faithfully The thirteen Sivaite that the orders abolishing this festival were carried out in a border District, lying between the Hindu plains and the nonAryan highlands. The low-castes, in reality semi-aborigines, and only half-Hinduized, assembled round the poles and foretold famine from the loss of their old propitiatory rites. As they thought the spring ceremonies absolutely essential before commencing tillage, I suggested they might swing a man by a rope round his waist instead of with a hook through his back. This compromise was accepted by some, but the better informed cultivators assured me that it would have no effect on the crops without the spilling of blood.1 The thirteen chief sects of Siva - worshippers represent the composite character of their god. left behind him a succession of teachers, many of whom rose sects. to the rank of religious founders. The Smarta Brahmans still maintain their life of calm monastic piety. The Dandis or ascetics, divide their time between begging and meditation. Some of them adore, without rites, Siva as the third person of the Aryan triad. Others practise an apparently non-Aryan ceremony of initiation by drawing blood from the inner part of the novice's knee, as an offering to the god in his more terrible form, Bhairava. All Dandis follow the non-Aryan custom of burying their dead, or commit the body to some sacred stream. The Yogis include every class of devotee, Gradations from the speechless mystic who, by long suppressions of the of Sivabreath, loses the consciousness of existence in an unearthly union with Siva, to the impostor who sits upon air, and the juggler who travels with a performing goat. The Sivaite sects descend, through various gradations of self-mortification and abstraction, to the Aghoris, whose abnegation extends to eating carrion and gashing their bodies with knives. The lowest Nonsects follow non- Aryan rather than Aryan types, alike as Aryan regards their use of animal food and their bloody worship. worship. types, These non-Aryan types are, however, spiritualized into spirituala mystic symbolism by the Sivaite Sáktas, or worshippers ized by the of the creative energy in nature (Sakti). The 'right-hand adorers follow the Aryan ritual, with the addition of an offering of blood.1 Their Tantras or religious works take Sakta 1 It is right to say that very little blood was lost, and the wounds caused were slight; indeed, slighter than those sometimes left behind by the skewers which were fixed through the cheek or tongue of the swinger during the performance. 2 Cf. the Santáls and the Dámodar river, ante, p. 74. Dakshinas or Bhaktas. • The bali. sects. Sakta or Tantrik sect. Secret orgies. Siva and Vishnu compared. Vishnu always a friendly god. the form of a dialogue between Siva and his lovely Aryan bride, in which the god teaches her the true forms of prayer and ceremonial. But the 'left-hand' worship 2 is an organized fivefold ritual of incantation, lust, gluttony, drunkenness, and blood. The non-Aryan origin of these secret rites is attested by the meats and drinks forbidden to all respectable Hindus; perhaps also by the community of women, possibly an unconscious survival of the non-Aryan forms of polyandry and primitive marriage by capture. The Kánchuliyas, one of the lowest of the Sivaite sects, not only enforce a community of women, but take measures to prevent the exercise of individual selection, and thus leave the matter entirely to divine chance. Even their orgies, however, are spiritualized into a mystic symbolism; and the Dread Goddess surely punishes the votary who enters on them merely to gratify his lusts. Siva-worship thus became a link between the highest and the lowest castes of the Hindus. Vishnu, the second person of the Aryan triad, supplied a religion for the intermediate classes. Siva, as a philosophical conception of the Brahmans, afforded small scope for legend; and the atrocities told of him and his wife in their terrible forms, as adapted to the non - Aryan masses, were little capable of refined literary treatment. But Vishnu, the Preserver, furnished a congenial theme for sacred romance. His religion appealed, not to the fears, but to the hopes of mankind. Siva-worship combined the Brahmanical doctrine of a personal god with nonAryan bloody rites; Vishnu-worship, in its final form as a popular religion, represents the coalition of the same Bráhmanical doctrine of a personal God, with the Buddhist principle of the spiritual equality of man. Vishnu had always been a very human god, from the time when he makes his appearance in the Veda as a solar myth, the Unconquerable Preserver' striding across the universe in three steps. His later incarnations made him the familiar 1 Usually in the form of Umá or Párvatí. 