Part 4 (2/2)
”I! Ride on a cow, and a five-legged one at that? Never!” exclaimed the poor colonel, with such a helpless air, nevertheless, that we burst out laughing.
”It will be better for Sahib to sit on a cow than to lie on a chitta”
(the pyre on which dead bodies are burned), remarked the Sadhu with modest seriousness. ”Why call forth the hour which has not yet struck?”
The colonel saw that argument was perfectly useless, and we succeeded in persuading him to follow the Sadhu's advice, who carefully hoisted him on the cow's back, then, recommending him to hold on by the fifth leg, he led the way. We all followed to the best of our ability.
In a few minutes more we were on the verandah of our vihara, where we found our Hindu friends, who had arrived by another path. We eagerly related all our adventures, and then looked for the Sadhu, but, in the meanwhile, he had disappeared together with his cow.
”Do not look for him, he is gone by a road known only to himself,”
remarked Gulab-Sing carelessly. ”He knows you are sincere in your grat.i.tude, but he would not take your money. He is a Sadhu, not a buni,”
added he proudly.
We remembered that it was reported this proud friend of ours also belonged to the Sadhu sect. ”Who can tell,” whispered the colonel in my ear, ”whether these reports are mere gossip, or the truth?”
Sadhu-Nanaka must not be confounded with Guru-Nanaka, a leader of the Sikhs. The former are Adwaitas, the latter monotheists. The Adwaitas believe only in an impersonal deity named Parabrahm.
In the chief hall of the vihara was a life-sized statue of Bhavani, the feminine aspect of s.h.i.+va. From the bosom of this devaki streams forth the pure cold water of a mountain spring, which falls into a reservoir at her feet. Around it lay heaps of sacrificial flowers, rice, betel leaves and incense. This hall was, in consequence, so damp that we preferred to spend the night on the verandah in the open air, hanging, as it were, between sky and earth, and lit from below by numerous fires kept burning all the night by Gulab-Sing's servants, to scare away wild beasts, and, from above, by the light of the full moon. A supper was arranged after the Eastern fas.h.i.+on, on carpets spread upon the floor, and with thick banana leaves for plates and dishes. The noiselessly gliding steps of the servants, more silent than ghosts, their white muslins and red turbans, the limitless depths of s.p.a.ce, lost in waves of moonlight, before us, and behind, the dark vaults of ancient caves, dug out by unknown races, in unknown times, in honor of an unknown, prehistoric religion--all these, our surroundings, transported us into a strange world, and into distant epochs far different from our own.
We had before us representatives of five different peoples, five different types of costume, each quite unlike the others. All five are known to us in ethnography under the generic name of Hindus. Similarly eagles, condors, hawks, vultures, and owls are known to ornithology as ”birds of prey,” but the a.n.a.logous differences are as great. Each of these five companions, a Rajput, a Bengali, a Madrasi, a Sinhalese and a Mahratti, is a descendant of a race, the origin of which European scientists have discussed for over half a century without coming to any agreement.
Rajputs are called Hindus and are said to belong to the Aryan race; but they call themselves Suryavansa, that is to say, descendants of Surya or the sun.
The Brahmans derive their origin from Indu, the moon, and are called Induvansa; Indu, Soma, or Chandra, meaning moon in Sanskrit. If the first Aryans, appearing in the prologue of universal history, are Brahmans, that is to say, the people who, according to Max Muller, having crossed the Himalayas conquered the country of the five rivers, then the Rajputs are no Aryans; and if they are Aryans they are not Brahmans, as all their genealogies and sacred books (Puranas) show that they are much older than the Brahmans; and, in this case, moreover, the Aryan tribes had an actual existence in other countries of our globe than the much renowned district of the Oxus, the cradle of the Germanic race, the ancestors of Aryans and Hindus, in the fancy of the scientist we have named and his German school.
