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A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c6: Introduction

A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c6

Language
English

Introduction

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FULL seventy years have passed since Sir William Jones published his translation of Śakuntala¹, a work which may fairly be considered as the starting point of Sanskrit philology. The first appearance of this beautiful specimen of dramatic art created at the time a sensation throughout Europe, and the most rapturous praise was bestowed upon it by men of high authority in matters of taste.² At the same time the attention of the historian, the philologist, and the philosopher was roused to the fact that

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¹ “Sacontala or the Fatal Ring, an Indian drama, translated from the original Sanskrit and Prakrit. Calcutta, 1789.” There have since appeared three editions of the Sanskrit text, and translations in French, German, Italian, Danish, and Swedish. A new and very elegant English version has lately been published by Professor Williams. Hertford, 1856.

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² Goethe was one of the greatest admirers of Śakuntala, as may be seen from the lines written in his Italian Travels at Naples, and from his well-known Epigram:

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“Willt Du die Blüthe des frühen, die Früchte des späteren Jahres,
Willt Du, was reizt und entzückt, willt Du was sättigt und nährt,
Willt Du den Himmel, die Erde mit einem Namen begreifen,
Nenn ich, Sacontala, Dich, und so ist Alles gesagt.”
“Wilt thou the blossoms of spring and the fruits that are later in season,
Wilt thou have charms and delights, wilt thou have strength and support,
Wilt thou with one short word encompass the earth and the heaven,
All is said if I name only, Sacontala, thee.”

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a complete literature had been preserved in India, which promised to open a new leaf in the ancient history of mankind, and deserved to become the object of serious study. And although the enthusiasm with which works like Śakuntala were at first received by all who took an interest in literary curiosities could scarcely be expected to last, the real and scientific interest excited by the language, the literature, the philosophy, and antiquities of India has lasted, and has been increasing ever since. England, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Greece have each contributed their share towards the advancement of Sanskrit philology, and names like those of Sir W. Jones, Colebrooke, Wilson, in England, Burnouf in France, the two Schlegels, W. von Humboldt, Bopp, and Lassen, in Germany, have secured to this branch of modern scholarship a firm standing and a universal reputation. The number of books that have been published by Sanskrit scholars in the course of the last seventy years is but small.¹ Those works, however, represent large and definite results, important not only in their bearing on Indian antiquities, but, as giving birth to a new system of Comparative Philology, of the highest possible importance to philology in general.² In little more than half a century, Sanskrit has gained its proper place in the republic of learning, side by side with Greek and Latin. The privileges which these two languages enjoy in the educational system of modern Europe will scarcely ever be shared by Sanskrit. But no one who wishes to acquire a thorough knowledge of these or any other of the Indo-European languages, — no one who takes an interest in the philosophy and the historical growth of human speech, — no one who desires to study the history of that branch of mankind to which we ourselves belong, and to discover in the first germs of the language, religion, and mythology of our forefathers, the wisdom of Him who is not the God of the Jews only, — can, for the future, dispense with some knowledge of the language and ancient literature of India.

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¹ Professor Gildemeister in his most laborious and accurate work, “Bibliothecæ Sanscritæ Specimen, Bonnæ, 1847,” brings the number of books that have been published up to that time in Sanskrit philology to 603, exclusive of all works on Indian antiquities and Comparative Philology. During the last twelve years that number has been considerably raised.

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² Professor Lassen, in his work on Indian Antiquities, now in course of publication, is giving a resumé of the combined labours of Indian philologists during the last seventy years, sifted critically

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And yet Indian philology is still in its infancy, and the difficulties with which it has had to contend have been great, much greater, indeed, than those which lay in the way of Greek philology after its revival in the fifteenth century. Seventy years after the fall of Constantinople, the classical works of Greek literature were not only studied from manuscripts: they had been edited and printed. There were men like Reuchlin, Erasmus, and Melanchthon, who had investigated the most important documents in the different periods of Greek literature, and possessed a general knowledge of the historical growth of the Greek and arranged scientifically by a man of the most extensive learning, and of the soundest principles of criticism. His work may indeed be considered as bringing to its conclusion an important period of Sanskrit philology, which had taken its beginning with Sir W. Jones's translation of Śakuntala. Indische Alterthums-Kunde, von Christian Lassen. Bonn, 1847—1858.

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mind. Learned Greeks who were taking refuge in the west of Europe, particularly in Italy, had brought with them a sufficient knowledge to teach their language and literature; and they were able and ready to guide the studies of those who were afterwards to contribute to the revival of classical learning in Europe. Men began where they ought to begin, namely, with Homer, Herodotus, and Thucydides, and not with Anacreontic poetry or Neo-Platonist philosophy. But when our earliest Sanskrit scholars directed their attention to Indian literature, the difficulties they had to struggle with were far greater. Not to mention the burning and enervating sky of India, and the burden of their official occupations, men like Halhed, Wilkins, and Sir W. Jones could hardly find a single Brahman who would undertake to teach them his sacred idiom. When, after some time, learned Pandits became more willing to impart their knowledge to Europeans, their own views of Indian history and literature were more apt to mislead their pupils than to guide them, in a truly historical direction. Thus it happened that, at the beginning of Sanskrit philology, preference was given either to works which still enjoyed amongst the Hindus themselves a great, but frequently undeserved, popularity, or to those which by their poetical beauty attracted the attention of men of taste. Everything Indian, whether Manu’s Code of Laws, the Bhagavadgîtâ, Śakuntala, or the Hitopadeśa, was at that time considered to be of great and extravagant antiquity, and it was extremely difficult for European scholars to form a right opinion on the real merits of Indian literature. The literary specimens received from India were generally fragments only of larger works:

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or, if not, they had been chosen so indiscriminately from different and widely distant periods, that it was impossible to derive from them an adequate knowledge of the rise and fall of the national literature of India.

