The Story of Oriental Philosophy E-Book

Lily Adams Beck

• Herausgeber: E-BOOKARAMA
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Inside these pages can be found the teachings and lore of such notable figures as Buddha, Shankara, Confucius, Lao-Tsu, Mencius and many others. First published in 1928, "The Story of Oriental Philosophy" offers readers insight into such Eastern scriptures as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the teachings of Zen, and Indian sacred writing. The ancient wisdom of Asia awaits those seeking value in thought and knowledge.

Lily Adams Beck was one of the more well-known and popular novelists and biographers in the 1920s. Beck's fascination with Asian culture and philosophy influenced her to write not only this book but several "oriental fantasies" of her era.

Leseprobe

Table of contents

THE STORY OF ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY

Preface

Chapter 1. The Aryan People Of India

Chapter 2. The Beginnings Of Indian Philosophy And Social Organization

Chapter 3. The Ancient System Of Education

Chapter 4. The Stories And Parables Of Ancient India

Chapter 5. Shankara, The Great Yogin And Philosopher

Chapter 6. Concentration And Its Powers

Chapter 7. Concentration And Its Attainment

Chapter 8. “The Song Celestial” And The Higher Consciousness

Chapter 9. The Great Renunciation Of The Buddha

Chapter 10. The Life And Death Of The Buddha

Chapter 11. The Great Teaching Of The Buddha Life And Death

Chapter 12. The Great Teaching Of The Buddha The Way Of Power

Chapter 13. Tibetan Teaching On Life After Death

Chapter 14. The Mystic Lovers Of Persia

Chapter 15. China The Story Of Confucius

Chapter 16. The Growing Power Of Confucius

Chapter 17. Confucius And His Great Disciples

Chapter 18. The Recognition Of Confucius

Chapter 19. The Great Doctrines

Chapter 20. The Sorrows Of Confucius His Death

Chapter 21. The Social Organization Of Ancient China

Chapter 22. The Heroes Of China

Chapter 23. The Soul Of China

Chapter 24. A Great Chinese Mystic Lao Tsŭ

Chapter 25. A Master Of The Mystic Way Chuang Tsŭ

Chapter 26. Chuang Tsŭ, His Irony And Humor

Chapter 27. Mencius, The Guide Of Princes

Chapter 28. The Guide-Book For Princes

Chapter 29. Buddhist Thought And Art In China And Japan The Teachings Of Zen

Chapter 30. Prophecy

THE STORY OF ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY

Lily Adams Beck

Preface

In writing this book upon the thought and thinkers of Asia my aim has been to convey what I have to tell in as clear and simple a manner as possible to readers unaccustomed to oriental modes of expression. This has meant more than translation from original languages, for beyond that lies the necessity for familiar English terms, which sometimes do not express the full implication of the original. I can hope only that I have not been wholly unsuccessful and that as little as possible has been lost on the way.

The value of the thought of Asia is daily more realized by western thinkers. The demand for knowledge of its riches grows more and more insistent. The caravans still journey from the heart of Asia, carrying merchandise more to be desired than gold or jewels.

The attainment of the West has been mainly on the intellectual-practical side. In the Orient it has been in the development of human consciousness, with the interesting exception of Japan, which appears to aim at the combination of both and to partake alike of eastern and western mentality. Iranian thought is necessarily included in any survey of Asiatic attainment.

The values of East and West do not clash. They are supplementary and interchangeable; and it will be well for the world when this is fully realized, and there is free circulation of thought. The faith of a nation is her soul. Her literature is her intellect. Nations who do not meet on these grounds cannot understand one another, and understanding is the most vital need of the present day. In this book, readers will at least find the Asiatic thought-systems set forth with the deep sympathy I feel for what I regard as the highest reach of human thought in such matters as they deal with.

In addition to my personal knowledge of the countries, peoples, faiths, and philosophies of which I write, I must acknowledge my sincere gratitude to the writers of the many books that I have consulted and to the many oriental friends with whom I have discussed these subjects.

