Hindu Gods And Heroes Part 1

Hindu G.o.ds And Heroes.

by Lionel D. Barnett.

PREFACE

The following pages are taken from the Forlong Bequest lectures which I delivered in March last at the School of Oriental Studies. Owing to exigencies of s.p.a.ce, much of what I then said has been omitted here, especially with regard to the wors.h.i.+p of Siva; but enough remains to make clear my general view, which is that the religion of the Aryans of India was essentially a wors.h.i.+p of spirits--sometimes spirits of real persons, sometimes imaginary spirits--and that, although in early days it provisionally found room for personifications of natural forces, it could not digest them into Great G.o.ds, and therefore they have either disappeared or, if surviving, remain as mere Struldbrugs.

Thus I am a heretic in relation to both the Solar Theory and the Vegetation Theory, as everyone must be who takes the trouble to study Hindu nature without prejudice.

L. D. B.

_May 29, 1922._

NOTE

The object of the Editors of this series is a very definite one. They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall be the amba.s.sadors of goodwill and understanding between East and West--the old world of Thought and the new of Action. In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the highest example in the land. They are confident that a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour.

L. CRANMER-BYNG.

S. A. KAPADIA.

NORTHBROOK SOCIETY,

21 CROMWELL ROAD,

KENSINGTON, S. W.

HINDU G.o.dS AND HEROES

CHAPTER I

THE VEDIC AGE

Let us imagine we are in a village of an Aryan tribe in the Eastern Panjab something more than thirty centuries ago. It is made up of a few large huts, round which cl.u.s.ter smaller ones, all of them rudely built, mostly of bamboo; in the other larger ones dwell the heads of families, while the smaller ones shelter their kinsfolk and followers, for this is a patriarchal world, and the housefather gives the law to his household. The people are mostly a comely folk, tall and clean-limbed, and rather fair of skin, with well-cut features and straight noses; but among them are not a few squat and ugly men and women, flat-nosed and nearly black in colour, who were once the free dwellers in this land, and now have become slaves or serfs to their Aryan conquerors. Around the village are fields where bullocks are dragging rough ploughs; and beyond these are woods and moors in which lurk wild men, and beyond these are the lands of other Aryan tribes.

Life in the village is simple and rude, but not uneventful, for the village is part of a tribe, and tribes are constantly fighting with one another, as well as with the dark-skinned men who often try to drive back the Aryans, sometimes in small forays and sometimes in ma.s.sed hordes. But the world in which the village is interested is a small one, and hardly extends beyond the bounds of the land where its tribe dwells. It knows something of the land of the Five Rivers, in one corner of which it lives, and something even of the lands to the north of it, and to the west as far as the mountains and deserts, where live men of its own kind and tongue; but beyond these limits it has no knowledge. Only a few bold spirits have travelled eastward across the high slope that divides the land of the Five Rivers from the strange and mysterious countries around the great rivers Ga?ga and Yamuna, the unknown land of deep forests and swarming dark-skinned men.

In the matter of religion these Aryans care a good deal about charms and spells, black and white magic, for preventing or curing all kinds of diseases or mishaps, for winning success in love and war and trade and husbandry, for bringing harm upon enemies or rivals--charms which a few centuries later will be dressed up in ?igvedic style, stuffed out with imitations of ?igvedic hymns, and published under the name of Atharva veda, "the lore of the Atharvans," by wizards who claim to belong to the old priestly clans of Atharvan and A?giras. But we have not yet come so far, and as yet all that these people can tell us is a great deal about their black and white magic, in which they are hugely interested, and a fair amount about certain valiant men of olden times who are now wors.h.i.+pped by them as helpful spirits, and a little about some vague spirits who are in the sun and the air and the fire and other places, and are very high and great, but are not interesting at all.

This popular religion seems to be a hopeless one, without ideals and symbols of love and hope. Is there nothing better to be found in this place? Yes, there is a priestly religion also; and if we would know something about it we must listen to the chanting of the priests, the _brahmans_ or men of the "holy spirit," as they are called, who are holding a sacrifice now on behalf of the rich lord who lives in the largest house in the village--a service for which they expect to be paid with a handsome fee of oxen and gold. They are priests by heredity, wise in the knowledge of the ways of the G.o.ds; some of them understand how to compose _?iks_, or hymns, in the fine speech dear to their order, hymns which are almost sure to win the G.o.ds' favour, and all of them know how the sacrifices shall be performed with perfect exactness so that no slip or imperfection may mar their efficacy.

