Читать книгу The Story of Oriental Philosophy - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 6

Table of Contents

INDIAN philosophy may be said to begin with the “Vedanta” (or end of the Veda), which includes the famous books known as the Upanishads and the great commentaries upon them, and for this reason my account of the Vedas shall be slight, though the seeds of the philosophies are in them.

The Vedas are not only the earliest records of Aryan thought but also among the earliest that survive of the human mind. The Rig and Yajur Vedas long precede the earliest beginnings of Greek civilization. They are posterior only to the Egyptian dynasties, of which we know little but records interesting chiefly to the student of dead empires. The Vedas are human and living. There are four: the Rig, Yajur, Sâma, and Atharva. Some Indian scholars assign the Rig-Veda to 6,000b.c. Others to the fifteenth centuryb.c. But it should be remembered that a very long period must have elapsed between the time when the hymns were composed and that when they were collected. The literary age is entered when collections are compiled.

The Rig-Veda is a collection of more than one thousand hymns which the Aryans brought with them to India. They were used during the sacrifices, of which the Yajur-Veda gives the ritual. They are partly in prose, partly in verse. The Sâma-Veda contains liturgies. The Atharva-Veda is the latest of the four and interesting for its relation to magic, spells, and charms. It shows a gradual tincturing of the Aryan mind by the worships of the subject peoples. For this reason it had not at first the high position of the other Vedas.

Each Veda has three parts—the mantras, or hymns; the Brahmanas, or precepts and religious duties; the Upanishads, which discuss philosophy. The Upanishads contain the background or foundation of the whole subsequent thought of India, and their value to the world is inestimable. It will be seen that the hymns represent the poets, or aspiration of the race; the Brahmanas the priests, and questions of conduct; the Upanishads the philosophers, or intellect touched with spirituality; and thus we have religion and philosophy as closely and naturally wedded as, for the welfare of mankind, they should always be.

The Rig-Veda is incomplete and much is lost. The hymns are addressed to nature-gods. The poets spoke of rain and it was considered that this implied a Rainer. Thus indu (rain) became Indra the Rainer. They spoke of fire and light, and these became a god Agni, whose name we (the far-off cousins of the Aryans) take in vain when we “ignite” anything. They spoke of a Heavenly Father, Dyaus-pitar, whose name we repeat when we say “Jupiter,” its latter half being preserved in our own word “father.” Though in this way there arose many divine agents to be propitiated, the Aryan people perceived them at times as facets of the one truth and manifestations in different activities of one divine spirit. Thus some of the Vedic poets openly stated the belief that enthroned above these many names is One. They said:

The sages called that One in many ways. They called it Agni, Yama, Matarishvan.

That One breathed breathlessly by Itself. Other than It there has been nothing since.

Here we have the germ of a monotheistic religion and a unifying philosophy. Among bygone mythological details, we find in these hymns passages which catch the mind with a quick sense of human interest and presuppose deep reflection.

I do not know what kind of thing I am.

Mysterious, bound, my mind wonders.

In that one sentence may be found the germ of philosophy. For all philosophy begins with wonder.

Thus wondering, they conceived the gods as those who give to men. Their collective name of Deva implies a giver. The sun god is a giver of light and warmth. Its secondary meaning is the Shining One. Allied with this and springing from the same source is our own “divine.”

So even in those early hymns they were feeling after a One Cause, and gradually as wonder increased and speculation strengthened, the higher thought of these Indian thinkers passed into a recognition of monotheism, which they were to transcend later.

“Priests and poets with words make into many the hidden reality which is One,” they said in the Rig-Veda.

As Max Müller writes: “Whatever may be the age when the Rig-Veda collection of hymns was finished, before that age the conviction had been formed that there is but One Being, neither male nor female, raised high above all conditions and limitations of personality and of human nature. In fact the Vedic poets had arrived at a conception of the Godhead which was reached once more by some of the Christian philosophers at Alexandria, but which even yet is beyond the reach of many who call themselves Christians.”

But because the masses cannot comprehend philosophical abstractions this Divine is sometimes called “He” as well as “It.” It was recognized that the Divine can be worshiped in spirit and in truth even under the personal conception of one God, and though there were those who could breathe in a rarer air of wisdom they were the first to realize that the soul must seek the bread for her own nourishing and that what will nourish one will not nourish another who is on a different spiritual plane. An Inquisition has always been inconceivable in India.

Here is a hymn of questions, very marvelous considering its remote antiquity. The translation is Professor Max Müller’s. It is a poem of creation.

There was then neither what is nor what is not.

There was no sky nor the heaven beyond.

What covered?

Where was it and in Whose shelter?

Was the water the deep abyss?

