of the religious founders. versions and commentaries,1 and a vast structure of miracle and fable has been reared upon it. It is the Golden Legend and Acta Sanctorum of Hinduism. The same wonders are not recorded of each of its apostles, but divine interpositions abound in the life of all. The greater ones rank as divine Miracles incarnations prophesied of old. Some were born of virgins; others overcame lions; raised the dead; their hands and feet when cut off sprouted afresh; prisons were opened to them; the sea received them and returned them to the land unhurt, while the earth opened and swallowed up their slanderers. Their lives were marvellous, and the deaths of some a solemn mystery. On Kabir's decease, both the Hindus and Musalmáns claimed the body, the former to burn it, the latter to bury it, according to their respective rites. While they wrangled over the corpse, Kabir suddenly stood in the midst, and, commanding them to look under the shroud, vanished. This they did. But under the winding-sheet they found only a heap of beautiful flowers, one-half of which they gave to be burned by the Hindus in their holy city, while the other half was buried in pomp by the Musalmáns. His name lives in the memory of the people; and pilgrims from Upper India beg a spoonful of rice-water from the Kabir Monastery at Purí, at the extreme southern point of Bengal, to this day. Kabir's death. Kumárila 750(?) A.D. The first in the line of apostles was Kumárila, a bhatta or Brahman of Behar. The legend relates that he journeyed into Southern India, in the 8th century A.D., commanding princes and people to worship one God. He stirred up a persecution against the Buddhists or Jains in the State of Rudrapur,—a local persecution which later tradition magnified into a general extermination of the Buddhists from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin.2 In Hindu theology he figures as a teacher of the later Mímánsá philosophy, which ascribes the universe to a divine act of creation, and assumes an allpowerful God as the cause of the existence, continuance, and dissolution of the world. The doctrine of this personal deity, 'the one existent and universal soul,' 'without a second' 1 The best known are that of Nárayan Dás, about the time of Shah Jahán (1627-58); the tíká of Krishna Dás (1713); and a later version ' in the more ordinary dialect of Hindustán.'-Wilson's Religions of the Hindus, vol. i. pp. 9, 10 (ed. 1862). 2 The local persecution is recorded by Ananda Giri, a disciple of Sankara about the 8th or 9th century A. D., and the author of the SankaraVijaya. The magnified version appears in the Sarva Darsana Sangraha of Madhava Acharya, in the 14th century. See, however, the Mackenzie MSS. in the India Office Library. (adwaita), states the philosophical argument against the Buddhists. Kumárila bequeathed his task to his famous disciple Sankara Acharya, in whose presence he is said to have solemnly committed his body to the flames. With the advent of Sankara Acharya we touch more solid Sankara ground. Born in Malabar, he wandered as an itinerant Acharya, 9th cenpreacher over India as far as Kashmír, and died at Kedarnath tury A.D. in the Himalayas, aged 32. One of his disciples has narrated his life's work under the title of 'The Victory of Sankara,'1 a record of his doctrines and controversial triumphs. Sankara moulded the later Mímánsá or Vedantic philosophy into its final form, and popularized it into a national religion. It is scarcely too much to say, that since his short life in the 8th or 9th century, every new Hindu sect has had to start with a personal God. He addressed himself to the high-caste philosophers on His twothe one hand, and to the low-caste multitude on the other. fold work. He left behind, as the twofold results of his life's work, a compact Brahman sect and a popular religion. Bráhmans. The Brahman sect are the Smartas, still powerful in Southern His sect of India. Sankara taught that there was one sole and supreme Smárta God, Bráhma Para Bráhma, distinct alike from any member of the old Brahman triad, or of the modern Hindu pantheon; the ruler of the universe and its inscrutable first cause, to be worshipped, not by sacrifices, but by meditation, and in spirit and in truth. The Smárta Bráhmans follow this philosophic side of his teaching; and of the religious houses which he founded some remain to this day, controlled from the parent monastery perched among the western ranges of Mysore. But Sankara His realized that such a faith is for the few. To those who could religion for the people. not rise to so high a conception of the godhead, he allowed the practice of any rites prescribed by the Veda, or by later orthodox teachers, to whatsoever form of the godhead they might be addressed. Tradition fondly narrates that the moulders of almost all the historical sects of Hinduism-Sivaites, Vishnuvites, Sauras, Sáktas, Gánapatya, Bhairavas-were his disciples." 