TWO BOOKS ON INDIAN RELIGION AND CASTE.*

THE two books before us deal by different methods and from very different points of view with the same subject. Dr. Hopkins, though he calls his closely printed volume of five hundred and ninety-five pages a handbook, gives an elaborate and extremely interesting history of the growth and develop- ment of the philosophical element side by side with the stagnant persistence of faith in God and gods, in the sort of tropical jungle of oppressive ritualistic observances, gross popular superstitions, and lofty moral conceptions, which are • (1.) The Religions of India. By Edward Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D. (beirsio), Professor of Sanskrit and Comparstive Philology in Bryn Mswr College. London : kdward Arnold.—(2) Hisda Castes and Sects: an Exposition of the Origin of the Hindu Caste System and the Bearing of the Sects Towards Each Other and Towards Other Religious Systems. By Jogendra Nath BhattaoharYa, ALA, D.L., President of the College of Pandits, Nadiya. Calontta : Thanker, Spink, sod Co. the material of the various religions of India. The two great rationalising heresies of Jainism and Buddhism are treated in their place as side movements. Bat, as is too much forgotten in the present day, the main stream of Indian religion is Brahmanism, and its history is to be traced in the literature of the Vedas, the Brahmanas, the Upanishads, and the Hindoo Epics. Of this literature Dr. Hopkins gives a fascinating and luminous account. It would be too much to say that there are no pages of his book where the wood is not occasionally hidden by the trees. But this effect could hardly be avoided in treating of a subject so intricate, com- plicated, and full of multitudinous detail. The complexity of the matter reflects the complexity of the Oriental mind, which differs from the Occidental mind immeasurably in its power of holding mutually contradictory propositions at the same time, and developing both horns of any dilemma into a forest of intricate ramifications. In dealing with Indian religion or philosophy, to simplify is generally to misrepre- sent, and Dr. Hopkins has done wisely to incur the incon- venience of overcrowding with detail, rather than to clear up his pages by means of arbitrary classifications and sharp divisions where the bewildering truth is that every develop- ment overlaps every other. All the same, however, one hails with thankfulness an occasional pithy summary like this one, of the progress from polytheism through the out- skirts of monotheism, to the mysteries of pantheistic humani- tarianism :—" In the Vedic hymns, man fears the gods and imagines God ; in the Brahmanas, man subdues the gods and fears God ; in the Upanishads, man ignores the gods and becomes God."

Upon caste Dr. Hopkins touches only incidentally. Bat Mr. Bhattacharya tells us more about caste than about reli- gion, and so his book becomes conveniently complementary to the other work. It gives a catalogue of the many different castes and tribes of India, and describes their origins, their privileges, and their disabilities,—all in an orderly fashion very handy for reference. In the chapter that discusses the social influence of caste, Mr. Bhattacharya frankly declares himself of the opinion that the system is very far from being a source of unmixed evil. Religion, on the other hand, he regards as an instrument shaped and wielded by priests for the torture and stultification of the human race, and he recognises no good in it at all.

"It has certainly nothing to do with the perception of the Infinite," is our Hindoo author's last word about religion in India. And yet, yearning after the Infinite, aspiration to know the Absolute and be absorbed in it, is the dominant note of the poetry of the Vedas, and the philosophy of the Brahmanas and the Upanishads ; and such knowledge, such absorption, is the end sought after in the asceticism alike of the orthodox Brahman and the heretical Jainist, as well as in the medita- tions and renunciations of the unbelieving Buddhist. To touch the Absolute in the Infinite, to get that knowledge of good and evil which makes men as gods—that is the aim ; and though ritual and self-mortification have been abused in India, as elsewhere, by mercenary and ambitious priesthoods, yet they were not invented for abuse, but discovered by the natural conscience as the means of checking the wandering tendencies of fleshly desire and mystical speculation, and keeping body and soul to the narrow path of the supreme quest. Scattered throughout Dr. Hopkins's analysis of the successive phases of Indian religion, we find passages quoted from the Brahmanistical and Buddhistic writings which so startle us by their closeness in word and thought to the teaching of our own Scriptures, that we are inclined to suspect him of having strayed inadvertently into the books of the Christian mystics. But then, close following upon the heels of some coincidence of thought, will come an equally startling assumption of some fundamental difference in belief and aim. For, after all, this Oriental thirst for knowledge of the infinite, is for knowledge as a good in itself,—not as understanding of a will to be obeyed and a personality to be loved. And all the good done by the way, is done only for the sake of getting knowledge. Everywhere one finds the mind of man seeking after God in the sense in which the Absolute is God ; no- where any recognition of an authentic message from God to man which it is man's happiness to accept.

