Our Oriental Heritage

by Will Durant

  V. THE RELIGION OF THE VEDAS

  Pre-Vedic religion—Vedic gods—Moral gods—The Vedic story of Creation—Immortality—The horse sacrifice

  The oldest known religion of India, which the invading Aryans found among the Nagas, and which still survives in the ethnic nooks and crannies of the great peninsula, was apparently an animistic and totemic worship of multitudinous spirits dwelling in stones and animals, in trees and streams, in mountains and stars. Snakes and serpents were divinities—idols and ideals of virile reproductive power; and the sacred Bodhi tree of Buddha’s time was a vestige of the mystic but wholesome reverence for the quiet majesty of trees.57 Naga, the dragon-god, Hanuman the monkey-god, Nandi the divine bull, and the Yakshas or tree-gods passed down into the religion of historic India.58 Since some of these spirits were good and some evil, only great skill in magic could keep the body from being possessed or tortured, in sickness or mania, by one or more of the innumerable demons that filled the air. Hence the medley of incantations in the Atharva-veda, or Book of the Knowledge of Magic; one must recite spells to obtain children, to avoid abortion, to prolong life, to ward off evil, to woo sleep, to destroy or harass enemies.*59

  The earliest gods of the Vedas were the forces and elements of nature herself—sky, sun, earth, fire, light, wind, water and sex.62 Dyaus (the Greek Zeus, the Roman Jupiter) was at first the sky itself; and the Sanskrit word deva, which later was to mean divine, originally meant only bright. By that poetic license which makes so many deities, these natural objects were personified; the sky, for example, became a father, Varuna; the earth became a mother, Prithivi; and vegetation was the fruit of their union through the rain.63 The rain was the god Parjanya, fire was Agni, the wind was Vayu, the pestilential wind was Rudra, the storm was Indra, the dawn was Ushas, the furrow in the field was Sita, the sun was Surya, Mitra, or Vishnu; and the sacred soma plant, whose juice was at once holy and intoxicating to gods and men, was itself a god, a Hindu Dionysus, inspiring man by its exhilarating essence to charity, insight and joy, and even bestowing upon him eternal life.64 A nation, like an individual, begins with poetry, and ends with prose. And as things became persons, so qualities became objects, adjectives became nouns, epithets became deities. The life-giving sun became a new sun-god, Savitar the Life-Giver; the shining sun became Vivasvat, Shining God; the life-generating sun became the great god Prajapati, Lord of all living things.*65

  For a time the most important of the Vedic gods was Agni—fire; he was the sacred flame that lifted the sacrifice to heaven, he was the lightning that pranced through the sky, he was the fiery life and spirit of the world. But the most popular figure in the pantheon was Indra, wielder of thunder and storm. For Indra brought to the Indo-Aryans that precious rain which seemed to them even more vital than the sun; therefore they made him the greatest of the gods, invoked the aid of his thunderbolts in their battles, and pictured him enviously as a gigantic hero feasting on bulls by the hundred, and lapping up lakes of wine.66 His favorite enemy was Krishna, who in the Vedas was as yet only the local god of the Krishna tribe. Vishnu, the sun who covered the earth with his strides, was also a Subordinate god, unaware that the future belonged to him and to Krishna, his avatar. This is one value of the Vedas to us, that through them we see religion in the making, and can follow the birth, growth and death of gods and beliefs from animism to philosophic pantheism, and from the superstition of the Atharva-veda to the sublime monism of the Upanishads.

  These gods are human in figure, in motive, almost in ignorance. One of them, besieged by prayers, ponders what he should give his devotee: “This is what I will do—no, not that; I will give him a cow—or shall it be a horse? I wonder if I have really had soma from him?”67 Some of them, however, rose in later Vedic days to a majestic moral significance. Varuna, who began as the encompassing heaven, whose breath was the storm and whose garment was the sky, grew with the development of his worshipers into the most ethical and ideal deity of the Vedas—watching over the world through his great eye, the sun, punishing evil, rewarding good, and forgiving the sins of those who petitioned him. In this aspect Varuna was the custodian and executor of an eternal law called Rita; this was at first the law that established and maintained the stars in their courses; gradually it became also the law of right, the cosmic and moral rhythm which every man must follow if he would not go astray and be destroyed.68

  As the number of the gods increased, the question arose as to which of them had created the world. This primal rôle was assigned now to Agni, now to Indra, now to Soma, now to Prajapati. One of the Upanishads attributed the world to an irrepressible Pro-creator:

  Verily, he had no delight; one alone had no delight; he desired a second. He was, indeed, as large as a woman and a man closely embraced. He caused that self to fall (v pat) into two pieces; therefrom arose a husband (pati) and a wife (patni). Therefore . . . one’s self is like a half fragment; . . . therefore this space is filled by a wife. He copulated with her. Therefore human beings were produced. And she bethought herself: “How, now, does he copulate with me after he has produced pie just from himself? Come, let me hide myself.” She became a cow. He became a bull. With her he did indeed copulate. Then cattle were born. She became a mare, he a stallion. She became a female ass, he a male ass; with her he copulated of a truth. Thence were born solid hoofed animals. She became a she-goat, he a he-goat; she a ewe, he a ram. With her he did verily copulate. Therefore were born goats and sheep. Thus indeed he created all, whatever pairs there are, even down to the ants. He knew: “I, indeed, am this creation, for I emitted it all from myself.” Thence arose creation.69