The ”moon” line begins with Pururavas (see the genealogical tree prepared by Colonel Tod from the MS. Puranas in the Oodeypore archives), that is to say, two thousand two hundred years before Christ, and much later than Ikshvaku, the patriarch of the Suryavansa. The fourth son of Pururavas, Rech, stands at the head of the line of the moon-race, and only in the fifteenth generation after him appears Harita, who founded the Kans.h.i.+kagotra, the Brahman tribe.
The Rajputs hate the latter. They say the children of the sun and Rama have nothing in common with the children of the moon and Krishna. As for the Bengalis, according to their traditions and history, they are aborigines. The Madrasis and the Sinhalese are Dravidians. They have, in turn, been said to belong to the Semites, the Hamites, the Aryans, and, lastly, they have been given up to the will of G.o.d, with the conclusion drawn that the Sinhalese, at all events, must be Mongolians of Turanian origin. The Mahrattis are aborigines of the West of India, as the Bengalis are of, the East; but to what group of tribes belong these two nationalities no ethnographer can define, save perhaps a German. The traditions of the people themselves are generally denied, because they are not in harmony with foregone conclusions. The meaning of ancient ma.n.u.scripts is disfigured, and, in fact, sacrificed to fiction, if only the latter proceeds from the mouth of some favorite oracle.
The ignorant ma.s.ses are often blamed and found to be guilty of superst.i.tion for creating idols in the spiritual world. Is not, then, the educated man, the man who craves after knowledge, who is enlightened, still more inconsistent than these ma.s.ses, when he deals with his favorite authorities? Are not half a dozen laurel-crowned heads allowed by him to do whatever they like with facts, to draw their own conclusions, according to their own liking, and does he not stone every one who would dare to rise against the decisions of these quasi-infallible specialists, and brand him as an ignorant fool?
Let us remember the case in point of Louis Jacolliot, who spent twenty years in India, who actually knew the language and the country to perfection, and who, nevertheless, was rolled in the mud by Max Muller, whose foot never touched Indian soil.
The oldest peoples of Europe are mere babes com-pared with the tribes of Asia, and especially of India. And oh! how poor and insignificant are the genealogies of the oldest European families compared with those of some Rajputs. In the opinion of Colonel Tod, who for over twenty years studied these genealogies on the spot, they are the completest and most trustworthy of the records of the peoples of antiquity. They date from 1,000 to 2,200 years B.C., and their authenticity may often be proved by reference to Greek authors. After long and careful research and comparison with the text of the Puranas, and various monumental inscriptions, Colonel Tod came to the conclusion that in the Oodeypore archives (now hidden from public inspection), not to mention other sources, may be found a clue to the history of India in particular, and to universal ancient history in general. Colonel Tod advises the earnest seeker after this clue not to think, with some flippant archaeologists who are insufficiently acquainted with India, that the stories of Rama, the Mahabharata, Krishna, and the five brothers Pandu, are mere allegories. He affirms that he who seriously considers these legends will very soon become thoroughly convinced that all these so-called ”fables” are founded on historical facts, by the actual existence of the descendants of the heroes, by tribes, ancient towns, and coins still extant; that to acquire the right to p.r.o.nounce a final opinion one must read first the inscriptions on the Inda-Prestha pillars of Purag and Mevar, on the rocks of Junagur, in Bijoli, on Aravuli and on all the ancient Jaina temples scattered throughout India, where are to be found numerous inscriptions in a language utterly unknown, in comparison with which the hieroglyphs will seem a mere toy.
Yet, nevertheless, Professor Max Muller, who, as already mentioned, was never in India, sits as a judge and corrects chronological tables as is his wont, and Europe, taking his words for those of an oracle, endorses his decisions. Et c'est ainsi que s'ecrit l'histoire.
