New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century Part 8

It is not too much to say that the educated Hindu does not regard a fixed creed as a part of his Hinduism, but rather boasts of the doctrinal comprehensiveness of his religion. He joyfully lives in a ferment of religious thought, surrendering to the doctrine of a satisfying teacher, but the idea of creed subscription, or a doctrinal stockade, is utterly foreign to his nature. For him the standards are the fixed social usages and the brahmanical ritual. Hear a Hindu himself on the matter, the historian of _Hindu Civilisation during British Rule_ [i. 60]: "Hinduism has ever been and still is as liberal and tolerant in matters of religious belief as it is illiberal and intolerant in matters of social conduct." In a recent pamphlet[68] an Anglo-Indian civilian gives his evidence clearly, if too baldly, of the fixity of practice and the mobility of belief. "The educated Hindu," he writes, "has largely lost his belief in the old myths about the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of the Hindu pantheon, and has learned to smile at many of the superst.i.tions of his uneducated countrymen. But Hinduism as a religion that tells a man not only what he shall eat, what he shall drink, and wherewithal he shall be clothed, but tells him how to perform innumerable acts that men of other nations never think have anything to do with religion at all, Hinduism as an intricate social code, stands largely unaffected by the flood of Western education that has been poured upon the country. He instances a brahman, one of his own subordinates, college-bred and English-speaking, who, when away from home with his superior officer, had to cook his food for himself, because the brahman servant he had with him was of a lower division than his own, and he could not afford to hire a man of his own status among brahmans."

[Sidenote: Thought independent of act.]

We ask again for the cause of this progress in thought and stagnation in practice. In India, creed and practice go their own way; thinking is independent of acting. Listen to the naive standpoint a.s.sumed in the Confession or Covenant of a Theistic a.s.sociation established in Madras in 1864. We read in article 3 that the person being initiated makes this declaration: "In the meantime, I shall observe the ceremonies now in use, but only where indispensable. I shall go through such ceremonies, where they are not conformable to pure Theism, as mere matters of routine, dest.i.tute of all religious significance--as the lifeless remains of a superst.i.tion which has pa.s.sed away." And again in article 4: "I shall never endeavour to deceive anyone as to my religious opinions." In the revision of 1871, both articles were dropped, but in the earlier form there was no attempt to disguise that thought was independent of act. The familiar figure of Buddha in meditation, seated cross-legged and motionless, with vacant introspective eyes, oblivious of the outer world, is a type of the separation of thought from act that seems natural to India or to the Indian mind, type also of the independence of each thinker. The thinker secludes himself; "the mind is its own place." To become a thinker signifies to become an ascetic recluse; even modern enlightenment often removes an Indian from fellow-feeling with his kind.

[Sidenote: No Theological Faculties.]

How is it so? I say nothing of the climate of tropical India as a contributory cause. The way in which Hindu learning was and is transmitted, is itself almost sufficient explanation of the independence and the fluidity of religious doctrine. Hinduism has no recognised Theological Faculties as training schools for the priesthood. _Buddhist_ monasteries of the early Christian centuries we do read of, inst.i.tutions corresponding to our universities, to which crowds of students resorted, and where many subjects were taught; but the _Hindu_ lore is transmitted otherwise. Beside or in his humble dwelling, the learned Hindu pandit receives and teaches and shares his poverty with his four, five, or it may be twenty disciples, who are to be the depositaries of his lore, and in their turn its transmitters. Such an inst.i.tution is a Sanscrit tol, where ten to twenty years of the formative period of a young pandit's life may be spent. Without printed books and libraries and intercourse with kindred minds, there may be as many schools of thought as there are teachers. And all this study, be it remembered, has no necessary connection with the priesthood. Tols have no necessary connection with temples, or temples with tols. Hereditary priests are independent of Theological Schools. Recently, indeed, in Bengal these tols have been taken up by the Education Department, and their studies are being directed to certain fixed subjects.

[Sidenote: The twofold priesthood--religious teachers and celebrants.]

[Sidenote: How doctrine moves independently of ritual.]

