2, 1 1 to 30, we have
a plain statement of the doctrine from a practical
point of view. Arjuna has just declared that he
will not fight, he loves and honours the princes
opposed to him, they are his kinsmen and his
teachers ; without them he does not care for victory
or dominion, c blood-stained feasts/ To this out
burst Krishna replies c smiling/ He says that
Arj una s grief is not wise ; wise men do not sorrow
for such things, because neither he himself, nor
Arjuna nor the sons of Dhritarashtra were at any
120 THE BHAGAVADGITA
time non-existent, nor can they ever cease to be.
That which is once, is always, and always has been ;
as we pass from one age to another in the course
of our lives, so we pass from one body to another
in the course of many lives. There is one eternal,
indestructible being, who passes through innumer
able bodies; it does not matter when or whether
these bodies are slain ; bodies are mere garments,
constantly being worn out and thrown aside ; the
Self who puts them on is unaffected by any of the
events that affect them ; weapons, fire, water, and
wind leave him untouched. This teaching asserts
that all we want is existence ; as long as we exist,
all is well. The relations of life come and go ;
there is nothing to grieve for in the breaking of
such a relation. Krishna does not seem to reckon
with the fact that Arjuna is grieving over the rupture
of an old friendship, apart from the fact that his
former friend is to be killed as well as alienated ;
when anyone passes into a new body he becomes
someone else, but this does not matter. Already
we see the idea of personality vanishing in the idea
of the vital principle.
After the practical point has been made clear,
Krishna goes on elaborating it in one explanation
after another, so that Arjuna may be able to get
away from the delusions of this life, and to find
complete peace and satisfaction in union with the
THE BHAGAVADGlTA 121
unchanging and indestructible Self. He describes
the difference between action and inaction, which
leads to an account of the working of desire, and
that to an account of the value of the sacrifice ;
from that he goes on to the doctrine of the ultimate
being, the unmanifest, which proves so difficult to
grasp that he passes from it to the doctrine of the
penultimate, the manifest, which is given us finally
in the eleventh discourse. Arjuna then asks which
of these two it is better to worship, the unmanifest
or the manifest, Akshara or lvara; and Krishna
replies that he is to worship the manifest, L^vara,
which is the best for him, and proceeds to teach
him the nature of this manifest power by enabling
him to distinguish, first between the knower of the
o J
field (Kshetrajna), and the field (Kshetra), words
which we may render by subject and object, and
next between Purusha and Prakriti, words which
with more hesitation we may render by spirit and
matter ; and this brings us to the fifteenth discourse,
in which all these teachings are summed up in a
short poem of twenty verses.
Leaving a detailed examination of these chapters
on one side for the present, we turn to the sixteenth
discourse ; and here everything is different. We
wonder whether we have not suddenly been carried
from Kurukshetra to Geneva. We hear how all
men are born either godlike or demoniacal; the
122 THE BHAGAVADGITA
godlike get better and better from birth to birth,
and eventually reach Krishna ; the demoniacal get
worse and worse, and are hurled to lower and lower
births for ever. This is really all the doctrine of
this system ; it is less interesting than the other,
because it attempts to account for less ; it also lends
itself less readily to poetical treatment, and runs
off into monotonous accounts of exactly how the
different natures act, as they are influenced by the
three qualities of harmony, passion, and darkness,
of which all things in the world consist. These
three qualities or moods (gunas) colour everything.
One example of their working is found in caste, as
explained in (^amkara s commentary on the Gita ;
the Brahmans are all harmony; the Kshatriyas,
passion, touched by harmony ; the Vaicyas, passion,
touched by darkness; the (^udras, darkness, touched
by passion. Therefore a man s nature is determined
by his caste, and therefore Arjuna s one sacred duty
is to fight, as becomes a Kshatriya.
This system carries us half through the eighteenth
discourse, and then in 18, 14, we come back to the
practical application, and this finishes the book.
Convinced at last, Arjuna promises obedience ; and
Sanjaya, in relating the event, assures Dhritarashtra
that fortune and victory are sure to be on the side
where he and Krishna fight.
Such is the Bhagavadgita. Can we trace in it the
THE BHAGAVADGlTA 123
same ideas that we found in the Vedas and in the
Upanishads ?
We find in the Glta the three leading conceptions
of the divine nature that we found before ; but their
relative value has changed. The Divine as vital
principle has become by far the most important
of the three ; and we will therefore leave it till
the last.
THE DIVINE AS THE SACRIFICIAL PRINCIPLE
Three times, at the beginning of the third, fifth,
and twelfth discourses, Arjuna asks whether it is
better to renounce all action or to perform it, action
meaning especially sacrificial action and the following
of the Vedic precepts. In each case the answer,
given with varying distinctness, is that it is better
to follow the way of action, which is the lower way,
because it is easier. The higher way, in which
sacrifice is given up, is only for the perfect man ;
the partly enlightened man, like Arjuna, must in
deed go on with sacrifice, but only as a matter
of caste duty, and for the sake of the example to
others ; in this aspect, looked at from the level of
the lower life, it is a matter of the first importance ;
it was instituted in the beginning by Prajapati, the
lord of living things, who brought forth mankind
at the same time as the sacrifice, and ordered that
i2 4 THE BHAGAVADGITA
by this means men and devas, the old nature gods,
should nourish each other ; for :
Those things which you wish for the Devas shall give
you, when they have been fostered by the sacrifice. 3, 12.
Again, Krishna says :
This world is not for him who does not sacrifice, how
then the other? 4, 31.
But the old feeling that the divine life was in any
way present in the sacrifice, or had been given in
it for the world, has disappeared. The most that
can be said is that the sacrificial act can be so done
as not to defile, by the practice of disinterestedness,
the surrender of the desire for results :
When a man s attachment to things is gone, when he
is free, when his thoughts are firm in wisdom and he per
forms sacrifice, all his actions dissolve. 4, 23.
The contrast of higher and lower is not put so
plainly as it was in the Mundaka Upanishad, which
was intended for those who were themselves follow
ing the higher way ; indeed it needs careful study
to be clear what the teaching really is. Krishna
dwells at considerable length on the importance of
sacrifice in the fourth discourse, and again in the
ninth 1 , where however he points out its inadequacy.
He also insists on the duty of setting an example
to the ignorant :
1 4, 25 to 30. 9, 26. See also 3, 26.
THE BHAGAVADGlTA 125
What a great man does, that also other men do, the
world follows the standard he sets. 3, 21.
an argument that has had much weight with other
great men since Arjuna. It seems as if the author
is anxious not to put the truth harshly ; the Kshat-
riyas are in fact inferior and must follow the lower
way ; so he tactfully enlarges on the greatness of
their position, and says very little about the higher
way and the sannyasis, who have renounced the
sacrifice and the Vedas. (^amkara s commentary
throws light on the matter ; he speaks with some
vehemence, commenting on Krishna s saying that :
Of these two, action and renunciation of action, the
rule of action is the better. 5, 2.
He says :
It is not possible to imagine, even in a dream, that the
man who knows the Self can have anything to do with
karma-yoga (the rule of action), so opposed to right know
ledge, and entirely based on illusory knowledge.
And commenting on a similar passage in the twelfth
discourse he says :
The Lord, who is pre-eminently a well-wisher of Arjuna,
recommends to him only karma-yoga, based on an idea of
distinction (between the individual self and the Great
Self) and quite dissociated from right knowledge.
But then (^amkara was a sannyasi.
126 THE BHAGAVADGITA
THE DIVINE AS THE ULTIMATE
The idea of the ultimate has become very dim and
shadowy indeed in the Gita. Krishna distinguishes
between the manifest power, which produces and
rules the world, I9vara, and another power beyond
it, which he sometimes calls Akshara, the imperish
able or unalterable ; and with both of these he
identifies himself.
The doctrine of the ultimate does not appear as
the crown and completion of the revelation ; it only
occurs in a few places, and then as leading on to the
doctrine of the penultimate and manifest. Indeed
it is often difficult to be sure which of the two
we are hearing about ; all the varying conceptions
of the subject waver up and down like reflections
in running water ; we cannot bind the words to one
O 7
meaning ; all we can do is to take the images in
which the teaching is given us as they come, and
form the best idea we can of them for ourselves,
and then see whether the various ideas will unite
to form any consistent whole.
At the end of the seventh discourse Krishna
uses various terms Brahma, Adhyatma, Karma,
Adhibhuta, Adhidaiva, Adhiyajna, and at the be
ginning of the eighth Arjuna asks him what their
meaning is ; Krishna answers that :
THE BHAGAVADGITA 127
Brahma is the indestructible (akshara), the supreme
(paramo). 8, 3.
And later he says :
Beyond that (beyond this world) is another being, un
manifest beyond the unmanifest, eternal. He does not
perish in the fall of all beings. 8, 20.
In the following verses this ultimate being is still
called akshara^ and Purusha para, supreme male.
