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Indian Philosophy Volume 1.006 - The Veid Period: The Hymns of the Ṛg-Veda (Continue 3)
First revision: Mar.25, 2024
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IX
RELIGION
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 out polish of a fair skin, and the dignity of a log 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.
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“This 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.
“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 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.
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1. Oldenberg: Ancient India, p. 71.
2. Gilbert Murray: Four Stages of Greek Religion, p.88.
3. x. 47. I; iv. 32. 4; ii. 6; vii. 59; vii. 24. 6; vii. 67. 16.
4. x. 42. 4.
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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
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 offering 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 recess of the human heart to find out the deep-lying motive. Gradually having conceived to gods as human, much too human, they thought that a full meal was the best way to the heart of God.5
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 sacrifice.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.
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.”
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1. R.V., x. 88. 15; i. 125-5; x. 107.2.
2. i. 24. I.
3. ii. 24. 20; vi. 15. 47.
4. i. 55. 5; i. 133. 5; i. 104. 6.
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 the ancient Greece. Fire carries the offerings from earth to heavenly gods. In all these things there is nothing specially Indian.
6. R.V., i. 6. 24.
7. R.V., ii., iii. vi., vii.
8. i., ii. 9. 2.
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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 yuga, but logic of growth of religious practice from meditation to sacrifice, from sacrifice to worship, from worship to praise and prayer, seems to be founded on fact.
The Vedic religion does not seem to be an idolatrous one. There were then on 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.
In x. 15 and x. 54 we have two hymns addressed to the pitaras of 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
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.
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1. vi. 2; See the story of Purūravas.
2. x. 15.
3. Behari Lal; The Vedas, p. 101.
4. vii. 86. 6; see also vii. 88. 5. 6.
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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.
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.
X
ETHICS
Turning to the ethics of the Ṛg-Veda, we find that the conception of Ṛta is of great significance. It is the anticipation of the law of karma, one of the distinguishing characteristics of Indian thought. It is the law which pervades the whole world, which all gods and men must obey. If there is law in the world, it must work itself out. If by any chance its effects are not revealed here on earth, they must be brought to fruition elsewhere. Where law is, disorder and injustice are only provisional and partial. The triumph of the wicked is not absolute. The shipwreck of the good need not cause despair.
Ṛta furnishes us with a standard of morality.
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1. i. 23. 22; i. 85.
2. ix. 115.
3. x. 117.
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Disorder or An-Ṛta is falsehood, the opposite of truth.1 The good are those who follow the path of Ṛta, the true and the ordered. Ordered conduct is called a true vrata. Vratāni are the ways of life of good men who follow the path of Ṛta.2 Consistency is the central feature of a good life. The good man of the Vedas dose not alter his ways. Varuṇa, the perfect example of the follower of Ṛta, is a dhṛtavrata, of unalterable ways. When ritual grew in importance, Ṛta became a synonym for yajña or sacrificial ceremony.
After giving us a general account of the ideal life, the hymns detail the specific contents of the moral life. Prayers are to be offered to the gods. Rites are to be performed.3 The Vedas assume a very close and intimate relationship between men and gods. The life of man has to be led under the very eye of god. Apart from the duties owed to gods there are also duties to man.4 Kindness to all is enjoined; hospitality is reckoned a great virtue. “The riches of one who gives do not diminish. …He who possessed of food hardens his heart against the feeble man craving nourishment, against the sufferer coming to him (for help) and pursues (his own enjoyment even) before him, that man finds no consoler.”5 Sorcery, witchcraft, seduction and adultery are condemned as vicious.6 Gambling is denounced. Virtue is conformity to the law of God, which includes the love of man. Vice is disobedience to this law. “If we have sinned against the man who loves us, have ever wronged friend or comrade, have ever done an injury to a neighbour who ever dwelt with us or even to a stranger, O Lord! free us from the guilt of this trespass.”7 Some of the gods cannot be persuaded or diverted from the paths of righteousness by any amount of offerings. “In them is to be discerned neither right nor left, neither before nor behind. They neither wink nor sleep, they penetrate all things; they see through both evil and good;
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1. See R.V., vii. 56. 12; ix. 115. 4; ii. 6. 10; iv. 5. 5; viii. 6. 2; 12; vii. 47. 3.