  In this unique passage we have the germ of pantheism and transmigration: the Creator is one with his creation, and all things, all forms of life, are one; every form was once another form, and is distinguished from it only in the prejudice of perception and the superficial separateness of time. This view, though formulated in the Upanishads, was not yet in Vedic days a part of the popular creed; instead of transmigration the Indo-Aryans, like the Aryans of Persia, accepted a simple belief in personal immortality. After death the soul entered into eternal punishment or happiness; it was thrust by Varuna into a dark abyss, half Hades and half hell, or was raised by Yama into a heaven where every earthly joy was made endless and complete.70 “Like corn decays the mortal,” said the Katha Upanishad, “like corn is he born again.”71

  In the earlier Vedic religion there were, so far as the evidence goes, no temples and no images;72 altars were put up anew for each sacrifice as in Zoroastrian Persia, and sacred fire lifted the offering to heaven. Vestiges of human sacrifice occur here,73 as at the outset of almost every civilization; but they are few and uncertain. Again as in Persia, the horse was sometimes burnt as an offering to the gods.74 The strangest ritual of all was the Ashvamedha, or Sacrifice of the Horse, in which the queen of the tribe seems to have copulated with the sacred horse after it had been killed.*75 The usual offering was a libation of soma juice, and the pouring of liquid butter into the fire.77 The sacrifice was conceived for the most part in magical terms; if it were properly performed it would win its reward, regardless of the moral deserts of the worshiper.78 The priests charged heavily for helping the pious in the ever more complicated ritual of sacrifice: if no fee was at hand, the priest refused to recite the necessary formulas; his payment had to come before that of the god. Rules were laid down by the clergy as to what the remuneration should be for each service—how many cows or horses, or how much gold; gold was particularly efficacious in moving the priest or the god.79 The Brahmanas, written by the Brahmans, instructed the priest how to turn the prayer or sacrifice secretly to the hurt of those who had employed him, if they had given him an inadequate fee.80 Other regulations were issued, prescribing the proper ceremony and usage for almost every occasion of life, and usually requiring priestly aid. Slowly the Brahmans became a privileged hereditary caste, holding the mental and spiritual life of India under a control that threatened to stifle all thought a
nd change.81

  VI. THE VEDAS AS LITERATURE

  Sanskrit and English—Writing—The four “Vedas”—The “Rigveda”—A Hymn of Creation

  The language of the Indo-Aryans should be of special interest to us, for Sanskrit is one of the oldest in that “Indo-European” group of languages to which our own speech belongs. We feel for a moment a strange sense of cultural continuity across great stretches of time and space when we observe the similarity—in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and English—of the numerals, the family terms, and those insinuating little words that, by some oversight of the moralists, have been called the copulative verb.* It is quite unlikely that this ancient tongue, which Sir William Jones pronounced “more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either,”83 should have been the spoken language of the Aryan invaders. What that speech was we do not know; we can only presume that it was a near relative of the early Persian dialect in which the Avesta was composed. The Sanskrit of the Vedas and the epics has already the earmarks of a classic and literary tongue, used only by scholars and priests; the very word Sanskrit means “prepared, pure, perfect, sacred.” The language of the people in the Vedic age was not one but many; each tribe had its own Aryan dialect.84 India has never had one language.

  The Vedas contain no hint that writing was known to their authors. It was not until the eighth or ninth century B.C. that Hindu—probably Dravidian—merchants brought from western Asia a Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician; and from this “Brahma script,” as it came to be called, all the later alphabets of India were derived.85 For centuries writing seems to have been confined to commercial and administrative purposes, with little thought of using it for literature; “merchants, not priests, developed this basic art.”86 Even the Buddhist canon does not appear to have been written down before the third century B.C. The oldest extant inscriptions in India are those of Ashoka.87 We who (until the air about us was filled with words and music) were for centuries made eye-minded by writing and print, find it hard to understand how contentedly India, long after she had learned to write, clung to the old ways of transmitting history and literature by recitation and memory. The Vedas and the epics were songs that grew with the generations of those that recited them; they were intended not for sight but for sound.* From this indifference to writing comes our dearth of knowledge about early India.

