A Comparative View of Religions | Page 3

whose anger deprecated.
After him, the great ruler of nature, there appear, in the Veda hymns,
Indra, the blue sky, god of light and thunder, the warrior who in battle
stands beside the combatants; Vayu, the god of the wind, 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