or the punishments* of the other, had ex-ture. Hence in India, while a new specuhausted the merit or demerit contracted in lative faith as to God grew up and assumed a former state of being, a new birth had shape among the Brahmans, its eschatology to be undergone, determined by the pre- alone took root among the people. They vious life.t The sinner descended, the still worshipped the old Vedic gods.* The righteous ascended, in the scale of exist- deities of sacerdotal and theosophic specence. The virtuous Sudra becomes a ulation were to them unknown. The fuVaisya, the Vaisya a Kshattriya, the Kshat- neral ceremonies and sacrifices wore still triya a Brahman, and the Brahman, when a the old forms. But instead of the old perfectly holy and sinless man, returns by heaven of Yama and the fathers, absorpknowledge into Brahma. If a man steals tion into Brahma had come; instead of a cow, he shall be re-born as a crocodile or the old "nethermost darkness," "glidings lizard; if grain, as a rat; if fruit, as an through ten thousand millions" of births, ape.§ He who attempts to murder a Brah- with between each almost as many hells. man, or sheds his blood, or kills him, is The new eschatology was the product of punished a hundred or thousand years in a new theology; but while the first bethe several hells, and then born again and came the people's the second remained the again in animal forms degraded in propor- priest's. tion to his crime. And to these mutations and migrations hardly any limit was recognized. The soul might glide "through ten thousand millions" of births or more. Tment of the belief on the sacerdotal side; Absorption was the prize of the elect few; transmigration the doom of the many. Only the selected Brahmins attained the first; almost the whole world revolved in the dreary circle of the second.

5. THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS. The laws of Manu exhibit the develop

but the philosophical systems, its further evolution on the speculative. The Hindu philosophies were, as to form and end, religious, professed to be based on the Vedas, recognized these as their formal source Now this point of the Brahmanical faith and authority. Philosophy has, as a rule, was exactly the point most intelligible, lived outside the positive religions. No most credible, and most terrible to the one associates the philosophy with the repeople.** It had grown up in the bosom ligion of Greece, save by way of contrast; of the ancient worship, and unfolded itself and the Greek systems found their characwith the unfolding national mind. Theo- teristic element, not in their relation to the sophic speculations as to the world-soul national worship, but to the idea of virtue were too recondite to be generally under- or the general conception of the universe. stood; but sacerdotalism, developing as Modern philosophy from Bacon on the one society developed had its claims and their side, and Descartes on the other, has stood sanctions unconsciously conceded. Trans- and speculated and inquired outside revealmigration had its roots in the Brahmanical ed religion, and been its best friend because conception of God; but the people had its greatest critic. But the Hindu philosogrown into it without knowing whence it phies stood in formal connection with revehad sprung, or that it differed in any way lation, although as to principle they might from the faith of their fathers. To the be Theistic, Auto-Theistic, Pantheistic, thinker, the theological is the distinctive or Atheistic. They differed as to subside of a religion; but to the multitude, stance, but agreed as to formal source, and the eschatological. Hebraism was strong so find their proper parallels, not in the in the former, but weak in the latter, ele-Platonic and Aristotelian, Baconian and ment, and hence so often broke down be- Cartesian, but in the Athanasian and Arifore fiercer faiths. Christianity has exercised a greater command over peoples, though not over individual minds, by its eschatology than by its theology. The speculative intellect seeks to stand face to face with the ultimate cause; the general intellect regards religion as regulating the present by its power to determine the fu

an, Augustinian and Pelagian, Scotist and Thomist systems and methods. The Hindu spirit was speculative, not critical, deductive, not inductive, and so sought truth along a single line by the process of abstraction. Sacerdotalism gave to speculative thought its objects and end, and hence it did not so much raise the question, What is man? as, Given soul as an essence successively appearing under different forms, how did it arise, and how can it

Lassen, Ind. Alterthumsk. i. pp. 911, f.; Duncker, Gesch. der Arier, pp. 113, f.