A detailed list of authorities would form a volume in itself and would be impossible. I can say only that in one sense such a book as this can never be original. The bibliography does not attempt to cover my debt in quotation, paraphrase and spirit, or to name a tenth part of the books to which I owe so much. It gives a few books (under the headings of different countries), intended to be useful to students, advanced or otherwise, who wish to know more of the subjects treated. If any scholars should look into this book I ask them to remember the enormous difficulty of clarifying Asiatic thought for the general reader. They will realize obstacles which none can know who have not faced them.

L. Adams Beck,

( E. Barrington.)

Ceylon.

Chapter 1. The Aryan People Of India

IF the average man were approached on the subject of Asia and asked to state his impressions they would probably be to the effect: that Asia is a continent with high possibilities for romance, and film stories, and for commercial intercourse to be conducted strictly under the tutelage of the West; that it is inhabited by races of semi-civilized or wholly uncivilized peoples much in need of Christianization and civilization before they can be dealt with at all on equal terms; that Japan, with the imitative talent of a highly specialized monkey, has unexpectedly and dangerously broken loose into western allotments and has thereby inspired the rest of Asia with the unfortunate notion that she is capable of managing her own affairs instead of having them managed for her by western nations.

Such a man would add a few emphatic sentences on the menace of Asiatic cheap labor and of any Asiatic foothold among western peoples; and if he had intellectual aspirations might ask with some warmth what Asia’s contribution to social philosophy, urban architecture, thought, and the religions of the world had been. He might concede that the Chinese make good servants and balance that concession with the remark that Japanese methods in trade are what you might expect—wholly untrustworthy. And he would go off without waiting for a rejoinder, secure in his conviction of the vast superiorities of the West.

Such a man will soon be extinct as the dodo, but because under every one of these so common assertions and implications lies the question of what philosophies have guided Asiatic nations on their way, and because Asia becomes every day a more vital and urgent problem for America and Europe as the narrowing of the world’s confines draws them closer together, it is well worth while to study their philosophic thought with its national outcome, and the men who have been its creators, and thus to arrive at some definite conclusion of its and their worth. And my hope is to achieve this in words so simple that anyone who cares for the information may have it for use when he is obliged to consider Asia and his own relation and reaction to its life. There is no question but that these considerations will be thrust upon us even violently by the force of events, and it will then be vital that we shall understand. The interest also seems to me and to many others profound, but that is naturally a matter of opinion.

Lately there have been put before us in a striking way certain ignorances and social failures of India: the bloody sacrifices, infant marriages, shames and weaknesses of her dark places. It cannot be denied that these exist; but the other side was not dealt with, nor the causes given which would have invited understanding. I wish sincerely that equal courage and candor with a little more knowledge could be brought to bear on our own dark places by a qualified Asiatic and an equal shock administered. But in either case persons of philosophic mind would know that the whole story had not been told and that after such fashion no true appraisal of a nation’s value to the world can be reached. And they would desire in either case to examine sources, before any final judgment could be passed. Examination of sources is what I attempt now.

In a book which professes to set forth the philosophies of Asia one is not concerned, however, with their practical results. Philosophy does not ask what use is made of the truths it sets forth, nor shall I. The quest of truth has no earthly goal, and when philosophy becomes consciously utilitarian it half renounces its own name. Nor shall I detail all the smaller philosophies or faiths that have occupied the ground marked out by the great men who were the sources. That would take libraries. My hope is to show the determinants; and I begin with India, for in a very real sense she has been the determinant of the highest thought of Asia. An exception must be made here and there, as in China, but China later so whole-heartedly accepted Indian influence and thought that too much stress should not be laid on that exception.

With India accordingly I begin.

It is difficult at all times to draw any hard and fast line between philosophy and religion. This has always been the case, even in modern times, and it was especially difficult in India, where religion was so deep a preoccupation that it still molds the whole outer form of life even more imperiously than among the Jews. Therefore in writing of Indian philosophy it can never be dissevered from religion.