The word Purusha for the supreme being appears
again in the fifteenth discourse, the summary of the
first part, where we are told that :
There are two males in this world, perishable and im
perishable,... but the ultimate male is another ; it is an
nounced as the highest Self. 15, 16, 17.
This supreme being is referred to again as na sat
na asat^ neither being nor not-being 1 ; and in these
passages we have all that Krishna has to tell us about
the ultimate. So undefined an existence cannot in
terest us much ; we learn that it exists, but what
it is we do not learn. The fact of its existence is
indeed the original fact of all facts ; but as it is apart
from all conditions and relations there seems to be
very little to be said about it. We turn from the
consideration of the unmanifest Akshara to that of
the manifest I^vara with a certain relief, and also
with a certain disappointment in having to allow
that in the end it is not the ultimate that matters
most.
128 THE BHAGAVADGITA
THE DIVINE AS THE VITAL PRINCIPLE
The manifest power is first described for us in
the seventh discourse, and again we are told that
it is double. The lower part consists of the elements
of the world, earth, water, air, heaven, mind, in
telligence ; and the higher part is what forms and
supports all this. Krishna enters into the world in
order to taste experience ; and he is the goal to
which the wise man reaches at last. In the fifteenth
discourse we find Purusha as the supreme, and a
portion of him is the animating power of the world.
When in the world, he is concerned with having
experiences, tasting and observing the objects of
the senses, which however do not affect him 1 ; he is
seated in the hearts of all, and wisdom and ignorance
are from him 2 . The fullest account of the divine
power manifest in the world is given in the ninth,
tenth, and eleventh discourses. In the ninth, Krishna
declares himself to be the origin of all things :
Controlling my own nature I send out again and again
this whole multitude of subject beings by the power of
nature. 9, 8.
In the tenth, he is their highest product, the best
example of each sort of existence :
Among the Adityas I am Vishnu,. . .among the Pandavas
I am Dhananjaya. 10, 21, 37.
1 15* 6 to 9. 2 15, 15.
THE BHAGAVADGITA 129
Finally in the eleventh he reveals himself, at Arjuna s
request, bodily as the universal form, that of which
the whole world is the visible expression.
The vision of the eleventh discourse is the crown
of this system of doctrine, and the most striking
part of the whole book. It begins with Sanjaya s
account of what Arjuna saw ; his idea of majesty is
infinite number ; he describes the appearance of an
idol, multiplied to infinity, endless faces and features,
ornaments, weapons, garlands, seen in every direc
tion 1 . Then Arjuna speaks, and gives his own ac
count of the infinite form, with all orders of being
contained in it and gazing on it 3 ; presently 3 the
vision becomes more terrible than before ; he sees
the god, whom he hails as Vishnu, not only bringing
forth all life, but destroying it ; Krishna s open
mouths are like blazing furnaces, and draw in the
hostile armies, like moths that fly into the fire,
while their princes are caught and crushed in his
teeth; and at last not only the two armies but all
mankind and all worlds are consumed. Then Krishna
himself speaks, and names himself as Time 4 , calling
on Arjuna to fight; for whether he fights or not,
his enemies are already doomed. Hereupon Arjuna
describes no more, but offers worship, especially
praying for forgiveness, because he has not known
1 II, IO tO 12. 2 II, 15 tO 30.
3 II, 23- 4 II, 32 tO 34.
1 30 THE BHAGAVADGlTA
Krishna in his mortal disguise, and has not honoured
him as he should have done ; again and again he
offers him homage, as the first of gods, the ancient
Male 1 , by whom all is filled ; and Krishna at last
resumes the form by which Arjuna had known him
before, telling him that this vision cannot be seen
by means of study or of sacrifice, but only through
undivided devotion, bhakti.
It is the vital impulse itself which stands before us,
infinite, awful, and yet speaking in a brief, definite
command. Like Elijah on Horeb 2 , Arjuna sees the
rush and stir -of a vast force ; but in the one case
it is a preparation for what is to come, a sort of
premonitory shudder running through nature at
the approaching revelation ; in the other it is the
actual life from which the divine voice speaks. The
vision of Elijah, more even than other visions of
Hebrew prophets, is marked with a sense of awe
and restraint. The prophet is recalled to himself
from his impatience and despair, sobered, strength
ened, and sent on an errand ; he knows and ac
knowledges the voice that speaks, and goes without
question. Arjuna too is overwhelmed. Heismoved
to the inmost depth of his nature, and in his hymn
of adoration lays open his whole heart, holding
back nothing. There is an element of terror in his
awe; the appeal he makes is to something that
1 ii, 38. 2 i Kings xix.
THE BHAGAVADGITA 131
overcomes him by its strength, without altogether
convincing his reason ; his attitude towards it is one
of utter submission ; but even so he cannot give
the obedience he promises till he has first had a
further explanation of the nature of the speaker,
and the revelation leads up to a question : Is he
indeed to worship this manifested power, Isvara,
or is he to look for the Akshara behind it ?
The answer given in the twelfth discourse, as we
have already seen, is that he is to worship I9vara ;
and in fact it is this vision of Icvara that has taken
possession of the thought of India and rules it to
day. It was this that passed into the Bhakti religions,
the worship of Vishnu and (^iva by faith and de
votion ; it inspired the songs of poets, and covered
temples and palaces with carving ; it speaks to us
in all the crowd of figures, divine, semi-divine,
heroic, human, or animal, on walls and pillars, in
the lingas and the bulls, by emblem and suggestion ;
it says nothing of morality, of righteousness or of
personal character, but speaks always and urgently
of physical life.
HUMAN NATURE AS THE REPRODUCTION
OF THE DIVINE
We come to the conception of human nature
given us in the Gita. The old idea of human nature
as the reproduction of the divine has disappeared.
92
132 THE BHAGAVADGITA
It seems that the Gita is too entirely practical in
its aim to concern itself with a purely speculative
scheme. The interest of the book is human only ;
there is no cosmology in it, no account of the origin
either of man or of the material world, beyond the
statement that they came from the supreme.
HUMAN NATURE AS THE SEAT OF DESIRE
In the Upanishads we found the annihilation or
the satisfaction of desire still a matter for debate.
Taking them as a whole, we found that the balance
inclined towards the annihilation of desire ; the most
complete and characteristic system of the Upanishads
declared itself on that side, and the reason for this
decision lay partly in the fact that there was no ideal
for any worthy fulfilment of desire, which would
not end in satiety or sorrow. In the Gita" this view
is maintained, and desire, kama, is counted as the
enemy of man and the root of all sin.
Yet there is another view in the book, never
expressed, but taken for granted. The perfect man
is still the creature of desire, for he seeks conscious
bliss in contact with Brahma, the eternal 1 . There
is a confusion of thought at the root of the teaching
about desire between kama, restless craving, and
deliberate choice, the act of the will. Krishna looks
1 6, 28.
THE BHAGAVADGITA 133
for deliverance from craving in indifference ; he
urges it in several passages :
When joy and grief, gain and loss, victory and defeat
are the same to you, then get ready for battle, and thou
shalt by no means incur sin. 2, 38.
But indifference makes an end of choice, and also
of bliss, for a really indifferent man is untouched
by bliss. So it comes about that we sometimes get
the denunciation of desire, and sometimes its as
sertion :
I am alike to all beings, none is hateful to me, nor dear;
but as for those who worship me with devotion, they are
in me, and I in them. 9, 29.
And in the twelfth discourse he speaks of his de
votees being dear, even very dear to him 1 . The
fact is that when Krishna says a man is to be in
different, he means that he is himself to be the one
object of desire.
HUMAN NATURE AS CONTROLLED BY
TRANSMIGRATION
Caste and transmigration are in undisputed pos
session through the book. Transmigration is taken
for granted, and the details are not worked out, for
which we may be thankful, remembering our earlier
experiences ; it is part of the conception of the one
life, expressing itself continually in new forms. We
1 12, 19, 20.
134 THE BHAGAVADGITA
find the idea in Krishna s earliest teaching 1 , and we
find it again in the fifteenth discourse, not so much
carrying the notion of retribution or development,
as merely giving an account of the wandering of the
one self through the world, tasting all experience.
It is here akin to Yajnavalkya s teaching, which he
illustrated by the images of the caterpillar and the
goldsmith. We find transmigration again in the
sixteenth discourse ; and here it is the individual
soul who travels, always upwards, or always down
wards, while the supreme power acts as judge, or
rather as the weight in the balance, for the judgment
is automatic, not rational; the wandering soul has
no choice, and his destiny falls to him of necessity.
HUMAN NATURE AS CONTROLLED BY CASTE
Caste rules everything. Put very shortly the
message of the Gita is that a man must do his
caste duty, and a wise man does it with indifference;
all the rest is only added to make this acceptable.
In the first discourse Arjuna protests against the
destruction of the Kurus because such a destruction
leads to confusion of caste. Later Krishna says that
if he did not act he would cause confusion of caste,
and again that the four castes were sent forth by
him. In the eighteenth discourse there is a minute
description of the varying natures of the three upper
1 2, II tO 30.