2. ix. 121. 1; x. 37. 5.
3. R.V., i. 104. 6; i. 108. 6; ii. 26. 3; x. 151.
4. R.V., x. 117.
5. Viii. 6. 5; i. 2. 6.
6. Via. 104. 8 ff; iv. 5. 5.
7. R.V., v.85. 7.
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everything, even the most distant, is near to them; they abhor and punish death; sustain and support all that lives.”
There are also indications of an ascetic tendency. Indra is said to have conquered heaven by asceticism.1 But the dominant note is not one of asceticism. In the hymns we find a keen delight in the beauties of nature, its greatness, its splendour and its pathos. The motive of the sacrifices is love of the good things of the world. We have yet the deep joy in life and the world untainted by any melancholy gloom. Ascetic practices were, however, known. Fasting and abstinence were regarded as means of attaining various supernatural powers. In ecstatic moods it is said that the gods have entered into men.2 The earliest reference to the ecstatic condition of ascetic sages is in Ṛg-Veda, x. 136.3
The Puruṣa Sūkta has the first reference to the division of Hindu society into the four classes. To understand the natural way in which this institution arose, we must remember that the Aryan conquerors were divided by differences of blood and racial ancestry from the conquered tribes of India. The original Aryans all belonged to one class, every one being priest and soldier, trader and tiller of the soil. There was no privileged order of priests. The complexity of life led to a division of classes among the Aryans. Though to start with each man could offer sacrifices to gods without anybody’s mediation, priesthood and aristocracy separated themselves from the proletariat. Originally the term Vaiśya referred to the whole people. As we shall see, when sacrifices assume an important rȏle, when the increasing complexity of life rendered necessary division of life, certain families, distinguished for learning, wisdom, poetic and speculative gifts, became representatives in worship under the title of Purohita, or one set in front. When the Vedic religion developed into a regulated ceremonialism, these families formed themselves into a class. In view of their great function of conserving the tradition of the Aryans, this class was freed from the necessity of the struggle for existence. For those engaged in the feverish ardour of life cannot afford the freedom and the leisure necessary for thought and reflection.
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1. x. 127.
2. x. 86. 2.
3. See also vii. 59. 6; x. 114. 2; x. 167. 1; x. 109. 4.
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Thus one class concerned with things of spirit came into existence. The Brāhmins are not a priesthood pledged to support fixed doctrines, but an intellectual aristocracy charged with the moulding of the higher life of the people. The kings who became the patrons of the learned Brāhmins were the Kṣatriyas or the princes who had borne rule in those days. The word Kṣatriya comes from Kṣatra, “rule, dominion.” It has the same meaning in the Veda, the Avesta and the Persian inscriptions. The rest were classed as the people or the Vaiśyas. Originally occupational, the division soon became hereditary. In the period of the hymns, professions were not restricted to particular castes. Referring to the diversity of men’s tastes, one verse says: “I am a poet my father is a doctor, my mother a grinder of corn.”1 There are also passages indicative of the rising power of the Brāhmin. “In his own house he dwells in peace and comfort, to him forever holy food flows richly, to him the people with free will pay homage – the king with whom the Brāhmin has precedence.”2 Those who followed the learned professions, those who fought, those who traded all belonged to one whole, which was divided by a wider gulf from the conquered races, who were grouped into two broad divisions of (a) the Draviḍians, forming the fourth estate, and (b) the aboriginal tribes. The division into Aryans and Dasyus is a radical one, being based on blood and descent. It is sometimes said that the aborigines converted and accepted by the Aryans are the Śudras, while those excluded by them are the Panchamas.3 It is maintained by others that the Aryans had in their own communities Śudras even before they came to the southern part of India. It is not easy to decide between these rival hypotheses.