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Herder, in other respects an excellent judge of ancient national poetry, committed himself to some extraordinary remarks on Indian literature. In his criticism on Śakuntala, written in the form of letters to a friend, he says: "Do you not wish with me, that instead of these endless religious books of the Vedas, Upavedas, and Upangas, they would give us the more useful and more agreeable works of the Indians, and especially their best poetry of every kind? It is here the mind and character of a nation is best brought to life before us, and I gladly admit, that I have received a truer and more real notion of the manner of thinking among the ancient Indians from this one Śakuntala, than from all their Upnekats and Bagavedams."¹ The fact is that at that time Herder's view on the endless religious books of the Vedas, could only have been formed from a wretched translation of the Bagavedam, as he calls it, — that is, the Bhâgavatapurâṇa, — a Sanskrit work composed as many centuries after as the Vedas were before Christ; or from the Ezour-vedam, a very coarse forgery, if, indeed, it was intended as such, written, as it appears, by a native servant, for the use of the famous Jesuit missionary in India, Roberto de Nobilibus.²

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¹ Herder's Schriften, vol. ix. p. 226, Zur schönen Literatur und Kunst. Tübingen, 1807.

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² Cf. Account of a Discovery of a Modern Imitation of the

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Even at a much later time, men who possessed the true tact of an historian, like Niebuhr, have abstained from passing sentence on the history of a nation whose literature had only just been recovered, and had not yet passed through the ordeal of philological criticism. In his Lectures on Ancient History, Niebuhr leaves a place open for India, to be filled up when the pure metal of history should have been extracted from the ore of Brahmanic exaggeration and superstition.

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Other historians, however, thought they could do what Niebuhr had left undone; and after perusing some poems of Kâlidâsa, some fables of the Hitopadeśa, some verses of the Ânanda-lahari, or the mystic poetry of the Bhagavadgîtâ, they gave, with the aid of Megasthenes and Apollonius of Tyana, a so-called historical account of the Indian nation, without being aware that they were using as contemporary witnesses, authors as distant from each other as Dante and Virgil. No nation has, in this respect, been more unjustly treated than the Indian. Not only have general conclusions been drawn from the most scanty materials, but the most questionable and spurious authorities have been employed without the least historical investigation or the exercise of that critical ingenuity, which, from its peculiar character, Indian literature requires more than any other.¹

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¹ Professor H. H. Wilson, in the preface to his translation of the Vishnu-Purâna, remarks: "It is the boast of inductive philosophy that it draws its conclusions from the careful observation and accumulation of facts; and it is equally the business of all philosophical research to determine its facts before it ventures

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Vedas, with Remarks on the genuine works, by Fr. Ellis; Asiatic Researches, xiv. p. 1—59: Calcutta, 1822.

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There is another circumstance which has retarded the progress of Sanskrit philology: an affectation of that learned pedantry which has done so much mischief to Greek and Latin scholarship. We have much to learn, no doubt, from classical scholars, and nothing can be a better preparation for a Sanskrit student than to have passed through the school of a Bentley or a Hermann. But in Greek and Latin scholarship the distinction between useful and useless knowledge has almost disappeared, and the real objects of the study of these ancient languages have been well nigh forgotten. More than half of the publications of classical scholars have tended only to impede our access to the master-works of the ancients; and a sanction has been given to a kind of learning, which, however creditable to the individual, is of no benefit to the public at large. A similar spirit has infected Sanskrit philology. Sanskrit texts have been edited, on which no rational man ought to waste his time. Essays have been written on subjects on which it is folly to be wise. These remarks are not intended to disparage critical scholarship or to depreciate the results which have been obtained by minute and abstruse erudition. But scholars who devote all their time to critical niceties and recondite subtleties are apt to forget that these are but accessories. Knowledge which has no object beyond itself is, in most cases, but a pretext for vanity. It is so easy, even for the most superficial, to build up a theory on the most important and most obscure points of the earliest and most difficult literature, and to call this procedure critical investigation. This procedure has not been observed in the investigation of the mythology and traditions of the Hindus. Impatience to generalise has availed itself greedily of whatever promised to afford materials for generalisation; and the most erroneous views have been confidently advocated, because the guides to which their authors trusted were ignorant or insufficient.

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cial scholar, to bring together a vast mass of information, bearing more or less remotely on questions of no importance whatsoever. The test of a true scholar is to be able to find out what is really important, to state with precision and clearness the results of long and tedious researches, and to suppress altogether lucubrations, which, though they might display the laboriousness of the writer, would but encumber his subject with needless difficulty.

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The object and aim of philology, in its highest sense, is but one,—to learn what man is, by learning what man has been. With this principle for our pole-star, we shall never lose ourselves, though engaged in the most minute and abstruse inquiries. Our own studies may seemingly refer to matters that are but secondary and preparatory, to the clearance, so to say, of the rubbish which passing ages have left on the monuments of the human mind. But we shall never mistake that rubbish for the monuments which it covers. And if, after years of tiresome labour, we do not arrive at the results which we expected,—if we find but spurious and unimportant fabrications of individuals, where we thought to place ourselves face to face with the heroes of an ancient world, and among ruins that should teach us the lessons of former ages,—we need not be discouraged nor ashamed, for in true science even a disappointment is a result.