cease to be? In the West, except in the its reward is exhausted, birth into another earlier phases of Greek thought, and cer- form is necessary, and so new virtues can tain later exceptional instances simply de-only prolong the miserable cycle of births monstrative of the rule, there was a gen- and deaths. Vice needs to be punished; eric idea of personality which, while ad- when its demerit is exhausted, birth must mitting many specific differences, excluded, again happen, and more vice leads to more without discussion, any theory of transmi- births ad infinitum. The aim of the soul gration. In India, on the other hand, the therefore should be to get quit of works, notion of soul as one, but as transmigrat- whether good or bad; "the confinement ing through many forms, had become so of fetters is the same, whether the chain is fundamental, that the very conception of of gold or iron."* And it can do so only separate disembodied existence after death by knowledge. It prevents actions from was á priori excluded. The belief so per- ripening into merit or demerit. "Past sin vaded thought and life, that the notion of is annulled, future offence precluded." the opposite was never entertained even as "As water wets not the leaf of the lotus, a possibility. so sin touches not him who knows God; The Hindu philosophies, like the Euro- as the floss on the carding comb cast into pean, have thus generic similarities with the fire it consumed, so are his sins burnt only specific differences, and their generic away." Merit and demerit being obliterfeatures are the exact opposite of ours. ated, final beatitude can be attained. The They stand related on the speculative side Vedantin is identified with Brahma; the to the earlier theosophic thought, on the Sankhya student ceases to be a self-conpractical to the sacerdotal. The one rela-scious personality. The first "quitting his tion is seen in their notions as to the origin corporeal frame, ascends to the pure light and cessation of personal existence, the which is Brahma, and comes forth identiother in their conception of its miserable-fied with him, conform and undivided; ' ness and hatefulness. as pure water dropping into the limpid

The Hindu philosophies thus intensify, lake is such as that is," "or as a river at instead of counteracting, the sacerdotal its confluence with the sea, merges therein teaching and tendencies as to our belief. altogether."§ The second has reached the The Vedanta might assert that the world point where he can say, "neither I am, nor was an illusion, and Brahma the only real-is aught mine, nor I exist;""yet soul reity; the Sankhya might affirm a dualism, mains awhile invested with body, as the under a Theistic or Atheistic form; the potter's wheel continues whirling after the Nyaya, whether dialectic or atomistic as to pot has been fashioned, by force of the form, might declare the existence of a su- impulse previously given to it. When preme soul and propound the true method separation of the informed soul from its of discovering the nature of things; but corporeal frame at length takes place, and each system held that souls are eternal,* nature in respect of it ceases, then is absothat they transmigrate through countless lute and final deliverance accomplished."|| bodies, that the bondage to birth and Such then was the terrible conclusion death is due to ignorance and maintained to which Hindu sacerdotalism and specuby works, whether good or bad. Life is lation had alike come. Individual existthus a calamity, personal existence expos-ence was a curse; the only immortality ure to successive cycles of conscious mise-known the ceaseless succession of births ries under multitudinous forms. The and deaths. Self-annihilation, conceived grand problem of all the systems is thus, either as absorption or the cessation of how to attain final beatitude. The beat- self-conscious being, was the only salvaitude known to each is the loss of con- tion believed in or desired. Sacerdotalscious personality. The means of attain-ism had made religion a calamity. Its ment in each, knowledge or right appre-modes of worship could neither gladden hension. Good works and bad, virtue and the present nor gild with hope the future. vice, are, because of their consequences, undesirable, hinder, by creating merit or demerit, the final emancipation of the soul.§ Virtue needs to be rewarded; when

The priesthood might stand proudly preeminent, but its pre-eminence was dangerous, because founded on dogmas which created despair. There is a limit to the burdens the human spirit can bear, and

* Anonymous Commentator, in Colebrooke's Essays, p. 232.

+ Colebrooke, p. 232.
+ Ib., 236.

§ Ib., 234.

I lb., p. 164.

that limit had been reached. A religlon | cause of age, of death, of all pain? Birth. which intensified the actual miseries of What is the cause of birth? Existence. the present, and the possible miseries of What is the cause of existence? Attachthe future, had abdicated its functions, ment to the existent. What is the cause and deserved only what it was sure, be- of attachment? Desire. Of desire? Per'fore long, to suffer, abolition or revolution. ception. Of perception? The senses. What is the cause of the senses? Name 6. BUDDHISM. and form, or individual existence. Of inBuddhism, at once the offspring and the dividual existence? Consciousness. Of enemy of Brahmanism, can hardly be un-consciousness? Ignorance. To annihilderstood apart from the India in which it ate birth, existence must be annihilated; arose. It was essentially an anti-sacer- to annihilate existence, the attachment to dotal revolution, specifically Indian alike it. Attachment, again, can only be dein what it affirmed and what it denied. troyed by destroying desire, desire by The Brahmanical gods, sacrifices, ceremo- destroying perception, perception by denies, and inspired books it rejected. The stroying the senses, the senses by destroycaste system, the very foundation of Hin- ing the consciousness, and the consciousdu society, it recognized, but practically ness by destroying the ignorance, which is abolished in the religious sphere, a pre- its cause. If the ground of personal existliminary to its general abolition. But istence is annihilated, it cannot continue, without perhaps consciously borrowing birth and death cease.*

