BOOK II. CHAPTER VI. Religion. IT is difficult to determine whether the constitution of the government and the provisions of law, or Religion, have, among the Hindus, the greatest influence upon the lives of individuals, and the operations of society. Beside the causes which usually give superstition a powerful sway in ignorant and credulous ages, the order of priests obtained a greater authority in India than in any other region of the globe; and this again they employed with astonishing success in multiplying and corroborating the ideas on which their power and consequence depended. Every thing in Hindustan was transacted by the Deity. The laws were promulgated, the people were classified, the government was established, by the Divine Being. The astonishing exploits of the Divinity were endless in that sacred land. For every stage of life from the cradle to the grave; for every hour of the day: for every function of nature; for every social transaction, God prescribed a number of religious observances. And meditation upon his incomprehensible attributes, as in conveying the taxes to the capital. Ib. p. 508. In those countries on the Euxine Sea, which early attained so high a state of civilization, as to have a large export trade in grain, even the custom-house duties, or the taxes on export and import, were levied in kind. We are informed by Demosthenes, Orat. adv. Leptinem, that Leucon, king of Bosphorus, from which Athens derived her principal supplies, levied a duty of one thirtieth in kind upon all the corn shipped in his ports. CHAP. 6. BOOK II. it was by far the most difficult of all human operations, so was it that glorious occupation which alone prepared the intense votary for the participation of the Divine nature. Of so extensive and complicated a subject as the religion of the Hindus, a very general view can alone be taken here. All that is interesting to the politician and the philosopher, may, however, it is presumed, be confined within a moderate space. The task is rendered difficult by the unparalleled vagueness which marks the language of the Brahmens respecting the nature of the gods, the vast multiplicity of their fictions, and the endless discrepancy of their ideas. Hence it is, that no coherent system of belief seems capable of being extracted from their wild eulogies and legends; and if he who attempts to study their religion is disposed, like themselves, to build his faith on his imagination, he meets with little obstruction from the stubborn precision of Hindu expressions and tenets. Nothing is more curious than to trace the ideas concerning Divine power which the natural faculties of our race suggest to them at the various stages of their career. In the very rude and imperfect state in which society originated, the human mind can hardly so far enlarge its views as to draw conclusions respecting the universe. Those operations and events of nature, which more immediately concern mankind, and on which their happiness and misery depend, no doubt The causes of light and darkness, of drought and rain, of the thunder, of the hurricane, of the earthquake, suggest many an anxious inquiry; but to put engage their eager curiosity. CHAP. 6. all the objects of nature, and all the changes which BOOK II. they undergo, into one group of ideas, and to ask whence did the whole proceed, seems to be an operation too complicated, and too far removed from the ordinary track of his ideas, to be one of the first that takes place in the mind of a barbarian. With regard to that other class of questions, which more easily occur to him, his nature very readily suggests an answer. Prior to experience and instruction, there is a propensity in the imagination to endow with life whatever we behold in motion; or, in general, whatever appears to be the cause of any event. A child beats the inanimate object by which it has been hurt, and caresses that by which it has been gratified. The sun, which is the cause of day, the savage regards as a beneficent deity. A spirit resides in the storm; the woods and the waters are peopled with divinities; there is a god of plenty, and a god of want; a god of war, and a god of peace; a god of health, and a god of sickness. That this may be considered as a correct outline of the first religion which is suggested to the human mind, the laws of human nature, and the ideas which are found to prevail among rude tribes, appear sufficiently to evince. But men are not long in making another step in their religious progress. Having made for themselves a theory with respect to the cause of the events which affect them, the origin too of the things which they perceive attracts their curiosity; and from asking the cause, first of one great object, and then of another, they come at last to put the general question, What is the cause and origin of the whole? СНАР. 6. BOOK II. There are very few, therefore, even among the most barbarous nations, who have not made an attempt to account for the origin of the universe, and in whose religious ideas some species of cosmogony is not involved. But, in answering the question respecting the origin of the universe, it is impossible that men should not be guided by their previous ideas. It follows, that among the divinities whom they already adored, He, whom they regarded as the most powerful, should be selected as the Maker of the world. Were they placed in circumstances of tolerable tranquillity, this potent God would probably be the sun: were they a people almost constantly plunged in the horrors of war, the god of arms would naturally be their chief divinity. Hence we see that in many nations of Asia, who at an early period seem to have been placed in favourable circumstances, the sun was supreme among the gods, and the great principle of the universe; among the turbulent and warlike tribes who inhabited the north of Europe, Odin, the god of war, was the supreme deity, and author of all things. The Hindus had made considerable progress beyond the first and lowest stage of human society,' It seems common, however, to retain for a long time the ideas which are then implanted; and, rather than eradicate the old, to make of them a heterogeneous compound with the new. The Greeks and the Romans did not reject their Jupiter, and Mars, their gods of the mountains, trees, and rivers, when 'This is an admission, rather incompatible with the views usually advocated by the author.-W. CHAP. 6. they rose to more comprehensive views of the uni- BOOK II. verse; they only endeavoured to accommodate to these primary conceptions their new apprehensions and conclusions. In like manner, the Hindus have still their Indra, or the god of the firmament, Varuna, or the god of the waters, Rembha, the goddess of love: in the whole, a long and splendid catalogue of thirty-three crore,' 2 We have translations from the Hindu books of several passages containing accounts of the creation. They differ from one another very widely in the minor forms and circumstances; but strongly resemble in the general character, and in the principal ideas. That contained in the sacred volume which bears the name of Menu may be taken as a standard,3 being more full and circumstantial than any of those which are given us from the Vedas; derived from A crore is 100 lacs. and a lac is 100,000; so that thirty-three crore of deities is just 330 millions.-M. This expression is not to be understood in its literal sense. It is intended only to denote an infinite number; including all the inferior spirits of heaven and earth. The objects of adoration, that are individualized, are but few. Dr. Tennant is not good authority on this subject. Rembhá, is not goddess of love, but an inferior being-a nymph of Indra's court.-W. Three of these from the Vedas themselves by Mr. Colebrooke (As. Res. viii. 404, 421, 452); another account, translated from the Puranas by Mr. Halhed, is published in Maurice's History (i. 407); Mr. Wilford has given us another, derived from the same source, (As. Res. iii. 358.) An account of the creation is prefixed to the Gentoo code translated by Halhed; we have another, in the French translation, entitled Bagavadam, of the Bhagavat. The author of the Ayeen Akbery informs us that no fewer than eighteen opinions respecting the creation were entertained in Hindustan, and presents us three as a specimen, of which the last, taken from the Surya Sidhanta, he says, is the most common. Ayeen Akbery, iii. 6. The most important of all is that which I have referred to in the text, from the Institutes of Menu, ch. i. 5, &c. It is not the best standard that could have been selected, being a rather injudicious mixture of the popular and philosophical accounts.-W. |