Concluding Remarks
Having presented to the reader the foregoing condensed epitomes of the great Hindu Epics, it only remains for me to offer a few brief observations upon some of the more abiding features of the national life and the religious and moral sentiments of the Hindus, as illustrated by these gigantic poems, in which we see, as in a mirror, an unconscious reflection of the ideas and tendencies, the intellectual cravings and the moral instincts, of the age to which they belong.
It may seem superfluous to remind the reader that the “Ramayana” describes the adventures of Rama, including amongst them a war which he undertook in order to avenge an insult and to recover the person of his wife, who had been carried off by an unscrupulous enemy. The campaign against Ravana had not for its object extension of territory, but the punishment of an evil-doer and the righting of a personal wrong; while the protracted struggle, which is the basis of the “Mahabharata,” is purely a contest for supremacy between kindred families, each side being backed by friends and allies from amongst their own race, as well as from amongst alien tribes (the Mlecchas). In neither poem, be it noted, does any question of patriotism arise; for the contest in which the heroes are involved are not against foreign invaders or national enemies.
The India known to the compilers of the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata,”—the extensive theatre upon which their heroes played the stirring drama of their lives—was evidently a land covered with vast tracts of dense forest, whose mysterious gloom, pervaded with the aroma of incense and burnt-offerings, has cast a vague and mighty shadow over the hearts of the Hindu bards, as surely as the breezy atmosphere and the restless waves of the Ægean have imparted a healthy buoyancy to the Homeric rhapsodists.
The dreamy solitudes in which Valmiki and Vyasa love to linger have a restfulness about them which the European, unused to Eastern lands, can hardly comprehend. They have also a mystery only to be found in primæval forests, and they possess a dark background of horror, in the roar of the ferocious tiger, the hiss of the deadly serpent, and the grip of the invisible fever-fiend, enough to awaken strange and gloomy imaginings.
The few who have lived, as I have done, through changing seasons in the dense forests of Eastern India, can hover in spirit through Valmiki and Vyasa’s woodlands of the past.
First it is summer, and the hot sunbeams come filtering through the leafy covering, under the shadow of which man and beast listlessly repose through uneventful hours, while the shrill cricket chirps its monotonous song and the cokil’s sweet note fills the hot and trembling air. Then the black clouds gather overhead. God Indra parts them with his flashing bolts. Loud thunder peals in the sky, the roaring hurricane enters into fearful conflict with the warring trees, and the rain descends, not in tiny drizzles, but in torrents; and its voice, as it buries itself in square miles of standing forest, is like the roar of many waters. Cascades, starting into life, leap gladly from the hill-side. The swollen streams, muddy and impassable, swirl and rush along, carrying with them a burden of forest trees. A mantle of vivid green covers, as if by magic, the whole earth, and climbs up till it almost hides the little cottage in which the proprietor takes refuge from the incessant drip, which descends from the leafy covering above.
To this succeeds a period when the steamy miasma rises in the green light from the rotten ground, and man and beast sicken in the malarious atmosphere, wherein the odour of decaying vegetation mingles with the exquisite perfume of orchids and strange flowers of the wilderness. In the glorious sky—in mystic cloudland—appear displays of light and colour, of subtle tints and gorgeous hues, utterly beyond description or the artist’s cunningest skill. Watch, with fevered vision, from the neighbourhood of one of these dark forests the rapidly shifting cloud-phantasms, arrayed in red and gold, upon the evening sky, then cease from marvelling at the exuberant and unbridled imaginings of the Indian bard! Fix your attention at night upon the monstrous shapes which hover, skulking in the background, in the flickering firelight, listen to the unearthly wailing and stifled cries which steal through the hideous darkness, and doubt no more the existence and doings of gruesome Rakshasas who change their shapes at will! Learn also, at the same time, how indispensable a god is Agni, who protects you through the horrors of darkest night in the forests.
Later in the year winter smiles mildly over the enervated land and chills the tepid air. For hours after sunrise a dense fog wraps the primæval forest in its embrace, but when it, ghost-like, steals silently away, it reveals the white smoke of the cottages curling upwards into a blue unclouded sky. The sun hardly affords sufficient warmth to the labourer in the little patch of cultivation near the hut, and the moon looks cold and pallid: the streams begin to dwindle away; the cascades are silent.
Such is the succession of seasons in a tropical forest-land like the India of the Epics. And, throughout all the seasons, the forest is enveloped in a dreamy air of depression and despondency, which peoples the solitudes with hideous Rakshasas, but leaves no place for sporting nymphs or dancing fairies. Life in such woodlands is real forest-life, not like Thoreau’s delightful playing at hermit in Walden, within a couple of miles of Concord, and in sight of a railway.
Thus far the forests; but the sublime Alps of the Indian world, tallest and most majestic of mountains, have not been without influence upon the feelings of the Indian poets, elevating them to lofty heights of contemplation. And when we read what the few travellers who have penetrated those regions have to tell us of the ineffable grandeur and sublimity of the lone mountains, the glittering ice-fields, and the untrodden snows of the interior, when we consider the solemn silence of those uninhabited solitudes, we cannot wonder that the Indian poets who had heard of them, and perhaps visited their rocky fastnesses, made of them a land of mystery and the sporting place of their gods and Apsaras.
Not only from the woods of Dandhaka and the vales and crests of mighty Himavat did the epic poets of India gather inspiration; but also from the noble and lovely rivers of their fair land, winding beneficently through many hundreds of miles of fertile country, from their birth-places above the clouds to the bosom of the all-embracing ocean, while determining in their course the march of migration and conquest.
Mountains, forests and rivers, all of colossal proportions, have served to impress a grandiose if bewildering character upon the great Epics of India, which the reader, even of this volume, can hardly fail to observe.
Religion, being the dominant note of these voluminous poems, claims our first consideration. In this connection I would draw attention to the fact that India is very far from that stage of intellectual development in which literature, science, art and politics become secularized. In Europe secularization has taken place gradually under the influence of the spirit of rationalism, as Mr. Lecky has so admirably explained. In India a beginning has been made in the secularization of knowledge. It is yet only a mere beginning, which owes its origin to the influence of English education; but the effects being confined to a very small class indeed, it may still be said with truth that all departments of knowledge which form the intellectual heritage of the Indian people—even law, poetry and the drama—fall within the domain of theology. And, certainly, there is no indigenous science amongst the Hindus which is not subject to priestly influence and interpretation.
Throughout the Epics we find the supernatural beings, who influence the destinies of mankind, arrayed in two distinctly hostile camps. On one side are the gods with the Gandharvas and Apsaras. On the other side the Asuras, including Daityas and Danavas, Rakshasas and Picáchas. The contest lies, be it noted, between the lesser gods and the Asuras with their allies. The superior gods interpose from time to time in the interests of the celestials; but behind and above the turmoil of existence the shadowy form of inexorable destiny reveals its overwhelming presence.