2 Vámís or Vámácharís, whose worship comprises the fivefold Makára, 'which takes away all sin,' namely-mánsa (flesh), matsya (fish, the symbol of oviary fertility), madya (intoxicating spirits), maithuna (sexual intercourse), mudrá (mystical gesticulations). 3 Cf. also the festival of the Rukminí-haran-ekádasí at Puri. See my Orissa, vol. i. p. 131. • Probably at first connected with the rising, zenith, and setting of the sun in his daily course. ments. friend of man. Of these 'descents' on earth, ten or twenty- Vishnu as two in number, Vishnu-worship, with the unerring instinct of a hero. a popular religion, chose the two most beautiful and most human for adoration. As Ráma and Krishna, Vishnu attracted to himself innumerable loving legends. Ráma, his seventh incarnation, was the hero of the Sanskrit epic, the Rámáyana. In his eighth incarnation, as Krishna, Vishnu becomes the His later high-souled prince of the other epic, the Mahábhárata; he develop. afterwards grew into the central figure of Indian pastoral poetry; was spiritualized into the supreme god of the Vishnuvite Puránas; and now flourishes the most popular deity of the Hindus. The worship of Vishnu, in one form or another, is the religion of the bulk of the middle classes; with its roots deep down in beautiful forms of non-Aryan nature-worship, and its top sending forth branches among the most refined of the Brahmans and literary classes. It is a religion in all things graceful. Its gods are heroes or bright friendly beings, who walk and converse with men. Its legends breathe an almost Grecian beauty. But pastoral simplicities and an exquisite ritual belong to a later age than Siva-worship, with its pandering to the grosser superstitions of the masses. Vishnuvism made its popular conquests at a later period than Sivaite rites. Vishnu In the 11th century, the Vishnuvite doctrines were gathered The into a religious treatise. The Vishnu Purána dates from about 1045 A.D., and probably represents,2 as indeed its name circ. 1045 implies, 'ancient' traditions which had co-existed with Sivaism A.D. and Buddhism for centuries. It derived its doctrines from the Vedas, not, however, in a direct channel, but filtered through 1 Avatáras. The ten chief ones are: (1) the Fish incarnation, (2) the Tortoise, (3) the Boar, (4) the Man-Lion, (5) the Dwarf, (6) Parasu-ráma or Ráma with the Axe, (7) Ráma or Ráma-chandra, (8) Krishna, (9) Buddha, and (10) Kalki, the White Horse, yet to come. The first four are mythological beasts, perhaps representing the progress of animal life through the eras of fishes, reptiles, and mammals, developing into halfformed man. From another aspect, the Fish represents the yoni, or ovarian fertility; the Tortoise, the linga; the Boar, the terrestrial fertilizer; and the Man-Lion, the celestial. These four appeared in the Satya Yuga, an astronomical period anterior to the present world. The fifth or dwarf incarnation represents early man in the Treta Yuga, or second astronomical period, also long anterior to the present mundane one. The next three incarnations represent the Heroic Age; the ninth or Buddha, the Religious Age. The tenth stands for the end of all things, according to the Hindu apocalypse, when Vishnu shall appear on a white horse, a drawn sword blazing like a comet, in his hand, for the destruction of the wicked and the renovation of the world. The Bhagavata Purána gives twenty-two incarnations of Vishnu. ? Preface to the Vishnu Purána. H. H. Wilson, p. cxii. (ed. 1364). The eighteen Puránas. Brahmanical Vish nuvism, 1045 A.D. Popular vism. A.D. the two great epic poems. It forms one of the eighteen Puránas or Sanskrit theological works, in which the Brahman moulders of Vishnuvism and Sivaism embodied their rival systems. These works especially extol the second and third members of the Hindu triad, now claiming the pre-eminence for Vishnu as the sole deity, and now for Siva; but in their higher flights rising to a recognition that both are but forms. for representing the one eternal God. Their interminable dialogues are said to run to 1,600,000 lines.1 But they exhibit only the Bráhmanical aspect of what were destined to become the two national faiths of India, and are devoid of any genuine sympathy for the people. The Vishnu Purána starts with an intolerance equal to that of the ancient code of Manu. It still declares the