THE BHAGAVADGITA 135
castes 1 . At the beginning of his instructions Krishna
urges on Arjuna his duty as a Kshatriya, according
to which it seems that he must in any case fight,
and that it is his good fortune to be fighting in a
lawful war 2 . Again he says:
Even the wise man acts according to his own nature ;
beings follow nature, what can force do ? 3, 33.
In one passage he says that even those whose
birth is sinful, women, Vaicjas, even (^adras, are
able to walk on the highest road, c far more then
the Brahmans and royal rishis; and at the end of
all he warns Arjuna that even if he refuses to fight
he cannot help himself :
Nature will compel thee. Bound by thy own work,
born of thy nature, O Kaunteya, thou shalt do perforce
that which, from confusion of mind, thou dost not wish
to do. 1 8, 59, 60.
Thus as ever, when caste comes in at the door,
personality goes out at the window.
HUMAN NATURE AS CAPABLE OF
SALVATION OR SIN
There is only one conception of salvation in the
Gita, contact with the supreme, which is infinite
bliss :
The yogi, when he has put away corruption, always
concentrating himself, easily obtains the endless bliss of
contact with Brahma. 6, 28.
1 I, 43. 3,24. 4,13. 18,41 tO 44. 2 2, 31.
136 THE BHAGAVADGITA
It is the goal of each individual, harmony for each
liberated soul, not a kingdom of God, whether in
this world or another.
The character of the perfect man is described
clearly in several places, but especially in the sixth
discourse. He is a Yogi, who follows the way of
disinterestedness, doing acts, but having no concern
with their results. Without (^amkara s help we
should find it hard indeed to be sure what is really
meant whether this ideal is really the highest of
all, or whether it is not a yet higher state to have
renounced even disinterested action, (^amkara as
sures us that the latter is indeed the case : the lower
way is only said to be perfect for the sake of courtesy.
It is at any rate the highest way set before us in
the Glta. This practice of courtesy is somewhat
bewildering ; but by allowing for it we can get con
sistent doctrine on the subject of the perfect life.
The really perfect man, the Sannyasi, is referred
to, but he is not described ; we hear about the man
who attains perfection on the lower level, the Yogi,
and understand that in another birth he may attain
to absolute perfection 1 .
The perfect man is free from all disturbance, it is
not the Tightness of his act, but the freedom of his
mind that delivers from sin ; he :
Looks alike on a Brahman, endowed with wisdom
1 6, 45-
THE BHAGAVADGITA 137
and modesty, a cow, an elephant, a dog, and a dog-eater.
5, 1 8.
and also on :
Lovers, friends, enemies, the indifferent, neutral, hateful,
kinsmen, good, and bad. 6, 9.
He is- told to draw back his senses from the objects
of sense, as a tortoise draws in its legs on all sides 1 ,
an expressive image to anyone who has ever watched
a tortoise, withdrawing itself into its private world,
all sign of life vanishing, as the wrinkled face and
straggling limbs disappear, and the shell settles down
gently on the ground.
Yet the life to which this process leads is not
one of absolute detachment ; it is not the realisation
of the one only Self, which is oneself, and the self
of all ; it is a relation. In this the Gita has departed
from the doctrine of the Upanishads ; but it is not
wholly clear with what the relation is established ;
it is generally said to be with Krishna, but some
times it seems to be with that further power beyond
Krishna, of which we found it difficult to form any
intelligible idea.
The words most used with reference to salvation
are Toga, rule, and yukta, harmonised, from the
same root ; the ruling idea of them is harmony,
balance.
There are three things that especially hinder the
138 THE BHAGAVADGITA
attainment of balance or harmony, desire, doubt,
and bad conduct. Desire is a form of ignorance,
for it clouds the mind ; doubt is akin to treachery,
or at least to disloyalty ; bad conduct is what offends
against the general sense of right.
Desire, kamaj is the craving that is never satis
fied ; it is not a rational choice, though it chooses ;
and in the Glta no distinction is drawn between the
two things. This one is evil in itself, and it leads
to more evil:
When a man contemplates material things, the objects
of the senses, attachment to them arises. From attachment
desire arises, from desire, anger fe born. 2, 62.
It is desire, it is anger, born from passion, very greedy,
very evil ; know this as our enemy here. 3, 37.
But doubt is as bad. In the rebuke administered
to doubt there is a ring of earnestness which re
minds us that the Gita is not a speculative essay,
devoted to the mere search for truth ; it is an ex
hortation, and brings a command to men in general.
They must hear, and they must obey ; nay, more,
there is a real danger threatening the world if they
refuse. With the idea of personality in the divine
being, that is with the idea of Krishna, the manifest
deity in a personal form, the idea of treachery
appears :
For the doubter there is neither this world, nor the next,
nor happiness. 4, 40.
THE BHAGAVADGITA 139
Resolute reason is one... the judgments of the irresolute
split into many branches, and have no end. 2, 41.
In the sixteenth discourse especially we find sin
thought of as bad conduct, and described in lists
of various sins hypocrisy, pride, arrogance, anger,
harsKness, ignorance, want of purity, of courtesy,
or truth 1 . But in the earlier part of the book too,
we find sin referred to in a rather casual manner,
apparently as bad conduct ; and it seems to be a
thing easily got rid of by the man who has turned
his attention to being wise. Sin of conduct never
seems to trouble the Indian mind nearly as much
as sins of the intellect. By knowledge (Jfiffna) even
the worst of sinners may get over his sin, like a
man crossing the sea on a raft 2 ; and :
A very sinful man (who worships Krishna) must be
counted good, for he has resolved well. 9, 30.
There is in the Gita another hindrance to salvation,
which consists not in any act of man, but in the
nature of the divine being. Krishna says that the
difficulty of knowing him rises from something in
his own nature which deludes people, as the power
of a juggler deludes the beholders. Twice he de
scribes its working :
I am not clear to all, hidden by my magic power. This
bewildered world does not recognise me, unborn and un
changeable. 7, 25.
1 See 1 6, 7, 8. 2 4,36.
1 40 THE BHAGAVADGITA
And again at the very end of his teaching :
lvara stands in the hearts of all, all beings spin by
illusion, mounted on a whirligig. 18, 61.
(^amkara puts his own comment into Krishna s
mouth : Alas! it is very miserable, thus does the
Lord express his regret : c that yoga-maya by which
I am veiled, and on account of which people do not
know me, is mine, i.e. subject to my control, and
as such it cannot obstruct my knowledge,... just as
the glamour (may a) caused by a juggler (mayaviri)
does not obstruct his own knowledge,... nobody
knows me and seeks refuge with me. Just for want of
knowledge of my real nature nobody worships me/
We are shocked by the theory that the author
of our being plays with us, as a juggler plays with
his puppets ; yet it is not unreasonable, so long as
the relation between him and us is thought of apart
from morality, that is apart from personal character.
We are becoming accustomed to the idea that we
must be content with regard to material things not
to see them as they are ; solid matter is, it appears,
a collection of whirling vortices ; colour exists only
for the eye that sees ; we can never have exact proof
of the circumstances of any event ; one thing only
is really absolutely clear to each of us, and that is
personal character ; we are sure that two and two
make four, and we are ready to argue the matter;
we trust our beloved friend, and there is an end of
THE BHAGAVADGlTA 141
it. Even the exception goes to prove the rule ; to
be mistaken about things is a passing incident, but
to have been taken in by a person we trusted is an
intolerable evil. So if we think of God as a person
we may cheerfully acknowledge that our ideas of
his methods, his action on us through the things
around us, were crude and mistaken ; but we cannot
rationally believe that he deceives us about himself;
for to do so makes nonsense of all our beliefs. Yet
this is the tragic conclusion to which Krishna leads
us ; we individually may be among the very few,
not one in thousands 1 , who can attain true know
ledge ; but men in general follow natural sense and
go wrong.
THE GITA AND THE FOURTH GOSPEL
We have followed the old lines of thought into
the newer time, and have traced them in some
detail. We must try now to form some idea of
the Gita as a whole, and to see how far it has ful
filled its purpose.
It was meant to reconcile the thought of the
philosophers with the life of the common people ;
and it has attempted this by announcing a revela
tion, made at a specified time and place by a certain
person. The fact that such a person existed, if he
did exist, was in itself the revelation ; the fact that
H2 THE BHAGAVADGITA
he comes forth from time to time for the protection
of the good, the destruction of the wicked, and the
establishment of the law 1 , in itself shows the divine
nature. Hence arises the apparent connection be
tween the Gita and the Fourth Gospel, which has
sometimes led people to think that one copied from
the other. There is no reason to suppose that there
was any borrowing, or that either author knew of
the existence of the other ; but the two are teaching
the same doctrine, and it is natural that there should
be likenesses of thought and even expression. Each
claims to be founded on an historical event ; and
each declares that the divine has manifested itself
in human form on earth. Our belief in the doctrine
is dependent on our belief in the historical event.
We cannot press this point too strongly ; it is
essential in both cases.