The people who first shaped Indian philosophy were a branch of that mighty race from which the Indo-European races including the Anglo-Saxon have sprung. In their own language they called themselves the Arya—that is to say the “Noble People” (a word which still survives in the German ehre, or “honor”); and with the tradition of exclusiveness on the point of color, which is still so strong a mark of the race in America and England, they held themselves proudly apart for as long as possible from the dark-skinned natives of the country they had invaded and conquered.

Where was the cradle of the race that, dividing into the Indo-European and Aryan branches, was to rule the destiny of so great a part of the world? This is not certainly known; but it is known that though the time of separation is hidden in the mists of years we and the Aryan settlers of India had common ancestors; and it is now agreed by scholars that this still undivided people were to be found circa sixty thousand years ago as nomads or wandering shepherds on or about the lands now known as the plateau of the Pamirs and the northern grasslands. There or thereabouts came upon this people the two great urges: pressure of population and that adventurous spirit which today sends the descendants of one branch flying across the Atlantic or climbing Himalayan peaks and long ago committed the other to spiritual adventures higher and more daring still. And so, probably never in one great exodus, but in errant bands here and there like the princes of a fairy-tale setting out to seek their fortune, this ancient people parted and went out east and west. Many and strange events were to happen before they met again—with the clash of arms.

A part, let us call it the western division, went down into Europe, probably through Southern Russia into the (now-named) Polish and Austrian countries. Another, deflecting eastward, pressed through the mountain passes to India along many tracks which invaders were to follow later, and coming down upon the glorious river Indus, which gives its name to Hindustan, realized that here was a fair home for a haughty and courageous people.

Thus, they left their friends and kinsmen, little guessing what vast seas of custom, language, philosophy, and even of color, were to divide them; though indeed both sections carried indelible marks of identity, which would in coming ages reveal the history of their parting.

There were deep grooves of thought traced by the original language, in which the thought of both Indian and European philosophers must move henceforth, however far apart their lives. A family likeness can still be traced between the thoughts of Indo-European philosophers, such as the Greeks, and those of the great Aryans of India. Their mythology is unmistakably alike in earlier stages. There are identities of language. They had the verbal copula that existed before the separation—in Sanskrit asti, in Greek esti, in Latin est, in English is. They kept (like ourselves) the relative pronoun and the article, definite and indefinite. Those who have studied such alien languages as Hebrew, Chinese, and Japanese know all this implies, but there is much more. Both branches kept the indicative and subjunctive in the verb, the comparative and superlative in the adjective; both use the genitive case. It would be tedious to elaborate these points; but they are extremely interesting, and expose the rudimentary structure of thought, as the identical bones and teeth of animals may prove them to be of the same species.

Philologists assert that this ancestral language common to ourselves and the Aryans of India dates from at least ten thousand years b.c. and must then have been in a high state of development. We find it a strong and beautiful variant when we catch our first glimpse of it in Indian sacred and philosophic literature. It was for a long time unwritten, but was handed down in the marvelously cultivated memories of the East, and afterwards written and codified by their learned men. It was the opinion of Max Müller, the famous oriental scholar, that writing for literary purposes does not appear in any nation much before the seventh century b.c. in alphabetic writing.

It is a curious fact that many root-words employed in philosophic terms still connect us. In Sanskrit there is manas, the mind, which is mens in Latin and which we use as mentality, and so many more that it is impossible to recapitulate them. In short, there is between the separated Indo-European and Aryan peoples a now deeply submerged stratum of thought—like a reef covered with sea-water which forms a submarine bridge between islands, and accounts for identities of animals and plants otherwise inexplicable.

Yet we must not overrate the degree of philosophic thought at which our common ancestors had arrived. We know from what we see in India that it must have been rudimentary, though marvelous, in that it held the materials for the mighty palaces of thought which Greece and India were to rear on the racial foundations.

