Part 6 (2/2)

END OF LECTURE III.

LECTURE IV.

Of the Inst.i.tutions of the Indians--the Brahminical caste, and the hereditary priesthood.--Of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, considered as the basis of Indian life, and of Indian philosophy.

When Alexander the Great had attained the object of his most ardent desires and, realizing the fabulous expedition of Bacchus and his train of followers, had at last reached India, the Greeks found this vast region, even on this side of the Ganges--(for that river, the peculiar object of Alexander's ambition, the conqueror in despite of all his efforts, was unable to reach)--the Greeks found this country extensive, fertile, highly cultivated, populous, and filled with flouris.h.i.+ng cities, as it was, divided into a number of great and petty kingdoms.

They found there an hereditary division of castes, such as still subsists; although they reckoned not four, but seven castes, a circ.u.mstance, however, which, as we shall see later, argues no essential difference in the division of Indian cla.s.ses at that period. They remarked, also, that the country was divided into two religious parties or sects, the _Brachmans and the Samaneans_. By the first, the Greeks designated the followers of the religion of Brahma, as well as of Vishnoo and Siva, a religion which still subsists, and is more deeply rooted and more widely diffused and prevalent in India than any other religious system; distinguished as it is by its leading dogma of the transmigration of souls, which has exerted the mightiest influence on every department of thought, on the whole bearing of Indian philosophy, and on the whole arrangement of Indian life. But by the Greek denomination of _Samaneans_ we must certainly understand the Buddhists, as, among the rude nations of central Asia, and in other countries, the priests of the religion of Fo bear at this day the name of _Schamans_.

These priests indeed appear to be little better than mere sorcerers and jugglers, as are the priests of all idolatrous nations that are sunk to the lowest degree of barbarism and superst.i.tion. The word itself is pure Indian, and occurs frequently in the religious and metaphysical treatises of that people; for originally, and before it had received such a mean acceptation among those Buddhist nations, it had quite a philosophical sense, as it still has in the Sanscrit. This word denotes that equability of mind, or that deep internal equanimity which, according to the Indian philosophy, must precede, and is indispensably requisite to the perfect union with the G.o.d-head. In general all the names by which Buddha, the priests of his religion, and its important and fundamental doctrines are known, whether in Thibet, or among the Mongul nations, in Siam, in Pegu, or in j.a.pan--in general, we say, all those names are pure Indian words; for the tradition of all those nations, with unanimous accord, deduces the origin of this sect from India.

The name of Buddha, which the Chinese have changed, or shortened into that of Fo, is rather an honorary appellation, and is expressive of the divine wisdom with which, in the opinion of his followers, he was endowed; or which rather, according to their belief, became visible in his person. The period of his existence is fixed by many at six hundred years, by others again at a thousand years, before the Christian era.

His real and historical name was Gautama; and it is remarkable that the same name was borne by the author of one of the princ.i.p.al philosophical systems of the Hindoos, the Nyaya philosophy, the leading principles of which will be the subject of future consideration, when we come to speak of the Indian philosophy. Indeed, the dialectic spirit, which pervades the Nyaya philosophy would seem to be of a kindred nature and like origin with the confused metaphysics of the Buddhists. But the names, notwithstanding their ident.i.ty, denote two different persons; although even the founder of the dialectic system, like almost all other celebrated names in the ancient history, traditions and science of the Indians, figures in the character of a mythological personage. But we must first take a view of the state of manners, and the state of political civilization, in India, in order to be able to form a right judgment and estimate of the intellectual and scientific exertions of its inhabitants, and of the peculiar nature and tendency of the Indian opinions.