There is no evidence that such a man as Krishna
ever existed ; indeed there is evidence to show that
he did not. The war, of which the Mahabharata
keeps the memory alive, must have been somewhere
about 800 B.C., the Glta is not older than 300 B.C.
In the interval of some five hundred years between
battle and book there is no sign that anyone had ever
heard of Krishna, either as a teacher or as a complete
divine incarnation ; there was no body of believers
in him ; there is no trace of him in literature in this
1 4,8.
THE BHAGAVADGITA 143
character ; the Krishna of the Glta is not an historical
figure, and his connection with legend is slight ; he
is imaginary, and the product of one of the most
remarkable and powerful imaginations that the world
has ever seen 1 .
THE MOTIVE OF THE GIT A
How then did the book come to be written?
What led anyone to conceive and set forth such an
idea as that the divine power should manifest itself
in this way ?
The author is urged, in the first place, by the ne
cessity of carrying on life somehow. This necessity
he acknowledges, without explaining it; he allows
it in men, for, he says, they must act :
Without action even bodily life cannot be secured. 3, 8.
Krishna himself acts :
These worlds would fall into ruin if I did not act. 3, 24.
On his own showing there is no reason why they
should not ; they are of no advantage to him ; and
we are to be. indifferent to any advantage they might
bring to us. We are left in the dark as to the motive
which compels action, and the author leaves us to
detect the gap in his system for ourselves ; yet it
remains, though unacknowledged ; and the whole
doctrine rests in the end on nothing ; the ultimate
1 On this subject see Gita and Gospel, Farquhar.
H4 THE BHAGAVADGITA
ground of it is unknowable, and so far as we are con
cerned, irrational; and in so far as it holds together
at all, it is a compromise between that irrational
background and an apparently rational world. The
achievement of the book is that it has provided a
scheme by which, up to a certain point, life can be
made to seem rational.
The strength of the Glta lies in its adaptability ;
there is an argument to suit every view. If the
necessity for action is to be urged, we have the verse
already quoted :
Do thou always perform action, for action is better than
inaction ; without action even bodily life cannot be secured.
3,8.
Or if we are to understand its essential unreality
we have:
When it is deceived by egoism the self thinks t it is I
who act. 3, 27.
If common morality is to be maintained, there is
the whole of the sixteenth discourse, with its con
tinuation in the seventeenth and eighteenth dis
courses ; but the hollowness of the conventional
view is declared in the saying :
The Lord does not take count of anyone s sin, nor yet
their good deeds. 5, 15.
If it is a plain rule of life that is wanted, the whole
book is an exhortation to follow the rule of caste
THE BHAGAVADGITA 145
the old, familiar, traditional rule ; if convention is
to be put on one side and search made for the one
reality, we have only to realise that the book itself
is a concession made to the partly enlightened, and
that there is a yet higher way possible, where its
standards do not apply.
If the seeker demands a personal God, we find
the assertion throughout that such a being exists,
and that he manifested himself as Krishna at Kuru-
kshetra, that he knows and watches the lives of all
men, is their judge, their saviour, and is sometimes
even said to love them.
If, on the other hand, anyone rebels against the
limitations which seem to be necessary to such a
conception, he can take refuge in some remoter
existence, of which nothing can be said, except that
it is, and that it is unchangeable, self-existent, eternal,
infinite.
Wonder and the delight in mystery find a sphere
in the contemplation of that unknown being and of
its working, especially in the vision of the eleventh
discourse ; and mental subtlety finds exercise in
tracing the working of the various systems.
The power of the Glta lies in these things ; but
here also lies its weakness, for at each point we find
suggestion, but not satisfaction ; there is great power
of seeing difficulties, real difficulties, but little power
of solving them ; and in the end we are left to fall
s. 10
i 4 6 THE BHAGAVADGITA
back on convention and caste ; there is no new life-
giving principle revealed, to include old opposites
in a new unity.
The author of the Gita found himself called on
to produce a fresh interpretation of life at a turning-
point in the history of his race. Of this turning-
point we know little except what we can gather from
the book. A class of thinkers had grown up, who
found complete satisfaction neither in philosophy
nor in the Epics. They demanded at once the
reasoned arguments of the philosophers, and the
personal interest of the gods. On the one hand,
as educated men, they could not be content without
some examination of belief ; on the other, their sense
of personality, their affections and interest in life,
demanded affections and interest in that power of
which life is the expression. The gods, in whom
they actually professed belief, were no longer of
any use to them ; as we have seen, they were not
persons, but at best pictures, and could make no
claim on the love or reverence of their worshippers,
except for old sake s sake ; they could do nothing
to attract or educate the new powers of love and
wonder that were growing up.
The Great Self of the Upanishads was no better;
a man s own self, however great, cannot lead him
beyond himself. Against the doctrine of the Great
Self, carried out with entire consistency, the sense
THE BHAGAVADGITA 147
of right and wrong continually asserts itself, the
sense that there is a distinction, that good and evil
are not the same, and that it is our business to
choose between them, even if only in their lowest
form of pleasure and pain. Arjuna s unreflecting
instinct tells him that it is wrong to destroy his
cousins and friends, and he announces that he will
not do it 1 , and in the very act of so resolving claims
to be a person, exercising a will and expressing his
belief in a world governed by personal considera
tions, the sphere of action of a personal God. In
his whole argument the author never explains this
impulse of Arjuna s will ; he sets custom against
conscience, and justifies it by mere assertion ; yet
he goes so far as to provide an imaginary person
for want of a real one, and his readers were satisfied
with the substitute. So Arjuna s problem remains
unsolved.
If, for the sake of the argument, we suppose
that this conscience, the sense of distinction of a
difference between good and evil, is not something
accidental and superficial, but is something essential
in human nature, we shall presently find that it is
the essential ; that it is in this, a free will, that man
consists, that the world is founded in righteousness,
and that the ultimate, the power that lies beyond
it, is also a will, a person. Every argument must
1 2,9-
10 2
148 THE BHAGAVADGITA
come to this at last, the question between fate and
free-will, between a personal God and an impersonal
world. As far as argument is concerned, the question
is endless ; for fate always wins by argument, and
the result is always upset by life. But if after all
it should prove that we have come to wrong con
clusions through trusting to insufficient data and
immature faculties, we may yet find free-will a
more satisfactory answer to the riddle of life than
fate.
But the belief in a personal God makes a demand
from which the opposite one is free ; it makes life
more intense and more inward ; it deals with motive
rather than with outward action ; it points to harmony
in life rather than to mere equipoise ; it is spiritual
rather than material.
The teachers of India refused this line of thought
in the early days, when they turned from Varuna
to Indra ; they refused it again, in the time of the
Upanishads, when they looked for revelation by
knowledge only ; and again when the writer of the
Glta gave to his country a revelation founded on
fancy, and they were willing to accept it.
CHAPTER V
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
WE have followed the main stream of early Indian
thought from its sources in the Rigveda, through
its most perfect manifestation in the Upanishads to
its practical application in the Bhagavadgita". It will
be easier to form a just idea of what it really is and
wherein its special character lies, if we compare it
with the thought of other races and nations of the
ancient world.
EGYPT
Of all the great religions of the ancient world that
of Egypt stands nearest to primitive thought. Per
manence is the mark of Egypt. In a land where
not only buildings, books and paintings, but grains of
corn, flowers and even footprints, can be preserved
for thousands of years, men s thoughts naturally
dwell on the hope of keeping the things they value
in the shapes they know, for ever. Egypt troubled
little about the origin of things, and still less about
the final end ; but turned all its energy to the task
150 INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
of overcoming the great interruption, death, and
planning to make a fresh start beyond it on the
old lines. Whether a man looked on the sun as
the divine power, or whether he looked on Osiris
as the great king, what he wanted was not a new
life in another world, nor yet a clearer revelation
of truth in a higher state of being, but another
Egypt and another Nile, where things might go
on as before.
Egyptian thought was much occupied with magic,
but there was also a strain of morality in it, which
was remarkable in such a connection. It appeared
in the religion of Osiris ; when the man comes into
his judgment-hall, to see his soul weighed against
truth, he protests his innocence in forty-two asser
tions, addressed to forty-two gods. Some of these
assertions show an unusually advanced idea of sin,
not only murder, adultery and sacrilege are men
tioned, but slander, lying, oppression of the poor,
indulgence of anxious care or vain remorse. At the
time of Ikh-en-aton, the reforming pharaoh, who
introduced the worship of the solar disc and revolu
tionised Egyptian religion for a while, there was a
movement towards repentance and amendment of
life, which left its mark on the hymns of the period,
but it seems to have died out ; and in later times
Egypt again put its trust in magic. There is a strange
mixture of spiritual and material about the people,
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS 151
they recognised the need for pure hearts to display
in the Hall of Judgment, and had them carved in
stone, and laid on their breasts in their coffins.
