Two Old Faiths | Page 7

attributes.] The Veda frequently ascribes to the gods, to use the
language of Max Müller, "sentiments and passions unworthy of deity."
In truth, except in the case of Varuna, there is not one divinity that is
possessed of pure and elevated attributes.

II.
PHILOSOPHY, AND RITUALISM.
[Sidenote: Speculation begins. Rise of asceticism. Upanishads. They
are pantheistic.] During the Vedic period--certainly toward its
conclusion--a tendency to speculation had begun to appear. Probably it
had all along existed in the Hindu mind, but had remained latent during
the stirring period when the people were engaged in incessant wars.
Climate, also, must have affected the temperament of the race; and, as
the Hindus steadily pressed down the valley of the Ganges into warmer
regions, their love of repose and contemplative quietism would
continually deepen. And when the Brahmans became a fully developed
hierarchy, lavishly endowed, with no employment except the
performance of religious ceremonies, their minds could avoid
stagnation only by having recourse to speculative thought. Again,
asceticism has a deep root in human nature; earnest souls, conscious of
their own weakness, will fly from the temptations of the world. Various
causes thus led numbers of men to seek a life of seclusion; they dwelt
chiefly in forests, and there they revolved the everlasting problems of
existence, creation, the soul, and God. The lively Greeks, for whom,
with all their high intellectual endowments, a happy sensuous existence
was nearly all in all, were amazed at the numbers in northern India who
appeared weary of the world and indifferent to life itself. By and for
these recluses were gradually composed the Aranyakas, or forest
treatises; and out of these grew a series of more regular works, called
Upanishads.[13] At least two hundred and fifty of these are known to

exist. They have been called "guesses at truth;" they are more so than
formal solutions of great questions. Many of them are unintelligible
rhapsodies; others rise almost to sublimity. They frequently contradict
each other; the same writer sometimes contradicts himself. One
prevailing characteristic is all-important; their doctrine is pantheism.
The pantheism is sometimes not so much a coldly reasoned system as
an aspiration, a yearning, a deep-felt need of something better than the
mob of gods who came in the train of Indra, and the darker deities who
were still crowding in. Even in spite of the counteracting power of the
Gospel mysticism has run easily into pantheism in Europe, and
orthodox Christians sometimes slide unconsciously into it, or at least
into its language.[14] But, as has been already noted, a strain of
pantheism existed in the Hindu mind from early times.
Accordingly, these hermit sages, these mystic dreamers, soon came to
identify the human soul with God. And the chief end of man was to
seek that the stream derived from God should return to its source, and,
ceasing to wander through the wilderness of this world, should find
repose in the bosom of the illimitable deep, the One, the All. The
Brahmans attached the Upanishads to the Veda proper, and they soon
came to be regarded as its most sacred part. In this way the influence
these treatises have exercised has been immense; more than any other
portion of the earlier Hindu writings they have molded the thoughts of
succeeding generations. Philosophy had thus begun.
[Sidenote: Six philosophic schools.] The speculations of which we see
the commencement and progress in the Upanishads were finally
developed and classified in a series of writings called the six Sastras or
darsanas. These constitute the regular official philosophy of India.
They are without much difficulty reducible to three leading schools of
thought--the Nyaya, the Sankhya, and the Vedanta.
Roundly, and speaking generally, we may characterize these systems as
theistic, atheistic, and pantheistic respectively.
[Sidenote: The Nyaya.] It is doubtful, however, whether the earlier
form of the Nyaya was theistic or not. The later form is so, but it says
nothing of the moral attributes of God, nor of his government. The

chief end of man, according to the Nyaya, is deliverance from pain; and
this is to be attained by cessation from all action, whether good or bad.
[Sidenote: The Sankhya.] The Sankhya declares matter to be
self-existent and eternal. Soul is distinct from matter, and also eternal.
When it attains true knowledge it is liberated from matter and from
pain. The Sankhya holds the existence of God to be without proof.
[Sidenote: The Vedanta.] But the leading philosophy of India is
unquestionably the Vedanta. The name means "the end or scope of the
Veda;" and if the Upanishads were the Veda, instead of treatises tacked
on to it, the name would be correct; for the Vedanta, like the
Upanishads, inculcates pantheism.
The form which this philosophy ultimately assumed is well represented
in the treatise called the Vedanta