By the manner in which the Greek writers speak of the two religious parties, into which Alexander found the country divided, it can scarcely be doubted that the Buddhists at that period were far more numerous, and more extensively diffused throughout India, than they are at the present day, and this inference is even corroborated by many historical vouchers of the Indians themselves. Although the Buddhists are now but an obscure sect of dissenters in the Western Peninsula, they are still tolerably numerous in several of its provinces; while, on the other hand, they have complete possession of the whole Eastern and Indo-Chinese peninsula. Besides this sect, there are many other religious dissenters even in Hindostan; such for instance, as the sect of _Jains_, who steer a middle course between the followers of the old and established religion of Brahma, and the Buddhists; for, like the latter, they reject the Indian division and system of castes. Even the established religion itself is divided into three parties, which, though they do not form precisely separate sects, still are marked by no inconsiderable differences in their opinions, views, and conduct: according as each of these parties acknowledges the supremacy, or renders a nearly exclusive wors.h.i.+p to one or other of the three princ.i.p.al Hindoo divinities, Brahma, Vishnoo, and Siva. And, although in the empire of the great Mogul, the number of the Mahometan conquerors, and of those that accompanied them into India, was very small, compared with the ma.s.s of the native population, yet, after the total destruction of this empire, there still remain several millions of Mahometans in the country. Even the Persian language, or a corrupt dialect of it, which these conquerors introduced, is still in many places in use as the language of ordinary life, trade, and business; in the same way as the Portuguese in the maritime and commercial cities of India, or the Lingua Franca in our eastern factories, serves as the usual and convenient medium of communication.

The Indian is not the only, or exclusively prevailing, language in the whole peninsula; in several provinces, as for instance, on the southern coast, and in the Isle of Ceylon, quite a different language prevails; and the old cultivated and cla.s.sical speech of India is there unknown.

The name of Sanscrit, by which the latter is designated, denotes a cultivated or highly wrought language; but the Pracrit, which is employed together or alternately with the Sanscrit in the theatrical pieces of the Indians, signifies a natural and artless speech, and is not so much a distinct dialect as a softer p.r.o.nunciation of the Sanscrit, which smoothes, suppresses, or melts down the hard and crowded consonants, and pays less regard to the more elaborate grammatical forms of this language. The Pracrit, which is used in dramatic pieces, particularly in the female parts, stands from its more simple grammar, in the same relation to the Sanscrit as the softer Italian or Portuguese is to the old Latin, without however the same heterogeneous alloy. But, independently of these variations in the later and beautiful language of Indian poetry, the language of that country is split and divided into a number of dissimilar and widely dissimilar dialects, such as the Malabar, for example; and almost in every province the common language undergoes a variety of changes; and this is the case even in Bengal. The country of the Upper Ganges, especially Benares, is renowned for being the chief seat of the Sanscrit tongue,--the place, at least, where it is best understood, and spoken with the greatest purity.

Those languages which differ totally from the Indian belong in part to quite a different race of men, mostly, perhaps, to the Malays: for, so far is India from being entirely peopled by one single race of inhabitants, that we find in several of its provinces tribes of an origin totally different from that of the Hindoos. This great variety in the whole life, manners, and political inst.i.tutions of the Indians, forms a striking contrast with the absolute unity, and internal uniformity of the Chinese Empire. It was perhaps this variety in the moral and political aspect of ancient India that gave rise to the denomination which it has received in the old sacred Median books of Zoroaster, where, in the first _fargard_, or section of the Vendidat, it is described as the fifteenth pure region of the earth, created by Ormuzd, and designated by the name of _Hapte Heando_--a name which signifies the seven Indias. As India is still split into a mult.i.tude of sects and religions, and divided into different tribes, speaking various languages; so, as Herodotus long ago observed, it has for the most part been ever composed of a mult.i.tude of great and petty states, although from its natural boundaries it might easily have been formed into one great monarchy, and really const.i.tutes but one country in its geographical circ.u.mscription.