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If, then, it is the aim of Sanskrit philology to supply one of the earliest and most important links in the history of mankind, we must go to work historically; that is, we must begin, as far as we can, with the beginning, and then trace gradually the growth of the Indian mind, in its various manifestations, as far as the remaining literary monuments allow us to follow this course. What has been said with regard to philosophy, that “we must acquire a knowledge of the beginning and first principles, because then we say that we understand any thing when we believe we know its real beginnings,” applies with equal force to history. Now every one acquainted with Indian literature, must have observed how impossible it is to open any book on Indian subjects without being thrown back upon an earlier authority, which is generally acknowledged by the Indians as the basis of all their knowledge, whether sacred or profane. This earlier authority, which we find alluded to in theological and philosophical works, as well as in poetry, in codes of law, in astronomical, grammatical, metrical, and lexicographic compositions, is called by one comprehensive name, the Veda.

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It is with the Veda, therefore, that Indian philology ought to begin if it is to follow a natural and historical course. So great an influence has the Vedic age (the historical period to which we are justified in referring the formation of the sacred texts) exercised upon all succeeding periods of Indian history, so closely is every branch of literature connected with Vedic traditions, so deeply have the religious and moral ideas of that primitive era taken root in the mind of the Indian nation, so minutely has almost every private and public act of Indian life been regulated by old traditionary precepts, that it is impossible to find the right point of view for judging of Indian religion, morals, and literature without a knowledge of the literary remains of the Vedic age. No one could fairly say that those men who first began to study Sanskrit, now seventy years ago, ought to have begun with reading the Veda. The difficulties connected with the study of the Veda would have made such a course utterly impossible and useless. But since the combined labours of Sanskrit scholars have now rendered the study of that language of more easy access, since the terminology of Indian grammarians and commentators, which not long ago was considered unintelligible, has become more familiar to us, and manuscripts can be more readily procured at the principal public libraries of Europe, Sanskrit philology has no longer an excuse for ignoring the Vedic age.

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It might be inferred from the very variety of subjects upon which, as has been just observed, the Veda is quoted as the last and highest authority, that by Veda must be understood something more than a single work. It would be, indeed, much nearer the truth to take "Veda" as a collective name for the sacred literature of the Vedic age, which forms, so to speak, the background of the whole Indian world. Many of the works which belonged to that period of literature have been irrecoverably lost. With regard to many of them, though their existence cannot be doubted, it is even uncertain whether they were ever committed to writing. A large number, however, of Vedic works does still exist; and it will require many years before they can be edited together with their commentaries. Till then it will be impossible to arrive at definite results on many questions connected with Vedic literature, and it would not be safe to take a comprehensive view of the whole Vedic age before all the sources have been exhausted from which its history and character can be studied. Nothing could be farther from the purpose of this historical essay than to attempt anything of this kind at present. What I have to offer are but Prolegomena to the Veda, or treatises on some preliminary questions connected with the history of the Vedic age. There are points which can be settled with complete certainty, though it may be impossible to bring, as yet, the whole weight of evidence to bear upon them; and the general question as to the authenticity, the antiquity, and the different periods of Vedic literature, ought to be answered even before beginning an edition of Vedic works. Again, there are many questions of special interest for Sanskrit literature, in which even now, with the materials that have been published, and with the help of manuscripts that are accessible in the public libraries of Europe, it is possible to arrive at certain results; while other points are such that even after the complete publication of all Vedic texts and commentaries, they will remain open to different views, and will necessarily become the subject of literary discussions. The principal object of the following essays will be to put the antiquity of the Veda in its proper light. By antiquity, however, is meant, not only the chronological distance of the Vedic age from our own, measured by the revolutions and the progress of the heavenly bodies, but also and still more, the distance between the intellectual, moral, and religious state of men as represented to us during the Vedic age, compared with that of other periods of history,—a distance which can only be measured by the revolutions and the progress of the human mind.

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No one who is at all acquainted with the position which India occupies in the history of the world, would expect to find many synchronisms between the history of the Brahmans and that of other nations before the date of the origin of Buddhism in India. Although the Brahmans of India belong to the same family, the Aryan or Indo-European family, which civilised the whole of Europe, the two great branches of that primitive race were kept asunder for centuries after their first separation. The main stream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the north-west. No historian can tell us by what impulse those adventurous Nomads were driven on through Asia towards the isles and shores of Europe. The first start of this world-wide migration belongs to a period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the soil of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans, Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks. But whatever it was, the impulse was as irresistible as the spell which, in our own times, sends the Celtic tribes towards the prairies or the regions of gold across the Atlantic. It requires a strong will, or a great amount of inertness, to be able to withstand the impetus of such national, or rather ethnical movements. Few will stay behind when all are going. But to let one's friends depart, and then to set out ourselves—to take a road which, lead where it may, can never lead us to join those again who speak our language and worship our gods—is a course which only men of strong individuality and great self-dependence are capable of pursuing. It was the course adopted by the southern branch of the Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryas of India and the Zoroastrians of Iran.

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At the first dawn of traditional history we see these Aryan tribes migrating across the snow of the Himâlaya southward toward the "Seven Rivers" (the Indus, the five rivers of the Panjâb and the Sarasvatî), and ever since India has been called their home. That before that time they had been living in more northern regions, within the same precincts with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians, Germans, and Celts, is a fact as firmly established as that the Normans of William the Conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia. The evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods. It would have been next to impossible to discover any traces of relationship between the swarthy natives of India and their conquerors, whether Alexander or Clive, but for the testimony borne by language. What other evidence could have reached back to times when Greece was not peopled by Greeks, nor India by Hindus? Yet these are the times of which we are speaking. What authority would have been strong enough to persuade the Grecian army, that their gods and their hero ancestors were the same as those of King Porus, or to convince the English soldier that the same blood was running in his veins and in the veins of the dark Bengalese? And yet there is not an English jury now a days, which, after examining the hoary documents of language, would reject the claim of a common descent and a legitimate relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live in India and in England, that have witnessed the first separation of the northern and southern Aryans, and these are witnesses not to be shaken by cross-examination. The terms for God, for house, for father, mother, son, daughter, for dog and cow, for heart and tears, for axe and tree, identical in all the Indo-European idioms, are like the watchwords of soldiers. We challenge the seeming stranger; and whether he answer with the lips of a Greek, a German, or an Indian, we recognise him as one of ourselves. Though the historian may shake his head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea, all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavonians, the Greeks, and Italians, the Persians, and Hindus, were living together within the same fences, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races.

