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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s4: § 4. The Ethics of the Brāhmaṇas

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s4

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§ 4. The Ethics of the Brāhmaṇas

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In the strict sense of the word there is no theory of ethics in the Brāhmaṇa literature: the question of the nature of right action does not seem ever to have in any degree influenced the speculations of the curious spirits which framed the remarkable theory of which the outlines have been sketched above. It was, indeed, natural that the first element of the speculative thought of India should in the main be directed to problems of pure speculation, as was also the case in Greece, but the dominating feature in the philosophy of India is that the question of right conduct never attained the dignity of a subject to be propounded for serious consideration. In the Rigveda, while the hymns of creation and the other efforts to arrive at a philosophical account of the universe have beside them the expression in the hymns to Varuṇa of the prevalence of moral order and the punishment of sin, the latter conception cannot be found in living force any longer in the Brāhmaṇas, a fact which has unwisely been used as a proof that early India was exposed to Semitic influences later not felt.¹

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¹ Brunnhofer, *Arische Urzeit*, pp. xviii, 89, 90; his etymologies of Vedic words need not seriously be considered; to that of Weber which derives Dulā, one of the Kṛttikās, from a Semitic source no objection in principle is open, but the mere similarity of sound without identity of use is an utterly insufficient ground.

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The contrast here between Indian and Iranian development in religious matters becomes marked. Almost contemporaneously, perhaps, with the development of the thought of the Brāhmaṇas, we find Zoroaster engaged in deepening the meaning of religion for the people of Iran and founding a reasoned ethical system. While Varuṇa was losing ground in India, Zoroaster was developing the figure of Ahura Mazdāh, and depriving him of a rival by degrading Indra, his most serious competitor, as the god of war, to the rank of a demon.² At the same time he removed from the character of the god any suspicion of uncertainty or caprice, such as still clings in the Rigveda to Varuṇa, whose noose and whose punishments appear to afflict at times even the innocent, and who is lord of a Māyā, which may be harmful as well as beneficent. Further, to Zoroaster the powers of evil loomed far greater than they had done to the early Aryan mind, which, as in the Rigveda, knows indeed demons in abundance, but has no doubt in the power of the gods to overcome them, nor indeed of its own ability to win the favour of the gods. Vṛtra may be terrible, but he is never victorious, even if it would be unkind to assert that the Vedic demons exist merely for the gods to slay. Zoroaster accepts the impossibility of explaining the evil in the world, if it be assumed that Ahura is all-mighty, and that all has been created by him at his pleasure. On the contrary, the spirit of evil contends against the good, and only after desperate struggles can good be made to prevail. Moreover, in that struggle each man is free and morally bound to participate; it lies with him to further the conquest of evil; the deeds which he does are not merely personal; they serve to further the constant struggle of good against evil, and have cosmic value. Moreover, by his deeds does a man decide his future fate, in heaven or hell; the intervention of divine favour is excluded;¹ the soul of the dead finds the Cinvat bridge wide or hopelessly narrow, according as his good or evil deeds prevail. Deeds, moreover, are essentially matters of practical utility and activity; prayers and offerings play their part, but the ideal of Zoroaster is the man who founds a family, performs his duties in his tribe, and furthers agriculture, performing useful works, as opposed to the nomad, who is the personification of the lie (*druj*).

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² See Güntert, *Der arische Weltkönig*, pp. 211 ff.

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¹ For the idea of a future Saviour for the world as a whole, see Güntert, pp. 219, 395 ff.

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It may be that the stern conditions of life in Iran, where cultivation can be maintained only by unceasing toil, and the agriculturist must ever fear the incursions of the nomad, played a definite part in evoking the Zoroastrian outlook, nor, of course, must be ignored the individual character of his teaching, which never was fully assimilated in Iran, but was on the one hand exaggerated and made absurd by the pedantic and cruel pursuit of detail, and on the other hand contaminated by the reintroduction of much of the old nature-worship of Iran.² In India under different conditions of climate and life and racial admixture, thought turned to speculation rather than to action, and inclined to see unity, in lieu of regarding life as a struggle between the good and the bad. This contrast interposed for Zoroaster essential difficulties in regarding the world as a single whole, animated by one spirit; in India this was possible, and an absolute came to be recognized in which all was contained, whether good or bad, material or spiritual. Parallel with this movement was necessarily the decline from power of Varuṇa. Indra, as the god of the warrior and the people, remained powerful and popular: recent research, indeed, has shown how much alive, if in humble guise, he is to-day in northern India;³ first Prajāpati, and then the Brahman absorbed the metaphysical elements of Varuṇa's nature, while the growth in popularity of Yama as king of the dead limited his chthonian functions,⁴ so that the god who once was the chief guardian of the Ṛta sank to the function of lord of waters, which was his by right as a sky god, and which no other deity arose to wrest from him. Similarly the conception of the Ṛta passes away before the prevalence of the Brahman.

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² Cf. Hertel, *Die Zeit Zoroasters*, pp. 9 ff., 48 ff.

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³ See Grierson, *ZII.* ii. 133 ff.

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⁴ Cf. Güntert, *Der arische Weltkönig*, pp. 238 f. He (p. 390) lays stress on the folk etymology of Yama as the restrainer (*yam*) as securing his relation as controller of the dead in later thought. Less plausible is his suggestion of Poseidon's history as comparable to that of Varuṇa.