from, or building on any previous system, What Buddha conceived this final deit appropriated and developed certain ten-liverance to be cannot be discussed here dencies and doctrines familiar to Indian and now. Enough to say, a religion withspeculation and translated them into a out a God could hardly promise a restful faith and a religion for the people.t but conscious immortality. Nirvana can

Buddhism was an ethical, Brahmanism not be absorption, for Buddhism knew a sacerdotal religion, and so were specifi- no world-soul, no Brahma, into which the cally different, but both had a metaphysi- perfect man could enter, nor can it be any cal as distinguished from a personal basis, conscious state of being, for the loss of conand so were generically alike. The gen-sciousness was the goal of Buddha's ambieric similarity necessitated resemblances tion. The oldest definitions describe Nirin their respective conceptions of the uni- vana as "the cessation of thought, since verse, the specific difference affected their its causes are removed," as a condition views of life and the conditions which de- " in which nothing remains of that which termined its happiness or misery. Bud- constitutes existence." When the soul dhism like Brahmanism had its graduated enters Nirvana it is extinguished like a system of future reward and punishment, lamp blown out, and nothing remains but its descending circles of hells, its ascending the void. The only asylum and the only circles of heavens but unlike Brahmanism its principle of award in the one case was virtue, in the other vice. Hence the grand "arbiter of destiny" is Karmi, moral action, the aggregate result of all previous acts.§ Buddhism, indeed, is nothing else than the religion of moral action metaphysically conceived.

Buddha's great problem was the problem common to every Indian thinker,How to be delivered from misery, from that greatest of evils, the everlasting succession of births and deaths. He accepted the Indian theory of man-never seems to have imagined any other as possible. The sight of the misery around, the thought of the misery behind and before, pained him. He inquired what is the

Lassen, Ind. Alterthumsk. ii. pp. 440, ff. † Ib., i. pp. 996, f.

+ Burnouf, Introduction a l'Hist. du Buddhisme Indien, pp. 320, 366, f.; R. S. Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, chap. ii.

§ R. S. Hardy's Manual, pp. 394, ff. LIVING AGE.

VOL. XXVI.

1204

reality is nothing, because from it there is no return, and once at rest in Nirvana, the soul has no longer anything to fear, nor anything to expect."§

Duncker, Gesch. der Arier, pp. 237, f.

† Burnouf, Introduction a l'Hist. du Bud. Ind.,. pp. 73, 83, 589, f. + Ib., 252.

§ M. Barthelemy S. Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa. sions as to the meaning of Nirvana, by Professor Religion, pp. vii. viii. See the interesting discusMax Muller, Chips i. 223, f.; 248, ff.; 279, ff. On the same side stand the late Eug. Burnouf. Introduction, ut supra and 153-155, 211, 521, &c.; Lotus de la bonne Loi, pp. 335. 839, 784, &c. Lassen, Ind. Alterthumsk. i. 996; ii. 462; iii. 385, 395; C. F. Koppen, emy S. Hilaire often, but particularly the AvertisseDie Religion des Buddha, i. pp. 306, f. M. Barthelment. On the other side, holding that Nirvana dewithout wind." stand Dr. Wilson of Bombay, Art. notes a state of repose, "non-agitation," "calm. The Buddhist Revolution in Ind., Brit. and For. Ev. Rev., July, 1871, p. 422; Colebrooke's Essays, 258; and J. B. F. Obry, in Du Nirvana Bouddhique, a formal reply to M. B. S. Hilaire. Perhaps the truth lies in very equal proportions on both sides. In Buddhism, as a system, Nirvana can mean nothing but annihilation, or extinction, escape from our own personal existence without passing into any

Buddhism is a proof of what a false | the Hindu heart. Thus on both the ditheory of immortality may become life vine and human sides, the old faith was so after death, a thing so terrible that to es- modified as to suit, even better than the cape it man will court annihilation. The new, the mind and condition of India. Hindu Spirit had got bewildered in the mazes of transmigration, and unable to find a way to a right conception of God, and a consequent right conception of immortality, it rose into an absolute denial of both, produced and propagated a religion founded on the abolition of what Western thinkers used to regard as the fundamental truths of every faith -the being of God and the immortality of man.