The system of caste is in reality neither Aryan not Draviḍian, but was introduced to meet the needs of the time when the different racial types had to live together in amity. It was then the salvation of the country, whatever its present tendency may be.
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1. ix. 112. 3.
2. iv. 50. 8.
3. See Farquhar: Outline of the Religious Literature of India, p. 6.
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The only way of conserving the culture of a race which ran the great risk of being absorbed by the superstitions of the large numbers of native inhabitants, was to pin down rigidly by iron bonds the existing differences of culture and race. Unfortunately, this device to prevent the social organization from growing.1 The barriers did not show any signs of weakening when the tide of progress demanded it. While they contributed to the preservation of the social order they did not help the advancement of the nation as a whole. But this gives us no right to condemn the institution of caste as it was originally introduced. Only caste made it possible for a number of races to live together side by side without fighting each other. India solved peaceably the inter-racial problem which other people did by a decree of death. When European races conquered others, they took care to efface their human dignity and annihilate their self-respect. Caste enabled the Vedic Indian to preserve the integrity and independence of the conquering as well as the conquered races and promote mutual confidence and harmony.
XI
ESCHATOLOGY
The Vedic Aryans entered India in the pride of strength and joy of conquest. They loved life in its fullness. They, therefore, showed no great interest in the future of the soul. Life to them was bright and joyous, free from all the vexations of a fretful spirit. They were not enamoured of death. They wished for themselves and their posterity a life of a hundred autumns.2 They had no special doctrines about life after death, though some vague conceptions about heaven and hell could not be avoided by reflective minds.
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1. Referring to the hardening of classes into castes, Rhys Davids writes: “It is most probable that this momentous step followed upon and was chiefly due to the previous establishment of a similar hard and fast line preventing anyone belonging to the non-Aryan tribes from inter-marrying with an Aryan family or being incorporated into the Aryan race. It was the hereditary disability the Aryans had succeeded in imposing upon races they despised which, reacting within their own circle and strengthened by the very intolerance that gave it birth, has borne such bitter fruit through so many centuries” (Hibbert Lectures, p. 23).
2. R.V., x. 18.
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Rebirth is still a distance. The Vedic Aryans were convinced that death was not the end of things. After night, the day; after death, life. Beings who once had been could never cease to be. They must exist somewhere, perhaps in the realm of the setting sun where Yama rules. The imagination of man with his shuddering fear of death had not yet made Yama into a terrible lord of vengeance. Yama and Yamī are the first mortals who entered the other world to lord over it. When a man dies, he is supposed to reach Yama’s kingdom. Yama had found for us a place, a home which is not to be taken from us. When the body is thrown off, the soul becomes endowed with a shining spiritual form and goes to the abode of gods where Yama and the fathers live immortal. The dead are supposed to get to this paradise by passing over water and a bridge.1 A reference to the paths of the fathers and the gods is found in x. 88. 15. This might be, as has been suggested, due to the distinction of the ways in which the smoke ascends in cremation and sacrifice. The distinction is yet in an undeveloped form.
The departed souls dwell in heaven, revelling with Yama. They there live an existence like ours. The joys of heaven are those of earth perfected and heightened. “These bright things are the portion of those who bestow largesses; there are suns for them in heaven; they attain immortality; they prolong their lives.”2 Stress is sometimes laid on the sensuous character in the Vedic picture of future life. But as Deussen observes: “Even Jesus represents the kingdom of heaven as a festal gathering where they sit down to table3 and drink wine,4 and even a Dante or Milton could not choose but borrow all the colours for their pictures from this world of earth.”5 The gods are supposed to become immortal through the power of the Soma. To become like gods is the goal of our endeavour. For the gods live in a spiritual paradise enjoying a kind of unalloyed bliss.
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1 x. 6. 10; ix. 41. 2.
2 i. 25. 6.