priests to have sprung from the mouth, and the low-castes from the feet, of God. Its stately theogony disdains to touch the legends of the people. It declares, indeed, that there is One God; but He is the God of the Brahmans, to whom He gives the earth as an inheritance, and in His eyes the ruder Indian races are as naught. This is the general tenor of its doctrines, although more enlightened, perhaps because later, passages occur. In the Vishnu Purána, Buddha is still an arch-heretic, who teaches the masses to despise the Veda, but whose disciples are eventually crushed by the bright Aryan gods. It is true that in the concluding book, when treating of the last Iron Age, to which this world has now come, some nobler idea of God's dealing with man gleams forth. In that time of universal dissolution and darkness, the sage consoles us by the fact that devotion to Vishnu will suffice for salvation to all persons and to all castes.3 Vishnuvism had to preach a different doctrine before it could become, as it has for ages been, a religion of the people. The first of the line of Vishnuvite reformers was Rámánuja, Rámánuja, a Bráhman of Southern India. In the middle of circ. 1150 the 12th century, he led a movement against the Sivaites, proclaiming the unity of God, under the title of Vishnu, the Cause and the Creator of all things. Persecuted by the Chola king, who tried to enforce Sivaite conformity throughout his dominions, Rámánuja fled to the Jain sovereign of Mysore. This prince he converted to the Vishnuvite faith by expelling an evil spirit from his daughter. Seven hundred 1 Preface to the Vishnu Purána, p. xxiv. H. H. Wilson (ed. 1864). 2 Vishnu Purána, lib. i. cap. vi. p. 89. H. H. Wilson's ed. (1864). 3 Vishnu Purána, lib. vi. cap. ii. H. H. Wilson, p. cxxxviii. monasteries, of which four still remain, are said to have marked the spread of his doctrine before his death. Rámánuja made converts from every class, but it was reserved for his successors to formally enunciate the brotherhood of man. A.D. At the end of the 13th century A.D., according to some Rámáauthorities, or at the end of the 14th, according to others, the nand, great reformation, which made Vishnu-worship a national 1300-1400 religion of India, took place. Rámánand stands fifth in the apostolic succession from Rámánuja, and spread his doctrine through Northern India. He had his headquarters in a monastery at Benares, but wandered from place to place, preaching the One God under the name of Vishnu, and choosing twelve disciples, not from the priests or nobles, but among the despised castes. One of them was a leatherdresser, another a barber, and the most distinguished of all was the reputed son of a weaver. The list shows that every His lowcaste without distinction found free entrance into the new caste disciples. faith. The life of a disciple was no life of ease. He was called upon to forsake the world in a strictly literal sense, and to go about preaching or teaching, and living on alms. old age found an asylum in some monastery of the brotherhood. Rámánuja had addressed himself chiefly to the pure Aryan castes, and wrote in the language of the Brahmans. Rámánand appealed to the people, and the literature of his sect is in the dialects familiar to the masses. The Hindí vernacular owes its development into a written language, partly to the folk-songs of the peasantry and the war-ballads of the Rajput court-bards, but chiefly to the literary requirements of the new popular faith. Vishnuvism has deeply impressed itself on the modern dialects of Northern India.1 A. D. Kabir, one of the twelve disciples of Rámánand, carried his Kabir, doctrines throughout Bengal. As his master had laboured to 1380-1420 gather together all castes of the Hindus into one common faith, so Kabir, seeing that the Hindus were no longer the whole inhabitants of India, tried, about the beginning of the 15th century, to build up a religion that should embrace Hindu and Muhammadan alike. The writings of his sect His docacknowledge that the god of the Hindu is also the god of trines. 1 The three best known sets of such religious treatises are―(1) the voluminous works ascribed to Kabir (1400 A.D.) and his followers, preserved at the headquarters of his sect, the Kabir Chaurá at Benares; (2) the Granth, or scriptures of various Bhagats or Vishnuvite religious founders, especially of Dudú in Rajputána, and of the Sikh Gurús, beginning with Nának (1469); and (3) the Bhaktamálá, or Roll of the Bhaktas or apostles, the Golden Legend of Vishnuvism alluded to, ante, p. 193. |