The part of man in the perpetual strife carried on between the two orders of superhuman beings is neither an ignoble nor a passive one. Man is not, as in most other religions, either the abject and unworthy recipient of gracious favours from the gods, or the unhappy victim of the malice of devils and demons. His position in the universe, as conceived by the authors of the Indian Epics, reflecting, no doubt, the prevailing ideas of their time, was a far higher one. Man is no nonentity in the struggle between the good and the evil forces of nature, but is rather a very important factor; for it is his especial duty to piously assist and nourish the celestials by perpetual sacrifices, so that they on their part might have the strength to perform their respective duties in the government of the universe, and insure the repression of the forces of evil. Neither is man a merely useful but servile auxiliary of the celestials; since he may by austerities, sacrifices, and ceremonies, earn and acquire rights and power for himself, and use his accumulated store of energy at his own will and for his own purposes.
Now it is a noteworthy fact that this high ideal of man’s dignity in the scale of beings has led in India to a degradation of the gods. It would seem as if you could not raise man without pulling down the deity; as if you could not exalt the human race without abasing the celestials. Hence we see the irreverent familiarity with which the highest gods, even Mahadeva, is personated by the Hindus in religious processions, or even on the occasion of the wild saturnalia of the Holi festival, when a man painted white with a wig of long yellow hair on his head, a string of huge beads about his neck, and a trident in his hand—the Supreme Deity personified—is borne aloft amidst a crowd of excited men who are indulging in the grossest license of obscene speech and gesture.
In regard to a life beyond the grave the writers of the Epics hold very decided opinions, a fact of great interest, if we remember that the Jews acquired their ideas about existence after death and of good and evil spirits for the first time in their Babylonian captivity, and passed them on as a heritage to Christianity; the conceptions of our great Christian poet, Milton, being strongly coloured by ideas which, undoubtedly, had their roots in Persian Mazdeism.
The heavens of the Hindu gods are essentially material and sensuous, with their palaces and gardens, music and dancing, their lively Gandharvas and frail Apsaras. Yet the goddesses play a very subordinate part, indeed, in India’s heroic age. We find in the Epics no powerful Hera, no wise Pallas Athene, no lovely Venus, no silver-footed Thetis—bright creations which lend such a charm to the myths of Hellas. Ganga, it is true, acts a minor and appointed part in the great drama, and Parbati is mentioned, while Durga and Kali only flit across the stage. But it is quite evident that in the Olympus of the Aryan Indians the goddesses had not attained the power and dignity they enjoy to-day. The frequent boasts in the Epics against the celestials with Indra at their head, the way in which every chief or leader, even of the Venars, is said to be a match for Indra’s self, seem to indicate an unmistakable, if covert, hostility to the old gods of the Aryan invaders, which is well worthy of notice, as indicating a transition period in the religious development of the Hindus, a period of doubt and confusion, which is emphasized by the fulsome flattery addressed to anyone of whom a favour is desired, be he man or god. He is the best of men, the greatest of kings; equal to gods, he is a god; he is Indra; he is Yama; he is Prajapati; he is superior to all the gods; he is the ruler of the three worlds; he is, in fact, anything and all things to the uncertain suppliant who craves his help. And in these perplexities we seem to have a share too; for under the influence of the pantheistic notions of the writers, combined with their conceptions of endless transmigrations and utter indifference to permanent shapes of any kind, individuality seems lost (as when we find Krishna addressed as the younger brother of Indra130), and a world of confused phantasmagorial forms seems to dance before us, till we feel dizzy contemplating this distracting and impermanent universe.
But amidst the ever-shifting pageant of existence the Hindu seems to have arrived at and firmly grasped the idea of a periodic law which has given a certain grandeur to his speculations about both the past and the hereafter.
From the orderly sequence of natural phenomena, as in the succession of day and night; in the measured march of the seasons of the revolving year; in the periodic movements of the heavenly bodies; the Hindu recognized an appointed, unvarying and endless cycle of changes. Generalizing from these facts he concluded that this law must hold for the entire Cosmos as well, which would pass through its grand but destined cycle of changes, over and over again, in the æons of eternity. He held these ideas in common with the Greek of old, and, like the Greek of old, he never rose to the conception of progress, development, evolution.131
How the Hindu thinker accounted, by his doctrine of Karma, for the striking inequalities and apparent injustice inseparable from mundane existence, the reader has learned in sufficient detail already. As to the moral responsibility of man for his actions, the poets of the Epics had thought out the problem in its various aspects and despairingly left it unsolved. For as Sanjaya, the envoy of the Pandavas to their cousins, sadly says, in the true spirit of agnosticism: “In this respect three opinions are entertained; some say that everything is ordained by God;132 some say that our acts are the results of free will; and others say that our acts are the results of those of our past lives.”133
The attribution of righteousness to the gods does not seem to be insisted upon; for Krishna, as we have seen, is particularly prone to guileful arts in order to compass his objects, like the Pallas Athene of Homer, at whose suggestion Pandaros treacherously and unjustifiably wounded Menelaus with an arrow.
In regard to the political condition of India in those earlier times we may, I think, gather from the Epics that the petty rulers who shared the land amongst themselves were very numerous—thousands,134 indeed, if the poet’s statements could be relied upon,—and we need not doubt that it was the perpetual endeavour of the more able and ambitious of these kings to get as many as possible of their fellow chiefs to acknowledge their supremacy.
No one who studies the narratives attributed to Valmiki and Vyasa will fail to catch glimpses of the simple sagas which formed the ground-work of the great edifices raised by the Indian poets; but, as I have observed in the Introductory Chapter, the value and extent of what is usually considered historical matter to be traced in the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” is so small and so doubtful that it fails to command either my interest or my confidence. It may be due to perversity of character, or to want of historical acumen on my part; but when I am expected to believe that the progress of the Bhojas and their allies eastward may be traced in the legend of Karna, given in the “Mahabharata,” with which the reader of the foregoing pages is familiar, I do not feel inclined to acquiesce. And when I am gravely assured that the romantic story of Satyavati, the fisherman’s daughter, her marriage with Santanu and her previous amour with the father of Vyasa, although absurd in Vyasa’s own poem, becomes intelligible,—if we will only put the individual fisherman out of court altogether, forget what the poet tells us about Satyavati, and imagine that the young lady in question was a personage of some importance in the family of the king of the fishing people,—I feel such efforts towards constructive history are somewhat beyond my abilities.135
While writers of one class strain after the hidden historical elements in the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata,” those of another class (represented by both Europeans and Indians), ingeniously discover in these narratives merely solar myths or moral allegories. It were needless to enlarge upon this topic here, and I have already given instances of such interpretations in the Note appended to the “Ramayana” (p. 91) and in the summary of the “Bhagavatgita” (p. 217). I would merely add that if it be the true function of history to reveal to us living pictures of bygone times, to disclose to us the social life of earlier days, and to make us acquainted with the thoughts, ideals and aspirations of former generations, then the Indian Epics are a solid contribution to historical literature even if they do not happen to chronicle actual events.
