Indian Philosophy v1.c8.s6: IX Religion
Indian Philosophy v1.c8.s6
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IX Religion
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We have seen how physical phenomena first came to attract attention and were assigned personalities. The deification of natural phenomena has a mischievous influence on religious thought and practice. The world becomes peopled with gods possessed of the human sense of justice and capable of being influenced by the human qualities of hate and love. Many of the gods are not even sufficiently humanised and easily lapse into their past naturalistic condition. Indra, for example, born of waters and cloud, sometimes crashes down from heaven in thunder. Vedic gods, as Bloomfield says, represent “arrested personification.” But even the humanised gods are only crudely personal. They have hands and feet like men. They are given the actual bodily shape, the warring passions of the human breast, the outer polish of a fair skin, and the dignity of a long beard. They fight and feast, drink and dance, eat and rejoice. Some of them are described to be priests in function such as Agni and Bṛhaspati; others are warriors, like Indra and the Maruts. Their food is just the favourite food of man, milk and butter, ghee and grain; their favourite drink is the Soma juice. They have their share of human weakness and are easily pleased by flattery. Sometimes they are so stupidly self-centred that they begin to discuss what they should give. “This is what I will do—not that, I will give him a cow or shall it be a horse? I wonder if I have really had Soma from him."' 1 In their eyes a rich offering is much more efficacious than a sincere prayer. It is a very simple law of give and take that binds gods and men, though the perfect reciprocity governing their relations in the later Brāhmaṇas is yet remote.
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"To make the elements of a nature religion human is inevitably to make them vicious. There is no great moral harm in worshipping a thunderstorm even though the lightning strikes the good and the evil quite recklessly. There is no need to pretend that the lightning is exercising a wise and righteous choice, but when once you worship an imaginary quasi-human being who throws the lightning you are in a dilemma. Either you have to admit that you are worshipping and flattering a being with no moral sense, because he happens to be dangerous, or else you have to invent reasons for his wrath against the people who happen to be struck. And they are pretty sure to be bad reasons. The God if personal becomes capricious and cruel."' 2 True to this view, the Vedic worship of the natural powers is not quite sincere, but utilitarian. We fear the gods whose effects are dangerous to us, and love those that help us in our daily pursuits. We pray to Indra to send down rain, and yet beg him not to send the storm. The sun is implored to impart a gentle warmth, and not force the world into drought and famine by scorching heat. The gods become the sources of material prosperity, and prayers for the goods of the world are very common. And since there is a division of functions and attributes. we pray to particular deities for specific things.³ The invocations to the gods are monotonously simple.⁴ The gods were conceived as strong rather than good, powerful rather than moral. Such a religion is not capable of satisfying men's ethical aspirations. It shows the strong moral sense of the Vedic Aryan, that in spite of the prevalent tendency of utilitarian worship he yet regards the gods as being in general moral as inclined to help the good and punish the wicked. The highest religious aspiration of man to unite himself with the Supreme is recognised.¹ The many gods are helpful only as enabling their devotees to reach the Supreme.²
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¹ Oldenberg : *Ancient India*, p. 71.
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² Gilbert Murray : *Four Stages of Greek Religion*, p. 88.
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³ x. 47. 1; iv. 32. 4; ii. 1; ii. 6; vii. 59; vii. 24. 6; vii. 67. 16.
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⁴ x. 42. 4.
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¹ R.V., x. 88. 15; i. 125. 5; x. 107. 2.
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² i. 24. 1.
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It was inevitable that sacrifices should come. For the depth of one’s affection for God consists in the surrender of one’s property and possessions to Him. We pray and offer. Even when sacrificial offerings came into fashion, the spirit was considered more important and the real nature of the sacrifice was insisted on. "Utter a powerful speech to Indra which is sweeter than butter or honey."³ Śraddhā or faith in all ceremonies is necessary.⁴ Varuṇa is a god who looks into the secret recesses of the human heart to find out the deep-lying motive. Gradually having conceived the gods as human, much too human, they thought that a full meal was the best way to the heart of God.⁵
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³ ii. 24. 20; vi. 15. 47.
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⁴ i. 55. 5; i. 133. 5; i. 104. 6.