There was no death, hence there was nothing immortal.

There was no distinction between night and day.

That One breathed by itself without breath.

Since then there has been nothing other than It.

Darkness there was in the beginning, a sea without light.

From the germ that lay covered by the husk that One was born by the power of heat.

Love overcame It in the beginning, the seed springing from mind.

Poets having searched in their heart found by wisdom the seed of what is, in what is not.

Their ray was stretched across. Was It below or was It above?

There were seed-bearers, there were Powers; self-power below and Will above.

Who then knows, who has declared from whence was born this creation?

The Gods came later.

Who then knows whence it arose?

He from whom this creation arose, whether He made or did not make it only the highest seer in the highest heaven knows. Or perhaps he does not know.

That is to say perhaps the gods themselves cannot read the riddle of the universe.

This poem conceives a period when there was no Personal God, or rather he was as yet unmanifested by the Absolute Reality which is beyond all finite reason or words. This Ancient is older than and beyond any state of life or death that we have power to conceive. The depth of this conception is astonishing, and it will be realized that a primitive people who could thus reflect and state their case would certainly go far in the field of metaphysics and philosophy.

Their thought indeed developed swiftly; but before following it I shall say something of the social order it developed and that in reaction developed it, because it is difficult to realize the stories in which, as in parables, much of the wisdom of the Upanishads is conveyed, without setting them in their own background of the life of the people. For this reason I now turn to “The Laws of Manu,” that famous book which holds such a high position in India and gives so perfect a picture of the life of the ancient Aryan communities that it was granted a divine origin by the beliefs of the people.

“The Laws of Manu” is a compilation of most venerable laws and customs written in a style that insures popular understanding. It would be impossible to say to what antiquity they may be traced. The compilation is variously dated at from 1200 to 500b.c. Few books will better repay study by those interested in social questions and especially in those concerning the western problems of democracy. Though named “The Laws of Manu” it should rather be “The Laws of the Manavas.” The word “manu” has its root in the verb “to think”; and the collection is said to be “the quintessence of the Vedas” and therefore of all knowledge. It gives us the dharma of the Indian people to this day.

What is “dharma”—a word occurring so often in Indian philosophy and having no one equivalent in English? I should describe it as the national spirit, which consecrates social custom, tradition, conduct, and religion, and is a uniting force, which in greater or less degree conditions the life and thought of every person born in that nation. But though inside the national circle it is a unifying energy, outside it is a dividing one and the source of much misunderstanding; for every nation has its own dharma, nor is it possible that any should wholly understand that of another or that it should adopt it. One may perhaps call it the national spirit, though that does not give its origin.

What then are the laws and precepts which built up the Indian dharma—so difficult for the West to understand, so easy for it to misjudge through surface judgments?

“The Laws of Manu” saw life steadily and saw it whole, as it applied to young and old, to men and women. They are founded on the Four Orders and the Four Castes. Varna, the Indian word for caste, denotes originally color division. The Four Orders are those of the student, the householder, the forest-dweller, and the ascetic who has renounced the world. These are the Ashramas, and all these are founded upon the householder. Without him there is no cohesion. The Four Castes are the Brahmin or teacher, the warrior, the merchant, and the laborer. Of these the first three are the “twice-born” castes. “And outside these is no fifth class,” say the Laws.

It is interesting to compare this statement with the jungle of castes that has since grown up in India with their bewildering cruelties and fetters. Manu states that all men naturally belong to one of these four divisions, and that all are rooted in the life of the householder because he nourishes and supports the others with food for the body and the mind. “Therefore the householder occupies the position of the eldest.”

But this division means little in India today. Brahmins are now not only priests and teachers but are found in almost every calling, and this is the case also with caste artizans. Indian caste has nothing in common with western social divisions. A servant may be of much higher caste than his master. It is conceivable there that it would be a most terrible mésalliance for the man servant of a house to marry the wealthy daughter of its master. I have known a Brahmin official who would have died sooner than eat with his royal master, so much was his sovereign’s caste lower than his own. Yet even in the present aberrations of caste may be seen the original germs of a dharma not only wise but inevitable where a ruling race had to make good its position among races of different color and lower racial types. The caste system was a vital necessity to the Aryan race and still has certain virtues.

To return to “The Laws of Manu”—the caste divisions made it possible for all to pass through the desirable experiences of all stages of life. In earliest Vedic times caste probably did not exist other than as a color line, but as society became complex, organizations developed which allotted different functions to different groups. At first the priest had no special concern with religious or sacrificial rites. The householder performed his own sacrifices and oblations and there it ended.