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The development which places the Brahman in the first place is not achieved until the Upaniṣads, but it is in preparation during the period of the Brāhmaṇas, and it is in entire harmony with this spirit that these texts do not develop any theory of morality.¹ Indeed they do not normally inculcate morality even on merely empiric grounds. The myths which they recount and invent have this characteristic about them, that they are indifferent to the moral qualities of the acts: the gods are willing to commit sins freely for their own gain: they obtain the aid of the Rakṣases against the Asuras, and then they refuse to carry out their bargain to share equally with the former in the event of victory attending their united efforts. They are not ashamed to purchase the Soma from the Gandharvas by means of Vāc, on the clear agreement arrived at between her and them that she will return to them when invited. They win speech from the Asuras by the low arts of solicitation and of dancing and singing in opposition to the pious recitation of the Veda by their rivals. They are constantly jealous of men, whom they refuse to allow to share with them the happiness of immortality without laying aside the corporeal body in death. But compared with Indra they are comparatively virtuous people: he, however, is quite unashamed: he makes a compact with Namuci and sets about to find a way of violating it, which he does with success: his murder of Viçvarūpa, son of Tvaṣṭṛ, is unmotived and wicked, and brings on him the guilt of slaying a Brahman. His amour with Ahalyā is only accomplished by means of deceiving the lady by adopting the form of her husband,² and he gave over to the hyenas certain ascetics, an impure (*amedhya*) act.³ His adultery ⁴ is repaid in kind; for his own son, born of his thigh, Kutsa Aurava, takes advantage of his physical likeness, to win the favour of Çacī Paulomnī, his father's wife. But, after all, what could be more degrading than the pictures of him hungry and begging a priest for an offering, and then running about cake in hand, or bound by cords by Kutsa and urged by Luça to break away from this degrading servitude?⁵ Even his own subjects, the Maruts, he plunders, justifying the royal habit of accepting loot plundered from the husbandmen. Prajāpati appears as committing incest, and as adopting in the course of it an animal form, which is slain by the wrath of the gods concentrated in the form of Rudra,⁶ and in one rite he is formally reviled. The other gods are constantly jealous of one another; they have separate dwellings, and are moved by envy of one another rather than by love and friendship. The Vrātyas insult Vāyu and Īçāna, who bar the world of heaven to them, but are shown it by Prajāpati.⁷ The gods are essentially selfish; they give men the six evils of sleep, sloth, anger, hunger, love of dicing and of women.

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¹ For an interesting contrast with Confucianism, see M. Weber, *Religionssoziologie*, ii. 136 ff.

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² Weber, SBA. 1887, p. 903; Oertel, JAOS. xix. 120; xxvi. 186. For the sins of the gods see PB. i. 6. 10; AV. vi. 111. 3; x. 1. 12; Bloomfield, SBE. xlii. 520. Traces of ‘high moral sense and exalted sentiment’ (Radhakrishnan, *Ind. Phil.* i. 131) are invisible, and the term Āçrama certainly does not show that it was recognized that all progress involved suffering.

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³ TS. iii. 3. 7. 3; PB. xiv. 11. 28; xviii. 1. 9.

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⁴ JB. iii. 199-202.

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⁵ PB. ix. 2. 22; xxi. 1. 1. f.

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⁶ MS. iv. 2. 12; ÇB. i. 7. 4. 1-4; vi. 1. 3. 8; PB. viii. 2. 10; AB. iii. 33; ĀpÇS. xxi. 12. 1 ff.

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⁷ JB. ii. 222.

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It is the case that the gods are said to be essentially true,¹ but the nature of the truth is not vitally moral: it is strictly confined to the precise carrying out of the rites and utterance of the formulae of the sacrificial ritual. Just as man’s faith is not in the goodness of the gods, but in the efficacy of the sacrifice, if duly performed, so truth has no real moral content and in intellectual outlook is limited to the sacrifice, which, it must be admitted, is the reality *par excellence* for the Brahmans. But even this truth was not always the possession of the gods: as children of Prajāpati, the gods and the Asuras shared the patrimony of the father, which was Vāc: they then indifferently spoke truth and falsehood: finally the gods abandoned the use of anything but truth, and the Asuras that of anything but falsehood. The gods, however, by saying nothing but the truth became feeble and impoverished, while by the opposite device the Asuras prospered like salt, the Indian equivalent of the green bay tree. But in the end the truth prevailed over the untruth, mainly, it would seem, because by the consecration offering, which they invented, the gods extended truth and made it more effective.² The moral apparently, therefore, is that in the long run exactitude in the sacrifice must prevail.

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¹ AB. i. 6. 7; KB. ii. 8; MS. i. 9. 3; ÇB. iii. 4. 2. 8.

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² ÇB. ix. 5. 1. 12–27.

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The sense of the importance of exactitude in the rite is seen in the famous ritual of confession which is performed at the Varuṇapraghāsas, when the priest, the Pratiprasthātṛ, asks the wife of the sacrificer with whom she consorts, other than her husband.³ It is essential that she should confess, since else it will go badly with her kinsfolk, an interesting assertion of the solidarity of the kin. The speaking out of the sin diminishes it, but not, it appears, by anything else than that it brings exactitude again into the order of things: the wife commits an offence against Varuṇa, in that being the wife of one she consorts with another: the statement of the true fact removes the inexactitude, and repairs in so far the defect. It brings truth, i.e. reality, and order into the rite.⁴ The position of Varuṇa in this regard is of importance as it indicates in what degree the high conception of the Varuṇa of the Rigveda has been degraded by the passage of time and the growing preference for the sacrifice. He is not regarded in the ritual, as it stands, as more than the power which resents the introduction of irregularity into the facts of the universe.

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³ A painful light is shed on priestly morality by the story of Yavakri, who was wont to summon to him any woman at pleasure, though intercourse with him meant death. He ultimately was slain by a Gandharva, after an Apsaras had been substituted for the wife of Yajñavacas, and after in madness he had cut off the heads of his cattle.

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⁴ ÇB. ii. 5. 2. 20.

