vism with Islám, Ráma of the Hindus. 1420 A.D. Coalition the Musalmán. His universal name is The Inner, whether of Vishnu he be invoked as the Alí of the Muhammadans, or as the To Alí and to Ráma we owe our life,' say the scriptures of his sect, and should show like tenderness to all who live. What avails it to wash your mouth, to count your beads, to bathe in holy streams, to bow in temples, if, whilst you mutter your prayers or journey on pilgrimage, deceitfulness is in your heart? The Hindu fasts every eleventh day; the Musalmán on the Ramazán. Who formed the remaining months and days, that you should venerate but one? If the Creator dwell in tabernacles, whose dwelling is The One the universe? The city of the Hindu god is to the east [Benares], the city of the Musalmán god is to the west [Mecca]; but explore your own heart, for there is the God, both of the Musalmáns and of the Hindus. Behold but One in all things. He to whom the world belongs, He is the father of the worshippers alike of Alí and of Ráma. He is my guide, He is my priest.'2 God of both. Brotherhood of man. The rest of the soul. Faith. A.D. Kabir's teaching marks another great stride in the Vishnuvite reformation. His master, Rámánand, had asserted the equality of castes, because he identified the deity with the worshipper. He had regarded the devotee as but a manifestation of the divinity, and no lowness of birth could degrade the godhead. As Vishnu had taken the form of several of the inferior animals, such as the Boar and the Fish incarnations, so might he be born as a man of any caste. Kabir accepted this doctrine, but he warmed it by an intense humanity. All the chances and changes of life, the varied lot of man, his differences in religion, his desires, hopes, fears, loves, are but the work of Máyá, or illusion. To recognise the one Divine Spirit under these manifold illusions, is to obtain emancipation and the rest of the soul. That rest is to be reached, not by burnt-offerings or sacrifice, but, according to Kabir, by faith (bhakti), by meditation on the Supreme, by keeping His holy names, Harí, Rám, Govínd, for ever on the lips and in the heart. Chaitanya, The labours of Kabir may be placed between 1380 and 1485-1527 1420 A.D. In 1485, Chaitanya was born, and spread the Vishnuvite doctrines, under the worship of Jagannáth, throughout the deltas of Bengal and Orissa. Signs and wonders 1 The Vijak of Bhagodás, one of Kabir's disciples. For the rival claims of the Hindus and Musalmáns to Kabir's body, see ante, p. 194. 2 Sabda, lvi. Abridged from H. H. Wilson's Works, vol. i. p. 81. 3 For the worship of Jagganáth, see post, pp. 208-211. 1500 A. D. attended Chaitanya through life, and during four centuries he Chaithas been worshipped as an incarnation of Vishnu. Extricat- anya's life, ing ourselves from the halo of legend which surrounds and obscures the apostle, we know little of his private life except that he was the son of a Bráhman settled at Nadiyá near Calcutta; that in his youth he married the daughter of a celebrated saint; that at the age of twenty-four he forsook the world, and, renouncing the state of a householder, repaired to Orissa, where he devoted the rest of his days to the propagation of the faith. He disappeared in 1527 A.D. But with regard to his doctrine we have the most ample evidence. No race His teachor caste was beyond the pale of salvation. The Musalmáns ing. shared his labours, and profited by his preaching as well as the Hindus. He held that all men are alike capable of faith, and that all castes by faith become equally pure. Implicit belief and incessant devotion were his watchwords. Contemplation rather than ritual was his pathway to salvation. Obedience to the religious guide is the great characteristic of his sect; but he warned his disciples to respect their teachers as second fathers, and not as gods. The great end of his system, as of all Indian forms of worship, is the 'Liberaliberation of the soul. He held that such liberation does tion' of not mean the mere annihilation of separate existence. It consists in nothing more than an entire freedom from the stains and the frailties of the body. The liberated soul dwells for ever, either in a blessed region of perfect beauty and sinlessness, or it soars into the heaven of Vishnu himself, high above the myths and mirages of this world, where God appears no more in his mortal incarnations, or in any other form, but is known in his supreme essence. the