Part 13 (1/2)
Such a notion is found in some of the later Greek philosophers, and in the writings of the Alexandrian Jews, who undoubtedly drew it from the priestly science of Egypt. Every one will recollect how Paul speaks of ”the prince of the power off the air.” And Shakspeare makes the timid Claudio shrink from the verge of death with horror, lest his soul should, through ages,
”Be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world.”
After their purgation in this region, all the souls live again on earth by transmigration.18 The third realm was in the serene blue sky among the stars, the zone of blessedness, where the accepted dwell in immortal peace and joy. Eusebius says, ”The Egyptians represented the universe by two circles, one within the other, and a serpent with the head of a hawk twining his folds around them,”
thus forming three spheres, earth, firmament, divinity.
But the representation most frequent and imposing is that which pictures the creation simply as having the earth in the centre, and the sun with his attendants as circulating around it in the brightness of the superior, and the darkness of the infernal, firmament. Souls at death pa.s.s down through the west into Amenthe, and are tried. If condemned, they are either sent back to the earth, or confined in the nether s.p.a.ce for punishment. If justified, they join the blissful company of the Sun G.o.d, and rise with him through the east to journey along his celestial course.
The upper hemisphere is divided into twelve equal parts, corresponding with the twelve hours of the day. At the gate of each of these golden segments a sentinel G.o.d is stationed, to whom the newly arriving soul must give its credentials to secure a pa.s.sage. In like manner, the lower hemisphere is cut into the same number of gloomy sections, corresponding with the twelve hours of the night. Daily the chief divinity, in robes of light, traverses the beaming zones of the blessed, where they hunt and fish, or plough and sow, reap and gather, in the Fields of the Sun on the banks of the heavenly Nile. Nightly, arrayed in deep black from head to foot, he traverses the dismal zones of the d.a.m.ned, where they undergo appropriate retributions. Thus the future destiny of man was sublimely a.s.sociated with the march of the sun through the upper and lower hemispheres.19 Astronomy was a part of the Egyptian's theology. He regarded the stars not figuratively, but literally, as spirits and pure genii; the great planets as deities. The calendar was a religious chart, each month, week, day, hour, being the special charge and stand point of a G.o.d.20
There was much poetic beauty and ethical power in these doctrines and symbols. The necessity of virtue, the dread ordeals of the grave, the certainty of retribution, the mystic circuits of transmigration, a glorious immortality, the paths of planets and G.o.ds and souls through creation, all were impressively enounced, dramatically shown.
18 Liber Metempsychosis Veterum Agyptiorum, edited and translated into Latin from the funeral papyri by H. Brugsch.
19 L'Univers, Egypte Ancienne, par Champollion Figeac, pp. 123 145.
20 Agyptische Glaubenslehre von Dr. Ed. Roth, ss. 171, 174.
”The Egyptain soul sail'd o'er the skyey sea In ark of crystal, mann'd by beamy G.o.ds, To drag the deeps of s.p.a.ce and net the stars, Where, in their nebulous shoals, they sh.o.r.e the void And through old Night's Typhonian blindness s.h.i.+ne.
Then, solarized, he press'd towards the sun, And, in the heavenly Hades, hall of G.o.d, Had final welcome of the firmament.”