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The position of Varuṇa in this regard is also of interest on another ground: in the Brāhmaṇas Varuṇa is essentially a god of the waters, and this connexion of truth or reality and the waters must be traced to this relation. Hiraṇyadant Baida⁵ is quoted as asserting that heaven rests on the atmosphere, the atmosphere on the earth, the earth on the waters, the waters on truth, truth on the Brahman, and the Brahman on fervour. The waters are, it must be remembered, the primeval elements, they are a fact and they are also based on fact, on truth. The waters are also the conception of law: when the waters come to this earth, then all is in due and lawful order: when there is lack of rain, the stronger oppresses the weaker.¹ The waters are also the reality itself,² they are immortality,³ they are faith,⁴ they are the sacrifice.⁵ Man must use them to sprinkle himself with water, in order to become ritually pure. The performance of the bath provides even consecration and fervour, for the gods placed consecration in the waters.⁶ Moreover, the sap of the sacrifice is in the waters and by it they flow.⁷ The impurities of men do not affect the waters themselves, in accordance with the pact they made with the gods. The Darbha grass owes its power to the presence in it of the waters. The waters are as a thunderbolt, and they must be propitiated with suitable words to avoid injury by them. They are extremely powerful to destroy the Rakṣases,⁸ and they are, therefore, benevolent if managed well: they form the atonement⁹ for every harsh deed in the sacrifice, and on the other hand, when appeased, they confer glory and power on the king at the royal consecration.

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⁵ AB. iii. 6; he appears also in JB. ii. 278.

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¹ ÇB. xi. 1. 6. 24.

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² MS. iv. 1. 4; ÇB. vii. 6. 1. 4.

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³ MS. iv. 1. 9; GB. ii. 1. 3.

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⁴ TS. i. 6. 8. 1; MS. i. 4. 10; iv. 1. 4.

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⁵ MS. iii. 6. 2; 6. 9; iv. 1. 4.

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⁶ TS. vi. 1. 1. 2; MS. iii. 6. 2.

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⁷ ÇB. iii. 9. 2. 1.

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⁸ MS. iv. 1. 3.

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⁹ MS. ii. 1. 5; iv. 5. 4; ÇB. i. 9. 3. 2; AB. viii. 6.

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But the identification of the waters with truth or reality is not the only identification: the earth is also truth, for it is of all the worlds the most obviously genuine.¹⁰ Gold again is reality; lead, being neither iron nor gold, is a mere appearance.¹¹ Truth, therefore, is nothing but a species of existence, which the term used, Satya, also properly expresses. But the most important side remains ritual accuracy: the best pair is the union of faith and truth as ritual accuracy.¹² The sacrifice is formally identified with the truth, and so is the threefold Veda, and the Brahman as holy writ, to which conception we must refer the doctrine of Hiraṇyadant Baida that truth rests on the Brahman. More simply, however, the rite is simple fact: the eye is asserted to be truth, because, unlike the mind and speech, it is not prone to give false witness. From this fact, however, there is deduced a doctrine of some value for the guidance of the sacrificer: as in the case of the wife and her lovers, he must see that in the rite he shall duly bring himself into harmony with the truth by the use of true speech.¹³ When he is about to undertake a vow, he should realize that he passes from the inaccuracy of ordinary life to the exactitude, which is characteristic in ritual of the god, and, at the end when he lays down the vow, he ceases to be under the bond of accuracy. But in the rite he does not say so openly:¹⁴ he contents himself with the declaration that he is once more as he was—that is one who lives among men, whose nature is inaccuracy.

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¹⁰ ÇB. vii. 4. 1. 8.

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¹¹ MS. ii. 2. 2; iv. 3. 1.

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¹² AB. vii. 10.

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¹³ ÇB. iv. 3. 4. 16; iii. 4. 2. 8; ii. 2. 2. 19; i. 1. 1. 5; AB. ii. 5–9; TB. i. 1. 4. 1.

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¹⁴ ÇB. i. 1. 1. 4–6.

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A difficulty, however, arises in practice: if the rule of truth is laid down absolutely as incumbent always on him who has established the sacred fires, what will happen to him? What man can always speak the truth? Aruṇa Aupaveçi, when urged to establish his fires, put the point plainly that he was being condemned by this instruction to silence, as no one could avoid speaking what was false.¹

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¹ AB. i. 6. 6; ÇB. ii. 2. 2. 20.

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In the view of Oldenberg,² truth denotes something more than mere accuracy, and it is probable that there is justice in this contention, if it is not pressed too hard. It is characteristic of this period³ that the terms Satya and Anṛta come to form a formal contrast. As we have seen, in the Rigveda it is impossible to accept the view that Ṛta and Satya, order and truth, are identical,⁴ and it would probably be erroneous to assume that the contrast of Satya and Anṛta denoted that in this period the term Anṛta had lost any connexion with the idea of order and righteousness. It may perhaps be said that, while Anṛta tends to be weakened into meaning no more than falsehood, Satya takes on an additional tinge of value⁵ and it is certain that Ṛta still means order, though here and there⁶ it is tempting, but probably misleading, merely to render it ‘truth’.

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² GN. 1915, pp. 177 ff.

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³ In the RV. Ṛta and Satya come together, usually late, ix. 113. 4; x. 190. 1; cf. vii. 104. 8; *anṛtá asatyáḥ*, iv. 5. 5; Anṛta regularly is opposed to Ṛta (i. 105. 5; 139. 2; 152. 1, 3; ii. 24. 7; vii. 60. 5; 65. 3; 66. 13; x. 87. 11; 124. 5); to Satya, only vii. 49. 3; x. 55. 6.