1 The Sankara-Vijaya of Ananda Giri, published in the Bibliotheca Indica, and critically examined by Káshináth Trimbak Telang in vol. v. of the Indian Antiquary. But, indeed, Sankara is the first great figure in almost every Hindu hagiology, or book of saints, from the Sarva Darsana Sangraha of Mádhava Achárya downwards. At SRINGIRI (Imperial Gazetteer, vol. viii. p. 445), where a brief account is given of the head of the Smárta sect, who has his headquarters in this monastery. See also Mysore and Coorg, by Lewis Rice, vol. ii. p. 413, etc. (Bangalore Government Press, 1876.) 3 Wilson's Religion of the Hindus, vol. i. p. 28 (1862). Growth of Sivaworship; Its philo sophical aspects; But Siva-worship claims Sankara as its founder in a special sense. Siva-worship represents the popular side of his teaching, and the piety of his followers has elevated Sankara into an incarnation of Siva himself.1 But nothing is altogether new in Hinduism, and it is needless to say that Siva had won his way high up into the pantheon long before the 8th century A.D. Siva is the Rudra of the Vedas, as developed by Bráhman philosophy, and finally adapted to popular worship. Rudra, the Storm-God of the Vedic hymns, had grown during this process into Siva, the Destroyer and Reproducer, as the third person of the Bráhman triad. The Chinese pilgrims supply evidence of his worship before the 7th century A.D., while his dread wife had a temple at the southernmost point of India at the time of the Periplus (2d century A.D.), and gave her name to Cape Comorin. Siva ranks high in the Mahábhárata, in various passages of uncertain date; but does not reach his full development till the Puránas, probably after the 10th century A.D. His worship in Bengal is said to have been formulated by Paramata Kálanála at Benares; but Sankara's teaching gave an impulse to it throughout all India, especially in the south; and later tradition makes Paramata himself a disciple of Sankara, In the hands of Sankara's followers and apostolic successors, Siva-worship became one of the two chief religions of India. As at once the Destroyer and Reproducer, Siva represented profound philosophical doctrines, and was early recognised as being in a special sense the god of the Brahmans.* To them he was the symbol of death as merely a change of life. Its terrible On the other hand, his terrible aspects, preserved in his long list of names from the Roarer (Rudra) of the Veda, to the Dread One (Bhíma) of the modern Hindu Pantheon, well adapted him to the religion of fear and propitiation prevalent among the ruder non-Aryan races. Siva, in his twofold character, thus became the deity alike of the highest and of the lowest forms. 5 1 This rank is claimed for Sankara by Mádhava Achárya in the 14th century A.D.; indeed, Siva's descent as Sankara is said to have been foretold in the Skanda Purána. Sankara is one of the names of Siva. ? From Kumári or Kanyá-kumári, the Virgin Goddess, a name of Durgá, wife of Siva. 3 As Visweswara, or Lord of the Universe, under which name Siva is still the chief object of worship at Benares. 4 A Sanskrit text declares Siva to be the ádideva, or special god of the Bráhmans; Vishnu, of the Kshattriyas; Brahma, of the Vaisyas; and Ganesa, of the Súdras. 5 From the root rud, weep. aspects of castes. He is the Mahá-deva, or Great God of modern Hinduism; and his wife is Deví, pre-eminently THE Goddess. His universal symbol is the linga, a fetish emblem of reproduction; his sacred beast, the bull, connected with the same idea; a trident tops his temples. His images partake of Twofold his double nature. The Brahmanical conception is repre- Siva and sented by his attitude as a fair-skinned man, seated in profound his wife. thought, the symbol of the fertilizing Ganges above his head, and the bull (emblem alike of procreation and of Aryan plough-tillage) near at hand. The wilder non-Aryan aspects of his character are signified by his necklace of skulls, his collar of twining serpents, his tiger-skin, and his club with a human head at the end. His five faces and four arms have also their significance. His wife, in like manner, appears in her Aryan form as Umá, 'Light,' the type of high-born