It is a very much debated question whether after the long separation Greece was indebted for some of her highest flights of thought to India; and here there will always be differences of opinion as there were among the Greeks themselves. The Persians, also Aryans or Noble People, and closely allied in faith with their Indian cousins, entered Greece freely, and brought with them Indian teachings. The name of their prophet Zoroaster or Zarathustra was familiar to both Plato and Aristotle. In the third century b.c. there existed in Greece an analysis of his teaching.

I cannot enter into the proofs of Indian influence, but a story of the visit of an Indian philosopher to Socrates cannot be passed over. Aristoxenus asserts that Socrates told the stranger that his work consisted in inquiries about the life of men, and that the Indian smiled, replying that none could understand things human who did not understand things divine—a note of thought so deeply and peculiarly Indian that Max Müller says this alone impresses him with the probability of the truth of the story.

There is no reason why it should not be true. The caravans came and went down the passes to India, as I have seen them myself in the Khaibar Pass, and others traveled down the ancient Asiatic trade-route through Kashmir from Ladakh and Turkestan, or from China down the mighty Burmese river, the Irawadi. Standing in these places I have realized that it was not only the merchandise of food, garments, and jewels which went to and fro. Men’s thoughts have journeyed along these ways from time immemorial, far more abundantly, I believe, than has been allowed.

Wise men took their wisdom with them, lovers their ardors of verse and story; and that India should have communicated to Plato her teaching of reincarnation, which he held so strongly, is as possible as that it sprang up in his own mind, or in the minds of both from some dim forgotten heritage of their once united peoples. Who can say? It matters little. For choice I prefer to think that the ancestral intelligence working in both countries independently produced the greatest philosophers the world has known.

Certain other points of resemblance are at first notable also: a deep and reverent devotion to the unseen, destined to fade in Europe later under the glare of unrivaled warlike and commercial genius; a high respect for their women as mothers and wives, to fade later in India under the torment of foreign invaders and alien races whose practice was very different from that of the Arya. Destiny had decreed that the two branches were to draw farther and farther apart, receding from the common home and kinship until a modern poet of their blood could write:

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

Yet in a fine outburst he ends:

But there is neither East nor West, Border or Breed or Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth.

The strong men were to meet often in the clash of thought and sword. In the former they are now meeting more fruitfully every day.

So the eastern-traveling Aryans settled in India, and still in their traditions and most ancient writings are embedded hints of the fact that they came to their home originally as strangers and pilgrims. This is not a common racial trait. The Hebrews recorded the entry into the Promised Land, but the Briton, the Teuton, and the Greek, as nations hold apparently no racial memory of a time when they were not settled in their countries, though there were aborigines about them who might have served as reminders. In Indian folk-lore are many hints and reminiscences of a dark-skinned people, often beautiful and dangerous, who opposed the advance of the Arya and tempted them with the beauty of their women from the Aryan tradition of race, insinuating their own lower formulas of life into the code of the new rulers.

Still, the Indo-Aryans carried with them the sense of an aristocracy qualified and resolute to dominate all opposing races, and while ruling them justly to teach them that submission was their role and obedience their only concern with law and custom. This racial trait is repeated in the history of America and Canada and all the far-flung dominions of the Indo-European races.

When we first come upon India it is a comparatively civilized country, aiming at and attaining a deep and true sense of its relation to the Unseen and to social order as it conceived it. These people might have quoted Schleiermacher’s definition of religion and philosophy as one which they frankly accepted: “Religion is the knowledge of our absolute dependence, something which determines us and which we cannot determine in return.” And this presupposes great teachers, mighty minds, who gathered together the hopes and aspirations of a race and summed them up into the eternal question of humanity.

But in India the figures of these ancient teachers are legendary at first. Before the days of the Buddha they move, almost mythical and semidivine, caring profoundly for the thoughts they loosed among the people, but nothing for their own personalities and renown. How could it be otherwise in a land where personality tends always to merge in the Universal? All this is so alien to the Indo-European mind that—if one might dream—it might be said that possibly the great eastern and western branches fell apart because the westerners concerned themselves little with metaphysics and the things of the spirit, whereas every instinct of the easterners drew them with passion to the solution of the eternal problem of man’s relation to the Unseen.