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⁴ In KS. xxxvi. 5 and MS. i. 10. 11 Ṛta and Satya are opposed to Anṛta only.

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⁵ Cf. ÇB. i. 1. 1. 4, 5 with KB. ii. 8.

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⁶ *e. g. ṛtám amīṣva*, TS. ii. 3. 5. 1; cf. MS. ii. 2. 7; PB. xxi. 2. 1; cf. Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 519, n. 2.

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Varuṇa is the deity who is constantly ready to punish inaccuracies in the ritual: his cords and his knots make him admirably fit for this purpose, and the errors in the offering are at once seized hold of by him. By sacrificing in the southern fire, the sacrificer secures the seizing by Varuṇa of his rival, but the offering if made on the Āhavanīya would entail the same fate for the sacrificer himself.⁷ Viṣṇu, on the other hand, repairs the errors of the sacrifice, and does not seize on them as the time for assailing the author of the mistakes.⁸ If the rule that a father should not be transgressed against is asserted, and traced to Prajāpati’s offspring being punished by Varuṇa for transgress against him, it is at once found that the transgress was a ritual one.⁹ In Varuṇa’s house when the gods make mutual pledge of loyalty at the Tānūnaptra they deposit their forms: here again the act is a ritual performance.¹⁰

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⁷ TS. ii. 3. 13. 2; i. 7. 2. 6; ÇB. i. 3. 1. 14–16; xii. 7. 2. 17; iv. 5. 1. 6; PB. xv. 2. 4; TB. i. 6. 5. 4.

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⁸ AB. vii. 4. 4.

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⁹ MS. i. 10. 10.

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¹⁰ TS. vi. 2. 2. 1, 2, &c.

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But the most convincing evidence of all regarding the almost purely ritual character of goodness in the view of the Brāhmaṇas is the fact that their conception of torment in the other world is inextricably bound up with the correct practice, or the failure to follow the correct practice, of the ritual.

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After death man is weighed in the balance to test the good and the bad, an idea which is evidently not a primitive speculation but a late development,¹ suggested, it may be, by the ordeal of the balance which is known in the later literature: it is, however, at least possible that the idea is no more than one of the passing conceptions of the Brāhmaṇas, possibly a faint echo of the Iranian conception of judgement.² But we cannot for a moment assume that the distinction depends on ordinary morality. The real nature of the idea is shown by the story of Bhṛgu, son of Varuṇa, who was so proud that the god for his improvement made him unconscious and sent his spirit to see the world to come. Of the sights seen by Bhṛgu there are two versions preserved in the Çatapatha³ and the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇas:⁴ according to the latter, he first saw a man devouring another man whom he had cut up in pieces; in the second place he saw a man who was eating another while the latter uttered cries of misery; in the third place he saw a man who was eating another, who, however, kept entire silence; in the fourth place he saw two women guarding a treasure; and in the fifth place two rivers, one of blood guarded by a naked man armed with a mace, and one of butter guarded by men of gold, who with cups of gold draw from it what they desire. Then he saw, last of all, five rivers covered with lotuses blue and white, with waves of honey, where the dance, the song, and the lute resounded, where Apsarases disported themselves, and sweet fragrance was wafted. The Çatapatha version differs in detail: Varuṇa sends Bhṛgu simply on a journey to cure him of pride: he visits the four cardinal points and one of the intermediate spaces. He sees only five instead of six sights, and these five are reduced to four by the fact that the first is really reduplicated, the first being the vision of men who were cutting in pieces and the second of men who were cutting only. The two rivers of blood and of butter, and the five of gold are omitted *in toto*, and the nude man figures in the episode of the two damsels. The explanation of these visions is given to the chastened Bhṛgu by his father Varuṇa: the first exhibits the fate of those men who, without offering the Agnihotra and without true knowledge, cut wood in the world: the trees take thus revenge on them in the world to come; the second is the fate of men who without proper ritual knowledge kill and eat animals; the third applies in the case of eating herbs. The other three visions are faith and lack of faith respectively; the river of blood is the blood of a Brahman, the black man is the sacrifice, the river of butter is formed from the waters used at the offering; the five rivers are the worlds of Varuṇa. If a man performs the due offering, the trees in the world to come do not eat him, nor animals, nor rice and barley: his offerings go neither to faith or lack of faith: he avoids the river of blood, he gains the river of butter. The same idea appears in the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa⁵ also : the animals revenge themselves on man in the next world, unless he adopts the proper form of rite.

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¹ ÇB. xi. 2. 7. 33.

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² Moulton, *Early Zoroastrianism*, pp. 169, 313; Güntert, *Der arische Weltkönig*, p. 218.

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³ xi. 6. 1.

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⁴ JB. i. 42–4 (JAOS. xv. 234–8).

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⁵ xi. 3.

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A final proof of the brutal morality of the priest can be adduced in the position assigned to women : woman in India has always suffered much from all religions,¹ but by none has she been so thoroughly despised as by the Brahmans of the period of the Brāhmaṇas. The insolence of the question at the Varuṇapraghāsas has been noted : however much it may be explained away, it remains an insult, since it can only be justified on the theory that infidelity in a wife is not surprising ; a priest like Yavakrī takes toll of every woman he fancies at pleasure. The wife is the half of man,² but this is merely due to the fact that, without her, the man cannot secure the essential off-spring to continue his family, and perform the offerings to him after death. The Maitrāyaṇī Saṁhitā ³ is very outspoken in its view of women : the three things which are connected with Nirṛti, ‘Dissolution’, are dice, women, and slumber : the reality is the sacrifice, women is lack of truth. Three invitations addressed in a loving tone will overcome the most circumspect women, and their bad taste prefers the dance and song to the recitation of the Veda.⁴ Their power of wheedling secrets out of their husband is referred to in contemptuous terms.⁵ As compared with men they are always inferior : woman is the inferior part of the sacrifice : she is ritually impure, and must be covered with a girdle.⁶ They have been smitten by the gods with the thunderbolt of the butter and hence they are emasculated, they cannot control themselves or an inheritance : ⁷ even if many women are together and there is but a small boy, he takes precedence of them all.⁸ They are inferior even to a bad man,⁹ and their inferiority is marked by the ceremony on birth when the child is brought to the father.¹⁰

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¹ Cf., in addition to Winternitz’s and Meyer’s works, the summary in Frazer, *Indian Thought Past and Present*, pp. 271–306; JB. ii. 269 ff.