The heroes of the Epics, being mostly demigods with a long previous history, an appointed destiny, and subject, like mortal men, to pass through many future existences in other forms, do not, I confess, engage my sympathies very much. Even human beings upon this epic stage lose their distinctive character and cease to interest us if we regard them merely as souls masquerading, as it were, for a certain time in particular forms assumed for the occasion, different from the many they have worn in former states, and unlike those which they will wear in future lives. Indeed the doctrine of metempsychosis, with its fluxional succession of beings, human and divine, undermines the conceptions of definite and permanent individuality so thoroughly that I do not wonder that sober human history, with its limited stage and narrow chronology, has had but little charm for the Hindus.
More remarkable than the heroes of Kurukshetra, however, are the Rishis and Hermits, who stand out upon the canvas of the Epic poets with startling distinctness. These sages, with their austerities, their superhuman powers, their irascibility and their terrible curses, are the Hindu representatives of the magicians and sorcerers of other countries, and form a remarkable feature in the life of even modern India. As a rule the saints of Christendom are of another type, yet, strange to say, there are a few of them, St. Renan for example, to whom have been attributed characteristics not unlike those of the Indian Rishis.136 Elsewhere a large share, perhaps the greater share, of magical power has been credited to the fair sex; but the Hindu has, characteristically, made no such concession to women, who never at any time in India were granted the free and honoured position accorded them amongst the Germans of Tacitus or the Norsemen of the Eddas, and never enjoyed even the restricted liberty which Greek women were privileged to exercise. Nevertheless, there is, undoubtedly, a substratum of chivalrous feeling towards the weaker sex manifested throughout the Epics, often in a distinct and pronounced manner.
As to the social life of the early heroic age, of which we get so many interesting glimpses in the Epics, it is certain that it was extremely simple and rude; as, for instance, to cite a single example, the life of the Pandavas in their primitive “house of lac,” where their mother ministered to them without the assistance of any servants at all, although, be it remembered, the young princes were supposed to be enjoying themselves away from home on a sort of holiday excursion. There is, however, ample evidence to show that by the time the poems were actually compiled or, at any rate, cast into their present forms, a complicated society had been evolved, and a life of luxurious ease and refinement was not unknown. Throughout the period embraced in the Epics the caste-system was well established, animal food commonly used,137 and spirituous drinks not prohibited. Polygamy was common, and polyandry a recognized institution, while the practice known as Niyoga—of raising up offspring to deceased relatives or childless men—was, undoubtedly, fully established.
Now caste, with its baleful influences, still dominates Hindu life; polygamy continues to be common in some parts of India; polyandry is still practised, here and there, in backward places; and Niyoga, which has never ceased to be orthodox doctrine, has, in these days, had special prominence given to it by Swami Dayanand, and the sect recently founded by him. The practice in question—which is known in a modified form as levirate138 amongst the Jews—has been established in India since time immemorial, and we have had important instances of it in the foregoing pages.
What Manu, the great Indian lawgiver, says on the subject of Niyoga is as follows: “On failure of issue by the husband, if he be of the servile class, the desired offspring may be procreated, either by his brother or some other sapinda, on the wife, who has been duly authorized. Sprinkled with clarified butter, silent, in the night, let the kinsman thus appointed beget one son, but a second by no means, on the widow or childless wife. By men of twice-born classes no widow or childless wife must be authorized to conceive by any other man than her lord.”139
Swami Dayanand, however, does not limit the practice of Niyoga to the inferior castes, nor to the cases referred to by Manu. The modern reformer goes much further, teaching a doctrine, said to be founded on the Vedas, which allows a latitude in respect to the relations between the sexes that, to say the least, is extremely startling in this nineteenth century.140 I am bound to add that I have been very positively assured that Swami Dayanand’s precepts in respect to Niyoga are not actually practised by his followers, but their dangerous tendency is, I presume, undeniable.
From the earliest ages known to the writers of the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” cremation of the dead has been the practice in India. Hence in Indian archæology we are deprived of those sources of information—graves, tumuli, cromlechs and sepulchres—which elsewhere, as in Egypt, have furnished such a wealth of facts regarding the earlier races of mankind.
The sacred character of the Brahmans receives abundant recognition in the Epics; and it is noteworthy that, except in the relinquishment of animal food and vinous drinks by a great majority of the Hindus, little change has taken place in the social habits of the people since the heroic age depicted in the Epics. We need not doubt, however, that the abstention from animal food and, with it, from wine and spirits of all kinds has, in the course of many generations, profoundly modified the national character; and has, perhaps, more than anything else, gradually converted the turbulent, aggressive Aryan into the mild and contemplative Hindu.141
A high degree of culture had doubtless been attained by the Indians before the Epics were cast into their present forms. The industrial arts would seem to have flourished, and we have seen how highly the poets appreciated and enjoyed the beauty of the woodlands, and how much they were impressed with the scenery of their grand mountains. This in itself is a remarkable fact, as the charms of landscape beauty do not seem to have been realized in the West until a somewhat later time.
The ideal of human (particularly female) beauty which possessed the minds of the Hindu bards has been indicated by several allusions and quotations in the preceding chapters. It is certainly not that embodied in the Venus of Melos or the Apollo Belvedere; but every age and country has its own ideals.
Throughout the foregoing brief narrative there has been ample evidence of the height to which the speculative imagination of the Hindus had carried them in endeavouring to read the riddle of human destiny, and notably so in the subtle pantheism of the “Bhagavatgita,” a work which, even if the date assigned to it by European scholars be accepted, and with that its authors’ supposed acquaintance with Christian ideas, must still excite our admiration by its largeness of conception and liberality of sentiments—expressed many centuries before Luther nailed his famous ninety-five theses upon the door of the church at Wittenberg.
The imaginative faculty never fails the bards of the Indian Epics, who too often indulge in a very delirium of exaggeration. Yet, notwithstanding their supreme contempt for probabilities or consistency, and their lofty scorn of numerical limitations, it cannot be denied that these Hindu poets, with their lawless imaginations, take us completely captive and carry us along with them, surprised and delighted, through the wonderful scenes of their creation; while one cannot but feel in their company that the intellectual atmosphere which surrounds them is a stronger one and more spiritual than that which was breathed by the Greeks of Homer or the Teutons of the Eddas.
On the whole, it may be said that the Indian Epics as they have reached us, reveal to the careful student an ancient free and vigorous primitive social life and turbulent times, overlaid by a later and less healthy, if more refined civilization, which was permeated with ecclesiasticism; and that they exhibit a strange mixture of what Mr. Herbert Spencer would call the “ethics of enmity” and the “ethics of amity.” The later stage of Indian history—the age of Brahmanism succeeding the heroic age and continuing to the present day—may, I think, be well compared with the Middle Ages in Europe, when priestly influence was predominant and national life at a low ebb. Europe, under the influence of the spirit of industrialism and modern science, has emancipated itself from the numbing influences of the Dark Ages. When will India do the same? For how many more centuries is she destined to wrangle over unprofitable theological questions, as did the Byzantine Greeks while the conqueror was thundering at their gates?