This solemn linking of the fate of man with the astronomic universe, this grand blending of the deepest of moral doctrines with the most august of physical sciences, plainly betrays the brain and hand of that hereditary hierarchy whose wisdom was the wonder of the ancient world. Osburn thinks the localization of Amenthe in the west may have arisen in the following way. Some superst.i.tious Egyptians, travelling westwards, at twilight, on the great marshes haunted by the strange gray white ibis, saw troops of these silent, solemn, ghostlike birds, motionless or slow stalking, and conceived them to be souls waiting for the funeral rites to be paid, that they might sink with the setting sun to their destined abode.21
That such a system of belief was too complex and elaborate to have been a popular development is evident. But that it was really held by the people there is no room to doubt. Parts of it were publicly enacted on festival days by mult.i.tudes numbering more than a hundred thousand. Parts of it were dimly shadowed out in the secret recesses of temples, surrounded by the most astonis.h.i.+ng accompaniments that unrivalled learning, skill, wealth, and power could contrive. Its authority commanded the allegiance, its charm fascinated the imagination, of the people. Its force built the pyramids, and enshrined whole generations of Egypt's embalmed population in richly adorned sepulchres of everlasting rock. Its substance of esoteric knowledge and faith, in its form of exoteric imposture and exhibition, gave it vitality and endurance long. In the vortex of change and decay it sank at last. And now it is only after its secrets have been buried for thirty centuries that the exploring genius of modern times has brought its hidden hieroglyphics to light, and taught us what were the doctrines originally contained in the altar lore of those priestly schools which once dotted the plains of the Delta and studded the banks of eldest Nile, where now, disfigured and gigantic, the solemn
”Old Syhinxes lift their countenances bland Athwart the river sea and sea of sand.”
21 Monumental History of Egypt, vol. i. ch. 8.
CHAPTER VI.
BRAHMANIC AND BUDDHIST DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
IN the Hindu views of the fate of the human soul, metaphysical subtlety and imaginative vastness, intellect and fancy, slavish tradition and audacious speculation, besotted ritualism and heaven storming spirituality, are mingled together on a scale of grandeur and intensity wholly without a parallel elsewhere in the literature or faith of the world. Brahmanism, with its hundred million adherents holding sway over India, and Buddhism, with its four hundred million disciples scattered over a dozen nations, from Java to j.a.pan, and from the Ceylonese to the Samoyedes, practically considered, in reference to their actually received dogmas and aims pertaining to a future life, agree sufficiently to warrant us in giving them a general examination together. The chief difference between them will be explained in the sequel.
The most ancient Hindu doctrine of the future fate of man, as given in the Vedas, was simple, rude, and very unlike the forms in which it has since prevailed. Professor Wilson says, in the introduction to his translation of the Rig Veda, that the references to this subject in the primeval Sanscrit scriptures are spa.r.s.e and incomplete. But no one has so thoroughly elucidated this obscure question as Roth of Tubingen, in his masterly paper on the Morality of the Vedas, of which there is a translation, by Professor Whitney, in the Journal of the American Oriental Society.1 The results of his researches may be stated in few words.
When a man dies, the earth is invoked to wrap his body up, as a mother wraps her child in her garment, and to lie lightly on him.
He himself is addressed thus: ”Go forth, go forth on the ancient paths which our fathers in old times have trodden: the two rulers in bliss, Yama and Varuna, shalt thou behold.” Varuna judges all.
He thrusts the wicked down into darkness; and not a hint or clew further of their doom is furnished. They were supposed either to be annihilated, as Professor Roth thinks the Vedas imply, or else to live as demons, in sin, blackness, and woe. The good go up to heaven and are glorified with a s.h.i.+ning spiritual body like that of the G.o.ds. Yama, the first man, originator of the human race on earth, is the beginner and head of renewed humanity in another world, and is termed the a.s.sembler of Men. It is a poetic and grand conception that the first one who died, leading the way, should be the patriarch and monarch of all who follow. The old Vedic hymns imply that the departed good are in a state of exalted felicity, but scarcely picture forth any particulars. The following pa.s.sage, versified with strict fidelity to the original, is as full and explicit as any:
Where glory never fading is, where is the world of heavenly light, The world of immortality, the everlasting, set me there!
Where Yama reigns, Vivasvat's son, in the inmost sphere of heaven bright.
Where those abounding waters flow, oh, make me but immortal there!
Where there is freedom unrestrain'd, where the triple vault of heaven's in sight, Where worlds of brightest glory are, oh, make me but immortal there!
Where pleasures and enjoyments are, where bliss and raptures ne'er take flight, Where all desires are satisfied, oh, make me but immortal there!