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It is more difficult to prove that the Hindu was the last to leave this common home, that he saw his brothers all depart towards the setting sun, and that then, turning towards the south and the east, he started alone in search of a new world. But as in his language and in his grammar he has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each of the northern dialects singly, as he agrees with the Greek and the German where the Greek and the German seem to differ from all the rest, and as no other language has carried off so large a share of the common Aryan heirloom — whether roots, grammar, words, mythes, or legends — it is natural to suppose that, though perhaps the eldest brother, the Hindu was the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family.

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The Aryan nations who pursued a north-westerly direction, stand before us in history as the principal nations of north-western Asia and Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilisation, commerce, and religion. In a word, they represent the Aryan man in his historical character.

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But while most of the members of the Aryan family followed this glorious path, the southern tribes were slowly migrating towards the mountains which gird the north of India. After crossing the narrow passes of the Hindukush or the Himâlaya, they conquered or drove before them, as it seems without much effort, the aboriginal inhabitants of the Trans-Himalayan countries. They took for their guides the principal rivers of Northern India, and were led by them to new homes in their beautiful and fertile valleys. It seems as if the great mountains in the north had afterwards closed for centuries their Cyclopean gates against new immigrations, while, at the same time, the waves of the Indian Ocean kept watch over the southern borders of the peninsula. None of the great conquerors of antiquity — Sesostris, Semiramis, Nebuchadnezzar, or Cyrus, who waged a kind of half-nomadic warfare over Asia, Africa, and Europe, and whose names, traced in characters of blood, are still legible on the threshold of history¹, disturbed the peaceful seats of these Aryan settlers. Left to themselves in a world of their own, without a past, and without a future before them, they had nothing but themselves to ponder on. Struggles there must have been in India also. Old dynasties were destroyed, whole families annihilated, and new empires founded. Yet the inward life of the Hindu was not changed by these convulsions. His mind was like the lotus leaf after a shower of rain has passed over it; his character remained the same, passive, meditative, quiet, and full of faith.

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¹ Thus Strabo says, xv. 1. 6.: Ἡμῖν δὲ τίς ἂν δικαία γένοιτο πίστις περὶ τῶν Ἰνδικῶν ἐκ τῆς τοιαύτης στρατείας τοῦ Κύρου ἢ τῆς Σεμιράμιδος; Συναποφαίνεται δέ πως καὶ Μεγασθένης τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ, κελεύων ἀπιστεῖν ταῖς ἀρχαίαις περὶ Ἰνδῶν ἱστορίαις· οὔτε γὰρ παρ’ Ἰνδῶν ἔξω σταλῆναί ποτε στρατιὰν οὔτ’ ἐπελθεῖν ἔξωθεν καὶ κρατῆσαι, πλὴν τῆς μεθ’ Ἡρακλέους καὶ Διονύσου, καὶ τῆς νῦν μετὰ Μακεδόνων.

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The chief elements of discord amongst the peaceful inhabitants of this rich country were, the struggle for supremacy between the different classes of society, the subjugation of the uncivilised inhabitants, particularly in the south of India, and the pressure of the latest comers in the north upon the possessors of the more fertile countries in the south.

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These three struggles took place in India at an early period, and were sufficiently important to have called forth the active faculties of any but the Indian

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Καίτοι Σέσωστριν μὲν τὸν Αἰγύπτιον καὶ Τεάρκωνα τὸν Αἰθίοπα ἕως Εὐρώπης προελθεῖν. Ναβοκοδρόσορον δὲ τὸν παρὰ Χαλδαίοις εὐδοκιμήσαντα Ἡρακλέους μᾶλλον καὶ ἕως Στηλῶν ἐλάσαι· μέχρι μὲν δὴ δεῦρο καὶ Τεάρκωνα ἀφικέσθαι· ἐκεῖνον δὲ καὶ ἐκ τῆς Ἰβηρίας εἰς τὴν Θράκην καὶ τὸν Πόντον ἀγαγεῖν τὴν στρατιάν. Ἰδάνθυρσον δὲ τὸν Σκύθην ἐπιδραμεῖν τῆς Ἀσίας μέχρι Αἰγύπτου· τῆς δὲ Ἰνδικῆς μηδένα τούτων ἅψασθαι. Καὶ Σεμίραμιν δ’ ἀποθανεῖν πρὸ τῆς ἐπιχειρήσεως. Πέρσας δὲ μισθοφόρους μὲν ἐκ τῆς Ἰνδικῆς μεταπέμψασθαι Ὕδρακας· ἐκεῖ δὲ μὴ στρατεῦσαι, ἀλλ’ ἐγγὺς ἐλθεῖν μόνον, ἡνίκα Κῦρος ἤλαυνεν ἐπὶ Μασσαγέτας. With regard to the expeditions of Herakles and Dionysos, Strabo adds: Καὶ τὰ περὶ Ἡρακλέους δὲ καὶ Διονύσου Μεγασθένης μὲν μετ’ ὀλίγων πιστὰ ἡγεῖται· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων οἱ πλείους, ὧν ἐστι καὶ Ἐρατοσθένης, ἄπιστα καὶ μυθώδη, καθάπερ καὶ τὰ παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, κ.τ.λ. Cf. Megasthenis Indica, ed. Schwanbeck. Bonnæ, 1846.