This could not last. The Aryans perceived the need of specialization. Therefore the Brahmin gradually assumed that care of education and of spiritual affairs which the people considered the most honorable in the social system. The next caste, the Kshatriya or warrior caste, was made responsible for war, political matters, government and public work. The third caste, the Vaishya, concerned itself with all affairs of trade and industry. The fourth, the Shudra, represented labor. The Shudras were “the feet and pedestal of all.” Some scholars believe that the fourth caste—the Shudra—may have been formed from the aboriginal people; some that when the Aryans came to India they had already a laboring caste of their own. This is not certain.

The Brahmin was the servant of all on the higher planes of thought. The Shudra was the servant of the community on the physical plane because he was not developed into the higher forms of thought.

It will be seen that in the ancient caste-conception each caste is a school for the one above it, rising from lowly and yet preparative labor to the highest form of human consciousness.

Dharma was the constructive and binding force for all the castes. It constituted a brotherhood of differently apportioned but collective and coöperative work.

The Mahabharata states that “the order of wise men who dwell in forests and live on fruits, roots, and air, is prescribed for the three twice-born classes, but the order of householders is prescribed for all.”

Thus it was only when all duties to the family and state had been accomplished that any man of the three higher castes could betake himself to the life of contemplation. Unless indeed he had a high and special vocation and in that case even a Shudra was not shut out. “Harmlessness, truthfulness, honesty, cleanliness, self-control: these are declared by man to be the duty of all the four castes.” Distinction between the secular and the religious was not drawn. That with its disastrous consequences was to be a much later development.

Naturally, because upon it all depends, the first concern of “The Laws of Manu” is education. This ideal involves a certain asceticism very foreign to western notions and therefore perhaps the better worth considering. I think there is much to be learned from it.

For different boy-types different ages were set for the beginning. Those who were to do the high work of the Brahmins as storers and dispensers of knowledge must begin early. They must not spend so much time in games. The next, the warrior and governing class, may begin later and for them very pronounced physical development is of more importance. The next caste the Vaishyas, or merchants, whose intelligence is slower for higher aims, may begin a little later than the caste above it.

“The Brahmin should be led up to the teacher and invested with the sacred thread in the eighth year; the Kshatriya boy [governing] in the eleventh, the Vaishya boy [merchant] in the twelfth. But if a boy shows exceptional promise and desire for the qualifications of his vocation, such as the light of wisdom if a Brahmin; physical vitality and might of body if a Kshatriya, commercial enterprise and initiative, if a Vaishya, then he should begin his studies in the fifth, sixth, and eighth years respectively.”

Education must on no account be delayed beyond the sixteenth, twenty-second and twenty-fourth years for the three castes. After that the mind is no longer flexible.

Bhagavan Das (who has written a remarkable book on “The Laws of Manu”) points out that the ancient teacher was spared one serious modern difficulty. He knew exactly to what end his pupil’s faculties were to be directed. Not only so, but he was spared the greatest problem of the modern world. “By one of those paradoxes which Nature has invented to maintain her balance the modern man, while laying all stress on differentiation as the prime factor in human society, aims at making all men equal.” With the Aryan teacher this question of equality did not exist.

The western teacher must treat each pupil as a separate and individual caste, for his place in social rank and work is never fixed. Therefore his main view-point must be the bread-education—the possibility of making as much money as lies within the boy’s powers. The future profession of the pupil, still perhaps quite undecided, will further complicate the problem of education. What will be his choice? Where will he best fit into a crowded market?

These questions were answered in India by the caste system. It offered broad lines, within which there could be specialization to follow later as the boy’s faculties developed into those of the man. And it followed naturally that much more time could be given to education, varying for the different castes but longest for the Brahmin. For him it was considered that the ideal demanded thirty-six years of dwelling with his teachers. Knowledge, which comprised the Vedas, the Trinity of Sciences, the Science of the Trinity, and all the subsidiary sciences, needed thirty-six years! If that were impossible it should be eighteen. The least was nine. But, it was added, it must in any case be until the necessary knowledge was gained. That would vary with different pupils.

“Only after having spent the first quarter of life with the Teacher and undergone the discipline which produces real knowledge and consecrated his soul in the recognized way—only after this preparation should the twice-born man take a wife and become a householder.”

It was held that a man so trained would be trained to cope with life at any point, spiritual, intellectual, and physical. He would understand the reaction of temperaments upon each other. He would have learned the uses of silence and reflection. He would know that the procreation of feeble and diseased thoughts is worse if possible than the procreation of a feeble and diseased family. He would become the mainstay of the wisdom of communities, the counselor of kings. Such men would combine knowledge with spiritual wisdom. They would be the racial patriarchs. In a lesser and differing degree the same system applied to the education of the two lower castes who were also twice-born.