Another feature of the organisation of Hinduism, hitherto insufficiently noticed, has a still closer connection with this freedom of thought and fixity of practice. The Indian mind is open to new religious ideas, while the religious customs of India remain almost unaffected, _because_ the priesthood of Hinduism is two-fold. One set of priests, called purohits, are merely the celebrants at wors.h.i.+p and ceremonies; the second set, called gurus, theoretically more highly honoured, are or were the religious teachers of the people. Among Mahomedans there is a somewhat similar two-fold priesthood, although among them doctrine is not divorced from religious wors.h.i.+p and ritual. But in Christianity we have not specialised so far. A Christian clergyman, as we know, holds both offices; he is both the religious teacher and the celebrant at sacraments, etc. In Hinduism, with these two sets of priests entirely separate, it is evident that a change may take place in the creed without the due performance of the Hindu ritual being affected. A striking instance of the divergence of guru from purohit is given by Sir Monier Williams in another connection. In India, he says, no temples are more common than those containing the symbol of the G.o.d Siva--there are said to be thirty million symbols of Siva scattered over India--yet among gurus there is scarcely one in a hundred whose vocation is to impart the mantra (the saving text) of Siva.[69] It has already been explained how the creed of Hinduism is dissolving while its practices remain; to restate the fact otherwise now--The hereditary purohits continue to be employed many times a year in a Hindu household, as wors.h.i.+p, births, deaths, marriages, and social ceremonies recur, but the hereditary gurus as religious teachers have become practically defunct.[70] Literally, the _one_ duty of a guru has come to be to communicate once in a lifetime to each Hindu his saving mantra or Sanscrit text; periodically thereafter, the guru may visit his clients to collect what dues they may be pleased to give. The place of religious teacher in Hinduism is vacant, and Christianity and modern thought are taking the vacant place. The modern middle-cla.s.s Hindu is in need of a guru. For mere purohits, as such, he has a small and a declining reverence; but holy men, as such, his instinct is to honour--one of the pleasing features of Hinduism. We can understand it all when we remember how in the Christian Church, in a crisis like that from which the Church is now emerging, many come to be married by the clergyman who have practically lapsed from the faith.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NEW THEISM

"The idea of G.o.d is the productive and conservative principle of civilisation; as is the religion of a community, so will be in the main its morals, its laws, its general history."

_Vico_ and _Michelet_ (Prof. Flint's _Philosophy of History_).

[Sidenote: Polytheism receding before Monotheism.]

In some measure, then, we understand how Hindu polytheism, theism, and pantheism are related to each other; we realise in some measure the openness of the Indian mind, and we now ask ourselves how far the Christian doctrine of G.o.d has impressed itself upon that open mind. Of the polytheistic ma.s.ses it has already been pointed out that intelligent individuals will now readily acknowledge that there is truly one G.o.d only. Further, that the polytheistic idolatry which is now a.s.sociated with the ma.s.ses once extended far higher up the scale, is evident to anyone reading the observations made early in the nineteenth century.

Early travellers in India, like the French traveller Tavernier of the seventeenth century, speak of the Indians without distinction as idolaters, contrasting them with the Mahomedans of India. In the _Calcutta Gazette_ of 1816, Raja Rammohan Roy, the learned opponent of Hindu idolatry, the Erasmus of the new era, is called the _discoverer_ of theism in the sacred books of the Hindus. Rammohan Roy himself disclaimed the t.i.tle, but writing in 1817, he speaks of "the system of idolatry into which Hindus are now completely sunk."[71] Many learned brahmans, he says in the same pamphlet, are perfectly aware of the absurdity of idol wors.h.i.+p, indicating that the knowledge belonged only to the scholars. His own object, he said, was to declare _the unity_ of G.o.d as the real thought of the Hindu Scriptures. Across India, on the Bombay side, we find clear evidence of the state of opinion among the middle cla.s.s in 1830, from the report of a public debate on the Christian and Hindu religions. The antagonists were, on the one side, the Scottish missionary Dr. John Wilson and others, and on the other side two leading officials of the highest Government Appellate Court, men who would now rank as eminent representatives of the educated cla.s.s.

One of these demanded proof that there was only one G.o.d.[72]

[Sidenote: The beginning of the nineteenth century.]

[Sidenote: Monotheistic belief a broadening wedge between pantheism and polytheism.]

