The Historians' History of the World 02

Hellenic culture then found its way to India, and it may have been through Greek influence that many sciences and arts, such as knowledge of the zodiac, scientific astronomy, minting, etc., were first adopted in the land of the Ganges. The Hellenic spirit seems to have been influential in the development of poetry and plastic arts, at least in that of the drama and architecture. Greek culture also led to an early introduction of Christian opinions into India; in the idea of a personal god, which later became prominent and in the evolution of the doctrine of Vishnu-Krishna the influence of Christian ideas is not to be ignored.

In the Macedonian and Alexandrian period, when India came in contact with western Asiatic and Greek culture, Indian spiritual life had come to a standstill, the creative spirit was extinct. The speculative and inquiring spirit had brought forward an abundance of theories and systems, and applied them to life with astonishing consistency; and now it was exhausted, and left to posterity the wonderful images as strict forms and categories for the inner and outer life.

With the peculiar tenacity of the oriental nature, the Indians have retained throughout all centuries, down to the present time, the religious conceptions, the fantastic doctrine of the gods, the oppressing order of caste, the strict asceticism, the faith in the second birth, and in short all the forms and theories, which crippled and broke the moral and productive force of the nation. However many conquerors put their iron heel on the neck of the people, however many storms and wars spread death and desolation over the sacred land, these principles of Indian life survived all changes, and withstood all oppression, persecution, and attempts at conversion.

The despotism and caste power, impregnating the Indian nature, have imbued it with a force of endurance and passive resistance which could not be broken by any outside power. Cunning, artifice, dissimulation, lying, and deceit, the weapons and vices of all the weak and oppressed, helped the Indian to bear his painful position. He bowed under dominion without being broken in character; and as death always appeared to him a gain, and asceticism deadened him to suffering, he always suffered death with composure and stoicism.b

Having read an account of the rise of Brahmanism we may well examine its code of morals somewhat more fully before passing on to Buddhism.

The Vedas

The religion taught in the Institutes is derived from the Vedas, to which scriptures they refer in every page. There are four Vedas; but the fourth is rejected by many of the learned Hindus, and the number reduced to three.

The primary doctrine of the Vedas is the Unity of God. “There is in truth,” say repeated texts, “but one Deity, the Supreme Spirit, the Lord of the Universe, whose work is the universe.”

Among the creatures of the Supreme Being are some superior to man, who should be adored, and from whom protection and favours may be obtained through prayer. The most frequently mentioned of these are the gods of the elements, the stars, and the planets; but other personified powers and virtues likewise appear. “The three principal manifestations of the Divinity (Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva), with other personified attributes and energies, and most of the other gods of Hindu mythology, are indeed mentioned, or at least indicated, in the Veda; but the worship of deified heroes is no part of the system.” Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, are rarely named, enjoy no preëminence, nor are they ever objects of special adoration; and Mr. Colebrooke could discover no passage in which their incarnations were suggested. There seem to have been no images and no visible types of the objects of worship. The doctrine of monotheism prevails throughout the Institutes; and it is declared towards the close that, of all duties, “the principal is to obtain from the Upanishads a true knowledge of one supreme God.” But although Manu has preserved the idea of the unity of God, his opinions on the nature and operations of the Divinity have fallen off from the purity of their original. This is chiefly apparent in his account of the creation. There are passages in the Vedas which declare that God is “the material, as well as the efficient, cause of the universe; the potter by whom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is fabricated”: yet those best qualified to interpret conceive that these expressions are not to be taken literally, and mean no more than to assert the origin of all things from the same first cause. The general tendency of the Vedas is to show that the substance as well as the form of all created beings was derived from the will of the Self-existing Cause.