The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c11.116

v1.c11.116

The ritual of this Vaiṣṇavism was probably the same which we see described in the tenth Book of the *Taittirīya Āraṇyaka*. Set forms of prayers at morning, noon and evening, offerings of fruits, flowers, water, &c, special *mantras*, and modified forms of *gāyatrī* were its chief elements, resulting in the substitution of faith for knowledge. This was the natural consequence of rigid obedience to set forms under a domineering hierarchy. Revealed religion, in such cases, generally requires an unlimited degree of faith, and it was promoted by a spirit of proselytism which polemical antagonism usually engenders. Not that the religion of the Vedas did not insist on a great amount of faith; it did so to a large extent; nevertheless the old belief was that an intelligent understanding of the nature and object of ceremonies was necessary to perfect fruition, and the leading Upaniṣads laid particular stress upon this point; but it was by no means a convenient dogma for the conversion or control of large masses of men, and a more summary means of governing the mind of the lower orders, was greatly needed, and this was found in the maxim of unswerving and unquestioning faith, or *Bhakti*, as a substitute for knowledge. The *Bhagvadgītā* gave it great prominence, by pointing out the inefficacy of practical worship enjoined in the ordinance of the Smṛti, and the advantage of absolute devotion to the service of God; and Śāṇḍilya reduced it to a system in his Aphorisms on the subject, (*Śatasūtra*), in which he "rejects the Hindu (gnostic) theory, that knowledge is the one thing needful and contends that knowledge is only the handmaid of faith". ⁵⁷ The *bhakti* or faith advocated by him was however, not a mere principle of belief, or action in consonance with requirements of that belief, but an earnest, unflinching vehement devotion, such as, in the case of worldly matters, is indicated by the word passion, and in a moral sense by pathos. Śāṇḍilya defines it as "absolute devotion to God," ⁵⁸ and Svapneśvara explains the devotion by describing it as "a function of the mind with reference to the Supreme Being similar to what is evinced in regard to worldly objects under particular circumstances", ⁵⁹ a feeling similar to what is engendered—to use a tough phrase of Aristotle—by our concupiscible appetites, but bearing a closer affinity to his *Boulysis* or rational appetite, or the *Thumos* of Plato as distinct from his "*epithumia* an earnestness connected with the rational and immortal part of our nature, and stimulating the pursuit through God of good and the avoiding of excess and evil". The most important peculiarity of this devotion or theopathy is its entire freedom from reason: it admits no argument, or discussion, or consideration as to the reasonableness of the action prompted by it: it is an unreasoning and absolute belief,—an unqualified and entire resignation of the mind—which is so sublimely expressed in the language of the English prayer: "Lord, Thy will be done". Its chief object was to override the dialectics of the philosophers, who discarded the promptings of the mind in their schemes of salvation, and to substitute a religion of the heart for one of reason,—of one much better calculated to command sympathy than either the rites of the Vedas, or the teachings of the Sāṃkhya, the Nyāya and the Vedānta. The full effect of the innovation did not, however, manifest itself until a later stage in the history of this system of religion.