Returning to Bengal, it would seem from Rammohan Roy's evidence that in 1820 the standpoint of the learned at that time was exactly what we have called the standpoint of an intelligent individual among the ma.s.ses to-day, namely, a plea that the mult.i.tude of G.o.ds were agents of the one Supreme G.o.d. "Debased and despicable," he writes, "as is the belief of the Hindus in three hundred and thirty millions of G.o.ds, they (the learned) pretend to reconcile this persuasion with the doctrine of the unity of G.o.d, alleging that the three hundred and thirty millions of G.o.ds are subordinate agents a.s.suming various offices and preserving the harmony of the universe under one G.o.dhead, as innumerable rays issue from one sun."[73] Turning to testimony of a different kind, we find Macaulay speaking about the polytheistic idolatry he knew between 1834 and 1838. "The great majority of the population," he writes, "consists of idolaters." Macaulay's belief was that idolatry would not survive many years of English education, and we shall now take note how in the century the sphere of idolatry and polytheism has been limited. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, we may now say that Indian Hindu society consisted of a vast polytheistic ma.s.s with a very thin, an often invisible, film of pantheists on the top. The nineteenth century of enlightenment and contact with Christianity has seen the wide acceptance of the monotheistic conception by the new-educated India. The founding of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j or Theistic a.s.sociation in 1828 by Rammohan Roy has already been called the commencement of an indigenous theistic church outside the transplanted theism of Indian Christianity and Indian Mahomedanism. Strictly rendered, the divine name _Brahm[=a]_, adopted by the Br[=a]hmas, expresses the pantheistic idea that G.o.d is the _One without a second_, not the theistic idea of one personal G.o.d; but what we are concerned with is, that it was in the monotheistic sense that Rammohan Roy adopted the term. To him Brahm[=a] was a personal G.o.d, with whom men spoke in prayer and praise. As a matter of fact the pantheistic formula, "One only, no second," occurs in the creeds of all three new monotheistic bodies, Br[=a]hmas, Pr[=a]rthan[=a] Sam[=a]jists, and [=A]ryas, but in the same monotheistic sense. The original Sanscrit of the formula (Ekam eva advityam), three words from the Chh[=a]ndogya Upanishad, is regularly intoned (droned) in the public wors.h.i.+p of Br[=a]hmas. Like a wedge between the polytheism of the ma.s.ses below and the pantheism of the brahmanically educated above, there came in this naturalised theism, a body of opinion ever widening as modern education enlarges its domain. It is one of the _events_ of Indian history. Now, pantheistic in argument and polytheistic in domestic practices as educated Hindus still are, they never call themselves pantheists, and would resent being called polytheists; they call themselves theists.

"Every intelligent man is now a monotheist," writes the late Dr. John Murdoch of Madras, an experienced observer.[74] "Many" (of the educated Hindus), says a Hindu writer, "--I may say most of them--are in reality monotheists, but monotheists of a different type from those who belong to the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j. They are, if we may so call them, pa.s.sive monotheists.... The influence of the Hindu environment is as much perceptible in them as that of the Christian environment."[75] Professor Max Muller and Sir M. Monier Williams are of the same opinion. "The educated cla.s.ses look with contempt upon idolatry.... A complete disintegration of ancient faiths is in progress in the upper strata of society. Most of the ablest thinkers become pure Theists or Unitarians."[76] That change took place within the nineteenth century, a testimony to the force of Christian theism in building up belief, and to the power of the modern Indian atmosphere to dissipate irrational and unpractical beliefs. For, in contact with the practical instincts of Europe, the pantheistic denial of one's own personality--a disbelief in one's own consciousness, the thought that there is no thinker--was bound to give way, as well as the irrational polytheism. Very unphilosophical may have been Lord Byron's att.i.tude to the idealism of Berkeley: "When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, 'twas no matter what he said."

But that represents the modern atmosphere which New India is breathing, and it is fatal to pantheism.

[Sidenote: The spread of monotheism traced.]