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nation. In these struggles we may recognise almost the same elements by which the Greek character was perfected and matured. But how different have been the results upon the Indian mind! The struggle for supremacy between the different classes, which in Greece ended with the downfall of the tyrannies and the rising of well-organised republics, has its counterpart in India in the extirpation of the Kshatriya race and the triumph of the Brahmans through Paraśu-Râma.¹

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¹ “Paraśu-Râma cleared the earth thrice seven times of the Kshatriya caste, and filled with their blood the five large lakes of Samanta-panchaka, from which he offered libations to the race of Bhrigu. Offering a solemn sacrifice to the king of the gods, Paraśu-Râma presented the earth to the ministering priests. Having given the earth to Kaśyapa, the hero of immeasurable prowess retired to the Mahendra mountain, where he still resides; and in this manner was there enmity between him and the race of the Kshatriyas, and thus was the whole earth conquered by Paraśu-Râma.” (Viṣṇu-Purâṇa, p. 403.) In the Mahâbhârata the earth is made to say, “The fathers and grandfathers of these Kshatriyas have been killed by the remorseless Râma in warfare on my account.”

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The second struggle, or the war against the uncivilised inhabitants of the South, is represented by the Indian poet of the Râmâyaṇa as the battle of a divine hero against evil spirits and uncouth giants. What this is to India, the war of Persia was to Greece; the victory of patriotic valour over brute force. The Muses of Herodotus are the Râmâyaṇa of Hellas.

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In the third of these parallel struggles the contrast is no less striking. We follow, with a mournful interest, the narrative of international jealousies between the different states of Greece; we see how one tries to crush the power of the other, while all are preparing the common ruin of the country. But what characters are here presented to our analysis, what statesmanship, what eloquence, what bravery! In India the war of the Mahâbhârata was, perhaps, more bloody than the Peloponnesian war: but in the hands of the Brahmans the ancient epic has been changed into a didactic legend.

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Greece and India are, indeed, the two opposite poles in the historical development of the Aryan man. To the Greek, existence is full of life and reality; to the Hindu it is a dream, an illusion. The Greek is at home where he is born; all his energies belong to his country: he stands and falls with his party, and is ready to sacrifice even his life to the glory and independence of Hellas. The Hindu enters this world as a stranger; all his thoughts are directed to another world; he takes no part even where he is driven to act; and when he sacrifices his life, it is but to be delivered from it.

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No wonder that a nation like the Indian cared so little for history; no wonder that social and political virtues were little cultivated, and the ideas of the Useful and the Beautiful scarcely known to them. With all this, however, they had what the Greek was as little capable of imagining as they were of realising the elements of Grecian life. They shut their eyes to this world of outward seeming and activity, to open them full on the world of thought and rest. Their life was a yearning after eternity; their activity a struggle to return into that divine essence from which this life seemed to have severed them. Believing as they did in a divine and really existing eternal Being (τὸ ὄντως ὄν), they could not believe in the existence of this passing world. If the one existed, the other could only seem to exist; if they lived in the one, they could not live in the other. Their existence on earth was to them a problem, their eternal life a certainty. The highest object of their religion was to restore that bond¹ by which their own self (âtman) was linked to the eternal Self (paramâtman); to recover that unity which had been clouded and obscured by the magical illusions of reality, by the so-called Mâyâ of creation. It scarcely entered their mind either to doubt or to affirm the immortality of the soul², except in later times, and then only for philosophical and controversial purposes.³ Not only their religion and literature, but their very language, reminded them daily of that relation between the real and the seeming world. The word *âtman*, for instance, which in the Veda occurs often as *tman*, means life, particularly animal life. Thus we read, Rv. i. 63. 8., “Increase, O bright Indra! this our manifold food, like water all over the earth; by which, O Hero! thou givest us life, like sap, to move every where.” Here *tman* means the vital principle, and is compared with the juice that circulates in plants. In another hymn, addressed to the horse which is to be sacrificed (Rv. i. 162. 20.), the poet says, “Mâ tvâ tapat priya âtmâ-piyantam,” literally, “Let not thy dear self burn or afflict thee as thou approachest the sacrifice.” Here *priya âtmâ* corresponds to the Greek φίλον ἦτορ. But we find *âtman* used, also, in a higher sense in the Veda. For instance, Rv. i. 115. 1., “Sûrya âtmâ jagatas tasthushaś cha:” “the sun is the soul of all that moves and rests.”¹ Most frequently, however, *tman* and *âtman* are employed for self, just as we say, My soul praises, rejoices, for I praise, I myself rejoice. This is the most usual signification of *âtman* in the later Sanskrit, where it is used like a pronoun. Yet *âtman* means there also the soul of the universe, the highest soul or Self (*paramâtman*) of which all other

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¹ In one of the old hymns of the Rig-veda this thought seems to weigh upon the mind of the poet, when he says: सतो बंधुममति निरविंदन् हृदि प्रतीष्य कवयो मनीषा "Poets discovered in their heart, through meditation, the bond of the existing in the non-existing." Rv. x. 129. 4.