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² ÇB. v. 2. 1. 10.

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³ iii. 6. 3 ; i. 10. 11, 16 ; JB. i. 98 f. adds sloth, anger, and hunger.

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⁴ ÇB. iii. 2. 4. 3–6 ; TS. vi. 1. 6. 5 ; MS. iii. 7. 3. Cf. BAU. vi. 4. 12.

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⁵ KS. xxx. 1 ; AB. iii. 22.

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⁶ ÇB. i. 3. 1. 12, 13; the symbolic ritual to secure fertility is slightly refined in PB. viii. 7. 8–13 ; Hopkins, TCA. xv. 36.

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⁷ ÇB. iv. 4. 2. 13 ; TS. vi. 8. 2.

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⁸ ÇB. i. 3. 1. 9.

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⁹ TS. vi. 5. 8. 2.

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¹⁰ MS. iv. 6. 4.

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On the other hand, it would be wholly unfair to ignore the fact that the Brāhmaṇas do not encourage or contemplate many crimes, which have been committed in other rituals. The exposure of female children which has been asserted to be mentioned in the Brāhmaṇas is a mere error.¹¹ The Brāhmaṇas, further, never actually prescribe a human sacrifice : the tradition of such an offering in the piling of the fire altar is handed down, and the name of the last sacrificer is given, but, though the Brāhmaṇa ¹² does not show any profound horror at the past, and may possibly have regretted the change, it must be remembered that this rite was always a rare and exceptional one. The slaughter of animals was, of course, prescribed by the rite, but the use of animals for food was the basis of this slaughter, and the doctrine of Ahiṁsā is one which has never even in India received full sanction. The accusation of cruelty in the slaying of the victim, which has often been brought against religious rites, is not specially proved for the Brāhmaṇas: the primitive means of slaying victims available probably caused suffering to the animals, as in the Jewish practice of to-day, but that there was any deliberate lack of humanity is contrary to the desire of the sacrificers to avoid anything unseemly, which might indicate the reluctance of the victim to depart from the world. The Omophagia of the Dionysiac rites is not in the slightest degree hinted at in the Indian sacrifice.

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¹¹ Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, i. 395 ; ii. 115.

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¹² ÇB. vi. 2. 1. 39.

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The ritual admittedly contains several rites based on fertility magic, which to modern taste are revolting, and sometimes even horrible, such as the action of the queen at the horse sacrifice. The idea that these rites were invented by the Brahmans, as is suggested even by Victor Henry,¹ must be rejected as an error: the beliefs so expressed are primitive and natural, not priestly, and the only action of the priests in regard to them was doubtless the adoption from the popular belief of these usages and their decoration with the literature of the priests.² Even in regard to these usages it is fair to note that there arose among the priests a disinclination to perform the ritual. In the Çāṅkhāyana Çrauta Sūtra³ there is recorded the view that the rite, by which a pair, or pairs, in the course of the Mahāvrata at the winter solstice went through the process of intercourse, ought not to be performed, whether because it was antiquated or too extensive is uncertain. That such a view should have been taken in the face of the prescription of the rite in all the ancient texts⁴ is creditable and worthy of notice. It is only to be regretted that it stands almost alone, for the omission in certain texts of the rite of beating the king on the occasion of the royal consecration may be explained otherwise.

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¹ *La doctrine du sacrifice*, pp. 107, 108. The Tantras reveal to us a religion—perhaps aboriginal—of sexual orgiastic character, which doubtless in substance is very old and popular; cf. Weber, *Religionssoziologie*, ii. 322 ff.

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² See, e. g., the rites for sexual intercourse given in BAU. vi. 4, *a priori* an unexpected place, and the speculations of the Garbha Upaniṣad, forerunners of the Kāma Sūtra.

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³ Weber, *Ind. Stud.* x. 125; Keith, ZDMG. lxvi. 729, 730. The term *utsanna* recurs in Samudragupta’s record of his sacrifice, raising doubts of its sense; IA. lii. 17.

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⁴ TS. vii. 5. 9. 4; KS. xxxiv. 5. These texts may be put about 800–700 B.C., the Çrauta Sūtra is dated (Keith, JRAS. 1908, p. 387) about 350 B.C. In JB. ii. 404 f. a Māgadha is given the distasteful duty.

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Moreover, we must admit that the ritual books show sometimes the most unedifying indifference to morality. The Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa⁵ actually records, without disapproval apparently, a rite, the Gosava, in which the performer pays the ox the compliment of imitating its mode of existence, including incest with mother, sister, and female relative, though it records that Janaka of Videha did not carry out the rite, when he understood its nature, and the Çibi king, who did, concluded that it was a ritual which should be performed in old age only, when the action it prescribed might be more excusable in certain regards. The priestly nature of the rite as it stands is shown by the reward promised, the world of the Ox, a reference to that creature in its Atharvan¹ form as a cosmic equivalent of Prajāpati. Not less brutal is the cynical rite² provided when a man desires his wife to have lovers in plenty during his absence from her side.