It is interesting to note how monotheism spread. The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j of Madras was founded in 1864, theistic like the mother society, the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j of Bengal. Three years later the first of similar bodies on the west side of India was founded, the Pr[=a]rthan[=a]

Sam[=a]jes or Prayer a.s.sociations of Bombay. Their very name, the _Prayer_ a.s.sociations, implies the dual conception of G.o.d and Man, for the pantheistic conception does not admit of the idea of prayer any more than it admits of the other dualistic conceptions of revelation, of wors.h.i.+p, and of sin. These movements, again, were followed in the United Provinces and the North-West of India by the founding of the _[=A]rya Sam[=a]j_, or, as I have called it, the Vedic Theistic a.s.sociation, also professedly theistic. Polytheism and pantheism alike, the [=A]ryas repudiate. For the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of the Hindu pantheon, the founder of the [=A]ryas declared there was no recognition in the Vedas.

Demonstrable or not, that is the [=A]rya position. The rejection of pantheism by such a body is noteworthy, for pantheism is identified with India and the Vedanta, the most widely accepted of the six systems of Indian philosophy, and the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j is nothing if not patriotic.

It is above all pro-Indian and pro-Vedic. Their direct repudiation of pantheism may not be apparent to Western minds. [=A]ryas predicate three eternal ent.i.ties, G.o.d, the Soul, and Matter,[77] and this declaration of the reality of the soul and of matter is a direct denial of the pantheistic conception, its very ant.i.thesis. One pantheistic formula is: "Brahma is reality, the world unreality" (Brahma satyam, jagan mithy[=a]). The Pantheist must declare, and does declare in his doctrine of Maya or Delusion, that the soul and matter are illusions.

[Sidenote: The progress of monotheism seen in the _Text-book of Hindu Religion_.]

A very striking ill.u.s.tration of the present insufficiency of the pantheistic conception of G.o.d and of the movement of educated India towards theism is to be found where one would least expect it--in connection with the Hindu Revival. In 1903 an _Advanced Text-book of Hindu Religion and Ethics_ was published by the Board of Trustees of the Hindu College, Benares, a body representing the movement for a revival of Hinduism. It was a heroic undertaking to reconcile, in the one Text-book, Vedic, philosophic, and popular Hinduism, to harmonise all the six schools of philosophy, to embrace all the aspects of modern Hinduism, and lastly to satisfy the monotheistic opinions of modern enlightened Hindus.

[Sidenote: What is Pantheism?]

To appreciate the testimony of the Text-book, we must enter more fully into the orthodox Hindu theological position. Pantheism, or the doctrine that G.o.d is all and all is G.o.d--what does it imply? Pantheism is a theory of creation, that G.o.d is all, that there are in truth no creatures, but only unreal phantasies appearing to darkened human minds, because darkened and half-blind. As such, its nearest Christian a.n.a.logue would be the thought that in every phenomenon we have G.o.d's fiat and G.o.d's reason, and that "in Him we live and move and have our being."

Pantheism is a theory of spiritual culture, that our individuality is ours only to merge it in His, although on this line, the Christian soon parts company with the Indian pantheistic devotee, who seeks to _merge_ his consciousness in G.o.d, not to train himself into active sons.h.i.+p.

Pantheism is a theory of G.o.d's omnipresence, and may be little more than enthusiastic feeling of G.o.d's omnipresence, such as we have in the 139th psalm, "Whither shall I go from Thy presence? and whither shall I flee from Thy spirit?" That Oriental mysticism and loyalty to an idea we can allow for. It is in that aspect that pantheism is in closest contact with the belief of the new educated Hindu. But in brahmanical philosophy, pantheism is nothing else than the inability to pa.s.s beyond the initial idea of infinite preexistent, unconditioned, Deity. To the pantheist, let us remember, there is Deity, but there are no real deities; there is a G.o.dhead, but there are no real persons in the G.o.dhead. In the view of the pantheist, when we see aught else divine or human than this all-embracing Deity or G.o.dhead, it is only a self-created mist of the dim human eye, in which there play the flickering phantasms of deities and human individuals and things. "In the Absolute, there is no thou, nor I, nor G.o.d," said Ramkrishna, a great Hindu saint who died in 1886.[78] In Hindu phraseology, every conception other than this all-comprehending Deity is _Maya_ or delusion, and salvation is "saving knowledge" of the delusion, and therefore deliverance from it. The perception of _manifoldness_ is Maya or illusion, says a modern pro-Hindu writer. And again, "To India, all that exists is but a mighty curtain of appearances, tremulous now and again with breaths from the unseen that it conceals."[79]

[Sidenote: Maya is implied in Pantheism.]

