must blow only as he wishes. He cannot be hurt by gods or demons. So Vischnu becomes incarnate as Rama, and the gods become incarnate as Monkeys, in order to destroy him. Such vast power was supposed to be attained by piety without morality. The Puranas are derived from the same system as the epic poems, and carry out further the same ideas. Siva and Vischnu are almost the only gods who are worshipped, and they are worshipped with a sectarian zeal unknown to the epics. Most of the Puranas contain these five topics, -Creation, Destruction and Renovation, the Genealogy of the gods, Reigns of the Manus, and History of the Solar and Lunar races. Their philosophy of creation is derived from the Sankhya philosophy. Pantheism is one of their invariable characteristics, as they always identify God and Nature; and herein they differ from the system of Kapila. The form of the Puranas is always that of a dialogue. The Puranas are eighteen in number, and the contents of the whole are stated to be one million six hundred thousand lines.* The religion of the Hindoos at the present time is very different from that of the Vedas or Manu. Idolatry is universal, and every month has its special worship, April, October, and January being most sacred. April begins the Hindoo year. During this sacred month bands of singers go from house to house, early in the morning, singing hymns to the gods. On the 1st of April Hindoos of all castes dedicate pitchers to the shades of their ancestors. The girls bring flowers with which to worship little ponds of water dedicated to Siva. Women adore the river Ganges, bathing in it and offering it flowers. They also walk in procession round the banyan or sacred tree. Then they worship the cow, pouring water on her feet and putting oil on her forehead. Sometimes they take a vow to feed some particular Brahman luxuriously during the whole month. They bathe their idols with religious care every day and offer them food. This lasts during April and then stops. In May the women of India worship a goddess friendly * Preface to the translation of the Vischnu Purana, by H. H. Wilson. to little babies, named Shus-ty. They bring the infants to be blessed by some venerable woman before the image of the goddess, whose messenger is a cat. Social parties are also given on these occasions, although the lower castes are kept distinct at four separate tables. The women also, not being allowed to meet with the men at such times, have a separate entertainment by themselves. The month of June is devoted to the bath of Juggernaut, who was one of the incarnations of Vischnu. The name, Jugger-naut, means Lord of the Universe. His worship is comparatively recent. His idols are extremely ugly. But the most remarkable thing perhaps about this worship is that it destroys, for the time, the distinction of castes. While within the walls which surround the temple Hindoos of every caste eat together from the same dish. But as soon as they leave the temple this equality disappears. The ceremony of the bath originated in this legend. The idol Jugger-naut, desiring to bathe in the Ganges, came in the form of a boy to the river, and then gave one of his golden ornaments to a confectioner for something to eat. Next day the ornament was missing, and the priests could find it nowhere. But that night in a dream the god revealed to a priest that he had given it to a certain confectioner to pay for his lunch; and it being found so, a festival was established on the spot, at which the idol is annually bathed. The other festival of this month is the worship of the Ganges, the sacred river of India. Here the people come to bathe and to offer sacrifices, which consist of flowers, incense, and clothes. The most sacred spot is where the river enters the sea. Before plunging into the water each one confesses his sins to the goddess. On the surface of this river castes are also abolished, the holiness of the river making the low-caste man also holy. In the month of July is celebrated the famous ceremony of the car of Jugger-naut, instituted to commemorate the departure of Krishna from his native land. These cars are in the form of a pyramid, built several stories high, and some are even fifty feet in height. They are found in every part of India, the offerings of wealthy peo ple, and some contain costly statues. They are drawn by hundreds of men, it being their faith that each one who pulls the rope will certainly go to the heaven of Krishna when he dies. Multitudes, therefore, crowd around the rope in order to pull, and in the excitement they sometimes fall under the wheels and are crushed. But this is accidental, for Krishna does not desire the suffering of his worshippers. He is a mild divinity, and not like the fierce Siva, who loves self-torture. In the month of August is celebrated the nativity of Krishna, the story of whose birth resembles that in the Gospel in this, that the tyrant whom he came to destroy sought to kill him, but a heavenly voice told the father to fly with the child across the Jumna, and the tyrant, like Herod, killed the infants in the village. In this month also is a feast upon which no fire must be kindled or food cooked, and on which the cactus-tree and serpents