The historian of India would have princ.i.p.ally to speak of the successes of a long series of foreign conquerors, who, from Alexander the Great to Nadir Shah, have invaded this country by the North-west side from Persia. The Greeks were indeed told that, before Alexander the Great, no foreign conqueror had ever invaded India; and even after this invasion, and on the death of Sandracottus, when the Indians were liberated from the transient dominion of the Greeks, they were for a long lapse of ages governed by native princes; and their country was parcelled out into a number of great and petty kingdoms, such as those of Magadha, Ayodha, &c. It is a striking incident in the moral, and intellectual history of the Hindoos that amid all the revolutions under their ancient and native rulers, and amid all the later vicissitudes of foreign conquest, their peculiar modes of life and their inst.i.tution of castes should have been preserved, and, in despite of all the changes of time and of empire, should have stood unchanged, like the one surviving monument of the primitive world. In the administration and government of this country, the absolute monarchical sway which exists in China, and the unlimited despotism of other oriental countries, could never be realized; for that hereditary division of cla.s.ses, and those hereditary rights belonging to each, which, as they form a part of the Indian const.i.tution, have taken such deep root in the soil; and which, as they rest on the immoveable basis of ancient faith, have become, as it were, the second nature of this people--all these present an una.s.sailable rampart, which not even a foreign conqueror could ever succeed in overthrowing. We can hence understand what led the Greeks to believe and a.s.sert that there were Republican states in India. If from prepossessions, which were natural to that people, they a.s.serted too much, or thought they saw more than a nearer investigation proves to be actually the case; still their a.s.sertion is not totally without foundation, for the Indian system of castes is in many respects more favourable to inst.i.tutions of a Republican nature, or at least Republican tendency, than the const.i.tution of any other Asiatic state. When those modern writers therefore, who were the declared enemies of all hereditary rank and hereditary rights, spoke with contempt and abh.o.r.ence of the Indian const.i.tution of castes, represented it as the peculiar basis of despotism, and even applied the name of caste as a party-word to the social relations of Europe; their a.s.sertions were false and utterly opposed to history. The invectives of these writers may be easily accounted for, from their very democratic views, or rather from their doctrine of absolute equality, as this equality itself is ever the attendant of despotism, produces it, or proceeds from it, and is one of its most distinctive characteristics. In confirmation of what we have said, we may observe, that even at the present day most of the cities of India possess munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions, which are much admired by English writers, who attest from their personal experience and observation, their salutary influence on individual and public prosperity. In general the English have paid very great attention to the jurisprudence and civil legislation of India; as the fundamental principle of their Indian government is to rule that country according to its own laws, customs and privileges; while, on the contrary, the other European powers that once had obtained a firm footing in India, formed alliances with, and attached themselves by preference to, the Mahometan sovereigns of the country. By this simple, but enlightened principle in their Indian policy and administration, the English have obtained the ascendency over all their rivals or opponents, and have become complete masters of the whole of this splendid region.

The scholars of Europe began their Indian researches by the study and translation of the laws and jurisprudence of the Hindoos, the text as well as commentaries, and it was only at a later period they extended their inquiries to other subjects. The Indian jurisprudence is undoubtedly a standing proof and monument of the comparatively high and very ancient moral and intellectural refinement of that people; and a more minute and profound investigation of that jurisprudence would no doubt give rise to many interesting points of comparison, and to many striking a.n.a.logies, partly with the old Athenian, or first Roman laws, partly with the Mosaic legislation, and even in some particular points, with the Germanic const.i.tution. As the caste of warriors in India, who const.i.tute the cla.s.s of landed proprietors, and the aristocracy of the country, are founded on exactly the same principle as the hereditary n.o.bility of Germany, it cannot excite surprise, if we find in India, not indeed the elaborate and complex feudality of the Germans, but a more simple system of fiefs.

But, according to the plan we have proposed to ourselves, in the history of all ancient, and especially of the primitive Asiatic nations, the matter of greatest moment must be to trace their intellectual progress, their scientific labours, and predominant opinions; all those views of divine and human things, that have a mighty influence on life; and finally the peculiar religious feelings and principles of each of those ancient nations. In the second part of this work, when we shall have to speak of the progress of mankind in modern times, we may perhaps change our point of view, and find it of more importance to trace the mutual relations between the external state of society and the internal development of intellect. But in that remote antiquity, which is contiguous to the primitive ages, the points of greatest moment, as we have already observed, are the intellectual character, the modes of thinking, and the religion of those nations. On the other hand, their civil legislation, and even their political const.i.tutions, however important, interesting and instructive the closer investigation of those subjects may be in other respects, can occupy in this history but a secondary place; and it will suffice for our purpose to point out some leading points of legislation that serve as the foundation and principle of the moral and intellectual character of those nations. In India this leading point is the inst.i.tution of castes, the most remarkable feature in all Indian life, and which in its essential traits existed in Egypt.