[Sidenote: The outcome of Maya.]

The doctrine of Maya is, of course, a postulate, a necessity of Pantheism. Brahma is the name of the impersonal pantheistic deity. First among the unrealities, the outcome of Maya or Illusion or Ignorance, is the idea of a supreme _personal_ G.o.d, Parameswar, from whom, or in whom, next come the three great personal deities, namely, the Hindu Triad, Brahm[=a] (not Brahma), Vishnu, and Siva,--Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer respectively. These and all the other deities are the product of Maya, and thus belong to the realm of unreality along with Parameswar.[80] Popular theology, on the other hand, begins with the three great personal deities.

[Sidenote: The Hindu Text-book transforms Pantheism into Monotheism.]

Now come we again to the Text-book. Rightly, as scholars would agree, it describes the predominant philosophy of Hinduism as pantheistic. The Text-book, however, goes farther, and declares all the six systems of Hindu philosophy to be parts of one pantheistic system.[81] The word pantheism, I ought to say, does not occur in the Text-book. But here is its teaching. "All six systems," we are told, "are designed to lead man to the One Science, the One Wisdom which saw One Self Real and all else as Unreal." And again, "Man learns to climb from the idea of himself as separate from Brahma to the thought that he is a part of Brahma that can unite with Him, and finally [to the thought] that he is and ever has been Brahma, veiled from himself by Avidy[=a]" (that is, Ignorance or Maya). Our point is that the _Text-book of Hindu Religion_ is professedly pantheistic, and the above is clearly pantheism and its postulate Maya. But in the final exposition of this pantheism, what do we find? To meet the modern thought of educated India, the pantheism is virtually given up.[82] Brahma, the One and the All, becomes simply _the Deity Unmanifested_; who shone forth to men as _the Deity Manifested_, Parameswar; of whom the Hindu Triad, Brahm[=a] and Vishnu and Siva, are only three _names_. Maya or Delusion, the foundation postulate of pantheism, by which things _seem_ to be,--by which the One seems to be many,--is identified with the creative will of Parameswar. In fact, Pantheism has been virtually transformed into Theism, Brahma into a Creator, and Maya into his creative and sustaining fiat. The _Text-book of the Hindu Religion_ is finally monotheistic, as the times will have it.

[Sidenote: A Pa.r.s.ee claiming to be a monotheist.]

As further confirmation of the change in the Indian mind, we may cite the paper read at the Congress on the History of Religions, Basel, 1904, by the Deputy High-priest of the Pa.r.s.ees, Bombay. The dualism of the Zoroastrian theology has. .h.i.therto been regarded as its distinctive feature, but the paper sought to show "that the religion of the Pa.r.s.ees was largely monotheistic, not dualistic."

The theistic standpoint of the younger members of the educated cla.s.s of to-day is easily discoverable. The word _G.o.d_ used in their English compositions or speeches, plainly implies a person. The commonplace of the anxious student is that the pa.s.s desired, the failure feared, is dependent upon the will of G.o.d--language manifestly not pantheistic.

Religious expressions, we may remark, are natural to a Hindu.

[Sidenote: The conception of the Deity as female has gone from the minds of the educated.]

In the new theism of educated Indians we may note that the conception of the deity as female is practically gone. Not so among the ma.s.ses, particularly of the provinces of Bengal and Gujerat, the provinces distinctively of G.o.ddesses. The sight of a man in Calcutta in the first hour of his sore bereavement calling upon Mother Kali has left a deep impression upon me.[83] Be it remembered, however, what his cry meant, and what the name _Mother_ in such cases means. It is a honorific form of address, not the symbol for devoted love. The _G.o.ddesses_ of India, not the G.o.ds, are the deities to be particularly feared and to be propitiated with blood. It is energy, often destructive energy, not woman's tenderness that they represent, even according to Hindu philosophy and modern rationalisers. We may nevertheless well believe that contact with Christian ideas will yet soften and sweeten this t.i.tle of the G.o.ddesses.

[Sidenote: The new theism is largely Christian theism--G.o.d is termed Father;]

[Sidenote: Or Mother.]