Their psalms are called _?ig-veda_, "lore of the verses," and they set themselves to find grace in the ears of the many G.o.ds whom these priests wors.h.i.+p, sometimes by open praise and sometimes by riddling description of the exploits and nature of the G.o.ds. Often they are very fine; but always they are the work of priests, artists in ritual.

And if you look heedfully into it you will also mark that these priests are inclined to think that the act of sacrifice, the offering of, say, certain oblations in a particular manner with particular words accompanying them, is in itself potent, quite apart from the psalms which they sing over it, that it has a magic power of its own over the machinery of nature.[1] Really this is no new idea of our Vedic priests; ten thousand years before them their remote forefathers believed it and acted upon it, and if for example they wanted rain they would sprinkle drops of water and utter magic words. Our Vedic priests have now a different kind of symbols, but all the same they still have the notion that ceremony, _?ita_ as they call it, has a magic potency of its own. Let us mark this well, for we shall see much issuing from it.

[Footnote 1: Cf. e.g. RV. III. x.x.xii. 12.]

Who are the G.o.ds to whom these priests offer their prayers and psalms?

They are many, and of various kinds. Most of them are taken from the religion of the people, and dressed in new garb according to the imagination of the priest; and a few are priestly inventions altogether. There is Dyaush-pita, the Sky-father, with P?ithivi Mata, the Earth-mother; there are Vayu the Wind-spirit, Parjanya the Rain-G.o.d, Surya the Sun-G.o.d, and other spirits of the sky such as Savita; there is the Dawn-G.o.ddess, Ushas. All these are or were originally deified powers of nature: the people, though their imagination created them, have never felt any deep interest in them, and the priests who have taken them into their charge, though they treat them very courteously and sing to them elegant hymns full of figures of speech, have not been able to cover them with the flesh and blood of living personality. Then we have Agni the Fire-G.o.d, and Soma the spirit of the intoxicating juice of the soma-plant, which is used to inspire the pious to drunken raptures in certain ceremonies; both of these have acquired a peculiar importance through their a.s.sociation with priestly wors.h.i.+p, especially Agni, because he, as bearing to the G.o.ds the sacrifices cast into his flames, has become the ideal Priest and divine Paraclete of Heaven. Nevertheless all this hieratic importance has not made them G.o.ds in the deeper sense, reigning in the hearts of men. Then we find powers of doubtful origin, Mitra and Varu?a and Vish?u and Rudra, and figures of heroic legend, like the warrior Indra and the twin charioteers called Asvinaa and Nasatya. All these, with many others, have their wors.h.i.+p in the ?ig-veda: the priests sing their praises l.u.s.tily, and often speak now of one deity, now of another, as being the highest divinity, without the least consistency.

Some savage races believe in a highest G.o.d or first divine Being in whom they feel little personal interest. They seldom speak of him, and hardly ever wors.h.i.+p him. So it seems to be with Dyaush-pita. The priests speak of him and to him, but only in connexion with other G.o.ds; he has not a single whole hymn in his honour, and the only definite attribute that attaches to him is that of fatherhood. Yet he has become a great G.o.d among other races akin in speech to the Aryans of India: Dyaush-pita is phonetically the same as the Greek [Greek: Zeus pater] and the Latin _Iuppiter_. How comes it then that he is not, and apparently never was, a G.o.d in the true sense among the Indian Aryans? Because, I think, his name has always betrayed him. To call a deity "Sky-father" is to label him as a mere abstraction. No mystery, no possibility of human personality, can gather round those two plain prose words. So long as a deity is known by the name of the physical agency that he represents, so long will he be unable to grow into a personal G.o.d in India. The priests may sing vociferous psalms to Vayu the Wind-spirit and Surya the Sun-spirit, and even to their beloved Agni the Fire-G.o.d; but sing as much as they will, they never can make the people in general take them to their hearts.