loveliness; in her composite character as Durgá, a golden-coloured woman, beautiful but menacing, riding on a tiger; and in her terrible non-Aryan aspects, as Kálí, a black fury, of a hideous countenance, dripping with blood, crowned with snakes, and hung round with skulls. As an Aryan deity, Siva is Pasu-pati, the Their twolord of animals and the protector of cows; Sambhu, the fold sets of auspicious; Mrityunjaya, the vanquisher of death; Viswanátha, monarch of all. In his non-Aryan attributes, he is Aghora, the horrible; Virúpáksha, of mis-shapen eyes; Ugra, the fierce; Kapála-málin, garlanded with skulls. So also Deví, his female form, as an Aryan goddess is Umá, the lovely daughter of the mountain king, Himavat ;1 Arya, the revered; Gauri, the brilliant or gold-coloured; Jagad-gaurí, the World's Fair One; Bhavání, the Source of Existence; and Jagan-mátá, the Mother of the Universe. Her non-Aryan attributes appear in her names of Kálí or Syámá, the Black One; Chandi, the Fierce; Bhairaví, the Terrible; Rakta-dantí, the Bloody-Toothed. names. of Siva The ritual of Siva - worship preserves, in an even more Twofold striking way, the traces of its double origin. The higher aspects minds still adore the godhead by silent contemplation, as pre- worship. scribed by Sankara, without the aid of external rites. The ordinary Brahman hangs a wreath of flowers around the phallic linga, or places before it harmless offerings of rice. But the low-castes pour out the lives of countless victims at the feet of the terrible Káli, and until lately, in time of pestilence and famine, tried in their despair to appease the relentless goddess by human blood. During the dearth of 1866, in a temple to miles of Calcutta, a boy was found with his Káli within 100 1 Monarch of the Himalayas. Human offerings, 1866. The Charak- neck cut, the eyes staring open, and the stiff clotted tongue thrust out between the teeth. In another temple at Húglí (a railway station only 25 miles from Calcutta), the head was left before the idol, decked with flowers.1 Such cases are true survivals of the regular system of human sacrifices which we have seen among the non-Aryan tribes.2 They have nothing to do with the old mystic purusha-medha or man-offering, whether real or symbolical, of the ancient Aryan faith; but form an essential part of the non-Aryan religion of terror, which demands that the greater the need, the greater shall be the propitiation. Such sacrifices are now forbidden, alike by Hindu custom and English law. H. H. Wilson found evidence that they were regularly offered by the Kápálika sect of Sivaite Hindus eight centuries ago; and representatives of those hideous votaries of Siva, 'smeared with ashes from the funeral pile, and their necks hung round with human skulls,' survive to this day.1 Colonel Keatinge tells me that he has seen old sacrifice troughs near Jáintiapur, now used only for goats, which exactly fitted the size of a man. The modern ones are reduced to the dimensions of the animals at present offered; and the greater length of the ancient ones is explained by a legend of human sacrifices. The Statistical Survey of India has brought to light many traditions of such offerings. The hill tribes between Sylhet and Assam hunt a monkey at sowing-time, and crucify it on the margin of the village lands, apparently as a substitute for the Spring man-sacrifice.2 A human life was sometimes devoted to the preservation of an artificial lake, or of a river embankment; a watchman being sacrificed, or a virgin princess walled up in the breach." Another Sivaite festival was the Charak-Pujá, or Hook-Swinging Festival, during which men were twisted on a pole by a hook thrust through the muscles of the back, and then swung in the air, in honour of Kálí. It was my duty in 1863 to see 1 The Calcutta Englishman of 19th May 1866; Annals of Rural Bengal, p. 128, 5th edition. 2 As among the Kandhs, ante, p. 78, etc. 3 See Dr. Haug's Origin of Bráhmanism, p. 5 (Poona, 1863). The Purusha-sukta of the Rig Veda, x. 90, verses 7-15; and the Purusha-medha of the Satapatha Bráhmana, i. 2, 3, 6, and xiii. 6, i. I ; and of the Aitareya Bráhmana, ii. 8, with other passages quoted throughout Dr. Muir's Sanskrit Texts, seem to have an allegorical and mystical significance, rather than to refer to a real sacrifice. See also Wilson's Essay on Human Sacrifices, Journal Roy. As. Soc., vol. viii. p. 96 (1852). 4 Religion of the Hindus, vol. i. p. 264. 5 See SAKRAYPATNA, Imperial Gazetteer, vol. viii. p. 122. 6 See ANANTASAGARAM, Imperial Gazetteer, vol. i. p. 194. |