HINDUISM. 



infests the territory of the ' pious ' man, and, at 

 anyrate, is liable to the righteous vengeance of 

 the worshipper and of his gods. The gods are 

 spoken of as everlasting, and expressions occur 

 which, taken literally, imply that the pious wor- 

 shipper might obtain immortality by their aid ; 

 but there can be no doubt that, by this, length of 

 life only is meant. Such a religion could have 

 no dreadful or mysterious rites. The Aryans had 

 no temples, and made no images of their gods. 

 The one offering to the gods we hear of in this, 

 which may be called the primitive stage of Vedic 

 worship, consisted of the fermented juice of the 

 Soma, or moon-plant, an exhilarating and ine- 

 briating beverage, which was deemed to invigorate 

 the gods, and increase their beneficial potency. 

 It was presented to them in ladles, or sprinkled 

 on the sacred kusa-grass. Clarified butter, poured 

 on fire, is mentioned in several hymns as an 

 oblation agreeable to the gods ; and this also may 

 have belonged to the earliest phase of Vedic 

 worship. 



In another class of hymns to be found in the 

 Rig-veda there is a departure from the simple 

 conceptions of the early faith. The stirrings of 

 new speculation begin to manifest themselves ; and 

 the objects capable of propitiating the gods are now 

 regarded as gods themselves ; Soma, the moon- 

 plant, and its juice, especially being invoked as 

 the bestower of all worldly boons. The animal 

 sacrifice, too, with properties ascribed to it more 

 mysterious than those belonging to the simple 

 media of the earlier worship, now appears among 

 the established rites. 



A third class of hymns shews speculation ad- 

 vanced to a stage at which the mere worship of 

 elemental powers could no longer be satisfactory. 

 The worshippers had come to see a mystery be- 

 yond, and more mysterious than their gods, and 

 to make their attempts at solving it. 'Who 

 knows exactly,' we find in one of these hymns, 

 ' and who shall in this world declare, whence 

 and why this creation took place ? The gods are 

 subsequent to the production of this world ; then, 

 who can know whence it proceeded, or whence 

 this varied world arose, "or whether it uphold itself 

 or not ? He who, in the highest heaven, is the 

 ruler of this universe does indeed know ; but not 

 another one can possess this knowledge.' In such 

 utterances as these are the germs of the philo- 

 sophic creed of the Vedic period, afterwards 

 developed in the Upanishads, a class of writings 

 the date of which is uncertain. Of these im- 

 portant works we can only speak very briefly. 

 Their object is to explain, not only the process 

 of creation, but the nature of a Supreme Spirit 

 (Brahman, as a neuter word, and therefore differ- 

 ent from the same word as the first god of the 

 Hindu trinity), and its relation to the human soul. 

 In the Upanishads, Agni, Indra, Vayu, and the 

 other deities of the Vedic hymns, become symbols 

 to assist the mind in its attempt to understand 

 the true nature of the one absolute being, and the 

 manner in which it manifests itself in its worldly 

 form. The human soul itself is of the same 

 nature as this supreme or great soul : its ultimate 

 destination is that of becoming re-united with the 

 supreme soul, and the means of attaining that end 

 is not the performance of sacrificial rites, but the 

 comprehension of its own self and of the great 

 soul. The doctrine which, at a later period, be- 



came the foundation of the creed of the educated 

 the doctrine that the supreme soul, or Brahman, 

 is the only reality, and that the world has a claim 

 to notice only in so far as it emanated from this 

 being, is already clearly laid down in these Upani- 

 shads, though the language in which it is ex- 

 pressed still adapts itself to the legendary and 

 allegorical style which characterises the Brahmana 

 portion of the Vedas. The Upanishads became 

 thus the basis of the enlightened faith of India. 



THE EPIC PERIOD. 



Our knowledge of this period is chiefly derived 

 from the two great epic poems of ancient India, the 

 Ramdyana and the Mahabhdrata, and hence the 

 name we have assigned to it. The Ramdyana ap- 

 pears beyond doubt to be the work of a single 

 author, and the name of its reputed author is 

 Valmiki. It ranks with the greatest epic poems of 

 the world. Its subject is the history of Rama, one of 

 the incarnations of the god Vishnu. The Maha- 

 bhdrata, the main story of which narrates the con- 

 flicts of two rival families, descendants of a king, 

 Bharata, is undoubtedly the work of many authors, 

 and of different ages. It is greatly inferior to 

 the Ramiyana in excellence ; and, indeed, three- 

 fourths of it is episodical matter, introduced at 

 various times, and without regard to the motive 

 of the work. The excrescences grafted upon it, 

 however, add greatly to its general usefulness ; 

 there is scarcely any subject of which it does not 

 treat, and thus it may almost be termed an 

 encyclopaedia of all knowledge, human and divine. 

 It is evident that these poems must be of later 

 date, by five or six centuries, than the earlier 

 Vedas, but no date can be with confidence 

 assigned to either. It may be surmised, however, 

 that, at the latest, they were composed before the 

 beginning of the Christian era. Changes in social 

 structure, and changes in religious belief, both 

 seeming to require a considerable time for their 

 production, place a wide interval between these 

 works and, at anyrate, the original Veda. In them 

 we find descendants of the Aryan conquerors are 

 masters of the greater part of India, the centre of 

 their dominion being in the province of Oude ; 

 they have brought the races which they have 

 conquered to an acceptance of their religion ; they 

 have made a new organisation of society, and 

 given it the sanction of religion by ascribing to 

 it a divine origin. What we have termed a new 

 organisation of society, consisted in the classifica- 

 tion known as caste. An institution of this kind, 

 however, cannot have been created at a stroke ; 

 it is well known that somewhat similar social 

 divisions have arisen spontaneously among nearly 

 every race of men ; and it is probable that among 

 the Hindus, legislation only attempted to modify 

 and give lasting form to divisions previously sub- 

 sisting. It may be gathered that at no period was 

 the attempt entirely successful In the theory of 

 caste, as laid down in the Institutes of Manu (a 

 work of unquestionably great antiquity, from which 

 much information as to Hindu life at this period 

 is obtained), there are four primary classes, which 

 were distinct at their very creation. First, there 

 is the class of Brahmans, or priests, whose duty 

 it is to read and study the sacred books, to con- 

 duct sacrifices, to teach, to act as lawyers and 

 state-councillors. For the Brahmans, a species 



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