Egyptian thought as set forth in art is full of
dignity and mystery. There is a peculiar satisfac
tion in the long straight monotonous rows of gods
and men, sitting or marching in stately attitudes,
and with solemn gestures, and painted in brilliant
colours. It was a strange faith that led the Egyptians
to paint the inside of tombs richly, working in the
darkness to adorn miles of underground passages,
which were closed to all living men as soon as the
dead came to inhabit them. The colossal statues
and enormous pyramids and temples rouse the same
wonder; and Egypt leaves us with a mingled vision
of awe and splendour the intense sunshine and
gorgeous sky, above a land of vast ruins, silent,
mysterious, and older than any other works of civi
lised man.
The thought of Egypt is like the first attempts
of some imaginative child, looking, wondering, but
hardly reasoning ; the race expresses itself in archi
tecture, sculpture, and painting, but not in literature.
This thought reached its greatest height in the wor
ship of Osiris, a god of many natures, in whom we
find traces of the moon, the spirit of trees and of corn,
and an actual human king, who taught his people
arts and industries, while his wife, Isis, became
152 INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
the type of faithfulness, fortitude and wisdom. But
even here magic had the last word.
CHALDEA
There were other nations in which religion was
closer to patriotism. In Chaldea the gods were at
once heavenly bodies and rulers of cities ; and their
fortunes rose and fell with those of the cities they
governed. As Babylon became greater than Nippur,
so Marduk became greater than Bel ; and legend
reflects the fact and accounts for it after its own
fashion.
ASSYRIA
When the Assyrians succeeded the Chaldeans as
the dominant power in Mesopotamia, they carried
the idea of political life a step further. Their god,
Assur, was a conqueror and Carried his armies far
away into other lands. We see him on the monu
ments, presiding over battlefields and the sack of
cities, the slaughter of captives, the carrying off of
their families, and the taking of tribute. It is a
brutal religion with no thought, so far as we can
see, beyond military glory. The art is like that of
Egypt ; but the grace and mystery is gone, though
some of the dignity is the same. Yet such as it is
this religion carries the suggestion that its god is
to be king, though only conqueror and tyrant, of
the whole world.
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS 153
CHINA
Political duty is the ruling thought of China.
In Chaldea and Assyria the king s advantage is the
centre of everything ; in China the one object is the
public welfare. The Sbu King, the oldest Chinese
history book, opens with the account of a reforming
king, under whose sway universal harmony was
established, the people all became brightly intelli
gent and were transformed, and c the result was
concord. Book after book we read of those who
succeeded and those who failed in the same work ;
one minister of a dissolute king sings sadly :
In my dealings with the millions of the people I should
feel as much anxiety as if I were driving six horses with
rotten reins. Shu King, Songs of the Five Sons.
So also a king in a time of terrible drought cries :
The drought is excessive ; all is dispersion and the bonds
of government are relaxed. . . .
There is no one who has not tried to help the people;...
I look up to the great heaven, but its stars sparkle bright.
My great officers and excellent men, ye have reverently
drawn near to Heaven with all your powers. Death is
approaching. But do not cast away what you have done.
You are seeking not for me only, but to give rest to all
our departments. I look up to the great heaven; When
shall I be favoured with repose ? Major Odes of the King
dom. 3, 5.
The divine nature is vaguely conceived, and shows
154 INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
itself chiefly in inspiring this sense of anxious re
sponsibility. The ancient Chinese stand before us
in their literature as an honest and diligent race,
with a great love for the common sights of nature,
the fields, the flowers, the birds and changing sea
sons, not much given to abstract thought, caring
little for war and glory. China can tell the dates
of its emperors and its periods of anarchy from
2 197 B.C. to the present time; a Chinaman is always
a citizen, even the dead are still citizens, who watch
over the affairs of their descendants and take part
in them ; the chief business of life is to rule or to
be ruled ; its motive is public duty ; the divine
power is the supreme ruler.
ROME
Kindred to the thought of Assyria and China,
but higher, is that of Rome. In Rome the early
worship of countless spirits, ruling over every de
partment and every sub-department of life, was
much the same as Chinese spirit-worship to-day.
Every implement in house and field, every stage
of growth in child or plant, every act of life, had
its deity. But the god of the pestle and the god
dess of the broom, the deity who led the child
across the room, and the other who led him back,
all the different gods who ruled over a single ear
of corn till it was full grown, and the singular being
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS 155
whose kingdom was a tax, find their fullest expres
sion in the genius who guarded what was really the
Roman s chief care, the life of the family, personi
fied in its father, and later, the life of the state,
personified in its emperor. This was the true object
of a Roman s worship, whether it was expressed
by decrees deifying the Caesars or by the devotion
paid to Jove. Jove was the father of the city, en
throned on the Capitol, receiving the triumphant
armies as they came in with the spoils of all the
world. The Emperor was the representative of
Rome too ; and loyalty to the man meant loyalty
to the city. But Rome was not a mere conqueror
like Assyria ; to Rome conquest was an incident,
glorious, but passing, to be got through as quickly
as possible, and with as little inconvenience to the
conquered as might be. The ultimate ideal was not
only a triumphant state, but an ordered world, where
Rome, who only could rule, should rule, and other
nations should live their lives according to their
powers.
The worship of the nation is an advance from
the search after merely individual advantage ; for a
long time it calls out much of what is best in human
nature, but it cannot satisfy us completely. The
Romans themselves felt this and borrowed from
Greece, Egypt and Syria, but never quite supplied
the want, so that the foreign gods either, like Apollo,
156 INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
shrivelled into conventional symbols, or, like Isis,
degenerated into fanciful superstitions, while pat
riotism, rinding its only end in itself, fell back from
a search after the divine reality, into the old worship
of the vital impulse.
All the national religions but one have died out
with the nations who followed them ; Chinese re
ligion survives with China, but makes no attempt
to spread beyond it. If new national gods arise,
by whatever names they are called, whether they
take shape in a king or in an imaginary figure decked
with symbols, or if they take the names that belong
to a really personal form of religion, they must
needs follow the others, and can never be the ulti
mate reality for mankind. Political worship is still,
as a matter of fact, the religion of many men. Of
late years it has been announced in more than one
place as a new and precious discovery. Men think
it a virtue to exalt their own countries at the ex
pense of others, and to insist that the rest of the
world owes everything to them ; every nation and
every race in turn passionately claims all the best
gifts for itself, and covers up its failures with angry
excuses. It is strange to see the heat with which
an ignorant man will throw himself into a discussion
to defend the doings of persons in remote ages,
whom he supposes, often wrongly, to have been
of the same race as himself; nothing is too good
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS 157
for his own chosen people, nothing too base for
everyone else.
With its introduction to the West India has been
touched by the attraction of nation-worship, but
the idea is not natural to it. The people of India
have never before compared themselves as one body
with other nations, the worship of India as a single
ideal is not characteristic ; and has only been learnt
from foreigners. Caste has been hard and cruel in
its working in many ways ; but it may have done
something to preserve the country from the dazzle
of nation-worship.
GREECE
Of all nations Greece is the most akin to India ;
and we look to Greek thought to throw a special
light on Indian thought. Its character has been
summed up as c intellectual passion for truth 1 . To
see this passion fairly we must lookat Greek thought,
not at any one moment in its long history, but in
its whole course, from the time of its dawn in the
days of Homer, to the time of its decay under the
Roman Empire. The interest in matters of fact is
always the same, though it takes different direc
tions : the Greeks care first for things as they seem
to be ; but as they examine into appearances their
1 Plato and Christianity, Temple.
158 INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
idea of the nature of reality changes. In the Homeric
age and earlier, the distinction between actual fact
and the play of imagination was not found out ;
their own notions of the divine nature seemed to
the Greeks to be gods, and they played with them
by the light of their own fancy ; but as time went
on, they tested the appearance, and realised with dis
tress and bewilderment, that it had ceased to satisfy
them. The Prometheus of Aeschylus is the eternal
Protestant, unconvinced and defiant ; Euripides is
full of protest :
Gods should be kinder and more just than men,
says the faithful servant in Hippolytus, when the
action of the goddess is likely to be particularly
petty and spiteful ; and Hecuba in the Women of
Troy says :
Ye Gods Alas ! why call on things so weak for aicl ?
The philosophers threw over the old belief in gods,
now seen to be false, and again tried to interpret
things according to their new and enlarged view of
them ; but however much their view of them was
enlarged, it still consisted of the interpretation of
observed facts ; and it was because more facts were
recognised that the interpretation had to be changed.
So in its best time Greek thought consisted of an
interpretation of facts, accurately observed, so far
as was possible, and honestly considered ; and the
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS 159
Greeks brought to their task the clearest and most
well-balanced minds that the human race has yet
produced. Even in the end, when the glory of
original thought had died out, the habit of collect
ing facts was left, without the power of putting them
together and building on them ; and the Athenians
of the first century A.D. told and heard new things,
and had no further use for them 1 .
