Читать книгу The History of Hinduism and Buddhism - Charles Eliot - Страница 37

These facts go far to explain some peculiar features of Hinduism. Compared with Islam or Christianity its doctrines are extraordinarily fluid, multiform and even inconsistent: its practice, though rarely lax, is also very various in different castes and districts. The strangeness of the phenomenon is diminished if one considers that the uniformity and rigidity of western creeds are due to their political more than to their religious character. Like the wind, the spirit bloweth where it listeth: it is governed by no laws but those which its own reverence imposes: it lives in changing speculation. But in Europe it has been in double bondage to the logic of Greece and the law of Rome. India deals in images and metaphor: Greece in dialectic. The original thought of Christianity had something of this Indian quality, though more sober and less fantastic, with more limitation and less imagination. On this substratum the Greeks reared their edifices of dialectic and when the quarrels of theologians began to disturb politics, the state treated the whole question from a legal point of view. It was assumed that there must be a right doctrine which the state should protect or even enforce, and a wrong doctrine which it should discourage or even forbid. Hence councils, creeds and persecutions. The whole position is logical and legal. The truth has been defined: those who do not accept it harm not only themselves but others: therefore they should be restrained and punished.

But in religious matters Hindus have not proceeded in this way as a rule. They have adopted the attitude not of a judge who decides, but of the humane observer who sees that neither side is completely right or completely wrong and avoids expressing his opinion in a legal form. Hindu teachers have never hesitated to proclaim their views as the whole and perfect truth. In that indeed they do not yield to Christian theologians but their pronouncements are professorial rather than judicial and so diverse and yet all so influential that the state, though bound to protect sound doctrine, dare not champion one more than the other. Religious persecution is rare. It is not absent but the student has to search for instances, whereas in Christian Europe they are among the most conspicuous facts of history.

Restless, subtle and argumentative as Hindu thought is, it is less prone than European theology to the vice of distorting transcendental ideas by too stringent definition. It adumbrates the indescribable by metaphors and figures. It is not afraid of inconsistencies which may illustrate different aspects of the infinite, but it rarely tries to cramp the divine within the limits of a logical phrase. Attempts to explain how the divine and human nature were combined in Christ convulsed the Byzantine Empire and have fettered succeeding generations with their stiff formulae. It would be rash to say that the ocean of Hindu theological literature contains no speculations about the incarnations of Vishnu similar to the views of the Nestorians, Monophysites and Catholics, but if such exist they have never attracted much interest or been embodied in well-known phrases[129]. The process by which a god can be born as a man, while continuing to exist as a god, is not described in quasi-legal language. Similarly the Soma offered in sacrifices is a god as well as a drink. But though the ritual of this sacrifice has produced an infinity of discussion and exegesis, no doctrine like transubstantiation or consubstantiation has assumed any prominence.

The Hindu has an extraordinary power of combining dogma and free thought, uniformity and variety. For instance it is held that the Vedas are a self-existent, eternal revelation made manifest to ancient sages and that their correct recitation ensures superhuman results. Yet each Veda exists in several recensions handed down by oral tradition in separate schools, and though the exact text and pronunciation are matters of the utmost importance, diversities of opinion respecting them are tolerated and honoured. Further, though the early scriptures were preserved with scrupulous care the canon was never closed. It is impossible to say how many Upanishads there are, nor does a Hindu think the less of an Upanishad because it is not found in a certain list. And in mediaeval and modern times these ancient sacred books have been replaced for all except Brahmans by more recent Sanskrit works, or by a vernacular literature which, though having no particular imprimatur, claims the same authority as the Vedas[130].

The only essential tenets of Hinduism are recognition of the Brahman caste and divine authority of the Vedas. Those who publicly deny these doctrines as the Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs have done, put themselves outside the pale, but the recognition required to ensure orthodoxy or at least to avoid excommunication must not be compared with that implied by such phrases as recognizing the authority of the Bible, or the supremacy of the Pope. The utmost latitude of interpretation is allowed and the supposed followers of the Veda comprise sects whose beliefs seem to have no relation to one another or to the Veda, philosophic atheists and demonolaters whose religious ideas hardly rise above those of African savages.

One explanation may be, that every nation insists on liberty at the expense of logic in the matters which interest it most. We do this in politics. It might be difficult to make an untravelled oriental understand how parliamentary institutions can continue for a day, how socialists and republicans can take part in the government of a monarchical country, and why the majority do not muzzle the opposition. Yet Englishmen prefer to let this curious illogical muddle continue rather than tolerate some symmetrical and authoritative system which would check free speech and individuality. It is the same in Indian religion. In all ages the Hindu has been passionately devoted to speculation. He will bear heavy burdens in the way of priestly exaction, social restrictions, and elaborate ceremonies, but he will not allow secular or even ecclesiastical authority to cramp and school his religious fancy, nor will he be deterred from sampling an attractive form of speculation merely because it is pronounced unorthodox by the priesthood, and the priesthood, being themselves Hindus, are discreet in the use of anathemas. They insist not so much on particular doctrines and rites as on the principle that whatever the doctrine, whatever the rite, they must be the teachers and officiants. In critical and revolutionary times the Brahmans have often assured their pre-eminence by the judicious recognition of heresies. In all ages there has been a conservative clique which restricted religion to ceremonial observances. Again and again some intellectual or emotional outburst has swept away such narrow limits and proclaimed doctrines which seemed subversive of the orthodoxy of the day. But they have simply become the orthodoxy of the morrow, under the protection of the same Brahman caste. The assailants are turned into champions, and in time the bold reformers stiffen into antiquated saints.

Hinduism has not been made but has grown. It is a jungle not a building. It is a living example of a great national paganism such as might have existed in Europe if Christianity had not become the state religion of the Roman Empire, if there had remained an incongruous jumble of old local superstitions, Greek philosophy and oriental cults such as the worship of Mithra or Serapis. Yet the parallel is not exact, for in Rome many of the discordant religious elements remained exotic, whereas in India they all, whatever their origin, became Indian and smack of the soil. There was wanting in European paganism the bond of union supplied by the Brahmans who by sometimes originating, sometimes tolerating and adapting, have managed to set their seal upon all Indian beliefs.