Observe what a different history is that of Zeus among the Greeks--Zeus, Father of G.o.ds and Men, the ideal of kingly majesty and wisdom and goodness. The reason is patent. Ages and ages before the days when the Homeric poets sang, the Greeks had forgotten that Zeus originally meant "sky": it had become to them a personal name of a great spiritual power, which they were free to invest with the n.o.blest ideal of personality. But very likely there is also another reason: I believe that the Olympian Zeus, as modelled by Homer and accepted by following generations, was not the original [Greek: _Zeus pater_] at all, but a usurper who had robbed the old Sky-father of his throne and of his t.i.tle as well, that he was at the outset a hero-king who some time after his death was raised to the seat and dignity of the old Sky-father and received likewise his name. This theory explains the old hero-sagas which are connected with Zeus and the strange fact that the Cretans pointed to a spot in their island where they believed Zeus was buried. It explains why legends persistently averred that Zeus expelled his father Kronos from the throne and suppressed the t.i.tan dynasty: on my view, Kronos was the original Father Zeus, and his name of Zeus and rank as chief G.o.d were appropriated by a deified hero.

How natural such a process was in those days may be seen from the liturgy of Una?s on the pyramids at Sakkarah in Egypt.[2] Here Una?s is described as rising in heaven after his death as a supreme G.o.d, devouring his fathers and mothers, slaughtering the G.o.ds, eating their "magical powers," and swallowing their "spirit-souls," so that he thus becomes "the first-born of the first-born G.o.ds," omniscient, omnipotent, and eternal, identified with the Osiris, the highest G.o.d.

Now this Una?s was a real historical man; he was the last king of the Fifth Dynasty, and was deified after death, just like any other king of Egypt. The early Egyptians, like many savage tribes, regarded all their kings as G.o.ds on earth and paid them formal wors.h.i.+p after their death; the later Egyptians, going a step further, wors.h.i.+pped them even in their lifetime as embodiments of the G.o.ds.[3] What is said in the liturgy for the deification of Una?s is much the same as was said of other kings. The dead king in early Egypt becomes a G.o.d, even the greatest of the G.o.ds, and he a.s.sumes the name of that G.o.d[4]; he overcomes the other G.o.ds by brute force, he kills and devours them.

This is very like what I think was the case with Zeus; the main difference is that in Egypt the _character_ of the deified king was merged in that of the old G.o.d, and men continued to regard the latter in exactly the same light as before; but among the forefathers of the Greeks the reverse happened in at least one case, that of Zeus, where the character of a hero who had peculiarly fascinated popular imagination partly eclipsed that of the old G.o.d whose name and rank he usurped. The reason for this, I suppose, is that even the early Egyptians had already a conservative religion with fixed traditions and a priesthood that forgot nothing,[5] whereas among the forefathers of the Greeks, who were wandering savages, social order and religion were in a very fluid state. However that may be, a deified hero might oust an older G.o.d and reign under his name; and this theory explains many difficulties in the legends of Zeus.

[Footnote 2: Sir E. A. W. Budge, _Literature of the Ancient Egyptians_, p. 21 ff., and _G.o.ds of the Egyptians_, i, pp. 32 f., 43.]

[Footnote 3: Erman, _Handbook of Egyptian Religion_, p. 37 f.]

[Footnote 4: Budge, _Lit. of the Egyptians_, p. 21; Erman, _ut supra_, p. 37 f.]

[Footnote 5: It is even possible that in one case, that of Osiris, a hero in Egypt may have eclipsed by his personality the G.o.d whom he ousted. See Sir J. W. Frazer's _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, ii, p. 200, and Sir W. Ridgeway's _Dramas and Dramatic Dances, etc._, p. 94 ff.]

As to the Roman Iuppiter, I need not say much about him. Like all the genuine G.o.ds of Latium, he never was much more than an abstraction until the Greeks came with their literature and dressed him in the wardrobe of their Zeus.

