A Comparative View of Religions | Page 3

the chief of the Maruts, or the winds; Rudra, the god of the hurricane; Vritra, the hostile god of the clouds; Ahi, the parching heat of summer. In the mythology of the people, Indra, god of light, aided by Vayu and Rudra, wages war with Vritra,--who, as god of the clouds, holds back the rain and the light,--and appears as opponent of the destructive Ahi. The other divinities also which appear in the Vedas are personified powers of nature,--the twin brothers Aswins (equites), or the first rays of the sun, Ushas the maiden, or the rosy dawn, Surya, Savitri, the god of the sun. Great significance is given in the Indian mythology to Agni, the god of fire, who burns the sacrifice in honor of the gods, who conveys the offerings and prayers of men to gods and their gifts to men, who gladdens the domestic hearth, lights up the darkness of night, drives away the evil spirits, the Ashuras and Rakshas, and purges of evil the souls of men. Religion, still wholly patriarchal in form, and free from hierarchical constraint and from the later dogmatic narrowness, bore in this earlier stage of its development the character of the still free and warlike life of a nomadic people living in the midst of a sublime nature, where everything, the clear sky, sunshine, and boisterous storm, mountains and rivers, disposed to worship. As yet the Indian knew no close priestly caste. Worship consisted in prayers and offerings, especially in the Soma-offering, which was offered as food to the gods. No fear of future torment after death as yet embittered the enjoyment of life and made dying fearful. Yama was the friendly guide of the souls of heroes to the heaven of Indra or Varuna, and not yet the inexorable prince of hell who tormented the souls of the ungodly in the kingdom of the dead. Of later barbarous usages also, such as the widow's sacrificing herself on the funeral pile of her departed husband, there was as yet no trace; and in the heroic poetry, as yet not disfigured by later Brahminical alterations and additions, the heroes Krishna and Rama appear as types of courage and self-sacrifice, and not, as later, as avatars, or human incarnations, of the deity.
b. Brahminism.
When the nomadic and warlike life of the nations of India in the land of the seven rivers, in connection with their removal to the conquered land of the Ganges (1300 B.C.), gave place to a more ordered social constitution, a priestly class formed itself, which began to represent the people before the deity, and from its chief function, Brahma, or prayer, took the name of Brahmins, i.e., the praying. This Brahma, before whose power even the gods must yield, was gradually exalted by the Brahmins to the highest deity, to whom, under the name of Brahma, the old Veda divinities were subordinated. Brahma is no god of the people, but a god of the priests; not the lord of nature, but the abstract and impersonal Being, out of whom nature and her phenomena emanate. From Brahma the priest derives his authority; and the system of caste, by which the priesthood is raised to the first rank, its origin. The worship of Brahma consists in doing penance and in abstinence. Yama, once a celestial divinity, now becomes the god of the lower world, where he who disobeys Brahma is tormented after death. Immortality consists in returning to Brahma; but is the portion only of the perfectly godly Brahmin, while the rest of mankind can rise to this perfect state only after many painful new births. The Brahmin, in the exclusive possession of religious knowledge, reads and expounds the Vedas (knowledge), exalted to infallible scripture, and on them constructs his doctrine.
Thus the once vigorous, natural life of the Indians gave place to a conception of the world which repressed the soul, and annihilated man's personality. The many-sidedness of the earlier theology resolved itself into the abstract unity of an impersonal All, and thus the glory of nature passed by unmarked, as nought or non-existent, and lost its charm. At the same time, the old heroic sagas were displaced by legends of saints, and the heroic spirit of the olden epic by an asceticism which repressed the human, and before whose power even the gods stood in awe. With Brahminism the religion lost its original and natural character, and became characterized by a slavish submission to a priesthood, which abrogated the truly human.
c. The Speculative Systems.
The doctrine of the Brahmins occasioned the rise of various theological and philosophical systems. To these belong, first, the "Vedanta," (end of the Veda) or the dogmatic-apologetic exposition of the Veda. This contains (1) the establishment of the authority of the Veda as holy scripture revealed by Brahma, and