The Indian philosophers, on the contrary, had
no interest in outward things for their own sake,
but left them on one side, and went on to look
for the knowledge of the ultimate only ; and when
they wanted to put that knowledge into a com
prehensible form, they travestied facts. When they
described the universe as a beehive, the resulting
picture left an equally vague impression of both
terms ; the wonder of the universe was expressed
in a tangle of honeycombs, gods and colours ; and
the wonder of the actual beehive disappears 2 . Indian
thought has fallen into the snare in part because
of its own strength, because it realised its own limi
tations too early, and knew that we can never attain
certainty through intellectual processes only ; so it
lost heart, and ended in the search for mere peace,
for the end of desire, not its fulfilment.
1 Acts xvii % 21.
2 Chhand. 3, i ff. Compare Brih. 2, 5.
160 INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
PERSIA
Two ancient nations, and two only, developed
in a different way, and held a certain belief which in
the end outgrew all their other beliefs, and opened
the way to a new world of thought altogether the
belief that God is at any rate all that we mean by
a person, that he has purpose, and distinguishes
between good and evil, and that this is the most
fundamental thing we know about him. The history
of this idea fell out very differently in these two
races.
The great prophet of Persia, Zarathushtra, taught
it so plainly that those who came after have never
quite lost sight of it ; but no one was able to carry
on his teaching, and in the course of ages it shrank
instead of developing. We have Zarathushtra sown
teaching in a series of seventeen hymns, the Gathas,
which are preserved in the Avesta. These hymns
seem to have been written by him, or sometimes
by his immediate friends, in the course of the wars
carried on under his inspiration, to free the Iranians
from the attacks of robber tribes.
The character he attributes to the supreme God
is quite different from that of any Indian God ex
cept Varuna, and of any Greek God except Zeus ;
and it differs widely from both Zeus and Varuna.
Ahura Mazdah is perfectly just and wise as Varuna
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS 161
almost always is, and Zeus at his best moments ;
but he has none of the lower side of Zeus, the con
stant amours, the liability to be tricked, the personal
jealousies and quarrels that mark Zeus at once as
a nature god and as the copy of a Greek hero.
There is in Ahura Mazdah no connection with sun
or rain; and if his name points to some relation
with the sky, no trace of it is left in the image pre
sented to us by Zarathushtra. Especially there is in
him no remotest suggestion of consort or children,
either celestial or earthly.
Ahura differs from Varuna as well in the much
greater development of the idea of goodness asso
ciated with him. With Varuna we are never posi
tively told what it was that had turned him against
Vasishtha; we hear in a general way that he punishes
falsehood, but it is only in one hymn that we find
particulars given 1 . Ahura, on the other hand, com
mands Zarathushtra not only to abstain from gross
and obvious sins, which indeed do not seem to have
tempted him much, but to undertake the arduous
life of a prophet and guardian of his people, to
teach them to choose good and refuse evil, for :
Between these two (the better and the bad) the wise
once chose aright, the foolish not so. Ys. 30, 3.
and to show them how to protect themselves in a life
of husbandry and the care of cattle. Zarathushtra s
1 Rigv. 7, 86.
s. n
1 62 INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
ideal for his people is clear and positive; he demands
industry, a good life in thought, word and deed, and
the knowledge of Ahura. The prophet himself
accepts hardship with the deliberate intention of
serving his people :
I... will, while I have power and strength, teach men to
seek after right. Ys. 28, 4.
an intention which the people received apparently
with anything but gratitude, at any rate in the be
ginning, for the Ox Soul indignantly complains :
That I must be content with the ineffectual word of an
impotent man for my protector, when I wish for one that
commands mightily! Ys. 29, 9 1 .
But it is not only through his demands on man that
we are shown the character of Ahura. The vision
of him, as described by Zarathushtra is a most
unusual one. While family relationships are con
spicuously absent, he is surrounded by a group of
attendant figures, who reveal his character; what
they actually are it is hard to say ; in the later
religion some of them become archangels ; in Zara-
thushtra s own writings we cannot finally say whether
they are independent persons or qualities; some are
more and some less closely connected with Ahura ;
he is sometimes called their father, sometimes their
creator; they are sometimes immanent in mankind.
1 The Gathas belong to the collection of Yasnas. The trans
lations are taken from Moulton s Early Zoroastrianism.
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS 163
They are Right, Good Thought, Dominion, Piety,
Health, Immortality, the Ox Soul, the Ox Creator,
Obedience, Fire and others; and we learn from them
that Zarathushtra thought of Ahura as manifesting
himself in goodness and health of mind and body,
in power and in the demand for honesty of life.
Of outward magnificence, gold, garlands, palaces,
chariots, weapons or any outward appearance at all,
we hear nothing.
The traditional date for Zarathushtra s life is
660 to 583 B.C., about the time of Jeremiah, and
of some of the later Upanishads, and a little earlier,
than the Buddha; but some recent scholarship puts
it much earlier, in the second millennium B.C., per
haps in the same general period as Moses, and the
arrival of the Aryans in India 1 . The fate of his
religion has been most singular. It left a mark on
the thought of his people that nothing has effaced,
and to this day the Parsis worship God as one and
holy; but no second prophet brought this thought
into such close contact with actual life as Zara
thushtra had done. The old nature-worship that
he had thrust out 2 came back ; the vision of Zara
thushtra was reduced to precise rule ; the idea of
moral purity shrank into the idea of ceremonial
1 See Dr Moulton s writings, Early Persian Poetry, Early 7.a-
roastrianism, etc.
2 See Yasna 32, especially <v. 18.
II 2
1 64 INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
purity ; and the whole religion passed from various
political causes, under the control of a foreign tribe,
the Magi, who established themselves as its priests,
and introduced customs of their own, which were
no part of the original doctrine ; so that from Zo-
roastrianism it became Magianism,and from a living
religion, it became largely a system of magic. This
change was completed by the time of Darius Hys-
taspes, 521 to 4856.0.; and to this day Parsism
survives as a blend of these two conceptions, the
thought of Zarathushtra and the thought of the
Magi.
ISRAEL
In Israel the thought of a God of righteousness
is carried much further. This conception did not
however reveal itself clearly at first, indeed the first
idea of Jahve is not so free from connection with
lower things as, in the mind of Zarathushtra, the
idea of Ahura Mazdah appears to have been. This
is natural, as we have in the books of the Hebrew
Bible the record, not of the thoughts of a single
man, as in the case of the Gathas, but of a whole
race. There are indeed not many traces of nature-
worship in connection with Jahve, but he 1 seems
1 In speaking of the God of Israel it is customary to use a
capital H in the words He and Him as an indication of the rever
ence due to the true God. For the special purpose of this book
I have ventured to omit this, so as not to seem to claim any position
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS 165
to have been thought of as inhabiting special places,
Mount Sinai, or his temple at Jerusalem ; and the
worship of the golden calves 1 and the brazen
serpent 2 shows the strength of the temptation to
wards this way of thinking. Outward appearance
is attributed to him, sometimes with the simplicity
of the story of Eden 3 , sometimes with hesitation,
as in the story of Abraham and the Three men 4 ,
sometimes with yet more hesitation and restraint,
as in the vision in which the writer speaks only of
a sapphire pavement under his feet, without any
further particulars 5 ; and we find the same tone in
the visions of Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 7 , where the pro
phet is evidently struggling with the difficulty of
either using or rejecting images. In other passages
outward appearance is put aside altogether; when
the vision of the c back parts has been promised
to Moses 8 , the revelation actually given is of the
name of the Lord, a proclamation of moral qualities 9 ;
and to Elijah it is a voice, not a vision, that brings
revelation 10 . Some minds rise above others in their
conceptions; but to all, the outward appearance,
for the religion of Israel other than what it is hoped will appear
from the substance of the argument. In using this spelling I am
following the example set by the printers of the Bible and the Book
of Common Prayer.
1 Exodus xxxii. 4. 2 2 Kings xviii. 4. 3 Genesis ii.
4 Genesis xviii. 5 Exodus xxiv. 10. 6 Isaiah vi.
7 Ezekiel i. 27. 8 Exodus xxxiii. 33. 9 Exodus xxxiv. 6.
10 i Kings xix. 12.
1 66 INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
whether it exists or not, is a matter of secondary
importance, and the moral character is the essential
revelation.
Here, as in the Persian religion, there is a com
plete absence of any suggestion of a consort. This
is a fact so familiar to us that we may lose sight
of its significance ; but both in Israel and in Persia
it marks a deep divergence from the thought of
either Greek or Indian official relic-ion. In Greece
o
sex is among the most prominent features of the
gods ; in Vedic India, though the divine consorts
are but shadowy beings, and the divine mothers
only a little less unimportant, the gods themselves
are distinctly masculine. The worship of the vital
impulse makes sex a matter of overwhelming im
portance. In Israel the only wife or child of Jahve
is the ideal nation of Israel ; and the use of the image
in this connection is not a myth, but a parable,
introduced to enforce a lesson of gratitude or
obedience 1 . It is readily changed for some other,
and Israel may be wife in one verse and child in
the next, and an animal or a flock of sheep directly
after 2 .