Talking of the venerable German Sanskritist's chronology, I cannot resist the desire to show, be it only to Russia, on what a fragile basis are founded his scientific discussions, and how little he is to be trusted when he p.r.o.nounces upon the antiquity of this or that ma.n.u.script. These pages are of a superficial and descriptive nature, and, as such, make no pretense to profound learning, so that what follows may seem incongruous. But it must be remembered that in Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, people estimate the value of this philological light by the points of exclamation lavished upon him by his admiring followers, and that no one reads the Veda Bhashaya of Swami Dayanand.
It may even be that I shall not be far from the truth in saying that the very existence of this work is ignored, which may perhaps be a fortunate fact for the reputation of Professor Max Muller. I shall be as brief as possible. When Professor Max Muller states, in his Sahitya-Grantha, that the Aryan tribe in India acquired the notion of G.o.d step by step and very slowly, he evidently wishes to prove that the Vedas are far from being as old as is supposed by some of his colleagues. Having presented, in due course, some more or less valuable evidence to prove the truth of this new theory, he ends with a fact which, in his opinion, is indisputable. He points to the word hiranya-garbha in the mantrams, which he translates by the word ”gold,” and adds that, as the part of the Vedas called chanda appeared 3,100 years ago, the part called mantrams could not have been written earlier than 2,900 years ago.
Let me remind the reader that the Vedas are divided into two parts: chandas--slokas, verses, etc.; and mantrams--prayers and rhythmical hymns, which are, at the same time, incantations used in white magic.
Professor Max Muller divides the mantram (”Agnihi Poorwebhihi,”
etc.) philologically and chronologically, and, finding in it the word hiranya-garbha, he denounces it as an anachronism. The ancients, he says, had no knowledge of gold, and, therefore, if gold is mentioned in this mantram it means that the mantram was composed at a comparatively modern epoch, and so on.
But here the ill.u.s.trious Sanskritist is very much mistaken. Swami Dayanand and other pandits, who sometimes are far from being Dayanand's allies, maintain that Professor Max Muller has completely misunderstood the meaning of the term hiranya. Originally it did not mean, and, when united to the word garbha, even now does not mean, gold. So all the Professor's brilliant demonstrations are labor in vain. The word hiranya in this mantram must be translated ”divine light”--mystically a symbol of knowledge; a.n.a.logically the alchemists used the term ”sublimated gold” for ”light,” and hoped to compose the objective metal out of its rays. The two words, hiranya-garbha, taken together, mean, literally, the ”radiant bosom,” and, when used in the Vedas, designate the first principle, in whose bosom, like gold in the bosom of the earth, rests the light of divine knowledge and truth, the essence of the soul liberated from the sins of the world. In the mantrams, as in the chandas, one must always look for a double meaning: (1) a metaphysical one, purely abstract, and (2) one as purely physical; for everything existing upon the earth is closely bound to the spiritual world, from which it proceeds and by which it is reabsorbed. For instance Indra, the G.o.d of thunder, Surya, the sun-G.o.d, Vayu, G.o.d of the wind, and Agni, G.o.d of fire, all four depending on this first divine principle, expand, according to the mantram from hiranya-garbha, the radiant bosom. In this case the G.o.ds are the personifications of the forces of Nature. But the initiated Adepts of India understand very clearly that the G.o.d Indra, for instance, is nothing more than a mere sound, born of the shock of electrical forces, or simply electricity itself. Surya is not the G.o.d of the sun, but simply the centre of fire in our system, the essence whence come fire, warmth, light, and so on; the very thing, namely, which no European scientist, steering an even course between Tyndall and Schropfer, has, as yet, defined. This concealed meaning has totally escaped Professor Max Muller's attention, and this is why, clinging to the dead letter, he never hesitates before cutting a Gordian knot. How then can he be permitted to p.r.o.nounce upon the antiquity of the Vedas, when he is so far from the right understanding of the language of these ancient writings.
The above is a resume of Dayanand's argument, and to him the Sanskritists must apply for further particulars, which they will certainly find in his Rigvedadi Bhashya Bhoomika.
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