are worshipped. In September is the great festival of the worship of Doorga, wife of Siva. It commences on the seventh day of the full moon and lasts three days. It commemorates a visit made by the goddess to her parents. The idol has three eyes and ten hands. The ceremony, which is costly, can only be celebrated by the rich people, who also give presents on this occasion to the poor. The image is placed in the middle of the hall of the rich man's house. One Brahman sits before the image with flowers, holy water, incense. Trays laden with rice, fruit, and other kinds of food are placed near the image, and given to the Brahmans. Goats and sheep are then sacrificed to the idol on an altar in the yard of the house. When the head of the victim falls the people shout, "Victory to thee, O mother!" Then the bells ring, the trumpets sound, and the people shout for joy. The lamps are waved before the idol, and a Brahman reads aloud from the Scripture. Then comes a dinner on each of the three days, to which the poor and the low-caste people are also invited and are served by the Brahmans. The people visit from house to house, and in the evening there is music, dancing, and public shows. So that the worship of the Hindoos is by no means all of it ascetic, but much is social and joyful, especially in Bengal. In October, November, and December there are fewer ceremonies. January is a month devoted to religious bathing. Also, in January, the religious Hindoos invite Brahmans to read and expound the sacred books in their houses, which are open to all hearers. In February there are festivals to Krishna. The month of March is devoted to ascetic exercises, especially to the famous one of swinging suspended by hooks. It is a festival in honor of Siva. A procession goes through the streets and enlists followers by putting a thread round their necks. Every man thus enlisted must join the party and go about with it till the end of the ceremony under pain of losing caste. On the day before the swinging, men thrust iron or bamboo sticks through their arms or tongues. On the next day they march in procession to the swinging tree, where the men are suspended by hooks and whirled round the tree four or five times. It is considered a pious act in India to build temples, dig tanks, or plant trees by the roadside. Rich people have idols in their houses for daily worship, and pay a priest who comes every morning to wake up the idols, wash and dress them, and offer them their food. In the evening he comes again, gives them their supper and puts them to bed. Mr. Gangooly, in his book, from which most of the above facts are drawn, denies emphatically the statement so commonly made that Hindoo mothers throw their infants into the Ganges. He justly says that the maternal instinct is as strong with them as with others; and in addition to that, their religion teaches them to offer sacrifices for the life and health of their children. § 9. Relation of Brahmanism to Christianity. Having thus attempted, in the space we can here use, to give an account of Brahmanism, we close by showing its special relation as a system of thought to Christianity. Brahmanism teaches the truth of the reality of spirit, and that spirit is infinite, absolute, perfect, one; that it is the substance underlying all existence. Brahmanism glows through and through with this spirituality. Its literature, no less than its theology, teaches it. It is in the dramas of Calidasa, as well as in the sublime strains of the Bhagavat-gita. Something divine is present in all nature and all life, "Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, Now, with this Christianity is in fullest agreement. We have such passages in the Scripture as these: "God is a Spirit"; "God is love; whoso dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him"; "In him we live, and move, and have our being"; "He is above all, and through all, and in us all." But beside these texts, which strike the key-note of the music which was to come after, there are divine strains of spiritualism, of God all in all, which come through a long chain of teachers of the Church, sounding on in the Confessions of Augustine, the prayers of Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Bonaventura, St. Bernard, through the Latin hymns of the Middle Ages, and develop themselves at last in what is called romantic art and romantic song. A Gothic cathedral like Antwerp or Strasburg, what is it but a striving upward of the soul to lose itself in God? A symphony of Beethoven, — what is it but the same unbounded longing and striving toward the Infinite and Eternal? The poetry of Wordsworth, of Goethe, Schiller, Dante, Byron, Victor Hugo, Manzoni, all partake of the same element. It is opposed to classic art and classic poetry in this, that instead of limits, it seeks the unlimited; that is, it believes in spirit, which alone is the unlimited; the infinite, that which is, not that which appears; the essence of things, not their existence or outwardness. Thus Christianity meets and accepts the truth of Brahmanism. But how does it fulfil Brahmanism? The deficiencies of Brahmanism are these, that holding to eternity, it omits time, and so loses history. It therefore |