This is pure imagination; but it is true that the westerners have never evolved a faith of their own and have been compelled to import religions from the East as they did tea and spices. They got no further than a ritual of human or bestial sacrifice to fearful or lustful gods. They could rise later into the great philosophies of Greece, relegating the old stories into the inane. But for the spiritual inspiration which rules the daily life of a nation they have been compelled to look to the East. The gods of Greece, Rome, early Gallia and Britannia exist no longer. “Great Pan is dead” was the cry which rang down the Ægean Sea as a conquering eastern faith prepared to rule the West with scepter and sword. The East in the form of the Galilean had conquered.

To many it seems that eastern thought as developed in Asia is to come again to rescue the western world from materialism, and that so the Indo-European and Aryan races may meet once more. This innermost difference has been a hitherto unbridgable gulf between them. The East, haughty, aristocratic, spiritual and other-worldly, leisured, tolerant of all faiths and philosophies, moving on vast spiritual orbits about the central sun; the West eager, hurried, worldly, absorbed in practical and temporary affairs, opinionated, contemptuous of other peoples and faiths, money-loving less for money’s sake than its pursuit, younger, infinitely younger in tastes and psychic development than the East—what point of fusion can there be between the philosophies of these two divergent branches of the same great root? That, the thoughts recorded in this book may shadow forth.

For the growth of true philosophy such as walks hand in hand with religion, peace is needed and the absence of extremes of wealth and poverty. And when the Aryans had settled themselves they found a land that philosophy might have created for her own. Great mountain walls rose about them, and the safeguards of hill-passes dangerous and difficult even today. Before them rolled mighty rivers to unknown seas. Vast forests provided natural sanctuaries where men might meditate on the cosmic riddle. The climate induced repose and reflection. Commercial competition was unknown, for the land produced all they needed, and they were a pastoral and agricultural people content for many centuries with very simple luxuries.

Before them lay the task of welding together a just and prosperous social organization of themselves and their subject races. It was necessary therefore that they should evolve a high philosophy, for that is the foundation stone of all social effort. They said: “Philosophy is the lamp of all the sciences, the means of performing all works, the support of all the duties.”

So their philosophy was not confined to the study or lecture hall. It became a part of daily life and experience because it was never divorced from religious experience; it was never the possession of the rich educated classes only. The “common people” snatched at it with avidity for what they could understand, and where its deeps were beyond them, what they had absorbed was enough to color their thoughts and lives as it does today. Why was this never the case with Europe? Why, with all its instinct to democracy now realizing itself along such painful roads, were the “working classes” of the West never uplifted into a sphere of spiritual passion at even the comparatively low level reached by their educated classes? The answer will appear as the study of Asiatic philosophy develops.

India has had a spiritual freedom never known until lately to the West.

Christianity when it came offering its spiritual philosophy of life imposed an iron dogma upon the European peoples. Those who could not accept this dogma, whatever it happened to be at the moment, paid so heavy a penalty that the legend of the Car of Juggernaut (Jaganath) is far truer of Europe than of Asia. And the natural result of the fetter upon European passion for freedom was the casting off of dogma and with it the consequent loss of much that was valuable. Whereas in India the soul was free from the beginning to choose what it would, ranging from the dry bread of atheism to the banquets offered by many-colored passionate gods and goddesses, each shadowing forth some different aspect of the One whom in the inmost chambers of her heart India has always adored. Therefore the spiritual outlook was universal. Each took unrebuked what he needed. The children were at home in the house of their father, while Europe crouched under the lash of a capricious Deity whose ways were beyond all understanding.

But while India fixed her eyes on the Ultimate she did not forget that objective science is the beginning of wisdom. There the foundations of mathematical and mechanical knowledge were well and truly laid by the Noble Race. Professor Radhakrishnan writes: “They measured the land, divided the year, mapped out the heaven, traced the course of sun and planets through the zodiacal belt, analyzed the constitution of matter, and studied the nature of birds and beasts, plants and seeds.”