In some respects the most attractive section of Dr. Hopkins's book is that which deals with the Vedic hymns and the cosmogony of divinities who were really believed in and

really worshipped in the earliest stages of Indian religion. Translations of some of the hymns are given, which bring us very near the heart of the people who used them. Of these one of the most striking is a prose rendering of a hymn to Varuna, the water-god, to whom is ascribed power both over Nature and the heart of man :—

" I will sing forth unto the universal king a high deep prayer, dear to renowned Varuna, who, as a butcher a hide, has struck earth apart (from the sky) for the sun. Varuna has extended air in trees, strength in horses, milk in cows, and has laid wisdom in hearts ; fire in water ; the sun in the sky ; soma in the stone. Varuna has inverted his water-barrel and let the two worlds with the space between flow (with rain). With this (heavenly water- barrel) he, the king of every created thing, wets the whole world, as a rain does a meadow. He wets the world, both earth and heaven, when he, Varuna, chooses to milk out (rain)—and then do the mountains clothe themselves with cloud, and even the strongest men grow weak. Yet another great and marvellous power of the renowned spirit (Asura) will I proclaim, this, that standing in mid-air he has measured earth with the sun, as if with a measuring rod. (It is due to) the marvellous power of the wisest god, which none ever resisted, that into the one confluence run the rivers and pour into it, and fill it not. 0 Parana, loosen whatever sin we have committed to bosom-friend, comrade, or brother ; to our own house, or to the stranger; what (we) have sinned like gamblers at play, real (sin), or what we have not known. Make loose, as it were, all these things, 0 god Varuna, and may we be dear to thee hereafter."

Elsewhere Varuna is invoked as "the Son of Boundlessness, the very Strong." The exact functions of this god, his rank among other divinities, and the limits of his power are points difficult of definition, as may be said of all divinities in all cosmogonies. But there can be no doubt either about the spirit of faith and worship in which the ascription is made in these hymns, or the sincerity of the cry for release from sin with which they conclude. In other hymns, celebrating the god Indra, we find a very interesting recognition of a beginning of scepticism even at this early stage of religion. The omnipotence of Indra is magnificently proclaimed :— "He who, just born, with thought endowed, the foremost, Himself a god hemmed in the gods with power; Before whose breath, and at whose manhood's greatness, The two worlds trembled; he, ye folk, is Indra.

He who the earth made firm as it was shaking. And made repose the forward tottering mountains ; Who measured wide the inter-space aerial, And heaven established ; he, ye folk, is Indra.

Whom, awful, they (yet) ask about: where is he ? ' And speak thus of him, saying, he exists not '— He makes like dice his foe's prosperity vanish. Believe on him ; and he, ye folk, is Indra."

In another hymn in honour of Indra, the god is made to declare that he is nourished by " well-directed " sacrifices; and in this assertion Dr. Hopkins sees the beginning of the evil devices of sacerdotalism,—the exaltation of the priest upon whose ministrations the nourishment, and therefore the existence, of the gods depends. It is in the Briihmanas that the ritual of the sacrifice reaches its full development, and these books mark the period of priestoraft. Of this ritual Dr. Hopkins says :—

" Even a rdsumd of one comparatively short ceremony would be so long and tedious that the explication of the intricate formalities would scarcely be a sufficient reward Sym- bolism without folk-lore, only with the imbecile imaginings of a daft mysticism, is the soul of it; and its outer form is a certain number of formuls3, mechanical movements, oblations, and slaughterings."

This is the religion Mr. Bhattacharya has allowed himself to study too exclusively. The doctrine of Karma and the rebirth, though they are found elsewhere also, belong

especially to the philosophy of the Upanishads. We are here in the region of the subtlest metaphysical speculation,—the very word "Upanishad" being a text of controversy. It may be used, as we use it now, as the title of a philosophical work, or it may stand for knowledge derived from esoteric teaching, or for the esoteric doctrine itself. Its literal meaning is "sitting below ; " but then it is doubtful whether the name is given to the books because their teaching was delivered in lectures to students "sitting below," or because the books are subsidiary to the Brahmanas. But whatever their title denotes or connotes, it is in these books of pantheistic speculation tinged

with humanitarianism that Dr. Hopkins finds the spirit of the purest religion :—

"It is not a new philosophy, it is a new religion that the Upanishads offer. This is no religion of rites and ceremonies, although the cult is retained as helpful in disciplining and *aching ; it is a religion for sorrowing humanity. It is a

religion that comforts the afflicted, and gives to the soul that peace which the world cannot give.' In the sectarian Upanishads this bliss of religion is ever present. 'Through knowing Him, who is more subtile than subtile, who is creator of everything, who has many forms, who embraces everything, the Blessed Lord,—one attains to peace without end Our limits of space make it impossible for us to give any- thing like a complete account of the contents of Dr. Hopkins's book. We have left ourselves no room to speak of the chapters devoted to the epic literature, to the law-books which popularised the Brahmanical belief and cult, to early Hindooism or the modern Hindoo sects, though all abound in deeply interesting matter. But we warmly recommend all who want to understand the present position of religion among the native populations of India, and the various ways by which that position has been reached, to read the book for themselves, it is full of information, and still fuller of luminous suggestion.