My pleasant undertaking has occupied more time than I had anticipated when I took it in hand; but I leave it now with a profound appreciation of the capabilities of a people who have produced such works as the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata.”
In every age—even in an industrial age of busy scientific progress and mechanical triumphs like our own—the human mind turns with fond interest to any picture which shows how men in the fore-time lived and thought, and it listens eagerly to any song which echoes through the vanished years the fervent hopes and lofty aspirations of buried generations. Therefore, I trust that my little work, though it be but a sketch of a great picture and the echo of a grand old song, may find favour with the public, and help to open up to English readers a strange but interesting world of Eastern ideas and conceptions. Above all, however, I hope that my pages represent—as I believe they do—both fairly and adequately the great Epics of India.
CHISWICK PRESS:—CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
Footnotes:
1 “No other work in India at the present day possesses the attraction which these epics have for the majority of the people.”—Life in an Indian Village, by T. Rama Krishna, B.A. (T. Fisher Unwin, 1891).
2 Professor Max Müller’s Hibbert Lectures, 1878, p. 50.
3 Prisoners of war of all ranks were sacrificed in numbers.
4 Du Chaillu’s “The Viking Age,” vol i., chapter xx., et seq.
5 “A Brief History of the Indian People,” by Sir William Wilson Hunter, K.C.S.I. (Trübner and Co.).
6 The world has recently been informed by Dr. Brinton that the theory attributed to Dr. Latham was really first advanced by Omalius D’Halloy in the “Bulletins de l’Academie Royale de Belgique” in May, 1848 (“Nature,” July 21st, 1892).
7 As is maintained by Dr. Hermann Braunehoffer, “Journal of Royal Asiatic Society,” 1890, pp. 687-689.
8 “The Origin of the Aryans,” by Isaac Taylor, M.A., LL.D. (Walter Scott); “Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples,” by Dr. O. Schrader, translated by F. B. Jevons, M.A. (Charles Griffin and Co.).
9 The preparations for a recital of this kind in a village in the Madras Presidency are thus described. “People came pouring in from Kelambakam and from neighbouring villages to the house of the village headman. On the pial of his house was seated the preacher. Before him was placed the picture of Krishna playing the flute and leaning on a cow. The picture was profusely decorated with flowers. There were also two small vessels. In one there were camphor and some burning incense, in the other were flowers and fruits. The people swarmed about like bees.”—Life in an Indian Village, by T. Rama Krishna, B.A., p. 144.
10 “The Ethnography of Afghanistan,” by Dr. H. W. Bellew, C.S.I., in the “Asiatic Quarterly Review,” October, 1891.
11 “The Rámáyan of Válmikí,” translated into English verse by Ralph T. H. Griffith, M.A., Principal of the Benares College (London, Trübner and Co.).
12 Of Yoga and Yogaism I have given a brief account in a previous work, “Indian Life, Religious and Social,” pp. 11-47 (London, Fisher Unwin).
13 “The Ramayana,” translated into English prose from the original Sanskrit of Valmiki by Manmatha Nath Dutt, M.A. (Deva Press, Calcutta). If not otherwise stated, all prose quotations from the “Ramayana” included in the following pages are derived from this work.
14 “The ruins of the ancient capital of Kama and the children of the Sun may still be traced in the present Ajudhya near Fyzabad. Ajudhya is the Jerusalem or Mecca of the Hindus.”—Note, vol. i., p. 35, of Mr. Griffith’s translation of the “Ramayana” (Trübner and Co., London).
15 What a terrible thing it is for a Hindu to be childless can be understood, and then only partially, by bearing in mind that, without a son to perform the complex funeral rights and ceremonies for a deceased father, the dead man’s soul must undergo ages of trouble in the next world.
16 According to Hindu belief the gods and the spirits of departed ancestors are actually nourished and sustained by the aroma of the burnt-offerings made by pious persons. Hence the vital importance of these sacrifices, upon which the very safety and continuance of the Universe depend.
17 This incident introduces us to an important Hindu idea, that the exact performance of certain prescribed rites and sacrifices leads to the attainment of definite objects, as, for example, purification from a particular sin, the destruction of a hated enemy or the discovery of a friend. The gods themselves performed sacrifices, and Indra is commonly addressed as “the performer of a hundred sacrifices.”
18 The Indian ideas respecting austerities are very peculiar, and as they pervade their religion and literature are specially noteworthy. “According to the Hindu theory the performance of penances was like making deposits in the bank of heaven. By degrees an enormous credit was accumulated, which enabled the depositor to draw to the amount of his savings, without fear of his draughts being refused payment. The power gained in this manner by weak mortals was so enormous, that gods as well as men were equally at the mercy of these all but omnipotent ascetics; and it is remarkable, that even the gods are described as engaging in penance and austerities, in order, it may be presumed, not to be outdone by human beings. Siva was so engaged when the god of love shot an arrow at him.”—Note to page 4 of Professor Sir Monier Williams’s “Indian Epic Poetry.” In the course of the following pages of this book we shall meet with ascetics very often and become familiar with their doings.
19 The belief in divine incarnations, for the benefit or salvation of the world, is a common and familiar one in the Hindu religion.
20 The modern Gogra.
21 Protection against fever would be specially desirable in a country covered with forest and jungle, as the India of the “Ramayana” evidently was.
22 The power of assuming a multiplicity of forms at will, and of passing from a huge to a minute size, or the reverse, to suit the exigencies of the moment is enjoyed by a great number of personages in the Hindu epics.
23 We shall in the course of the development of this story have frequent opportunities of learning the awful and irrevocable character of curses uttered by Brahmans and others, rejoicing in the possession of stores of power acquired by the practice of austerities.
24 Vide M. N. Dutt’s “Ramayana,” p. 75.
25 “The remains of the capital founded by Janaka and thence termed Janakapur are still to be seen, according to Buchanan, on the northern frontier at the Janeckpoor of the maps.”—Note to Professor H. H. Wilson’s translation of the “Uttara Rama Charitra.”
26 I have had the good fortune to be present at a marriage ceremony, carried out professedly in accordance with Vedic rites, which closely resembled the wedding of Rama and his brothers, as described by Valmiki.
27 In this description of Rama and in other places I have borrowed the epithets I find in Dutt’s translation of the “Ramayana,” in order to preserve something of the peculiar character of the original.
28 Here is a pretty picture for an artist, Hindu or other.
29 Dasahratha himself attributed these misfortunes to his having when a youth unwittingly killed, with a chance arrow, a young hermit in the forest. The boy’s father, himself a hermit, cursed Dasahratha, and the effects of the malediction were apparent in the troubles attending the king’s declining years.