But the conception of Jahve was never that of
a mere nature-god ; it was much nearer to that of
a national god a God of battles and Lord of Hosts
who chose the Israelites and made a covenant
1 Hosea ii. and xi. i. Isa. 1. Jer. iii. 2 Hosea xi. 4.
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS 167
with them, so that they became his people, not by
natural descent, but by choice and agreement. But
this idea was not the final one. One of the most
striking moments of Israelite history occurs when
it passes into the higher one of Jahve as god of the
whole world. The change was not due to philosophy,
to any desire to account for the origin or destiny
of the universe, but took place only in view of com
mon life. The earliest statement of this doctrine
is found in the book of Amos ; and here it arises
only from moral considerations. Because God is
righteous, he hates sin, not only among the Hebrews
but everywhere ; and he will punish it in all, and
most severely among those who know him best ;
and as he punishes it in all, he is therefore seen to
be the God of all. Here is philosophy, unconscious
of itself, and appearing as action ; and here, as with
Zarathushtra, the close concern of Jahve, as of
Ahura, with the affairs of common life, marks a
second deep divergence from the thought of Greece
or India. According to the one conception the
ultimate reality is that unknown force which we
are, yet of which we can say nothing, only we re
cognise it by thought ; according to the other, he is
a living person, not ourselves, but closely interested
in us, who knows and weighs every action, word
and thought, and whom we learn to know and re
cognise by means of loyalty.
1 68 INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
The religion of Israel is lacking in certain ele
ments. It has no answer for questions that the
mind of man is bound to ask ; everything in it is
concerned with the actual need of the moment. For
instance, it gives us two accounts of the origin of
things ; of these one leads up to the command to
keep the Sabbath, the other describes the beginning
of sin, and its result in the daily toil and suffering
of mankind. God is revealed always and only in
connection with conduct, whether in myth or legend,
poetry or history. Speculation turns only on the
problem of suffering ; and the only answer given to
it is the answer given to Job : you cannot argue with
God ; or else that which the writer of Ecclesiastes
offers us : let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die. The whole duty of man, so this writer or his
commentator tells us, is only to fear God and keep
his commandments, not also to understand him,
or ourselves. Our thought is turned to what we
do, not to what we are ; and the question of the
psalmist : Lord, what is man ? is left, like the
question of Job, without an answer.
But from this very limitation, the way, though
not the end, is set before us with unequalled clear
ness. The Hebrew points with intense conviction
and passionate earnestness to the next thing to be
done. Fight the enemy, overthrow the idols, reject
such a king or minister and appoint such another,
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS 169
deliver the poor, worship God 1 . Whatever is to
be done, it is because the Lord says so ; and he is
to be found in doing it. The view of man s fate
after death is very dim ; speculations about ultimate
truth are entirely absent ; but no one can doubt as
to what he is told to do at this moment.
It may happen that in this way of thinking we
may forget God himself in the interest of the service
we offer him. It happened so among the Jews ; and
it has happened so since with others. To those
who feel the inadequacy of such a position, without
clearly knowing what it is they feel, the Indian way
of thought has often brought a sense of great relief.
Its statement of the incomprehensibility of the
divine nature, and its description of the life of de
tachment in which alone that nature can be realised,
have not only seemed to be the revelation of spiritual
religion ; they have recalled a forgotten aspect of
it. The impression has, for modern Europeans,
been heightened by its novelty ; it seems as if to
turn from matter must be the same thing as to turn
to spirit, and as if, in order to get rid of the idea
of a quasi-human autocrat, a c great Taskmaster,
we must deny all that makes us think of the ultimate
being as a person. But we ought not to let reaction
from bad teaching lead us into careless thinking ;
See Isaiah i. 16, 17 for an instance of this.
1 70 INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
we have no right to condemn any school of thought
in its weakest form without looking to what it is
capable of producing at its best. Hebrew thought,
whether higher or lower, rests altogether on the
conception of a God whose essential character is
shown in the distinction between right and wrong,
and in the necessity of good conduct. This con
ception, though it seems to have arisen out of merely
practical considerations, supplied the element missing
in all other human thought, and the motive without
which philosophy cannot come to life in religion.
Indeed, though the Hebrews never detected it them
selves, there is a philosophy latent in their religion
which in the end proved to be the only rival to
that of India.
THE VALUE OF INDIAN THOUGHT
The great value of Indian thought is that it brings
the controversy of ages to an issue which grows
clearer as we dwell on it. India has stated the argu
ment for necessity, and has put it in practice, so far
as it can possibly be done, for three thousand years.
Western thought has accepted Hebrew guidance ;
it acts on the assumption of free-will, and has an
nounced its belief in God as a person. This belief it
holds, occasionally, inconsistently, confusing it with
savage superstitions, forgetting it, and misrepre
senting it. Succeeding generations have revolted
INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS 171
from the intellectual idols bequeathed to them,
and have set up more of their own ; yet all have
this common feature, that each man has attributed
to God what was at the moment his own highest
idea of goodness.
To such conceptions India has opposed a con
tinual challenge. It declares that the ultimate is
incomprehensible, and that all experience is illusion.
Not that India in its time has not also sought God
by way of the affections. After the period of the
Glta the Bhakti religions arose, which consisted of
the worship of (^iva or Vishnu with devotion,
amounting to passion ; but like the thought of the
philosophers, the passion of the devotee was some
thing apart from conduct. The original Bhakti
saints longed for deliverance from their own sins ;
but in the long run, the Bhakti religions brought
no moral reformation to the country at large.
The East and the West try one another s theories,
and compel one another to test foundations anew.
Now there is one line of thought in the sacred
books of India which we have looked at from time
to time. It has been ignored by Indian teachers,
and lies in the Vedas, in the Upanishads, and in
the Gita, neglected and barren, and yet capable or
repaying investigation. It consists in the appeal to
the common sense of right ; and it involves far-
reaching results, results which reach so far that they
172 INDIA AND OTHER NATIONS
may even undermine the whole stately system of
the Upanishads. The doctrine of the one real being,
of necessity, illusion, and impersonality has been
tried to the utmost ; and it has broken down on
the side of daily life.
It seems that our choice lies between believing
that personal character is nothing or is all. I n early
Indian thought we have the boldest and the most
consistent effort that the human mind has ever made
to show that it is nothing ; and the effort has failed.
Thought may yet learn a lesson from life that shall
end, not in failure, but in hope.
INDEX
Abstraction 7, 25, 26, 29
Action 1 1 6, 117, 1 1 8, 121, 123,
125, 143, 144, 167
A9vapati 52, 66
Acvin 19
Aditya 21, 40, 128
Aeschylus 158
Agni 12, 13, 18, 19, 24, 27, 40
Agnihotra 54
Ahura 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 167
Aitareya 34, 35, 40, 42, 44, 45, 47,
59, 68, 108
Akshara 121, 126, 127, 131
Amos 167
Anger 138, 139
Apollo 155
Aranyaka i, 2
Arjuna 116, 117, 118, 119, 120,
121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 129,
130, 134, 135, 147
Aryaman 9, 10
Aryan 2, 3, 4, 5, 38, 163
Assur 152
Assyria 152, 153, 154, 155
Asura 86
Atharva Veda 5
Athenians 159
Attachment 124, 138
Augustine 48, 67, 68
A vesta 160
Bad conduct 138, 139
Bank and boundary 73, 74
Beehive 159
Bel 152
BhagavadgTta i, 2, 114 148, 149,
171
Bhakti 130, 131, 171
Bhrigu 54
Bliss 54, 69, 72, 84, 109, 132, 133,
135
Brahma 39, 44, 46, 47, 50, 52, 54,
55, 64, 69, 75) 7$, 8 4 , 85, 86,
87, 90, 92, 98, 107, 108, 109,
126, 127, 132, 135
Brahmana i, 3, 33, 56, 62, 73, 99,
112
Brahmanaspati 29
Brahmans 16, 17, 23, 24, 25, 26,
55. 58, 62, 78, 92, 93, 96, 106,
114, 122, 135, 136
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 34, 36,
37. 44. 45) 47) 5) 5i> 57) 61, 63,
68,74,76,78,84,87,90, 91,92,
96, 97, 98, 109, 159
Brihaspati 19, 22, 26, 84
Buddhi 117
Buddhism 34
Buddhist 3, 34
Camkara, (^amkaracharya 34, 99,
122, 125, 136, 140
Caste 23, 39, 80, 91 96, 122, 123,
!33) 134) 135. 144) 146, 157
Caterpillar 97, 134
Chaldea 152, 153
Chandala 93, 96, 99
Chariot 12, 21, 107, 113, 116, 117
Chhandogya Upanishad 34,35,37,
45 46, 47) 5i) S^, 57) 62, 63, 67,
70, 71, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 96,
98, 99, 100, 101, 106, in, 112,
159
China 4, 153, 154, 156
Christian 19, 34
Civa 3, 114, 131, 171
Community 39, 93, 94, 95
Consort 16 1, 1 66
Craddha 4
C^udra 24, 122, 135
Cvetacvatara Upanishad 35
(^vetaketu 35, 70
Date 4, 142, 154, 163
Death 21, 32,35, 38, 44,45, 57, 150
INDEX
Demoniacal 121, 122
Desire 31, 32, 52, 69, 73, 74, 80,
82 91, no, in, 115, 121, 124,
i3 2 33 138
Dhananjaya 117, 128
Dhritarashtra 115, 116, 119, 122
Disinterestedness 124, 136
Disloyalty 138
Divine nature i 79, 103, 123, 153,
158, 169
Doubt 26, 138
Dravidian 2, 3, 5, 22, 38
Drought 26, 153
Ecclesiastes 168
Egoism 144
Egypt 4, 149152, 155
Element 45, 128
Elijah 130, 165
Epics 2, 3, 12, 114, 115, 116, 146
Ether 45, 51, 52, 53, 59, 73, 85
Euripides 158
Eye 41, 43, 45 4 6 - 47 49 5<>> 5 1 .