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² In the Veda life after death is not frequently alluded to, and it is more for the goods of this world, for strength, long life, a large family, food, and cattle, that the favour of the gods is implored. One of the rewards for a pious life, however, consists in being admitted after death to the seat of the gods. Thus Kakshîvan says, Rv. i. 125. 5.: "He who gives alms goes and stands on the highest place in heaven, he goes to the gods." Thus Dîrghatamas (Rv. i. 150. 3.), after having rebuked those who are rich, and do not give alms, nor worship the gods, exclaims, "The kind mortal, O Sage, is greater than the great in heaven; let us worship thee, O Agni, for ever and ever!"

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³ The technical term "pretyabhâva," which occurs so frequently in Indian philosophy, and has generally been rendered by "condition of the soul after death," means really the state in which we are while living on earth. Our present life, according to Indian notions, is "bhâva," birth and growth, "pretya," after a previous death.

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¹ In the same sense the sun is called jîvo asuḥ, “the vital spirit,” cf. Rv. i. 113. 16.:

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उदीर्ध्वं जीवो असुर्न आगादप प्रागात्तम आ ज्योतिरेति

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“Rise! our life, our spirit, came; the darkness went off; the light approaches!” Rv. ii. 3. 14.:

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को ददर्श प्रथमं जायमानमस्थन्वंतं यदनस्था बिभर्ति। भूम्या असुरसृगात्मा क्व स्वित्को विद्वांसमुप गात्प्रष्टुमेतत्॥

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“Who has seen the first born, when he who has no bones (*i. e.* form) bore him who had bones? Where was the life, the blood, the soul (self) of the world? Who went to ask this from any that knew it?”

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souls partake, from which all reality in this created world emanates, and into which every thing will return. Thus a Hindu speaking of himself (âtman) spoke also, though unconsciously, of the soul of the universe (âtman); and to know himself was to him to know both his own self and the universal Self, or to know himself in the divine Self. The Sanskrit, “âtmânam âtmanâ paśya,” “see (thy) self by (thy) self,” had a deeper signification than the Greek γνῶθι σεαυτόν¹, because it has not only a moral, but also a metaphysical meaning. How largely this idea of the Âtman, as the Divine Spirit, entered into the early religious and philosophical speculations of the Indians, may be seen from the following dialogue between Yâjnavalkya and Maitrêyî, which forms part of the Brihadarânyaka.

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¹ It is difficult to find a satisfactory etymology for âtmâ (nomin.), particularly in its older, and possibly more original, form, tmâ. Bopp (Comp. Grammar, i. § 140.) says, “if âtmâ stand for âhmâ, and be derived from a lost root, âh, to think (when it must be remembered that the root nah also changes its final h sometimes into t, upânah and upânat), it might be compared with the Gothic ahma, soul.” This root, âh, is afterwards traced by Bopp in the Sanskrit âha, “he said;” and he observes that to speak and to think are in the Indo-European languages sometimes expressed by one and the same word. The last observation, however, is not quite proved by the example taken by Bopp from the Zend, manthra, speech. For although the Sanskrit mantra is derived from man, to think, it receives its causal meaning by the termination tra, and has therefore the signification of prayer, hymn, advice, speech (i. e. what makes us think). If âtmâ come from a root ah, the meaning of this root is more likely that of breathing, which would account for Gothic ahma (πνεῦμα), as well as for Sanskrit âha, Greek ἦ and ἠχώ, Latin ajo and nego, and similar words. If we derive âtmâ, spirit, soul, self, from this root ah, we may also derive from it a-ham, I (cuneiform inscript. adam, ego, ἐγώ, ich). But there always remains a difficulty as regards the elision of â in the old Vedic form tmâ, instead of âtmâ, and the Zend thmanangh, which, according to Prof. Burnouf’s conjecture, is the Sansk. tmanas (Commentaire sur le Yaśna, p. 509.); a difficulty which neither European etymologists (Pott, Etymologische Forschungen, i. 196.; Benfey, Griechisches Wurzellexicon, i. 265.) nor Indian Uṇâdik scholars (Uṇâdi Sûtras, 4. 152.) have yet explained.

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"Maitrêyî¹," said Yâjnavalkya, "I am going away from this house (into the forest). Forsooth, I must make a settlement between thee and my other wife Kâtyâyanî."

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¹ Brihadâraṇyaka, 2d Adhyâya, 4th Brâhmaṇa, p. 28. edit. Poley; 4th Prapâṭhaka, 4th Brâhmaṇa, p. 444. edit. Röer.

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Maitrêyî said, "My Lord, if this whole earth full of wealth belonged to me, should I be immortal by it?"

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"No," replied Yâjnavalkya; "like the happy life of rich people will be thy life. But there is no hope of immortality by wealth."

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And Maitrêyî said, "What should I do with that by which I do not become immortal? What my Lord knoweth (of immortality) may he tell that to me."

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Yâjnavalkya replied, "Thou, who art truly dear to me², thou speakest dear words. Sit down, I will explain it to thee, and listen well to what I say." And he said, "A husband is loved, not because you love the husband, but because you love (in him) the Divine Spirit (âtmâ, the absolute Self). A wife is loved, not because we love the wife, but because we love (in her) the Divine Spirit. Children are loved, not because we love the children, but because we love the Divine Spirit in them. This spirit it is which we love when we (seem to) love wealth, Brahmans, Kshatriyas, this world, the gods, all beings, this universe. The Divine Spirit, O beloved wife, is to be seen, to be heard, to be perceived, and to be meditated upon. If we see, hear, perceive, and know him, O Maitrêyî, then this whole universe is known to us.”

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² Instead of प्रिया बतारे नः सती Dr. Poley reads प्रिया-बतारे नः सती which he may have meant for "thou Avatâr, or incarnation of our love." Not to speak, however, of the grammatical difficulties of this construction, the Commentary leaves no doubt that we ought to read, प्रिया (इष्टा) बत (इत्यनुकं-प्याह) अरे (मैत्रेयि).