This singular phenomenon of Indian life has even some points of connexion with a capital article of their creed, the doctrine of the transmigration of souls--a doctrine which will be later the subject of our enquiries, and which we shall endeavour to place in a nearer and clearer light. In shewing the influence of the inst.i.tution of castes on the state of manners in India, I may observe, in the first place, that in this division of the social ranks there is no distinct cla.s.s of _slaves_ (as was indeed long ago remarked by the _Greeks_); that is to say, no such cla.s.s of bought slaves--no men, the property and merchandise of their fellow-men--as existed in ancient Greece and Rome, as exist even at this day among Mahometan nations; and, as in the case of the Negroes, are still to be found in the colonial possessions of the Christian and European states. The labouring cla.s.s of the _Sudras_ is undoubtedly not admitted to the high privileges of the first cla.s.ses, and is in a state of great dependance upon these; but this very caste of Sudras has its hereditary and clearly defined rights. It is only by a crime that a man in India can lose his caste, and the rights annexed to it. These rights are acquired by birth; except in the instance of the offspring of unlawful marriages between persons of different castes. The fate of these hapless wretches is indeed hard,--harder, almost, than that of real slaves among other nations. Ejected, excommunicated as it were, loaded with malediction, they are regarded as the outcasts of society, yea almost, of humanity itself. This terrible exclusion, however, from the rights of citizens.h.i.+p occurs only in certain clearly specified cases. There are even some cases of exception explicitly laid down, where a marriage with a person of different caste is permitted; or where at least the only consequence to the children of such marriage is a degradation to an inferior cla.s.s of society. But the general rule is that a lawful marriage can be contracted only with a woman of the same caste. Women partic.i.p.ate in all the rights of their caste; in the high prerogatives of Brahmins, if they are of the sacerdotal race (although there are not and never were priestesses among the Indians as among the other heathen nations of antiquity); or in the privileges of n.o.bility, if they belong to the caste of the _Cshatriyas_. These privileges which belong and are secured to women, and this partic.i.p.ation in the rights and advantages of their respective cla.s.ses, must tend much undoubtedly to mitigate the injurious effects of polygamy. The latter custom has ever prevailed, and still prevails, in India; though not to the same degree of licentiousness, nor with the same unlimited and despotic controul, as in Mahometan countries; but a plurality of wives is there permitted only under certain conditions, and with certain legal restrictions; consequently in that milder form, under which it existed of old in the warm climes of Asia, and according to the patriarchal simplicity of the yet thinly peopled world. The much higher social rank, and better moral condition of the female s.e.x in India, are apparent from those portraits of Indian life which are drawn in their beautiful works of poetry, whether of a primitive or a later date; and from that deep feeling of tenderness, that affectionate regard and reverence, with which the character of woman and her domestic relations are invariably represented. These few examples suffice to show the moral effects of the Indian division of castes; and while they serve to defend this inst.i.tution against a sweeping sentence of condemnation, or the indiscriminate censure of too partial prejudice, they place the subject in its true and proper light, and present alike the advantages and defects of the system.