30 This significant passage from the “Ramayana” ought to clear away the doubts that may linger in anyone’s mind regarding the fact that animal food was commonly eaten in ancient India, since animal sacrifices are constantly referred to. Of course there is abundant positive evidence on the subject as in the preceding page.
[31] Near Salem in Southern India are “some chalk hills supposed by the natives to be formed of the bones of the mythical bird Jatayus, killed by Ravana when carrying off Sita.”—Professor Sir Monier Williams’s “Modern India,” p. 165.
32 Mr. Griffith’s “Ramayana,” vol. iii., p. 324.
33 As respects the Vanars it has to be noted that while implying that they were monkeys and nothing more, the poet has, for the most part, represented them—if we may judge by their sentiments and actions—as beings of a very superior order.
34 This car from the hand of Visvakarma recalls the famous embossed shield of Achilles, the masterpiece of Vulcan’s art, made of brass, tin, gold and silver, and divided into twelve compartments, each representing a distinct and complicated scene (for example, a wedding procession or a battle) wrought with marvellous skill.
35 There can be no doubt whatever that the seclusion of women was the common practice in ancient India. Wherever polygamy exists the seclusion of women is a necessity, and that polygamy did exist in the India of the “Ramayana” is abundantly evident from what we are told concerning the courts of Dasahratha, Sugriva and Ravana. The Greeks kept their women a good deal in the background; but Helen’s position in the court of her husband Menelaus, or Penelope’s in that of Ulysses, was far more free than the position of any queen mentioned in the “Ramayana.”
36 The lover of English poetry will recall to mind the similar description of sleeping beauties in the sixth canto of “Don Juan,” stanzas lxiv. - lxix.
37 The contrast between the fair Vaidehi and her ruthless persecutors in the enchanting ashoka grove might make a striking subject for the canvas of an able artist. Indeed, there is in the “Ramayana” no lack of suggestive and satisfactory motifs for the chisel and the brush. It is, indeed, a mine not yet wrought.
38 Whoever has not forgotten his Virgil will probably be reminded of the famous storm in the “Æneid” and of Neptune’s serene and majestic appearance above the troubled waters of the sea.
39 Some hundred thousand billions (see note to Griffith’s “Ramayana,” vol. v., p. 88).
40 Camped; but not like a modern army under canvas. The Vanars, I trow, needed no commissariat department, living as they did on fruits and roots. And the sons of Raghu were nearly as well used to woodland fare and lodging as their simian allies.
41 “The chariots of Ravana’s present army are said to have been one hundred and fifty million in number, with three hundred million elephants and twelve hundred million horses and asses. The footmen are merely said to have been unnumbered.”—Note to Griffith’s “Ramayana,” book vi., canto xcvi.
42 At this point the great epic of Valmiki properly ends; but a supplementary work, also popularly attributed to Valmiki, exists which affords further details of the lives of the principal personages of the poem. Upon the particulars supplied in this work the succeeding paragraphs are based.
43 Professor E. B. Cowell (“Academy,” No. 43). In Bhavabhuti’s drama, entitled “Uttara Rama Charitra,” the dénouement is different. Sita’s purity is attested by the goddess Ganga (the Ganges) and by Prithivi (the earth). The people bow in respectful homage to her. Rama welcomes her back, and with her two sons, Kusa and Lava, they pass many happy years together.
44 Muir, “Sanskrit Texts,” part iv., appendix.
45 The “Ramayana” of Tulsi Das, which differs in some respects from the original poem of Valmiki, has been translated into English by Mr. F. J. Growse of the Bengal Civil Service.
46 Ravana is described as having ten heads; but the effigy I saw had several faces, I do not think so many as ten, with the head of an ass surmounting all.
47 Properly the figure should have had twenty arms.
48 Bishop Heber was told that, in the good old times, the poor children were always “poisoned in the sweetmeats given to them the last day of the show, that it might be said their spirits were absorbed into the deities whom they had represented.”—Heber’s “Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India” (1824-25), p. 191.
49 Vide “On the Ramayana,” by Dr. Albrecht Weber (Trübner and Co., 1863).
50 “Indian Epic Poetry,” p. 3 (Williams and Norgate, London, 1863).
51 “Early History of Northern India,” by J. F. Hewitt, “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,” 1890, p. 744.
52 “Nouvelle Géographie Universelle,” par Elisée Reclus, tome viii., p. 873, et seq. Keane’s “Asia,” pp. 678-680.
53 It is, I think, impossible, after reading the tedious genealogies of the kings in the “Mahabharata,” to avoid the conclusion that there is a substratum of history beneath it all, notwithstanding the clouds of mythological dust which obscure the view.
54 The “Mahabharata” of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, translated into English prose, by Pratap Chundur Roy (Calcutta, Bharata Press). If not otherwise stated, all prose quotations from the “Mahabharata” included in the following pages are derived from this work.
55 “Every race has in its history one grand achievement on which it hangs all its past and all its future: and the memory of which is a rallying cry and a pledge of prosperity. The Exodus, the Jews would say; the overthrow of the Medes, would the Persians; the Median wars, the Greeks in their turn say. These will be recalled on all occasions to furnish arguments, political claims, rhetorical effects, patriotic encouragement in great crises, and in the end imperishable regrets.”—Essai sur l’histoire universelle, par M. Prévost-Paradol, tome premier, p. 166.
56 “Adi Parva,” of the “Mahabharata,” section xcvi. A somewhat different story is told in section xcix.
57 The battle, as described by the poet, is of little interest; but Bhisma’s challenge to the assembled kings is worthy of reproduction, as throwing light upon the marriage customs of the olden time in India. “In a voice like the roar of the clouds he exclaimed: ‘The wise have directed that after inviting an accomplished person a maiden may be bestowed on him, decked in ornaments and along with many valuable presents. Others again may bestow their daughters by accepting of a couple of kine, some again bestow their daughters by taking a fixed sum, and some take away maidens by force. Some wed with the consent of the maidens, some by drugging them into consent, and some by going unto the maidens’ parents and obtaining their sanction. Some again obtain wives as presents for assisting at sacrifices. Of these the learned always applaud the eighth form of marriage. Kings, however, speak highly of the swayamvara (the fifth form as above) and themselves wed according to it. But the sages have said that that wife is dearly to be prized who is taken away by force, after slaughter of opponents, from amid the concourse of princes and kings invited to a swayamvara. Therefore, ye monarchs, I bear away these maidens from hence by force. Strive ye to the best of your might to vanquish me or be vanquished.’”—P. C. Roy’s translation of the “Adi Parva” of the “Mahabharata,” p. 307.
58 The custom referred to in this paragraph and known as niyoga, is considered briefly in the concluding chapter.
[59] P. C. Roy’s “Adi Parva,” p. 325. This story throws considerable light on the ideas of the Hindus with respect to their gods.
60 Vyasa, as we have seen, was no blood relation of the house of Bharata. Similarly, the widows of King Vichitra-virya and the Sudra slave-girl were not connected to the family by ties of consanguinity; and yet the children of Vyasa by these women are, from the Hindu point of view, lineal descendants of King Shantanu.
