Vishnuite either in the form of a rude unhewn stone, or a stump, or a tree marked with red-lead. Sometimes a lump of clay placed under a tree does for a deity; and the attendant priest, when there is one, generally belongs to the half-Hinduized low-castes. The rude stone represents the non-Aryan fetish ; and the tree seems to owe its sanctity to the non-Aryan belief that it forms the abode of the ghosts, or gods, of the village. We have seen how, in some Santáli hamlets, the worshippers dance round every tree; so that they may not, by any evil chance, miss the one in which the village spirits happen to dwell. As the non-Aryan phallic emblems were utilized by Hindusymbols. ism in the worship of Siva, the All-Destroyer and Reproducer, so the household fetish sálagrám has supplied a symbol for the rival Hindu deity Vishnu, the Preserver. The sálagrám (often an ammonite or curved stone) and the tulasi plant are the insignia of Vishnuism, as universally as the linga is of Sivaism. In both cases the Bráhmans enriched the popular fetish-worship with deep metaphysical doctrines, and with admirable moral codes. The Sivaite devotee carries round his neck, or hidden about his person, a miniature phallic emblem, linga; the sálagrám and tulasi are the objects of reverence among all the Vishnuite sects.1 Jungle rites. The great Vishnuite festival of Bengal, the rath-játra, when Jagannath, the 'Lord of the World,' is dragged in his car to his garden - house, is of Buddhist origin. But it has many a humbler counterpart in the forest excursions which the Bengal villagers make in their holiday clothes to some sacred tree in the neighbouring grove or jungle. These jungle rites find special favour with the low-castes, and disclose curious survivals of the non-Hinduized element in the worshippers. Blood sacrifices and the eating of flesh have long been banished from the popular Vishnuite sects. But on such forest festivals, the fierce aboriginal instincts even in the mixed castes, who accept in ordinary life the restraints of Hinduism, break loose. Cowherds have been seen to series of MS. folios in the India Office, much in need of a competent editor. Montgomery Martin made three printed volumes out of them by the process of drawing his pencil through the parts which did not interest him, or which he could not understand. These he published under the title of the History, Antiquities, Topography, and Statistics of Eastern India (3 vols., 1838). 1 See, inter alia, pp. 15, 39, 50, 54, 116, 117, 140, 149, 179, 181, 246, vol. i. of H. H. Wilson's Religion of the Hindus (ed. 1862). feed on swine-flesh, which at all other times they regard with abhorrence. rites merg. The ceremonies, where they can pretend to a conscious meaning, have a propitiatory or necromantic tinge. Thus, in Birbhum District the mixed and low castes of the chief town repair once a year to the jungle, and make offerings to a ghost who dwells in a bel-tree. Buchanan - Hamilton describes such sacrifices as 'made partly from fear, and partly to gratify the appetite for flesh.'1 In examining the western Nonethnical frontier of Lower Bengal, the rites of the non-Aryan Aryan hillmen are found to merge into the Hinduism of the plains. ing into The evidence shows that the Hindus derived from non-Aryan Hinduism. sources their phallic emblem, the linga, their household fetish, the sálagrám, their village gods, grám-devatas, with the ghosts and demons that haunt so many trees, and the bloody rites of their national deity, Siva. Among the Hindus, these superstitions are often isolated and unconnected with each other; among the Santáls and other non-Aryan races, they form riveted links in a ritual of fear and propitiation. Hinduism. The development of Hinduism out of pre-existing religious Brahman types, although a natural evolution, bears the impress of founders of human guidance. Until the 12th century A.D., the Brahmans supplied the directing energy in opposition to the Buddhists, and founded their reforms on a re-assertion of the personality of God. But by that period, Buddhism had ceased to struggle for a separate existence in India; and the mass of the people began to strike out religious sects upon popular rather than on Brahmanical lines. The work of the early Bráhman reformers was accordingly carried on after the 12th century, in part by low-caste apostles, who popularized the old Bráh- Lowmanical conception of a personal God, by infusing into it the caste apostles. Buddhist doctrine of the spiritual equality of man. Many of the Hindu sects form brotherhoods, on the Buddhist model, within which the classification by caste gives place to one based on the various degrees of perfection attained in the religious life. Most of the Hindu reformations since the 12th century The thus preserve