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⁵ ii. 113; ĀpÇS. xxii. 13. 1–3.

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¹ AV. iv. 11.

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² BhGS. ii. 28; ĀpGS. xxiii. 4; cf. Keith, *JRAS.* 1914, p. 1088.

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A more favourable view of the morality of the Brāhmaṇas is taken by Hopkins,³ who holds that, while in the case of the Pañcaviñça the Sāman and the rite make the gist of the Brāhmaṇa's religion, it remains true that there is a real ethical foundation for this religion. The evidence adduced, however, is scanty; untruth is indeed reproved, and the 'hant' follows the slayer, while taking too much is like swallowing poison.⁴ But the sacrifice does away with sin automatically; even a sinner by means of wealth gets to the top; goods wrongly accepted can thus be made proper and fit.⁵ The conception of sin is mechanical: all slaying, even of demons such as Vṛtra, brings the taint of bloodshed, whether justified or not, the fault of the sacrifice passes to him who blames it, as does a third of the sin of the initiated to any one who speaks ill of them.⁶ Evil repute (*açlīlā vāc*) fastens on every killer, irrespective of the nature of his deed. A false accusation makes a man, despite his innocence, avoided by the gods, but the priests can make his sacrifice acceptable to them, and it is wisely said that the false accusers are the real sinners.⁷ Untruth is described as a hole in the voice which can be filled by adding a syllable to a verse.⁸ We find also the dubious doctrine⁹ of 'sins caused by the gods, by the Fathers, by other men or by ourselves', which the commentator explains as evils inflicted by the gods or Fathers in respect of neglect, but not with certain accuracy. Moreover, insistence is laid on the fact that sacrifice increases proportionately man's welfare materially and spiritually.¹⁰

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³ TCA. xv. 29.

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⁴ PB. xix. 4. 10.

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⁵ PB. xvii. 2. 2; xiii. 7. 12 f.

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⁶ PB. v. 5. 13; 6. 10.

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⁷ PB. xviii. 1. 10–12 (cf. the unholy voice which attaches to a man falsely accused of murder, TS. ii. 1. 10. 2); vi. 10. 7.

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⁸ PB. viii. 6. 13.

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⁹ PB. i. 6. 10; cf. VS. viii. 13; ÇB. iv. 4. 5. 22.

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¹⁰ Yet 'ill does he who gives all', PB. xvi. 5. 6; 6. 1; 9. 2.

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The Brāhmaṇa, however, contains one doctrine of interest,¹¹ intended to explain the fact of the grief (*çoka*) which is the lot of the harlot, the eunuch, and the sinner. It adapts the old doctrine of the grief of the earth and sky on parting; Indra removes grief from the earth into the harlot, from the atmosphere, which is the weakest of the worlds,¹² to the eunuch, and from the sky to the sinner; hence their desires are unattainable, and, even if one obtains some part of desire, he attains also a portion of grief.

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¹¹ PB. viii. i. 9–11.

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¹² PB. vii. 3. 10; cf. TS. v. 4. 6. 4; PB. xxi. 7. 3; its name is neuter.

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The association of purely ritual acts with morality is conspicuous even in the Upaniṣads,¹ and it is not surprising that the Brāhmaṇas remain in hopeless ignorance of the specific character of morality. As in the sphere of the sacrifice, we find confusion of the ideas of divine intervention and magic operation. Thus Varuṇa seizes the doer of evil, and therefore, since the evening is Varuṇa's time, one should then on no account utter falsehood.² But, having spoken truth in the evening, it makes no difference how much falsehood one speaks thereafter; the original truth, applied at the proper moment, continues to have, we may say, an abiding and dominant effect.³ Untruth and impurity can be washed away by water, or wiped away by application of the sacred Darbha grass.⁴ The same independence of morality is seen in the new doctrine of the fruit of ritual works, independent of divine action, and the view that man is born into the world hereafter which he has made for himself.⁵ The germ of the ideas lies in the gifts and sacrifices (*iṣṭāpūrta*) of the Rigveda with which one is united in the world to come, without any divine intervention. We have here a germ whence later appears the conception of the automatic working of Karman.

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¹ *e. g.* BAU. iii. 8. 9.

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² TB. i. 7. 2. 6; i. 5. 3. 3.

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³ KB. ii. 8.

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⁴ ÇB. iii. 1. 2. 10; 3. 18; AV. x. 5. 22.

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⁵ KB. xxvi. 3; ÇB. vi. 2. 2. 27. On the imperishableness of the *iṣṭāpūrta* see KB. vii. 4; JB. ii. 53. The idea seems applied to good deeds in TB. iii. 10. 11. 3; Oldenberg, *Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, p. 30.

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One idea of importance, however, can be faintly traced. Impurity, of course, is largely ritual, and a new-born child is ritually impure.⁶ On the other hand, we find it definitely asserted that if one perform a certain ceremony of purification one will be left with no more guilt than is in a toothless child, and a similar assertion is made of a child on birth.⁷ These assertions clearly admit that sin is not to be ascribed to a being incapable of volition, and in the same strain of thought we have the assertion of the sin which accrued to Soma because he had merely the intention of oppressing the Brahmans.⁸ But these are isolated utterances, we have no reason to suppose that there was recognized any general doctrine of the necessity of volition to create responsibility; the opposite clearly appears from the tale of the charioteer who by inadvertence killed a Brahman boy, for the discussion of the incident deals only with the point whether the charioteer, or his master who was riding in the chariot, was to bear the sin of the slaughter.⁹

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⁶ Cf. TB. iii. 7. 12. 3 f.

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⁷ ÇB. iv. 4. 5. 23; KS. xxxvi. 5; PB. xviii. 1. 24.