From its connexion with the general plan of my work, I am desirous of entering more deeply into the internal principle of this singular division and rigid separation of the social ranks, and into the historical origin of this strange const.i.tution of human society. When the Greeks, who accompanied or followed Alexander into India, numbered seven instead of four castes in that country, they did not judge inaccurately the outward condition of things; but they paid not sufficient attention to the Indian notions of castes; and their very enumeration of those castes proves they had mistaken some points of detail. In this enumeration they a.s.sign the first rank to the _Brachmans_, or wise men; and by the artisans, they no doubt understood the trading and manufacturing cla.s.s of the Vaisyas. The councillors and intendants of kings and princes do not const.i.tute a distinct caste, but are mere officers and functionaries; who, if they be lawyers, belong to, and must be taken from, the caste of Brahmins; though the other two upper castes are not always rigidly excluded from these functions. The cla.s.s again that tends the breeding of cattle, and lives by the chase, forms not a distinct caste, but merely follows a peculiar kind of employment. And when the Greeks make two castes of the agriculturists and the warriors, they only mean to draw a distinction between the labourers and the masters, or the real proprietors of the soil. Even the name of _Cshatriyas_ signifies landed proprietor; and, as in the old Germanic const.i.tution, the arriere-ban was composed of landed proprietors, and the very possession of the soil imposed on the n.o.bility the obligation of military service; so, in the Indian const.i.tution, the two ideas of property in land, and military service, are indissolubly connected. Some modern enquirers have attached very great importance to the undoubtedly wide and remarkable separation of the fourth or menial caste of Sudras from the three upper castes. They have thought they perceived, also, a very great difference in the bodily structure and general physiognomy of this fourth caste from those of the others; and have thence concluded that the caste of Sudras is descended from a totally different race, some primitive and barbarous people whom a more civilized nation, to whom the three upper castes must have belonged, have conquered and subdued, and degraded to that menial condition, the lowest grade in the social scale,--a grade to which the iron arm of law eternally binds them down. This hypothesis is in itself not very improbable; and it may be proved from history that the like has really occurred in several Asiatic, and even European, countries. In the back-ground of old, mighty and civilized nations we can almost always trace the primeval inhabitants of the country, who, dispossessed of their territory, have been either reduced to servitude by their conquerors, or have gradually been incorporated with them. These primitive inhabitants, when compared with their later and more civilized conquerors, appear indeed in general rude and barbarous; though we find among them a certain number of ancient customs and arts, which by no means tend to confirm the notion of an original and universal savage state of nature. It is possible that the same circ.u.mstances have occurred in India; though this is by no means a necessary inference, for humanity, in its progress, follows not one uniform course, but pursues various and widely different paths; and, hitherto at least, no adequate historical proof has, in my opinion, been adduced for the reality of such an occurrence in India. It has also been conjectured that the caste of warriors, or the princes and hereditary n.o.bility, possessed originally greater power and influence; and that it is only by degrees the race of Brahmins has attained to that great preponderance which it displays in later times, and which it even still possesses. We find, indeed, in the old epic, mythological, and historical poems of the Indians, many pa.s.sages which describe a contest between these two cla.s.ses, and which represent the deified heroes of India victoriously defending the wise and pious Brahmins from the attacks of the fierce and presumptuous Cshatriyas. This account, however, is susceptible of another interpretation, and should not be taken exclusively in this political sense. That in the brilliant period of their ancient and national dynasties and governments, the princes and warlike n.o.bility possessed greater weight and importance than at present, is quite in the nature of things, and appears indeed to have been undoubtedly the case.

From many indications in the old Indian traditions and histories, it would appear that the caste of Cshatriyas, was partially at least, of foreign extraction; while those traditionary accounts constantly represent the caste of Brahmins as the highest cla.s.s, and n.o.bler part, nay, the corner-stone of the whole community.

The origin of an hereditary caste of warriors, when considered in itself, may be easily accounted for, and it is no wise contrary to the nature of things that, even in a state of society where legal rights are yet undefined, the son, especially the eldest, should govern and administer the territory or property which his deceased father possessed, and even in those cases where it was necessary, should take possession, administer, and defend this property by open force and the aid of his dependents.

But afterwards, when the social relations became more clearly fixed by law, and an union on a larger scale was formed by a general league, as the duties of military service were annexed to the soil, so the right to the soil was again determined by, and depended on, military service; now, in that primitive period of history, such a political union might have been formed by a common subordination to a higher power, or by a confederacy between several potentates; and this has really been the origin of an hereditary landed n.o.bility in many countries.

The hereditary continuance or transmission of arts and trades, whereby the son pursues the occupation of the father, and learns and applies what the latter has discovered, has nothing singular in itself, and appears indeed to contain its own explanation. But it is not easy, or at least equally so, to account for the exclusive distribution and the exact and rigid separation of castes, particularly by any religious motives and principles, which are, however, indubitably connected with this inst.i.tution. Still less can we understand the existence of a great hereditary cla.s.s of priests, eternally divided from the rest of the community, such as existed both in India and Egypt. To comprehend this strange phenomenon, we must endeavour to discover its origin, and trace it back, as far as is possible, to the primitive ages of the world.--If, for the sake of brevity, I have used the expression, ”a cla.s.s of _hereditary priests_,” I ought to add, in order to explain my meaning more clearly, that the word _priests_ must not be taken in that limited sense which antiquity attached to it; that the Brahmins are not merely confined to the functions of prayer, but are strictly and eminently theologians, since they alone are permitted to read and interpret the Vedas, while the other castes can read only with their sanction such pa.s.sages of those sacred writings as are adapted to their circ.u.mstances, and the fourth caste are entirely prohibited from hearing any portion of them. The Brahmins are also the lawyers and physicians of India, and hence the Greeks did not designate them erroneously when they termed them the _caste of philosophers_.