3 Matt. vii. II.
4 Matt. xxvi. 9.
5 The Philosophy of the Upaniṣads, p. 320.
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They neither hunger nor thirst, neither marry nor are given in marriage. In their ideal descriptions of the other world, the contrast between life on earth and the life hereafter arises. The blessed gods live forever. We are children of a day. The gods have happiness in heaven above where Yama rules; we have misery for our lot on earth. What should we do to gain immortality? We have to offer sacrifices to gods since immortality is a free gift from heaven to the god-fearing. The good man who worships the gods becomes immortal. “Sage Agni! The mortal who propitiates thee becomes a moon in heaven.”1 Already, the difficulty is felt. Does he become the moon, or does he become like the moon? Sāyaṇa explains it as: “He becomes like the moon, the rejoice of all”;2 others contend that he becomes the moon.3 There are indications that the Vedic Aryan believed in the possibility of meeting his ancestors after his death.4
The question arises what happens to us if we do not worship the gods. Is there a hell corresponding to a heaven, a separate place for the morally guilty, the heretics, who do not believe in gods? If the heaven is only for the pious and the good, then the evil-minded cannot be extinguished at death nor can they reach heaven. So, a hell is necessary. We hear of Varuṇa thrusting the evildoer down into the dark abyss from which he never returns. Indra is prayed to consign to the lower darkness the man who injures his worshipper.5 It seems to be the destiny of the wicked to fall into this dark depth and disappear. We do not as yet get the grotesque mythology of hell and its horrors of the later purāṇas. Heaven for the righteous and hell for the wicked is the rule. Reward follows righteousness and punishment misconduct. I do not think that the joyless regions veiled in blind darkness into which we live, though that is Deussen’s view. We have no inklings as yet of saṁsāra or even gradations of happiness. There is a passage in the Ṛg-Veda6 which reads:
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1 ii. 2; x. 1. 3.
2 Āhlādaka sarveṣām.
3 Candra eva bhavati.
4 i. 24. I; vii. 56. 24.
5 x. 132. 4; iv. 5. 5; ix. 73. 8; x 152. 4.
6 iv. 27. I.
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“After he has completed what he has to do and has become old, he departs hence; departing hence he is once more born; this is the third birth.” This has reference to the Vedic theory that every man has three births: the first as a child, the second by spiritual education, and the third after death. We meet with the belief in the soul as a moving life principle.1 In x.58, the soul of an apparently unconscious man is invited to come back to him from the trees, the sky and sun. Evidently it was thought that the soul could be separated from the body in certain abnormal conditions. All this, however, does not imply that the Vedic Aryans were familiar with the conception of rebirth.
XII
CONCLUSION
The Hymns form the foundation of subsequent Indian thought. While the Brāhmaṇas emphasise the sacrificial ritual shadowed forth in the hymns, the Upaniṣads carry out their philosophical suggestions. The theism of the Bhagavadgītā is only an idealisation of Varuṇa-worship. The dualistic metaphysics of the Sāṁkhya is the logical development of the conception of Hiraṇyagarbha floating on the waters. The descriptions of the ecstatic conditions caused by the performance of sacrifice or the singing of hymns, or the effects of the Soma juice when we see the glories of the heavenly world remind us of the yogic states of divine blessedness where voices are heard and visions seen.
REFERENCES.
MAX MÜLLER AND OLDENBERG: The Vedic Hymns; S.B.E., vols. xxxii and xlvi.
MUIR: Original Sanskrit Texts, vol V.
RAGOZIN: Vedic India.
MAX MÜLLER: Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, chap. ii.
KAEGI: The Ṛg-Veda (Eng. Trans.).
GHATE: Lectures on the Ṛg-Veda.
MACDONELL: Vedic Mythology; Vedic Reader.
BARUA: Pre-Buddhistic Indian Philosophy, pp. 1-38,
BLOOMFIELD: The Religion of the Veda.
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1 i. 164. 30.