61 This parentage is rather bewildering after what we have learned already about Vidura being no other than Dharma in human form.
62 This is an instance of suttee in ancient India worth noting.
63 The modern Allahabad and, at that time, probably a frontier town of the Aryan invaders.
64 “The traditional site of this event is in the Allahabad district, on the left bank of the Ganges, three miles south of Handia Taksil. The village of Lachagarh (Laksha = lac) is said to take its name from this event. It stands on the bank of the river, which is never cut away by the stream. This is said to be due to the melted lac which keeps the earth together. People come to bathe on the Somwati Amawas when the new moon falls on a Monday. Jhusi or Pratishtapur, the capital of the Chandraransi Rajah is twenty-four miles from there.”—North Indian Notes and Queries, August, 1894, p. 89.
65 I don’t think it is at all unlikely that cannibalism prevailed in India at this early period, as it does in Africa to-day, and these stories are only the Hindu bard’s exaggerated way of recording the fact.
66 Karna had been brought up in the family of a Suta or charioteer and was reckoned as belonging to that caste.
67 From this story of Draupadi it seems evident that polyandry was practised at least in parts of ancient India; as, indeed, it is to this day, in portions of the Himalayan region. That it was not very uncommon in the old-time we may gather from a remark, attributed to Karna, in reference to Draupadi herself—“women always like to have many husbands” (“Adi Parva” of the “Mahabharata,” section cciv.).
68 “Again the site of Indraprasta is far more distinctly indicated than the site of Hastinapur. The pilgrim who wends his way from the modern city to Delhi to pay a visit to the strange relics of the ancient world, which surround the mysterious Kutub, will find on either side of his road a number of desolate heaps of the débris of thousands of years, the remains of successive capitals which date back to the very dawn of history, and local tradition still points to these sepulchres of departed ages as the sole remains of the Raj of the sons of Pandu and their once famous city of Indraprasta.”—Wheeler’s “History of India,” vol. i., p. 142.
69 Such is the Hindu poet’s conception of the court of Yama, the god of departed spirits, a delightful place where there is no lack of sensuous pleasures. He places amongst the attendants in this court “all sinners amongst human beings;” but as, according to Brahmanical theology, there is punishment for the wicked, we may presume that the sinners referred to are only temporary sojourners in this pleasant abode, awaiting their trial and the judgment of Yama upon their deeds.
70 Pratibhindhya, Sutasoma, Sutakarna, Shotanika, and Srutasena.
71 It would appear that only one of the armies—that which proceeded northward—went outside the limits of India, to the countries immediately beyond the Himalayas. India, with the region just referred to, was, for the poets of the “Mahabharata,” the whole world. On this point see Dr. Rajendra Lalla Mitra’s “Indo-Aryans,” vol. ii., pp. 9-12.
72 This statement, which is so consistent with what is known in respect to genuine historical events in India, throws a strong side-light upon the utter inability of the Indian kings from times immemorial to unite for purposes of defence, their ready acceptance of defeat, and their willing allegiance to the conqueror.
73 The whole story, though so bewilderingly strange, is yet so characteristically Hindu in its conception and motive, that I could not exclude it even from this brief sketch. Nor could I venture to present it in words other than those of an orthodox Hindu translator.
74 Throughout these epics, questions of right and wrong, policy and impolicy are discussed with rare acumen.
75 A little later Arjuna, addressing Krishna, says: “O slayer of all foes, having floated on the primordial waters, thou subsequently becamest Hari, and Brahma, and Surya, and Dharma, and Dhatri, and Yama, and Anala, and Vayu, and Vaisravana, and Rudra, and Kala, and the firmament, the earth, and the ten directions! Thyself incarnate, thou art the lord of the mobile and immobile universe, the creator of all, O thou foremost of all existences.” It would appear that each deity who is invoked is credited by his adorer with being the origin and support of the entire universe, the beginning and the end of all things.
76 In a subsequent page, however, we find the following. “Tell us now, O Brahman, what was the food of the sons of Pandu while they lived in the woods? Was it of the wilderness or was it the produce of cultivation?” Vaisampayana said “Those bulls among men collecting the produce of the wilderness, and killing the deer with pure arrows, first dedicated a portion of the food to the Brahmans and themselves ate the rest.” (Section L.)
77 This is an interesting and noteworthy instance of idolatry attributed to one of the ancient Aryan heroes by the Brahman authors of the “Mahabharata.”
78 “Apsaras—The Apsaras are the celebrated nymphs of Indra’s heaven.... It is said that when they came forth from the waters (at the churning of the ocean) neither the gods nor the Asuras would have them for wives, so they become common to all.... The Apsaras, then, are fairy-like beings, beautiful and voluptuous. Their amours on earth have been numerous, and they are the rewards in Indra’s paradise held out to heroes who fall in battle.”—Prof. Dawson’s “Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology,” etc.
79 This is only a single instance of the perpetual and undying hostility between the celestials on the one hand and the demons on the other.
80 Markandeya’s description of the dissolution and recreation of the world has undoubtedly a certain grandiose character about it, but betrays the extremely limited geographical knowledge of these omniscient sages, whose acquaintance with the earth’s surface is strictly bounded by the Himalayas and the Southern Sea.
81 A smiling fish is, at least, an original idea. In another place we find the following in regard to a very ancient tortoise. “And as he came there we asked him, saying: ‘Dost thou know this King Indra-dyumna?’ And the tortoise reflected for a moment. And his eyes filled with tears, and his heart was much moved, and he trembled all over and was nearly deprived of his senses. And he said with joined hands, ‘Alas, do I not know that one?’”—Vana Parva, p. 604.—P. C. Roy.
82 This Hindu legend of the destruction of the world by water affords materials for a comparison with the Mosaic account of the same event, and the Chaldean story of the deluge, as recorded on the tablets which have been deciphered by the late George Smith.
83 There are, according to the “Mahabharata,” so many easy modes of obtaining a complete release from the penalties of sin, and of attaining heaven, that it would seem that only the most culpable negligence and obstinacy could lead the Hindu to lose his chance of being purged from sin and of enjoying beatitude hereafter. It must be remembered, however, that there are also passages, in which it is emphatically laid down, that purity of heart is an essential and indispensable condition of salvation.—Vana Parva, section cc.
84 This appeal to tradition from a sage who had actually witnessed the destruction and recreation of the entire universe is rather strange.