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⁸ ÇB. iv. 1. 2. 4. The Kali Gandharvas vainly attempt to obtain favour from gods, Fathers, and men by asserting (JB. i. 154 f.) that they had mentally favoured their contest against Asuras, Rakṣases, and Piçācas.

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⁹ See Sieg, *Die Sagenstoffe des Ṛgveda*, pp. 64 ff.; Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 321; JB. iii. 94–6. Intention becomes recognized in Buddhism (Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, p. 114). See also Oldenberg, in Mommsen, *Zum ältesten Strafrecht der Kulturvölker*, pp. 76 ff.

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In the terminology¹⁰ of the Brāhmaṇas, however, appear differentiations from the uses of the Rigveda which attest the development of moral conceptions. The conception of Ṛta as righteousness, as has been seen, is less prominent; but the term itself in the negative form, Anṛta, has established itself as the opposite of truth, Satya, which largely supersedes Ṛta. The old conception of law, Dharman, persists, but there appears beside it the later formation Dharma, which the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa¹ formally personifies. The king now is hailed as the guardian of the Dharma and to him who has the power men resort in matters of Dharma,² whence later we have the Dharma Sūtras with their inextricable mixture of ritual, of domestic practices, and of civil and criminal law, all matters which Dharma is wide enough to cover. Vrata in the Rigveda denotes either the will of the god, or the usage of the man who obeys that will, nor does it cease to have this sense in the Brāhmaṇas, for the committer of a breach of the established moral laws can be called one who turns from Vrata (*apavrata*).³ But it tends to be specialized to denote the course of observance specially undertaken by an individual for some special purpose, and the Brāhmaṇas, like the Upaniṣads and the Sūtras, know of many curious Vratas.

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¹⁰ Oldenberg, *Weltanschauung der Brāhmaṇa-texte*, pp. 186 ff.; GN. 1915, pp. 167 ff.

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¹ xiii. 4. 3. 14.

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² AB. viii. 12. 5; KS. xvii. 19; ÇB. v. 3. 3. 9.

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³ MS. iv. 2. 12.

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There is development also in the terms for good and evil. The old words Vasu and Çrī⁴ continue to denote material prosperity, the earlier sense of the latter term as appropriate to beauty becoming less and less prominent, and the wicked man is still Pāpa. But from its use with terms of motion Sādhu comes to denote what is right,⁵ and Puṇya slowly develops, in lieu of its purely unethical sense of 'fortunate' or 'lucky', the implication of goodness,⁶ as evinced in prosperity. Both terms are fated to have an important development later, for they are used in those passages of the Upaniṣads which touch on the essential connexion of the position of man in life as affected by the merit or demerit of his deeds in a previous birth.⁷

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⁴ Oldenberg, GN. 1918, pp. 35 ff.

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⁵ ÇB. ii. 6. 3. 8 is dubious, but xi. 2. 7. 33 contrasts *sādhu-kṛtyā* and *pāpa-kṛtyā*; a king, true to his duty (*dhṛtavrata*), speaks and acts *sādhu*, v. 4. 4. 5.

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⁶ Connexion with *pṝ* or *puṣ* is dubious; for the old sense see RV. ii. 43. 2; vii. 55. 8; TS. i. 6. 11. 4; iii. 3. 8. 5; KS. xiii. 5; xxvii. 10.

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⁷ *puṇya*, BAU. iii. 2. 13; iv. 3. 15 (against *pāpa*); *sādhu*, *asādhu*, BAU. iv. 4. 22; *sādhu*, *pāpa*, TU. ii. 9; *sādhu*, *puṇya*, *pāpa*, BAU. iv. 4. 5.

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But though terminology shows a certain advance in view, it remains the case that nothing architectonic arises in the way of conception of good and evil. Truth and falsehood are sometimes set against each other, and once truth, good fortune, and light are opposed to untruth, evil, and darkness. But we miss entirely even what might have been expected, a living effort to combine the opposition of gods and Asuras with the conception of good and evil. Goods remain essentially mundane; the prayers offered are especially for temporal things, prosperity for the crops, the cattle, the boon of children, harmony in the realm, or pre-eminence for the Brahmans, or the restoration of an exiled king, acuteness of the senses, and rarely the world of heaven.¹ Occasionally the idea appears that all objects of human desire are of minor importance; the chariot of the gods is yoked for the world of heaven, that of men for mere desires. Similarly knowledge is stated to attain a result which neither gifts to the priest nor asceticism can obtain.² But this is not the prevailing idea, nor are prayers necessarily moral. Man may sacrifice and pray to be freed from reproach of murder, from persecution by evil spirits, but also to be safe in violating for a year his oath, without meeting punishment from Varuṇa.³

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¹ TS. ii; Caland, *Over de Wenschoffers* (1902).

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² KS. xxii. 1; ÇB. x. 5. 4. 16.

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³ TS. ii. 2. 6. 2.

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It is the conviction of the Brāhmaṇas that life on the earth is on the whole a good thing; for a man to live out his length of days is the ideal, and such traces of discontent as appear are mainly in regard to the doubt that man must feel whether he has even a year more to live.⁴ If he must die, then the sacrifice avails to carry him to the world of heaven, but he is never normally anxious to precipitate this result; if a rite carries him to the sky, it ends, none the less, in restoring him to the solid earth. Besides death there are other evils; hunger, dice, women, sleep, cause sin as does untruthfulness; these are of the nature of things, for Prajāpati is untruth and darkness as well as truth and light;⁵ but no question is yet raised as to the compatibility of the existence of the creator and evil.⁶ Nor is there any effort to evolve a complete code of moral rules; a man owes sacrifice to the gods, Vedic study to the seers, offspring to the Fathers, a triad of obligations, but also hospitality to friends;⁷ the duty of truth, as we have seen, is repeatedly asserted. But of the three duties, which in an Upaniṣad⁸ are enunciated as the three da's, generosity, self-restraint, and sympathy (*datta*, *dāmyata*, *dayadhvam*), only the first is heartily recognized in the Brāhmaṇas. Gifts are a bridge to the heaven, a gift of a cow protects one’s life, that of a garment prolongs it; the food destroys him who eats what he should give to others—the priests *par excellence*. It is only in an Āraṇyaka that we have the wise counsel that a man should be able to say ‘No’ as well as ‘Yes’ and to give only at the right moment.⁹ Self-restraint is asserted in one passage of the gods,¹⁰ but sympathy is a virtue of the Upaniṣad period.