what was best in each of the two ancient Hindu apostolic faiths of India-namely, the personal God of the Brahmans, type. and the spiritual equality of the Buddhists. Among the Hindus, every preacher who would really appeal to the 1 History, etc. of Eastern India, from the Buchanan MSS., vol. i. p. 194. Hunter's Annals of Rural Bengal, p. 194, 5th edition. The Hindu torum. Miracles popular heart must fulfil two conditions, and conform to a certain type. He must cut himself off from the world by a solemn act, like the Great Renunciation of Buddha; and he must come forth from his solemn communing with a simple message. The message need not be original. On the contrary, it must consist of a re-assertion, in some form, of the personality of God and the equality of men in His sight. Hinduism boasts a line of religious founders stretching in almost unbroken succession from about 700 A.D. to the present day. The lives of the medieval saints and their wondrous works are recorded in the Bhakta-Málá, literally, 'The Garland of the Faithful,' compiled by Nábhájí about three centuries ago. This difficult Hindi work was popularized by later versions and commentaries,2 and a vast structure of miracle and fable has been reared upon it. It is the Golden Legend The same wonders are and Acta Sanctorum of Hinduism. not recorded of each of its apostles, but divine interpositions abound in the life of all. The greater ones rank as divine incarnations prophesied of old. Some were born of virgins; of the others overcame lions; raised the dead; their hands and feet religious founders. 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. Kabir's death. Thus 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 to this day pilgrims from Upper India beg a spoonful of rice-water from the Kabir Monastery at Purí, at the extreme southern point of Bengal. 1 H. H. Wilson, writing in the Asiatic Researches (Calcutta, 1828), says about 250 years ago.'-See Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Asiatic Society, vol. iii. p. 4. The best known are those 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). BRAHMAN SIVAITE SECTS. 209 The first in the line of apostles was Kumárila, a bhatta or Kumárila Brahman of Behar. The legend relates that he journeyed Bhatta, 750 (?) A. D. 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.1 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, universal soul,' 'without a second' (adwaita), embodies 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. 'the one existent and With the advent of Sankara Achárya we touch firmer historical Sankara ground. Born in Malabar, he wandered over India as an itine- Acharya, 9th cenrant preacher as far north 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,' 2 a record of his doctrines and controversial triumphs. Sankara moulded the later Mímánsá or Vedantic philosophy into its final form, and popularized it as 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 the one hand, and to the low-caste multitude on the other. He left behind, as the twofold result of his life's work, a His twofold work. compact Brahman sect and a popular religion. The Brahman sect are the Smártas, 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 1 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. 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 Acharya downwards. VOL. VI. Brahmans. His re 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 ligion for realized that such a faith is for the few. To those who could 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 founders of almost all the historical sects of Hinduism-Sivaites, Vishnuites, Sauras, Sáktas, Gánapatyas, Bhairavas—were his disciples.2 But Siva-worship claims Sankara as its apostle 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. 3 Growth of Sivaworship; Nothing, however, 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 preaching of Sankara, in the 9th century A.D. Siva is the Rudra of the Vedas, as developed by Brahman philosophy, and adapted by Sankara and others 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 Brahman 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 (2nd century A.D.), and gave her name to Cape Comorin.1 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 1 See SRINGIRI (The Imperial Gazetteer of India) for a brief account of the chief-priest of the Smárta sect, which has its head-quarters in this monastery. Also the Statistical Account of Mysore and Coorg, by Lewis Rice, vol. ii. p. 413, etc. (Bangalore Government Press, 1876.) Wilson's Religion of the Hindus, vol. i. p. 28 (1862). 3 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 Durga, wife of Siva. As Visweswara, or Lord of the Universe, under which name Siva is still the chief object of worship at Benares. |