85 With important differences and limitations the modern doctrine of heredity may be regarded as the scientific analogue of the Hindu doctrine of Karma. One, however, is based on indisputable facts, the other on pure fancy. But whatever their merits or shortcomings, whatever the bases of truth or reasonableness on which they rest, neither the one doctrine nor the other can, unfortunately, afford a rational mind any consolation for the ills and apparent injustice of the present life; and, assuredly, neither the one nor the other can supply any stimulus towards the performance of good actions. A small class of persons in Europe seem to have become profoundly enamoured of the subtle ideas which underlie the doctrine of Karma; but he must be strangely constituted whose sense of justice can be satisfied, or who can derive any comfort in his present struggle against the evils of life, from the thought that he is suffering the consequences of deeds done by his soul in previous and unremembered existences, or can be induced to make for righteousness by the reflection that, after his physical death, the happiness of some other being, possibly a cat, into which his soul transmigrates, will be influenced by his deeds in the present life. But, at the same time, it may be admitted that the doctrine of Karma may certainly, in the case of some races, conduce towards a helpless and hopeless resignation, counterfeiting contentment.
86 From “Ballads and Legends of Hindustan,” by Miss Toru Dutt, the gifted Bengali girl, whose premature death in 1877, at the early age of twenty-one years, caused a sad loss to India.
87 Here we have a glimpse of the simple life of those primitive times.
88 A few of the questions put and answers given on this occasion may afford some insight into Indian modes of thought.
Q. What is it that maketh the sun rise? Who keep him company? Who causeth him to set? In whom is he established?
A. Brahma maketh the sun rise: the gods keep him company: Dharma causeth him to set: and he is established in truth.
Q. What is that which doth not close its eyes while asleep? What is that which doth not move after birth? What is that without a heart? And what is that which swells with its own impetus?
A. A fish doth not close its eyes while asleep: an egg doth not move after birth: a stone is without a heart: a river swelleth with its own impetus.
Q. What constitutes the way? What hath been spoken of as water? What as food? And what as poison?
A. They that are good constitute the way: space has been spoken of as water: the cow is food: a request is poison.
[To this answer the translator, Babu P. C. Roy, appends the following notes among others. “The crutis speak of the cow as the only food, in the following sense. The cow gives milk. The milk gives butter. The butter is used in Homa. The Homa is the cause of the clouds. The clouds give rain. The rain makes the seeds to sprout forth and produce food. Nilakantha endeavours to explain this in a spiritual sense. There is, however, no need of such explanation here.”]
89 This sudden and rather unartistic introduction of the goddess Kali, unmentioned before, looks very much like a clumsy addition to the epic made at a comparatively modern date in the interests of the later developments of Hinduism.
90 The cook in the council chamber! This is a sample of the primitive ideas which underlie the epic.
91 “Mahabharata Udyoga Parva,” section clx.
92 “The plain of Kurukshetra,” says Mr. Talboys Wheeler, “is generally identified with the field of Panipat, which lies to the northwest of the modern city of Delhi. This plain is famous in modern history as being the site of two of the greatest and most decisive battles that have been fought in modern times. It was here that Baber, in A.D. 1525, overthrew the Afghan rulers at Delhi and established the dynasty of the Moguls, and it was here in 1761 that Ahmad Shah Abdali, the Sovereign of Cabul, inflicted such a crushing blow upon the Mahrattas as indirectly cleared the way for the establishment of British supremacy.”—Note to Wheeler’s “History of India,” vol. i., p. 272. The identification of Panipat with Kurukshetra in the above passage is incorrect, and probably led to the disappointment experienced by Sir Edwin Arnold when he visited Panipat and found that the inhabitants of the place were ignorant of the history of Kurukshetra and its precise position (see his “India Revisited,” p. 193). It is near Thanesar and not Panipat that the Brahmans find Kurukshetra, and the various incidents of the old story are associated with many spots in that locality. In Chapter III., entitled “The Sacred Land,” I have given some account of the modern aspects of Kurukshetra.
93 These are large numbers indeed, but the poet does not limit himself to them, and in one of his flights of imagination speaks of a hundred millions of warriors having been slain in ten days by a single hero (“Bhisma Parva,” section xiv.). In another moment of inspiration he places “a hundred millions and twenty thousand” cars in a certain strategical position on the field (“Bhisma Parva,” section l.). There is, in the “Mahabharata” generally, an affectation of precision in regard to numbers, as when the narrator informs us that such a one was hit with three arrows, another with four, and a third with seven; but there is no attempt to preserve consistency, and, whenever the bard is so disposed, he revels without scruple in the biggest figures imaginable.
94 Here is a reference to the images of gods and goddesses existing at the period of the great war, which is both important and suggestive. They are also referred to again in section cxiii. of the “Bhisma Parva.”
95 Bhisma’s standard was a gold palmyra palm; Drona’s a golden altar; Duryodhana’s an elephant wrought in gems; Arjuna carried on his car a banner whereon was seated a gigantic ape. Each chief of note had his own distinguishing standard or banner.
96 This famous dialogue is too long to be dealt with in this place and too important to be passed over altogether; so I have appended a note on the subject, to which the reader’s attention is invited.
97 This allusion to the Mlecchas and Aryas fighting side by side is interesting and noteworthy. Later on, we shall have occasion to note the presence of Rakshasas also in either army.
98 Millions upon millions. Vide section cxv. of the “Bhisma Parva.”
99 “Then with a thousand arrows well shot, Pandu’s son Arjuna, famed for his skill in battle, shrouded Bhisma on all sides. That arrowy net, however, of Partha, Bhisma the son of Cantanu, baffled with an arrowy net (of his own).... And the successive flights of arrows shot from Bhisma’s bow were seen to be dispersed by the shafts of Arjuna. And so the flights of arrows shot by Arjuna, cut off by the arrows of Ganga’s son, all fell down on the ground.”—Bhisma Parva, section lii.
100 It is worthy of note that Rakshasas are present in both the Kaurava and Pandava armies.
101 “Mahabharata, Bhisma Parva,” section lxix. That the numbers are intended to be precise will be apparent from the following passage which is quoted merely as a sample:—“Then Bhisma, the grandsire of the Kauravas, struck Arjuna with seventy-seven arrows, and Drona (struck him) with five-and-twenty, and Kripa with fifty, and Duryodhana with four-and-sixty, and Cala with nine arrows, and Drona’s son, that tiger among men, with sixty, and Vikarna with three arrows, and Saindhana with nine, and Cakuni with five. And Artayani pierced Pandu’s son with three broad-headed arrows. And though pierced on all sides by them with sharp arrows, that great bowman, that mighty-armed (warrior) wavered not, like a mountain that is pierced with arrows.”—Ibid., section lii.
102 “Mahabharata, Bhisma Parva,” section xiv.
103 “Mahabharata, Bhisma Parva,” section lxxxvii.
104 Drona, being a Brahman, it would never have done for him to have actually died by the sword of Dhrista-dyumna. Yet this prince was born expressly to destroy Drona—hence this attempt to reconcile Brahman sensitiveness and pretensions with the details of the old legend.
105 This description of Duryodhana’s death scene is based upon the version in Mr. Talboys Wheeler’s “History of India,” vol. i. pp. 351-352, which is derived from a translation of the epic in the library of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, supposed to have been prepared by Prof. H. H. Wilson.