Coming now to Ushas, the Lady of the Dawn, and looking at her name from the standpoint of comparative philosophy, we see that the word _ushas_ is closely connected with the Greek [Greek: heos] and the Latin _aurora_. But when we read the literature, we are astonished to find that while the Greek Dawn-lady has remained almost always a mere abstraction, the Indian spirit is a lovely, living woman instinct with the richest sensuous charms of the East. Some twenty hymns are addressed to her, and for the most part they are alive with real poetry, with a sense of beauty and gladness and sometimes withal an under-note of sadness for the brief joys of life. But when we look carefully into it we notice a curious thing: all this hymn-singing to Ushas is purely literary and artistic, and there is practically no religion at all at the back of it. A few stories are told of her, but they seem to convince no one, and she certainly has no ritual wors.h.i.+p apart from these hymns, which are really poetical essays more than anything else. The priestly poets are thrilled with sincere emotion at the sight of the dawn, and are inspired by it to stately and lively descriptions of its beauties and to touching reflections upon the pa.s.sing of time and mortal life; but in this scene Ushas herself is hardly more than a model from an artist's studio, in a very Bohemian quarter. More than once on account of her free display of her charms she is compared to a dancing girl, or even a common harlot! Here the imagination is at work which in course of time will populate the Hindu Paradise with a celestial _corps de ballet_, the fair and frail Apsarasas. Our Vedic Ushas is a forerunner of that gay company. A charming person, indeed; but certainly no genuine G.o.ddess.

As his name shows, Surya is the spirit of the sun. We hear a good deal about him in the ?ig-veda, but the whole of it is merely description of the power of the sun in the order of nature, partly allegorical, and partly literal. He is only a nature-power, not a personal G.o.d. The case is not quite so clear with Savita, whose name seems to mean literally "stimulator," "one who stirs up." On the whole it seems most likely that he represents the sun, as the vivifying power in nature, though some[6] think that he was originally an abstraction of the vivifying forces in the world and later became connected with the sun.

However this may be, Savita is and remains an impersonal spirit with no human element in his character.

[Footnote 6: See Oldenberg, _Religion des Veda_, p. 64 f.]

Still more perplexing are the two deities Mitra and Varu?a, who are very often a.s.sociated with one another, and apparently are related.

Mitra certainly is an old G.o.d: if we go over the mountains to the west and north-west of the country of our Indian Aryans, we shall find their kinsmen in Persia and Bactria wors.h.i.+pping him as a power that maintains the laws of righteousness and guards the sanct.i.ty of oaths and engagements, who by means of his watchmen keeps mankind under his observation and with his terrible weapons crushes evil powers. The Indian Aryans tell almost exactly the same tale of their Mitra and his companion Varu?a, who perhaps is simply a doublet of Mitra with a different name, which perhaps is due to a variety of wors.h.i.+p. But they have more to say of Varu?a than of Mitra. In Varu?a we have the highest ideal of spirituality that Hindu religion will reach for many centuries. Not only is he described as supreme controller of the order of nature--that is an attribute which these priestly poets ascribe with generous inconsistency to many others of their deities--but he is likewise the omniscient guardian of the moral law and the rule of religion, sternly punis.h.i.+ng sin and falsehood with his dreaded noose, but showing mercy to the penitent and graciously communing with the sage who has found favour in his eyes.

But Mitra and Varu?a will not enjoy this exalted rank for long. Soon the priests will declare that Mitra rules over the day and Varu?a over the night (TS. II. i. 7, 4; VI. iv. 8, 3), and then Varu?a will begin to sink in honour. The "noose of Varu?a" will come to mean merely the disease of dropsy. His connection with the darkness of the night will cause men to think of him with fear; and in their dread they will forget his ancient attributes of universal righteousness, justice, and mercy, and remember him chiefly as an avenger of guilt. They will banish him to the distant seas, whose rivers he now guides over the earth in his gracious government of nature; and there he will dwell in exile for ever, remembered only to be feared. And Mitra will become merely another name for the sun.

What is the origin of this singular couple? And why are they destined to this fall? Neither of these questions can be answered by anything but conjectures. There is no evidence either from Indian or from Iranian religion that Mitra or his double Varu?a grew out of the wors.h.i.+p of the sun or the sky, although in their wors.h.i.+p they were sometimes connected with the sun and the sky. However far backwards we look, we still find them essentially spirits of natural order and moral law, G.o.ds in the higher sense of the word. But their character, and especially the character of Varu?a, it seems to me, is rather too high to survive the compet.i.tion of rival cults, such as that of the popular hero Indra and the priests' darling Agni, which tend to engross the interest of wors.h.i.+ppers lay and cleric, and to blunt their relish for more spiritual ideals. So Mitra and Varu?a become stunted in their growth; and at last comes the fatal time when they are identified with the sky by day and night. This is the final blow. No deity that is plainly limited to any one phase or form of nature in India can be or become a great G.o.d; and speedily all their real divinity fades away from Mitra and Varu?a, and they shrivel into insignificance.