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“Whosoever looks for Brahmahood elsewhere than in the Divine Spirit, should be abandoned by the Brahmans. Whosoever looks for the Kshatra-power elsewhere than in the Divine Spirit, should be abandoned by the Kshatras. Whosoever looks for this world, for the gods, for all beings, for this universe, elsewhere than in the Divine Spirit, should be abandoned by them all. This Brahmahood, this Kshatra-power, this world, these gods, these beings, this universe, all is the Divine Spirit.”

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“Now, as we cannot seize the sounds of a drum externally by themselves, but seize the sound by seizing the drum, or the beating of it, — as we cannot seize the sounds of a conch-shell by themselves, but seize the sound by seizing the conch-shell, or the shell-blower, — as we cannot seize the sounds of a lute by themselves, but seize the sound by seizing the lute, or the lutanist, — so is it with the Divine Spirit.”

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“As clouds of smoke rise out of a fire kindled with dry fuel, thus, O Maitrêyî, have all the holy words been breathed out of that Great Being.”

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“As all the waters find their centre in the sea, so all sensations find their centre in the skin, all tastes in the tongue, all smells in the nose, all colours in the eye, all sounds in the ear, all thoughts in the mind, all knowledge in the heart, all actions in the hands, and all the Holy Scriptures in speech."

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"It is with us, when we enter into the Divine Spirit, as if a lump of salt was thrown into the sea; it becomes dissolved into the water (from which it was produced), and is not to be taken out again. But wherever you take the water and taste it, it is salt. Thus is this great, endless, and boundless Being but one mass of knowledge. As the water becomes salt, and the salt becomes water again, thus has the Divine Spirit appeared from out the elements and disappears again into them. When we have passed away, there is no longer any name. This, I tell thee, my wife," said Yâjnavalkya.

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Maitrêyî said, "My Lord, here thou hast bewildered me, saying that there is no longer any name when we have passed away."

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And Yâjnavalkya replied, "My wife, what I say is not bewildering, it is sufficient for the highest knowledge. For if there be as it were two beings, then the one sees the other, the one hears, perceives, and knows the other. But if the one Divine Self be the whole of all this, whom or through whom should he see, hear, perceive, or know? How should he know (himself), by whom he knows every thing (himself)? How, my wife, should he know (himself) the knower?¹ Thus thou hast been taught, Maitrêyî;

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¹ This last sentence is taken from the fifth Brâhmaṇa of the fourth Adhyâya, where the same story is told again with slight modifications and additions.

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this is immortality.” Having said this Yâjnavalkya left his wife for ever, and went into the solitude of the forests.

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It must be observed that the work from which this dialogue is taken belongs to a later period of Vedic literature. In the earlier times which are represented to us in the hymns of the Veda, these mystic tendencies are not yet so strongly developed. In the songs of the Rig-veda we find but little of philosophy, but we do occasionally meet with wars of kings, with rivalries of ministers, with triumphs and defeats, with war-songs and imprecations. The active side of life is still prominent in the genuine poetry of the Rishis, and there still exists a certain equilibrium between the two scales of human nature. It is only after the Aryan tribes had advanced southward, and taken quiet possession of the rich plains and beautiful groves of Central India, that they seem to have turned all their energies and thoughts from the world without them to that more wonderful nature which they perceived within.

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Such was their state when the Greeks first became acquainted with them after the discovery of India by Alexander. What did these men, according to Megasthenes, most think and speak about? Their most frequent conversations, he says, were about life and death. This life they considered as the life of an embryo in the womb; but death as the birth to a real and happy life for those who had thought, and had prepared themselves to be ready to die.¹ Good and bad was nothing to them; not that they denied the distinction between good and bad in a moral sense. They recognised law and virtue, as we see in their sacred poetry¹, as well as in their codes of law. But they denied that anything that happened to men in this life could be called either good or bad, and they maintained that philosophy consisted in removing the affections of pleasure as well as of pain. Liking pain and hating pleasure was what they considered the highest state of indifference that man could arrive at.²

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¹ Strabo, xv. 59.: Πλείστους δ’ αὐτοῖς εἶναι λόγους περὶ τοῦ θανάτου· νομίζειν γὰρ δὴ τὸν μὲν ἐνθάδε βίον ὡς ἂν ἀκμὴν κυομένων εἶναι· τὸν δὲ θάνατον γένεσιν εἰς τὸν ὄντως βίον καὶ τὸν εὐδαίμονα τοῖς φιλοσοφήσασι· διὸ τῇ ἀσκήσει πλείστῃ χρῆσθαι πρὸς τὸ ἑτοιμο-

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¹ The notion of sin is clearly expressed, for instance, in a song of Gṛitsamada’s (Rv. ii. 28. 5.):

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² Strabo, xv. 59.: ’Αγαθὸν δὲ, ἢ κακὸν, μηδὲν εἶναι τῶν συμβαι-

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θάνατον. “Nay, for aught we know of ourselves, of our present life, and of death; death may immediately, in the natural course of things, put us into a higher and more enlarged state of life, as our birth does.”—*Bishop Butler.*

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वि म॑त्कृ॒थाय॒ रश॑नामि॒वाश्वं॒ ते वरु॑ण॒ खामृ॑तस्य । मा त॑न्तु॒श्छेदि॒ वय॑तो॒ धियं॑ मे॒ मा मा॒त्रा शा॑र्य॒पस॑ः पु॒र ऋ॑तोः ॥ अ॒पो सु॒ म्यच्च॒ वरु॑ण॒ भिय॑सं॒ मत्सम्॑राट्ता॒वोऽनु॑ मा गृभाय । दा॒मेव॒ वत्सा॒द्विमु॑मुग्ध्यंहो॒ न हि त्वदा॑रे निमि॒षच्च॒नेशे॑ ॥

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“Deliver me from sin, as from a rope; let us obtain thy path of righteousness. May the thread not be torn while I am weaving my prayer; may the form of my pious work not decay before its season. “Varuṇa, take all fear away from me; be kind to me, O just king! Take away my sin like a rope from a calf; for afar from thee I am not the master even of a twinkling of the eye.”