We have already had occasion to observe that the Mosaic narrative,--that first monument of all history, (which a very intellectual German writer has called the primitive doc.u.ment of the human race, and which it indeed is even in a mere historical sense, and in the literal acceptation of the word,) that the Mosaic narrative, we say, ascribes to the Cainites the origin of hereditary arts and trades. And there are two which are particularly worthy of remark, and to which I drew your attention--the knowledge of metals, and the art of music. I used the general expression, the knowledge of metals, because in the primitive ages of the world, the art of working mines, or of exploring and extracting metals from the earth, was essentially connected with the art of preparing and polis.h.i.+ng them; and this knowledge of metals was very instrumental in forwarding the infant civilization of the primitive world, as the art of working and polis.h.i.+ng them has ever contributed to the refinement of mankind. By the music of the Cainites, I said we were not to understand our own more elaborate and sublime system of melody.

This art was chiefly consecrated in those ancient times, to the uses of divine service; still older, perhaps, was the medicinal, or rather the magical, use and influence of music. This is at least indicated by the tradition and mythology of all nations; and such a supposition is quite conformable to the spirit of those early ages; and I would here remind you that, in the primitive symbolical writing of the Chinese, the sign of a magician represents also a priest--a character which, as Remusat has observed, is not to be found in the narrow circle of their symbols.

I added, that the existence of an hereditary caste of warriors among the Cainites was possible, and even probable; though not so, in my opinion, the existence of an hereditary sacerdotal caste. But though such an inst.i.tution did not emanate from the Cainites, it may at least have been occasioned by them. As I said before, the Mosaic history represents the vast, boundless, prodigious corruption of the world in the age immediately preceding the deluge, as produced solely by the union of the better and G.o.dly portion of mankind with the lawless descendants of Cain. Thus this would supposes a certain dread and apprehension of any alliance and intercourse with a race laden with malediction, and pregnant with calamity. And may not this very circ.u.mstance have given rise to the establishment of a distinctly separate and hereditary cla.s.s, not of priests in the later signification of that word, but of men chosen and consecrated by G.o.d, and entirely devoted to his service? and, consequently, is it not among the later Sethites, we must look for the origin of this inst.i.tution?

We should transport ourselves in imagination to the age of the Patriarchs, and then consider that, with the high powers which they still possessed, they must have watched with the most jealous and far-sighted solicitude over the fate of their posterity, in order to preserve them in their original purity and high hereditary dignity. The Indian traditions acknowledge and revere the succession of the first ancestors of mankind, or the holy Patriarchs of the primitive world, under the name of the seven great _Ris.h.i.+s_, or sages of h.o.a.ry antiquity; though they invest their history with a cloud of fictions. They place all these Patriarchs in the primitive world, and a.s.sign them to the race of Brahmins;--a circ.u.mstance which cannot here appear unfitting. It has been often observed that the Indians have no regular histories, no works of real historical science; and the reason is that with them the sense of the primitive world is still fresh and lively, and that not only do they clothe their ideas in a poetical garb, but all their conceptions of human affairs and events are exclusively mythological; so that all the real events of later historical times are absorbed in the element of mythology, or at least strongly tinged with its colours. It is in the same way, the Panegyrists of the Chinese language remark that the almost total absence of grammar in that language, among a people of such highly cultivated intellect, should not be taken merely to denote the poverty and jejuneness of the infancy of speech, as this in a great measure originated in the fact that the profound primitive emotions, which gave birth to those first languages, were too absorbed in the subject of their contemplation, too much bent on giving utterance to the most effective word, or expressing themselves with the most condensed brevity, to perplex or trouble themselves with nicer distinctions, and minor and often superfluous rules.

The providential care of these first Patriarchs for the preservation and prosperity of their offspring and race is evinced in those Patriarchal scenes described not only in the Sagas of other primitive nations, but also in the sacred writings of the Hebrews; and where the h.o.a.ry grand-s

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