  What, then, were these Vedas from which nearly all our understanding of primitive India is derived? The word Veda means knowledge;† a Veda is literally a Book of Knowledge. Vedas is applied by the Hindus to all the sacred lore of their early period; like our Bible it indicates a literature rather than a book. Nothing could be more confused than the arrangement and division of this collection. Of the many Vedas that once existed, only four have survived:

  I. The Rig-veda, or Knowledge of the Hymns of Praise;

  II. The Sama-veda, or Knowledge of the Melodies;

  III. The Yajur-veda, or Knowledge of the Sacrificial Formulas; and

  IV. The Atharva-veda, or Knowledge of the Magic Formulas.

  Each of these four Vedas is divided into four sections:

  1. The Mantras, or Hymns;

  2. The Brahmanas, or manuals of ritual, prayer and incantation for the priests;

  3. The Aranyaka, or “forest-texts” for hermit saints; and

  4. The Upanishads, or confidential conferences for philosophers.‡

  Only one of the Vedas belongs to literature rather than to religion, philosophy or magic. The Rig-veda is a kind of religious anthology, composed of 1028 hymns, or psalms of praise, to the various objects of Indo-Aryan worship—sun, moon, sky, stars, wind, rain, fire, dawn, earth, etc.* Most of the hymns are matter-of-fact petitions for herds, crops, and longevity; a small minority of them rise to the level of literature; a few of them reach to the eloquence and beauty of the Psalms.92 Some of them are simple and natural poetry, like the unaffected wonder of a child. One hymn marvels that white milk should come from red cows; another cannot understand why the sun, once it begins to descend, does not fall precipitately to the earth; another inquires how “the sparkling waters of all rivers flow into one ocean without ever filling it.” One is a funeral hymn, in the style of Thanatopsis, over the body of a comrade fallen in battle:

  From the dead hand I take the bow he wielded

  To gain for us dominion, might and glory.

  Thou there, we here, rich in heroic offspring,

  Will vanquish all assaults of every foeman.

  Approach the bosom of the earth, the mother,

  This earth extending far and most propitious;

  Young, soft as wool to bounteous givers, may she

  Preserve thee from the lap of dissolution.

  Open wide, O earth, press not heavily upon him,

  Be easy of approach, hail him with kindly aid;

  As with a robe a mother hides

  Her son, so shroud this man, O earth.93

  Another of the poems (Rv. x, 10) is a frank dialogue between the first parents of mankind, the twin brother and sister, Yama and Yami. Yami tempts her brother to cohabit with her despite the divine prohibition of incest, and alleges that all that she desires is the continuance of the race. Yama resists her on high moral grounds. She uses every inducement, and as a last weapon, calls him a weakling. The story as we have it is left unfinished, and we may judge the issue only from circumstantial evidence. The loftiest of the poems is an astonishing Creation Hymn, in which a subtle pantheism, even a pious scepticism, appears in this oldest book of the most religious of peoples:

  Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky

  Was not, nor heaven’s broad woof outstretched above.

  What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?

  Was it the water’s fathomless abyss?

  There was not death—yet was there naught immortal,

  There was no confine betwixt day and night;

  The Only One breathed breathless by itself;

  Other than It there nothing since has been.

  Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled

  In gloom profound—an ocean without light—

  The germ that still lay covered in the husk

  Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.

  Then first came love upon it, the new spring

  Of mind—yea, poets in their hearts discerned,

  Pondering, this bond between created things

  And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth

  Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?

  Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose—

  Nature below, and power and will above—

  Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,

  Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?

  The gods themselves came later into being—

  Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?

  He from whom all this great creation came,

  Whether his will created or was mute,

  The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,

  He knows it—or perchance even He knows not.94

  It remained for the authors of the Upanishads to take up these problems, and elaborate these hints, in the most typical, and perhaps the greatest, product of the Hindu mind.

  VII. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHADS

  The authors—Their theme—Intellect vs. intuition—Atman—Brahman—Their identity—A description of God—Salvation—Influence of the “Upanishads”—Emerson on Brahma

  “In the whole world,” said Schopenhauer, “there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life—it will be the solace of my death.”95 Here, excepting the moral fragments of Ptah-hotep, are the oldest extant philosophy and psychology of our race; the surprisingly subtle and patient effort of man to understand the mind and the world, and their relation. The Upanishads are as old as Homer, and as modern as Kant.

  The word is compo
sed of upa, near, and shad, to sit. From “sitting near” the teacher the term came to mean the secret or esoteric doctrine confided by the master to his best and favorite pupils.96 There are one hundred and eight of these discourses, composed by various saints and sages between 800 and 500 B.C.97 They represent not a consistent system of philosophy, but the opinions, aperçus and lessons of many men, in whom philosophy and religion were still fused in the attempt to understand—and reverently unite with—the simple and essential reality underlying the superficial multiplicity of things. They are full of absurdities and contradictions, and occasionally they anticipate all the wind of Hegelian verbiage;98 sometimes they present formulas as weird as that of Tom Sawyer for curing warts;99 sometimes they impress us as the profoundest thinking in the history of philosophy.

  We know the names of many of the authors,100 but we know nothing of their lives except what they occasionally reveal in their teachings. The most vivid figures among them are Yajnavalkya, the man, and Gargi, the woman who has the honor of being among the earliest of philosophers. Of the two, Yajnavalkya has the sharper tongue. His fellow teachers looked upon him as a dangerous innovator; his posterity made his doctrine the cornerstone of unchallengeable orthodoxy.101 He tells us how he tried to leave his two wives in order to become a hermit sage; and in the plea of his wife Maitreyi that he should take her with him, we catch some feeling of the intensity with which India has for thousands of years pursued religion and philosophy.

  And then Yajnavalkya was about to commence another mode of life.