soul. houses. The followers of Chaitanya belong to every caste, but they The Chaitacknowledge the rule of the descendants of the original anya sect. disciples (gosáins). The sect is open alike to the married and unmarried. It has its celibates and wandering mendicants, but its religious teachers are generally married men. They live with their wives and children in clusters of houses around Its a temple to Krishna; and in this way the adoration of Chaitanya has become a sort of family worship throughout Orissa. The landed gentry worship him with a daily ritual in household chapels dedicated to his name. After his death, a sect arose among his followers, who asserted the spiritual independence of women.1 In their monastic enclosures, male and female cenobites live in celibacy; the The Spashtha Dáyakas. to women. women shaving their heads, with the exception of a single The place lock of hair. The two sexes chant the praises of Vishnu and it assigns Chaitanya together, in hymn and solemn dance. But the really important doctrine of the sect is their recognition of the value of women as instructors of the outside female community. For long, they were the only teachers admitted into the zanánas of good families in Bengal. Fifty years ago, they had effected a change for the better in the state of female education, and the value of such instruction was assigned as the cause of the sect having spread in Calcutta.1 Since that time, Vishnuvite female ascetics of various sorts have entered the same field. In some instances the bad crept in along with the good, and an effort made in 1863 to utilize them in the mechanism of Public Instruction failed.2 Modern nuns. VallabhaSwámí, circ. 1520 A.D. The analogy of woman's position in the Vishnuvite sects to that assigned to her by ancient Buddhism is striking. But the analogy becomes more complete when the comparison is made with the extra-mural life of the modern Buddhist nun on the Punjab frontier. Thus, in LAHUL, the nuns have not, as in Tibet, cloisters of their own. They are attached to monasteries, in which they reside only a few months of the year; and which they may permanently quit, either in order to marry or for other good reasons. In 1868, there were seventy-one such Buddhist nuns in Lahúl, able to read and write, and very closely resembling in their life and discipline the better orders of Vishnuvite female devotees in Bengal. One of them was sufficiently skilled in astronomy to calculate an eclipse.3 The death of Chaitanya marked the beginning of a spiritual decline in Vishnu - worship. About 1520, Vallabha-Swámí preached in Northern India that the liberation of the soul did not depend upon the mortification of the body; and that God was to be sought, not in nakedness and hunger and solitude, but amid the enjoyments of this life. An opulent sect had, from an early period, attached itself to the worship of Krishna and his bride Rádhá; a mystic significance being, of course, assigned to their pastoral loves. Still more popular among women is the modern adoration of Krishna as the 1 Wilson's Religion of Hindus, vol. i. p. 171 (ed. 1862). 2 The official details of this interesting and once promising experiment at Dacca will be found in Appendix A to the Report of the Director of Public Instruction, Bengal, for 1863-64, pp. 83-90; for 1864-65, pp. 155-158; and in each subsequent Annual Report to 1869. 3 Sherring's Hindu Tribes, vol. ii. p. 9 (4to, Calcutta). Bála Gopála, or the Infant Cowherd, perhaps unconsciously Childstimulated by the Christian tradition of the Divine Child. worship. Another influence of Christianity on Hinduism may possibly be traced in the growing function assigned by the Krishna sects to bhakti, or faith, as an all-sufficient instrument of salvation. Vallabha-Swámí was the apostle of Vishnuvism as a reli- Krishnagion of pleasure. When he had finished his life's work, he worship. descended into the Ganges; a brilliant flame arose from the spot; and, in the presence of a host of witnesses, his glorified form ascended to heaven. The special object of his homage was Vishnu in his pastoral incarnation, in which he took the form of the divine youth Krishna, and led an arcadian life in the forest. Shady bowers, lovely women, exquisite viands, and everything that appeals to the luscious sensuousness of a tropical race, are mingled in his worship. His daily ritual consists of eight services, in which Krishna's image, as a beautiful boy, is