The new theism of educated India is more and more emphatically Christian theism. Anyone may observe that the name, other than "G.o.d," by which the Deity is almost universally named by educated Hindus is "The Father," or "Our Heavenly Father," or some such name. The new name is not a rendering of any of the vernacular names in use in modern India; it is due directly to its use in English literature and in Christian preaching and teaching. The late Keshub Chunder Sen's _Lectures in India_, addressed to Hindu audiences, abound in the use of the name. The fatherhood of G.o.d is in fact one of the articles of the Br[=a]hma creed.

In his last years, the Brahma leader, Keshub Chunder Sen, frequently spoke of G.o.d as the divine _Mother_, but we are not to suppose that it expresses a radical change of thought about G.o.d. Keshub Chunder Sen's last recorded prayer begins: "I have come, O Mother, into thy sanctuary"; his last, almost inarticulate, cries were: "Father,"

"Mother." Where modern Indian religious teachers address G.o.d as _Mother_, it is a modernism, an echo of the thought of the Fatherhood of G.o.d. The name is altered because the name of Mother better suits the ecstasies of Indian devotion, where the ecstatic mood is cultivated. A case in point is the Hindu devotee, Ramkrishna Paramhansa, who died near Calcutta in 1886. "Why," Ramkrishna Paramhansa asks, "does the G.o.d-lover find such pleasure in addressing the Deity as Mother? Because," his answer is, "the child is more free with its mother, and consequently she is dearer to the child than anyone else.[84] Another instance we find in the appeal issued by a committee of Hindu gentlemen for subscriptions towards the rebuilding of the temple at Kangra, destroyed by the earthquake of 1905. The president of the committee, signing the appeal, was a Hindu judge of the High Court at Lah.o.r.e, a graduate from a Mission College. "There are Hindus," thus runs the appeal, "who by the grace of the Divine Mother could give the [whole] amount ... and not feel the poorer for it."[85]

[Sidenote: The [=A]rya Sam[=a]j and the name Father.]

[Sidenote: The Hindu College, Benares, and the name _Father_.]

The [=A]rya Sam[=a]j, on the other hand, seems set against speaking or thinking of G.o.d as the Father. Specially present to their minds and in their preaching is the thought of G.o.d's absolute justice; and they hold that His Justice and His Fatherhood are contradictory attributes. Virtue _will_ have its reward, they a.s.sert, and Sin its punishment, both in this and the following existences. We recognise the working of their doctrine of transmigration, perhaps also the effect of a feeble presentation of the Christian doctrine of the Father's forgiveness of sin. Nevertheless, we may note in a hymn-book published in London for the use of members of the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j resident there, such hymns as "My G.o.d and Father, while I stray," and "My G.o.d, my Father, blissful name," as if the name were not explicitly excluded. We also read that the very last parting words of the founder of the [=A]ryas himself were: "Let Thy will be done, O Father!"[86] The heart of man will not be denied the name and the feeling of "G.o.d who is our home." Turning again from the [=A]ryas to the new citadel of Benares, and Hinduism, the Hindu College, Benares, we find that along with the Text-book already mentioned, there was published a _Catechism in Hindu Religion and Morals_ for boys and girls. One question is, "Can we know that eternal Being (the "One only without a second," or "The All," _i.e._ pantheistic Deity)? The answer is, "Only when revealed as Ishwar, the Lord, the loving Father of all the worlds and of all the creatures who live in them." That idea of the loving Father, of divine Law and Love in one person, is new to Hinduism. The law of G.o.d may be only imperfectly apprehended, but the loving Fatherhood of G.o.d, the approachable one, has become manifest in India--one of Christianity's dynamic doctrines.

Strangest confirmation of all, a Mahomedan preacher of Behar a few years ago was expounding from the Koran the Fatherhood of G.o.d. The name and thought of the divine Father established, we may leave name and thought to be invested with their full significance in the fulness of time.

"It is with Pantheism, not Polytheism, that a rising morality will have to reckon," says Sir Alfred Lyall.[87] The result of all our observation has been different. Pantheism is melting out of the sky of the educated, and if nothing else take its place, it will be a selfish materialism or agnosticism, not avowed or formulated yet shaping every motive, that the new morality will have to reckon with.