The Kshatriya, greater in physical power, qualified for endurance and the outleap of valor, less concerned with the training of the supernormal powers yet severely trained in spiritual wisdom, was fitted for his great task of government and the leadership of men.

The Vaishya, trader and agriculturalist, trained also in spiritual insight, was fitted, so far as wisdom could fit him for his part in life. Education was, as it were, a fugue—the dominant was the Brahmin, but all harmonized, each constructing and supporting the other, each developing from the one into the full harmony.

But what was the position in education of the fourth caste—the Shudra? Was he wholly neglected as was his lot in Europe until comparatively late years? By no means.

The Shudra was considered the child of the social system. The belief in what may roughly be called reincarnation gave him the status of one who for reasons of a past life was reborn in a sphere where he could scarcely hope to understand the inner and higher wisdom to which I shall come in later chapters. For his lifetime his status would be that of the three twice-born castes before they had received education and discipline.

The Laws say: “Everyone is born a Shudra and remains such until he receives the sacrament of the Veda and is thereby born a second time.”

The Shudra’s education was therefore necessarily comprised in obedience to the higher castes and to the training of a householder’s life. But there was one important exception. Special explanations of the Vedas had been prepared by the Rishis (sages) for the understanding of simple folk. These are known as the Puranas, and in them the truths of the Vedas are presented by tales and parables suited to less evolved mentalities. Their object was to interest the masses in the higher metaphysic, and this object was completely achieved though not without the consequence that the parable and analogy were often received as final truth. At these popular lectures men, women and children who escaped the net of the higher caste education assembled as eager hearers. All the necessary knowledge of the Vedas is in the Puranas and therefore none were compelled to go ignorant of what was then considered necessary education. The position of the Shudra in ancient India may be compared, judging from “The Laws of Manu,” with that of a valued house-servant of the present day. And in case of exceptional development he could study further, though still under certain restrictions.

Now comes a very curious and very interesting point. Life was to impose its hardest burden upon the higher castes. Noblesse oblige. Where the Shudra could go scot-free was no escape for them.

“The Shudra cannot commit a sin which degrades in the same sense as can the twice-born person. This is his advantage. His disadvantage is that he cannot be given the secret mantras [the hymns and sacred formulas]. He has no compulsory religious duty to perform but if he does it there is no prohibition. Indeed the Shudras who wish to gather dharma and learn its ordinances, and follow the way of the good among the twice-born, and perform the five daily sacrifices, etc. (but without the secret mantras) do not infringe law but rather gain the approval of the good and receive honor.”

But what of the education of women in such a society?

There was no question of the equality of the sexes, for in a society so divided into separated duties such a thought never could arise. Women were plainly differentiated by nature for different duties, and their training must follow those lines. It is true that all the sacraments were prescribed for the girls also. But they, like the Shudras, were debarred from use of the secret hymns and formulas, not because of inferiority but because of the differences which prevented right use of them. But the marriage ceremony which united man and woman was performed with the mantras, and the theory was that the girl, now a part of her husband and living with him, was in the position of the disciple with the master. Otherwise, generally speaking, the girl should be nurtured and educated in the same way and as diligently as the boy. No prohibition exists in “The Laws of Manu” against the education of girls on the same lines as their brothers, but their education must follow the general lines laid down for caste, though they were so differentiated for girls as to give more training in the fine arts.

The Brahmin girl must have a more intellectual education. The Kshatriya girl more physical activity, the Vaishya girl more training in economic matters. But it was never supposed that she could give the same time to these subjects. Nature called her imperatively and at a much earlier age to a quite distinct employment. Even there, however, the different trainings tended to blend. The wives of the Rishis (sages) are often represented as women of learning in the great knowledge to be described later in the philosophies. And the women of the Kshatriyas could take part with their husbands in very different enjoyments. Here is a classical passage from the Mahabharata, the ancient epic of India, describing the elopement of the Lady Subhadra with the all-beautiful, all-valorous Prince Arjuna. They fled in his chariot and were pursued.

“Then the sweet-voiced lady Subhadra was highly delighted to see that force of excited elephants, rushing cars, and horses. In great glee she said to Arjuna:

“‘For a long while I had a mind to drive your chariot in the midst of the battle with you fighting beside me ... you who have a great soul and strength of limb! Let me now be your charioteer, O son of Pritha, for I have been well instructed in the art.’”

And so it was. He fought. She, like a well-taught girl of the warrior caste, hurled the chariot against the foe, and they were victorious. Great and powerful and wise are the women of the Mahabharata! I possess the monumental book and can truly say that, on the subject of her heroines of old, India can well afford to speak with her enemies in the gate. They are not surpassed in any literature or history.