Next we turn to a spirit of a very different sort, the Fire-G.o.d, Agni.

The word _agni_ is identical with the Latin _ignis_; it means "fire,"

and nothing else but fire, and this fact is quite sufficient to prevent Agni from becoming a great G.o.d. The priests indeed do their best, by fertile fancy and endless repet.i.tion of his praises, to lift him to that rank; but even they cannot do it. From the days of the earliest generations of men Fire was a spirit; and the household fire, which cooks the food of the family and receives its simple oblations of clarified b.u.t.ter, is a kindly genius of the home. But with all his usefulness and elfish mystery Fire simply remains fire, and there's an end of it, for the ordinary man. But the priests will not have it so.

The chief concern of their lives is with sacrifice, and their deepest interest is in the spirit of the sacrificial fire. All the riches of their imagination and their vocabulary are lavished upon him, his forms and his activities. They have devoted to him about 200 hymns and many occasional verses, in which they dwell with constant delight and ingenious metaphor upon his splendour, his power, his birth from wood, from the two firesticks, from trees of the forest, from stones, or as lightning from the clouds, his kins.h.i.+p with the sun, his dwelling in three abodes (viz. as a rule on earth, in the clouds as lightning, and in the upper heavens as the sun), his place in the homes of men as a holy guest, a friend and a kinsman, his protection of wors.h.i.+ppers against evil spirits and malignant sorcerers, and especially his function of conveying the oblation poured into his flames up to the G.o.ds. Thus they are led to represent him as the divine Priest, the ideal hierophant, in whom are united the functions of the three chief cla.s.ses of ?igvedic sacrificial priests, the _hota_, _adhvaryu_, and _brahman_, and hence as an all-knowing sage and seer. If infinite zeal and ingenuity in singing Agni's praises and glorifying his activities can avail to raise him to the rank of a great G.o.d, we may expect to find him very near the top. But it is not to be. The priests cannot convince the plain man of Agni's super-G.o.dhead, and soon they will fail to convince even themselves.

The time will shortly come when they will regard all these G.o.ds as little more than puppets whose strings are pulled by the mysterious spirit of the sacrifice.

The priests have another pet deity, Soma. For the sacred rites include the pressing and drinking of the fermented yellow juice of the soma-plant, an acid draught with intoxicating powers, which when mixed with milk and drunk in the priestly rites inspires religious ecstasy.

This drinking of the soma-juice is already an ancient and important feature in the wors.h.i.+p of our Aryans, as it is also among their kinsmen in Iran; so it is no wonder that the spirit of the sacred plant has been made by the priests into an important deity and celebrated with endless abundance of praise and prayer. As with Agni, Soma's appearance and properties are described with inexhaustible wealth of epithets and metaphors. The poets love to dwell on the mystic powers of this wonderful potion, which can heal sickness of soul and body and inspire G.o.ds and men to mighty deeds and holy ecstasy. Most often they tell how the G.o.d Indra drank huge potions of it to strengthen himself for his great fight with the dragon V?itra.

Most of this wors.h.i.+p is of priestly invention; voluminous as its rhetoric is, it makes no great impression on the laity, nor perhaps on the clergy either. Some of the more ingenious of the priests are already beginning to trace an affinity between Soma and the moon. The yellow soma-stalks swell in the water of the pressing-vat, as the yellow moon waxes in the sky; the _soma_ has a magical power of stimulation, and the moon sends forth a mystic liquid influence over the vegetation of the earth, and especially over magic plants; the soma is an ambrosia drunk by G.o.ds and heroes to inspire them to mighty deeds, and the moon is a bowl of ambrosia which is periodically drunk by the G.o.ds and therefore wanes month by month. The next step will soon be taken, and the priests will say that Soma _is_ the moon; and literature will then obediently accept this statement, and, gradually forgetting nearly everything that Soma meant to the ?igvedic priests, will use the name Soma merely as a secondary name for Chandra, the moon and its G.o.d. A very illuminating process, which shows how a G.o.d may utterly change his nature. Now we turn to the hero-G.o.ds.