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⁴ ÇB. v. 5. 2. 2; TB. i. 8. 4. 3.

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⁵ ÇB. x. 6. 5. 1; MS. iii. 6. 3; ÇB. i. 1. 1. 1; v. 1. 2. 10.

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⁶ A ritual criticism of Prajāpati for creating thieves, flies, &c., is given in ĀpÇS. xxi. 12. 1 ff.

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⁷ TS. vi. 3. 10. 5; ÇB. i. 7. 2. 1 f.

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⁸ BAU. v. 2.

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⁹ MS. iv. 8. 3; KS. xxviii. 5; TB. ii. 8. 8. 1; AA. ii. 3. 6. Cf. above, p. 477, n. 10.

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¹⁰ KB. ix. 1.

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In the undeveloped state of ethical views it would be hopeless to expect any political philosophy, nor have we any. The existence of the castes is taken for granted, and their origin attributed to divine creation whether in the version of the Puruṣa hymn of the Rigveda or in some variant form.¹¹ The duties and privileges of the castes are often mentioned incidentally, occasionally in more completeness, but there is no effort to develop a theoretic version of the matter. The Brahman is required to be of Brahmanical descent, to follow an appropriate course of life, to possess renown for learning, and to be engaged in the spiritual advancement of the people. In return he is entitled to receive honour and presents, and to be exempt from oppression and the death penalty.¹ The Kṣatriyas are to protect the people, and show consideration for Brahmans, while the commonalty in its subjection to these two castes is not very much better off than the Çūdras, children of the Asuras or of non-existence, save in so far as they are sharers in the rites of the twice born. It is assumed² that, in the perpetuation of the due subordination of the castes, there is assured prosperity for the people; no attempt is made to demonstrate or render this theory plausible. In the relations of the king and his Purohita there is an element of contract, with which may be compared the effort of the Buddhists to base the existence of caste relations and the state on contractual agreements as well as on creation myths,³ but the Brahmans insist in the ceremony of the royal consecration that they own no king, for Soma is their overlord, an assertion of the superiority of the priestly to the warrior class doubtless more honoured in theory than in practice, though not without actual importance.

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¹¹ e. g. TS. vii. 1. 1. 4; ÇB. xii. 7. 3. 12; BAU. i. 4. 11 f.; PB. vi. 1. 6 ff.; JB. i. 68 f.

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¹ ÇB. xi. 5. 7. 1; AB. vii. 29; Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 82 ff.

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² Cf. ÇB. v. 4. 4. 19; xiii. 4. 4. 13.

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³ N. N. Law, *Ancient Indian Polity*, pp. 96-8. See also U. Ghoshal, *History of Hindu Political Theories* (1923), pp. 117 ff., 135, 210.

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Of the origin of kingship itself we have variant versions, while the condition of anarchy is once vividly described.⁴ On one theory⁵ Indra owes his kingship among the gods to Prajāpati's favour, who at first made him the most inferior, but later conferred on him his own lustre and made him overlord, of the gods. Another version⁶ makes him the chosen of the gods, including Prajāpati, by reason of his eminent qualities of mind and body. Yet another⁷ makes the gods choose Soma as their king, because they felt that they owed their defeats at the hands of the Asuras to their lack of a sovereign. Or again they consecrate Varuṇa,⁸ their brother, because they see in him the form (*rūpa*) of their father, Prajāpati. Among men the rule of the Rājanya is explained⁹ on the ground that he is the representative of Prajāpati, thus being entitled, though one, to rule over many. It is, however, dubious whether this should be regarded as precisely a doctrine of the divine origin of the kingship in any specific sense; at any rate there is no effort to expound a doctrine of hereditary divinity in the Brāhmaṇas, and the ceremony of the Rājasūya, or royal consecration, hints at recollections of an elective kingship by the consent of the people.¹⁰ The inviolability of the king is asserted,¹¹ and his duty to assert and defend the law,¹² Dharma, but no grounds of a philosophical character for his obligations are alleged.

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⁴ ÇB. xi. 1. 6. 24.

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⁵ TB. ii. 2. 10. 1 f.

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⁶ AB. viii. 4. 12.

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⁷ AB. i. 1. 14.

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⁸ JB. iii. 152; cf. PB. xiii. 9. 22 f.

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⁹ ÇB. v. 1. 5. 14.

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¹⁰ The view (Ghoshal, *op. cit.*, pp. 38 ff.) of the rise in Vedic times of a nobility of office *versus* birth is not plausible, and the Teutonic parallel is explained by difference of social conditions.

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¹¹ ÇB. v. 4. 4. 7.

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¹² ÇB. v. 4. 4. 5; 3. 3. 9. The Dharma Sūtras give much information as to royal duties as well as those of other persons, but, apart from their dubious date, they contain nothing of philosophical importance. Cf. Weber, *Religionssoziologie*, ii. 141 ff. The Arthaçāstra is clearly the product of a post-Vedic era.

Cites (19)