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And again, Rv. ii. 29. 1.:

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धृ॒तव॑ता आ॒दित्या॒ इषि॑रा॒ आरे॑ म॒त्कर्त॑ रह॒सूरि॑वागः ।

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“You quick Âdityas, ye who never fail in your works, carry away from me all sin, as a woman does who has given birth to a child in secret.”

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We are told by the same author that the Indians did not communicate their metaphysical doctrines to women; thinking that, if their wives understood these doctrines, and learned to be indifferent to pleasure and pain, and to consider life and death as the same, they would no longer continue to be the slaves of others: or, if they failed to understand them, they would be talkative, and communicate their knowledge to those who had no right to it. This statement of the Greek author is fully borne out by the later Sanskrit authorities. We find, for instance, in the ceremonial Sûtras (śrauta and gṛihya-sûtras), that women were not allowed to learn the sacred songs of the Vedas, the knowledge of which constituted one of the principal requirements for a Brahman before he was admitted to the performance of the sacrifices. Indeed, the whole education of a Brahman consisted in learning the old sacred literature by heart, and many years were spent for this purpose by every Brahmachârin in the house and under the severe discipline of his Guru, or of an Âchârya. As it was necessary¹, however, for a husband to perform

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¹ Sâyaṇa, in his commentary on the Rig-veda, i. 131. 3., explaining the words वि ला ततक्षे मिथुना अवस्वः: “Couples wishing for protection have magnified thee, O Indra!” quotes passages from the Brâhmaṇas, the Sûtras, and the Smṛitis, in

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νόντων ἀνθρώποις· οὐ γὰρ ἂν τοῖς αὐτοῖς τοὺς μὲν ἄχθεσθαι, τοὺς δὲ χαίρειν, ἐνυπνιώδεις ὑπολήψεις ἔχοντας, καὶ τοὺς αὐτοὺς τοῖς αὐτοῖς τότε μὲν ἄχθεσθαι, τότε δ’ αὖ χαίρειν μεταβαλλομένους. Ibid. xv. 65. : Τὰ γοῦν λεχθέντα εἰς τοῦτ’ ἔφη συντείνειν, ὡς εἴη λόγος ἄριστος ὃς ἡδονὴν καὶ λύπην ψυχῆς ἀφαιρήσεται· καὶ ὅτι λύπη καὶ πόνος διαφέρει· τὸ μὲν γὰρ πολέμιον, τὸ δὲ φίλον αὐτοῖς· τὰ δὲ σώματα ἀσκοῦσι πρὸς πόνον, ἵν’ αἱ γνῶμαι ῥωννύοιντο, ἀφ’ ὧν καὶ στάσεις παύοιεν, καὶ σύμβουλοι πᾶσιν ἀγαθῶν παρεῖεν, καὶ κοινῇ καὶ ἰδίᾳ.

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sacrifices together with his lawful wife, and as passages of the hymns¹, as well as of the Brâhmaṇas, speak clearly of man and wife as performing sacrifices in common, it was laid down in the Sûtras that the husband or the priest should, at the sacrifice itself, make his wife recite those hymns which were necessary for the ceremony. But although women were thus allowed to participate in the sacrifices of their husbands, they were not initiated, still less were they admitted to the highest knowledge, the knowledge of the Âtman or the Brahman.² Cases like that of Maitrêyî were exceptions, not the rule.

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¹ The piety and happiness of a married couple is well described in a hymn ascribed to Manu Vaivasoata, Rv. viii. 31. 5—9.

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² Manu, ix. 18., translated by Sir W. Jones. “Women have no business with the texts of the Veda, thus is the law fully settled; having, therefore, no evidence of law, and no knowledge of expiatory texts, sinful women must be as foul as falsehood itself; and this is a fixed rule.”

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Thus the account which Megasthenes gives of the Indians shows us the same abstract and passive support of the law laid down in the Pûrvamîmânsâ, that man and wife should perform sacrifices in common. From the Brâhmaṇas he quotes the beginning of the Agnyâdhâna, where it is said that man and wife are to place the sacred fire in common: जायापती अग्निमादधीयीतां। From the Sûtras he quotes a rule, वेदं पत्न्यै प्रदाय वाचयेत्। This seems to mean, “Let him, after giving the Veda to his wife, make her recite it.” The passage is taken from the Âśvalâyana Śrauta-sûtras, i. 11. If the word veda, used by Âśvalâyana, meant the Veda, this passage would be most important, as proving the existence of the Veda, as a written book, at the time of Âśvalâyana. Veda, however, is used here in the sense of “a bundle of grass,” and is connected with vedih, an altar made of grass (Root ve, Lat. viere). Lastly, Sâyaṇa quotes from the Smṛitis, Manu, v. 155., “Women cannot sacrifice without their husbands:” नास्ति स्त्रीणां पृथग्यज्ञः। character which we find throughout the whole classical or post-vedic literature of the Brahmans, and which, to a great extent, explains the absence of anything like historical literature among this nation of philosophers.

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