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⁵ "Ritual in Homer is simple and uniform. It consists of prayer accompanied by the sprinkling of the grain, followed by animal burnt offering. Part of the flesh is tasted by the worshippers and then made over by burning to the gods. The rest is eaten as a banquet with abundance of wine" (Harrison: *Stages of Grecian Life*, pp. 87-88). Agni is pre-eminently the god of sacrifices in India. It is so even in ancient Greece. Fire carries the offerings from earth to heavenly gods. In all these things there is nothing specially Indian.
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The question of human sacrifice is much debated. The case of Śunaśśepa⁶ does not indicate that human sacrifices are either allowed or encouraged in the Vedas. We hear of horse sacrifices.⁷ But against all such there were protests heard even then. Sāma Veda says: "O, Ye Gods! We use no sacrificial stake. We slay no victim. We worship entirely by the repetition of the sacred verses."⁸ This cry of revolt is taken up by the Upaniṣads and carried on by the Buddhist and the Jaina schools.
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⁶ R.V., i. 6. 24.
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⁷ R.V., ii., iii., vi., vii.
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⁸ i., ii. 9. 2.
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Sacrifices represent the second stage of the Vedic religion. In the first it was simple prayer. According to Pārāśarasmṛti we have "meditation in the Kṛtayuga, sacrifices in the Treta, worship in the Dvāpara, praises and prayers in Kali.” This view accords well with what the Viṣṇupurāṇa says that the rules of sacrifices were formulated in the tretāyuga.¹ We may not agree with the division into yugas, but the logic of the growth of religious practice from meditation to sacrifice, from sacrifice to worship, from worship to praise and prayer, seems to be founded on fact.
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¹ vi. 2 ; See the story of Purūravas.
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The Vedic religion does not seem to be an idolatrous one. There were then no temples for gods. Men had direct communion with gods without any mediation. Gods were looked upon as friends of their worshippers. “Father Heaven,” “Mother Earth,” Brother Agni”—these are no idle phrases. There was a very intimate personal relationship between men and gods. Religion seems to have dominated the whole life. The dependence on God was complete. The people prayed for even the ordinary necessities of life. “Give us this day our daily bread” was true to the spirit of the Vedic Aryan. It is the sign of a truly devout nature to depend on God for even the creature comforts of existence. As we have already said, we have the essentials of the highest theism in the worship of Varuṇa. If bhakti means faith in a personal God, love for Him, dedication of everything to His service and the attainment of mokṣa or freedom by personal devotion, surely we have all these elements in Varuṇa worship.
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In x. 15 and x. 54 we have two hymns addressed to the pitaras or fathers, the blessed dead who dwell in heaven. In the Vedic hymns they are invoked together with the devas.² They are supposed to come in the form of invisible spirits to receive the prayers and offerings at sacrifices. The social tradition is revered perhaps in the worship of the fathers. There are, however, some students of the Vedas who believe that the hymns of the Ṛg-Veda do not know of any obsequial offerings to ancestral manes.³
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² x. 15.
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³ Behari Lal: *The Vedas*, p. 101.
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A criticism that is generally urged against the Vedic religion is that the consciousness of sin is absent in the Veda. This is an erroneous view. Sin, in the Vedas, is alienation from God.⁴ The Vedic conception of sin is analogous to the Hebrew theory. The will of God is the standard of morality. Human guilt is short-coming. We sin when we transgress the commands of God. The gods are the upholders of the Ṛta, the moral order of the world. They protect the good and punish the wicked. Sin is not merely the omission of the external duties. There are moral sins as well as ritual sins.¹ It is a consciousness of sin that calls for propitiatory sacrifices. Especially in the conception of Varuṇa we have the sense of sin and forgiveness which reminds us of modern Christian doctrines.
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⁴ vii. 86. 6; see also vii. 88. 5, 6.
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¹ i. 23. 22; i. 85.
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While as a rule the gods of the Ṛg-Veda are regarded as the guardians of morality, some of them still retain their egoistic passions, being only magnified men, nor are there poets wanting who are able to see the hollowness of all this. One hymn² points out how all gods and men are dominated by self-interest. The decay of the old Vedic worship is traceable to this low conception of many gods. Otherwise we cannot understand the beautiful hymn,³ which recommends the duty of benevolence without any reference to gods. The gods seem to have become too weak to support a pure morality. The idea of an ethics independent of religion popularised in Buddhism is suggested here.
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² ix. 115.
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³ x. 117.
Cites (3)
- Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
- Sāmavedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
- Viṣṇupurāṇa — Vyāsa, Sanskrit