delicately bathed, anointed with essences, splendidly attired and sumptuously fed. The followers of the first Vishnuvite reformers dwelt together in secluded monasteries, went about scantily clothed, living upon But this sect performs its devotions arrayed in costly apparel, anointed with oil, and perfumed with camphor or sandal. It seeks its converts, not among weavers, or leatherdressers, or barbers, but among wealthy bankers and merchants, who look upon life as a thing to be enjoyed, and upon pilgrimage as a holiday excursion, or an opportunity for trade. In a religion of this sort, abuses are inevitable. It was a A religion revolt against a system which taught that the soul could of pleasure. approach its Maker only by the mortification of the body. It declared that God was present in the cities and marts of men, not less than in the cave of the ascetic. Faith and love were its instruments of salvation, and voluptuous contemplation its approved spiritual state. It delighted to clothe the deity in a beautiful human form, and mystical amorous poems make a large part of its canonical literature. One of its most valued theological treatises is entitled The Ocean of Love, Love Prem Ságar; and although its nobler professors always recognise its spiritual character, to baser minds it has become simply a religion of pleasure. The loves of Rádhá and Krishna, that woodland pastoral, redolent of a wild-flower aroma as ethereal as the legend of Psyche and Cupid, are sometimes materialized into a sanction for licentious rites. Poems. Numerous I have described a few of the Vishnuvite sects, in order to show the wide area of religious thought which they cover, and sects. Theistic moveemnts. the composite conceptions of which they are made up. But any attempt at even a complete catalogue of them is altogether beyond the scope of this work. Wilson divides them The into twenty principal sects, and the branches or lesser brothertwenty chief hoods probably number not less than a hundred. Their series Vishnuvite of religious founders continued until the present century, sects. when they began to merge into the more purely Theistic movements of our day. Indeed, the higher Vishnuvite teachers have always been theistic. The Statistical Survey of India has disclosed many such reformations, from the Kartábhajás1 of the Districts around Calcutta, to the Satnámis 2 of the Central Provinces. Some of them are poor local brotherhoods, with a single religious house; others have developed into widespread and wealthy bodies; while one theistic sect The Sikhs. has grown into a great nation, the Sikhs, the last military power which we had to subdue in India.3 Nának Sháh, the spiritual founder of the Sikhs, was nearly contemporary with Kabir, and taught doctrines in the Punjab but little differing from those of the Bengal apostle. The Vaishnavas now engross almost the whole population of Lower Bengal, excepting the very highest and the very lowest castes. In many of their sects, caste is not acknowledged. Such sects form brotherhoods which recognise only spiritual distinctions or degrees; and a new social organization is thus provided for the unfortunate, the widow, or the out-caste. In lately settled Provinces like Assam, Vishnu - worship becomes practically the universal religion of the Hindus. Nának Shah, 1469. Brotherhoods. Jagannáth. The Car Festival of Jagannath is perhaps the most typical ceremony of the Vishnuvite faith. Jagannath, literally The Lord of the World,' represents, with unmistakeable clearness, that coalition of Bráhman and Buddhist doctrines which form the basis of Vishnu-worship. In his temple are three rude His Bráh images, unconsciously representing the Bráhmanical triad. His Car Festival is probably a once-conscious reproduction Buddhist of the Tooth Festival of the Buddhists, although its original origin. significance has dropped out of sight. The Chinese pilgrim Fa - Hian gives an account of the yearly procession of Buddha's Sacred Tooth from its chapel to a shrine some way manical and See my Statistical Account of Bengal, vol. i. pp. 73-75 (TWENTY-FOUR PARGANAS); vol. ii. pp. 53-55 (Nadiya). 2 Vide Imperial Gazetteer of India, vol. ii. p. 364. 3 See post, p. 311, and Imperial Gazetteer, vol. i. p. 180 (AMRITSAR); vol. vii. pp. 419-421 (PUNJAB). For the theological aspects of the Sikhs, see Wilson's Religion of the Hindus, vol. i. pp. 267-275 (ed. 1862). H. H. Wilson's Religion of the Hindus, vol. i. p. 269. |