53, 81, 86
Ezekiel 165
Fate and freewill 147, 148
Fire 13, 27, 41, 45, 51, 52, 54, 106
Food 22, 23, 35, 41, 42, 43, 45, 51,
5 2 53> 54> 55 57
Forest books i
Fourth Gospel 141
Gandharva 21, 84, 98
Garutmat 27
Gathas 160, 162, 164
Glta. See Bhagavadglta
Godlike 121, 122
Gods and demons 86
Golden germ 14
Goldsmith 98, 134
Good and evil deeds 107, ro8, no
Greece 6, 13, 155, 157 159, t66,
167
Gunas 122
Harmony 89, 101, 105, in, 122,
136, 137. 138, 148
Harmony, passion, and darkness
Heart 37, 39, 41, 46, 49
74, 85, 86, 88
73.
Hebrew 31, 32, 130, 164, 167, 168,
170
Hecuba 158
Hinduism 3, 38
Hiranyagarbha 40
Horse 20, 21, 24, 41, 117
Human nature 22, 33, 80 113,
131 141
Human sacrifice 22, 23, 24
Hunger 41, 4 2, 44, 45
?9* 35
lvara 121, 126, 127, 131, 140
Ignorance 34, 97, 98, 104,106 in,
113, 128, 138, 139
Immaterial 50, 51
Imperishable 74, 76, 126, 127
Inaction 121, 144
Indestructible 46, 127
India i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 16, 17, 28,
3 1 43 56, 57 60, 66, 78, 82, 91,
93, 95, no, 114, 118, 131, 148,
149172
Indifference 133, 134
Indra 5, 6, 8, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19,
20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27,44, 4<5, 84,
86, 87, 88, 94, 109, 148
Infinite 72, 129, 130
Isaiah 165
Isis 151, 156
Israel 4, 34, 164170
iahve 164, 166, 167
ains 3
anaka 68, 73, 76
Jaratkarava 97
Jerusalem 165
Jftana 139
Job 1 68
Jove 155
Judgment 107, 150, 151
Ka 26
Kama 132, 138
Karma, karman 97, 126
Karma-yoga 125
Katha Upanishad 35, 38, 39, 57,
58, 73, 116, 117
Katyayani 78, 114, 115
Kaushitaki Upanishad 34, 35, 45,
46, 96, 107,. 108, 109
INDEX
Kena Upanishad 34, 35
Knowledge 31, 32, 71, 89, 104,
106 in, 113, 125, 139, 140,
141, 148
Krishna 114, 115, 116, 117, 118,
119, 120, 121, 122, 124,125, 126,
127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134,
Kshatriya 92, 93,96,99, 115, 122,
"5,135
Kshetra 121
Kshetrajna 121
Kurukshetra 115, 121, 145
Kurus 115, 134
Liberality 17
Loyalty 39, 105, in 113, 167
Magi no, 164
Magic 15, 35,38, 60, 66, 103, 104,
105, 106, 139, 150, 152, 164
Mahabharata 115, 142 .
Maitrayana Upanishad 36
Maitreyi 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 1 14, 1 15
Manifest 32, 108, 121, 126, 127,
128, 138
Mantha 57
Marduk 152
Maruts 6, 13
Matari9van 27
Material 10, 12, 17, 49, 50, 51, 82,
132, 138, 140, 148, 150
Material and immaterial 50
Material prosperity 7, 8, 15 18,
56, 106
Maya 140
Mistake 103, 106
Mitra 9, 10, 12
Moods 122
Moral law 7 10
Moses 163, 165
Mundaka Upanishad 35, 63, 64,
74, 89, 91, 124
Nachiketas 35, 38, 57, 58
Narada 71, 72, 76, 112
Neti, neti( Nol no! ) 35, 74, 75,
76
Ocean without duality 69, 73, 76,
One behind the many 7, 26, 27
Osiris 107, 150, 151
Pandavas 115, 116, 117, 128
Parsis 163, 164
Patriotism 83, 152, 156
Peace 78, 83, 109, no, in, 120
Penultimate 121, 126
Persia no, 160 164, 166
Philosopher 2, 6, 7, 25, 26, 31, 35,
112, 141, 142, 146, 158, 159,171
Philosophy 2, 56, 105, 146, 167,
170, 171
Physical law 7, 10, n
Physical life 7, 11 15
Poet 6, 7, 15, 24
Poker 112
Pracna Upanishad 36, 47
Prajapati 15, 26, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88,
94, 98, 123
Prakriti 121
Prank 35, 46, 73
Pratardana 109
Priest 6, 7, 15, [7, 18, 19, 24, 29,
62, 63
Prometheus 158
Protestants 3, 64, 158
Purusha 22, 23, 24, 41, 81. 121,
127, 128
Qualities 35, 122, 162, 165
Rain 6, 12, 13, 98, 99, 101, 102
Raj any as 24
Reproduction 80, 81, 82, 97, 131
Righteousness 8, 67, 147, 164
Rigveda i 32, 92, 149, 161
Rishi 8, 13, 18, 22, 23, 43, 54, 57,
68, 83, 1 10, 135
Rita 10
Rome 154 157
Rudra 20
Sacrifice i, 7, ir, 14 16, 19 24,
26, 27, 29, 56 66, 121, 123,
124, 125, 130
Sacriticial principle 123 125
Sage i, 50, 52, 71, 84, 85
Salvation 39, 80, 102 113, 135
141
Sama Veda 5, 55
Sanatkumara 71, 112
i 7 6
INDEX
Sanjaya 115, 116, 122, 129
Sannyasi 125, 136
Satyakama 112
Savitar 19
Scepticism 25
Shu King 153
Sin 8, 9, 80, 102113, 132, 133,
135141, 150, 168
Sinai 165
Sleep 8, 67, 68, 69, 86, 96
Soma 13, 18, 20, 24, 25, 46, 53, 81
Spirit 2, 49, 50, 112, 121, 154
Spiritual 82, 148, 150
Supreme 5, 6, 35, 127, 128, 132,
134, *35
Surya 12
Swing 59, 60
Syria 155
Taittiriya, Taittiriyaka Upanishad
34, 35, 45, 54, 55, 84, 109
Tapas 30
Tat tvam asi 35
Tongue 47
Tortoise 137
Transmigration 80, 96 102, 133,
134
Treachery 105, in 113, 138
Trita 21
True desires 67, 85, 86
Uddalaka 35, 52, 70
Ultimate 6, 7, 2832, 35, 6679,
112, 121, 126,127, 147,159, 167,
169, 171
Unalterable 126
Unmanifest 32, 108, 121, 127
Upanishadsi,2,33 113, 116, 117,
123, 132, 137, 146, 148, 149, 163,
171, 172. See also under Bri-
hadaranyaka, Chhandogya, ve-
t^vatara, I^a, Katha, Kaushl-
taki, Kena, Maitrayana, Mun-
daka, Pracna, Taittirlya
Ushas ii
Vaivanara 52, 53, 96
Vai9ya 24, 99, 122, 135
Vak 26
Varuna 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 16, 21,
27, 54, 148, 160, 161
Vasishtha 8, no, 161
Vasus 21
Vayu 40
Vedas i, 4, 5, 10, ri, 12, 26, 29,.
3, 33, 34, 39, 7i, 73, 80, 108,
114, 123, 125, 171
Vi9vakarman 19, 26, 30
Viraj 23
Virocana 86
Vishnu 3, 20, 116, 117, 128, 129,.
I3i,.i7i
Vital impulse, principle 24, 26^
3956, 66, 74, 120, 123, 128
131, 156, 166
Vitality 12, 13, 56, 61
Vritra 26
Women 85, 88, 91, 92, 114, 135
Yajnavalkya 34, 62, 63, 68, 73,
75,/6,77,78,79, 8 7,89,90, 97
109, 114, 134
Yajur Veda 5
Yama 21, 22, 27, 57
Yoga 137, 140
Yogi 135, 136
Yukta 137
Zarathushtra no, 160, 161, 162,
163, 164, 167
Zeus 6, 1 60, 161
CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BY J. B. PEACE, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
B STEPHEN
131 STUDIES IN EARLY
,S7 INDIAN THOUGHT
1918 120883
57