7. THE REFORMED RRAHMANISM

Our belief so shared in the general modification as to be in some respects improved, in others deteriorated. It receives fullest expression in the Bhagavad-Gita. The general conception is a crude Pantheism, with, on the one side a final absorption, conditioned on knowledge, into deity, on the other a hideous moral indifferentism, which abolishes good and evil and inculcates action without any regard to consequences. Krishna says, 66 Immortality and death, being and not being, am I, Ò Arjuna." He is everything, its source, A religion so ancient, so highly organ-its goal, father and mother of this world, ized, so strong in the traditions and associ- whence all things and beings come, ations of many centuries as Brahmanism, whither all return.t The soul is imcould not be easily vanquished. An old mutable, impenetrable, incombustible, can faith which has the courage and skill to re- neither be pierced by darts, nor burned form itself, will also have vitality and by fire, nor drowned by water, nor dried strength enough to engage and defeat its by wind.§ It can wear out and lay aside young opponent. The counter-Reforma-old and assume new bodies, as the body tion in Europe is a feeble type of the can change its garments. || Souls are Brahmanical reaction in India. Roman thus conceived as immortal, or, rathCatholicism drove back but could not ex-er, eternal, without beginning or end, pel from the Continent her vigorous but but as transmigrating through many bodies. unorganized enemy: but revived Brah- Man can be born into nobler and happier manism swept from India the once-victori- forms of personal being, and between ous Buddhism. The old system expanded birth and death taste divine joys in the to receive new and popular elements. heaven of Indra.** Till final emancipation The people loved the old gods, never knew is obtained birth and death succeed each or worshipped the abstract deity of the other, but when knowledge of the divine priesthood. Of the old Vedic Gods, being is acquired, birth ceases, the soul Vishnu and Rudra had become the chosen attains deity. Tranquille animatum of the people. They, joined with the utique illum devotum summa voluptas Sacerdotal Brahma, formed a new god-subit, sedato affectuum impetu in numinis head, the famous Brahmanical Trimurtti. essentiam conversum, innocuum.‡‡ Then if, according to the old mystical Here, then, our inquiry into the Hindu notion, the human could be absorbed in belief in immortality may end. Its histhe divine, why not the divine manifested torical conclusion was the antithesis and in the human? If man could become God contradiction of its historical beginning. why not God man? Hence the Avatar Our purpose was to trace the several steps notion arose, and by a well-known mythi- in this saddest, most extensive and incal process the heroes of the old national jurious revolution of religious thought, epics, Rama and Krishna, were deified, and as at once incarnations of the popular deity and heroes of the popular songs powerfully commended the old religion to

other being or form of personal being. In Bud

dhism as a religion, Nirvana may mean to the simple. hearted multitude "profound calm," undisturbed by successive births and deaths. Professor Max Muller, who has very greatly modified his earlier views, now maintains that while the metaphysic of Buddhism is both Atheistic and Nihilistic, Buddha himself was an Atheist, but not a Nihilist. See his Lecture, Ueber den Buddhistischen Nihilismus.

Lassen, Ind. Alterthumsk. i. 918, ff.; ii. 1087. But particularly Dr. Muir's Sanscrit Texts, vol. iv., comparison of the Vedic with the later representaions of the principal Indian deities.

and the lessons suggested the reader can best discover for himself. An exaggerated sacerdotalism turned the Hindu spirit from travelling along the only line on which it could have reached a right conception of God, and, without that, no right con

ception of man, as mortal or immortal, | can live only when rooted in faith in a perwas possible. Our thoughts weave them-sonal God. selves more subtly than we imagine into consistency and form, and the unsystematized faith of a people will often be found more logical than any reasoned system. The belief in a personal immortality