106 The “Mahabharata” quoted in “History of India,” by J. Talboys Wheeler, vol. i., pp. 386-390.
107 Ibid., p. 401.
108 “A Pilgrimage to the Field of the Mahabharata,” by Madho Ram, B.A., “Punjab Magazine,” June, 1890.
109 It is worth noting that it was on the western side of the lake that the Pandavas encamped, and Kauravas on the eastern side.
110 “Archæological Survey of India Reports,” vol. xiv. (Punjab), by General Cunningham, p. 90.
111 With the decay of Thanesar there has been a marked falling off in the number of pilgrims to the sacred places. “The sanitary arrangements introduced by the British authorities to prevent the spread of disease are said to be most unpopular and to deter large numbers of pilgrims from attending.... It is said that, whereas in former days great men used to march to Thanesar with small armies of followers and attendants they now come by rail with a few servants to the nearest station and return in the same way.”—Gazetteer of the Ambala District, pp. 73-74. On the other hand, the railways must bring to the shrines many who could not have spared the time or the money to visit them under the old conditions of travel.
112 “A Pilgrimage to the Field of the Mahabharata,” by Madho Ram, B.A., “Punjab Magazine,” June, 1890.
113 Vide Dr. Lorinser’s Essay on the subject in the “Indian Antiquary,” vol. ii. and the reply thereto prefixed to the translation of the “Bhagavatgita,” by Kashi Nath Trimbak Telang, M.A., LL.B.
114 Arjuna had apparently forgotten that he had already encountered and defeated these venerable elders of his in the interests of the King of Panchala (p. 162).
115 As in sacrifices the gods derived sustenance from the ethereal portion of the burnt-offering, so, no doubt, the corporeal frame (especially when cremated) supplied an ethereal one for the disembodied soul, which was not yet entirely freed from the trammels of matter though released from the bonds of its grosser forms.
116 There is a most important reason in favour of the special exception in regard to the performance of work in the case of sacrifices, for, as Krishna explains: “From food are all creatures; from rain is the production of food; rain is produced from sacrifice; and sacrifice is the outcome of work.”
117 Neither the joys of heaven nor the pains of hell could, in the view of Hindu theologians, be eternal. When an embodied soul has, by good actions, austerities, etc., acquired sufficient merit, it is permitted to taste the joys of heaven for a length of time proportional to its deserts. When these are exhausted it returns to be born again on this earth. Similarly the embodied soul whose evil deeds deserve punishment serves its time in hell and then returns to be re-born on the earth. In either case there is after re-birth no recollection of previous existences or of former joys and sorrows. But, in heaven or in hell, a recollection would be retained of the last state on earth, of which, indeed, the celestial or infernal condition would be only a sort of continuation.
118 “Absence of vanity, absence of ostentation, abstention from injury, forgiveness, uprightness, devotion to preceptor, purity, constancy, self-restraint, indifference to objects of sense, absence of egoism, perception of the misery and evil of birth, death, decrepitude and disease, freedom from attachment, absence of sympathy for son, wife, home, and the rest, and constant equanimity of heart on attainment of good and evil, unswerving devotion to me without meditation on anything else, frequenting of lonely places, distaste for concourse of men, constancy in the knowledge of the relation of the individual self to the supreme, perception of the object of the knowledge of truth—all this is called knowledge, all that which is contrary to this is ignorance. That which is the object of knowledge I will (now) declare (to thee) knowing which, one obtaineth immortality. (It is) the supreme Brahma, having no beginning, who is said to be neither existent nor non-existent, etc., etc.”—Krishna, in “Bhagavatgita.”
119 Those who have a leaning towards esoterics and mysticism may read “Discourse on the Bhagavatgita,” by T. Subba Row, B.A., B.L., F.T.S. (Bombay, 1888), from which they will learn, pp. 56-58, that the Pandavas represent in reality the five elements which constitute man or rather Humanity; that “the Kauravas are no other than the evil propensities of man, his vices and their allies,” and that “the philosophy of Krishna teaches Arjuna that he must conquer these, however closely related to him they may be, before he can secure the kingdom or the mastery over self.”
120 “Republic,” book x., chapters 614-621.
121 “The name as commonly used applies to Vishnu, and is that under which he was first worshipped.”—Dowson’s “Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology.”
122 Of Mandara the poet says: “Upwards it riseth eleven thousand Yojanas and descendeth downwards as much.”
123 The goddess of fortune.
124 If these poems are really ancient, I think we need not have any hesitation in concluding that the Zenana system was in force in India in early times, and was not introduced, as many Hindus declare, after the conquest of India by the Muhammadans. Possibly the purdah was made more strict after the Muslims established themselves south of the Himalayas.
125 This Kali is the Kali-yuga personified as the spirit of evil (Dowson’s “Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology”).
126 I desire to draw special attention to this interesting passage, which, in its native simplicity, throws considerable light upon the ideas and sentiments which lie at the root of the practice of the worship of the unseen powers who are believed to govern the lives of men.
127 This shows clearly that widow re-marriage was allowed.
128 “The History of Indian Literature,” by Dr. Albrecht Weber, pp. 185-188.
129 “Tarikh-i-Badauni” of Abdul Kadir Badauni, Elliot’s “Muhammadan Historians of India,” vol. v., pp. 537-538.
130 “Mahabharata, Bhisma Parva,” section lix., p. 224.
131 “The favourite idea of classical antiquity was not the idea of progress, but the idea of a cycle of changes in which departure from the original unity and return to it, or, as we should say, differentiation and integration, are not united, but follow each other. This idea seems to be adopted even by Aristotle.”—Caird’s “Evolution of Religion,” vol. i., p. 21.
132 What god can Sanjaya refer to? Surely it must be fate, inexorable destiny, of which he is thinking.
133 “Mahabharata, Udyoga Parva,” section clix.
134 “Mahabharata, Bhisma Parva,” section lix., p. 217, and section lxxxii., p. 295.
135 However, the reader who considers such historical inferences sufficiently interesting and important, may consult the articles entitled “Early History of Northern India,” by F. W. Hewitt, in the “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,” 1888-89-90.
136 Renan’s “Recollections of my Youth,” pp. 72-75.
137 “All creatures support life by living upon one another.”—“Mahabharata, Bhisma Parva,” p. 16.
138 Deut. xxv. 5 10, and Gen. xxxviii.
139 Manu, ix. 59, 60 and 64.
140 On the subject of Niyoga the reader may consult Sir Henry Maine’s “Dissertation on Early Law and Custom,” pp. 100 and 107, and “A Treatise on Hindu Law and Usage,” by John D. Mayne, chapter iv.
141 The abandonment of animal food and ardent spirits was probably due to Buddhistic influence, though Buddha himself, as is well known, ate pork. I have been assured by well-informed Indian gentlemen that within the last few years there has been a marked tendency amongst many sections of the people to take to a flesh diet and alcoholic stimulants—in fact to revert to the old Aryan habits in these respects.