Here, written two thousand years before the birth of Copernicus, is an interesting passage from the Aitareya Brahmana:

“The sun never sets or rises. When people think the sun is setting he only changes about after reaching the end of the day and makes night below and day to what is on the other side. Then, when people think he rises in the morning, he only shifts himself about after reaching the end of the night, and makes day below and night to what is on the other side. In truth, he does not set at all.”

Monier Williams says that whatever conclusions we form as to the source of the first astronomical ideas in the world it is probable that we owe to the Hindus the invention of algebra and its application to astronomy and geometry. And that from them the Arabs received the numerical symbols and decimal notation, which now used everywhere in Europe have rendered untold service to the cause of science.

And again: “The motions of the sun and moon were carefully observed by the Hindus and with such success that their determination of the moon’s synodical revolution is a much more correct one than the Greeks ever achieved. They introduced the period of Jupiter with those of the sun and moon into the regulation of their calendar in the form of sixty years common to them and the Chaldeans. They were keenly interested in logic and grammar, and in medicine and surgery they once kept pace with the most enlightened people of the world.”

As to art, I must entirely disagree with Dr. Breasted’s opinion that either Chinese or Indian art was “transformed,” if by transformed he means improved, as a result of the importation of Greek civilization to India by Alexander the Great in the fourth century b.c. Critics who have studied the work of the Greco-Buddhist School, as I have done in Peshawur and the neighborhood (its center), must agree that it lacks the spiritual beauty and nobility of primitive Buddhist art. When the smirking Buddhas of the Greco-Buddhist School are contrasted with the dignified and exquisite work to be seen at Amaravati, Sanchi, and Ajanta, it is not difficult to discriminate between a great national art and imported prettiness, which may amuse the multitude but never deceives those who can recognize and feel the expression of the faith of a people.

It is the philosophies of this great race that I propose to examine. It is interesting to wonder along what lines it might have developed later if its ancestral heritage had been less diffused and intermingled with other such different stocks as it found in India on arrival, or were forced by many invasions and conquests to accept later.

Chapter 2. The Beginnings Of Indian Philosophy And Social Organization

Chapter 2. The Beginnings Of Indian Philosophy And Social Organization

INDIAN philosophy may be said to begin with the “Vedanta” (or end of the Veda), which includes the famous books known as the Upanishads and the great commentaries upon them, and for this reason my account of the Vedas shall be slight, though the seeds of the philosophies are in them.

The Vedas are not only the earliest records of Aryan thought but also among the earliest that survive of the human mind. The Rig and Yajur Vedas long precede the earliest beginnings of Greek civilization. They are posterior only to the Egyptian dynasties, of which we know little but records interesting chiefly to the student of dead empires. The Vedas are human and living. There are four: the Rig, Yajur, Sâma, and Atharva. Some Indian scholars assign the Rig-Veda to 6,000 b.c. Others to the fifteenth century b.c. But it should be remembered that a very long period must have elapsed between the time when the hymns were composed and that when they were collected. The literary age is entered when collections are compiled.

The Rig-Veda is a collection of more than one thousand hymns which the Aryans brought with them to India. They were used during the sacrifices, of which the Yajur-Veda gives the ritual. They are partly in prose, partly in verse. The Sâma-Veda contains liturgies. The Atharva-Veda is the latest of the four and interesting for its relation to magic, spells, and charms. It shows a gradual tincturing of the Aryan mind by the worships of the subject peoples. For this reason it had not at first the high position of the other Vedas.

Each Veda has three parts—the mantras, or hymns; the Brahmanas, or precepts and religious duties; the Upanishads, which discuss philosophy. The Upanishads contain the background or foundation of the whole subsequent thought of India, and their value to the world is inestimable. It will be seen that the hymns represent the poets, or aspiration of the race; the Brahmanas the priests, and questions of conduct; the Upanishads the philosophers, or intellect touched with spirituality; and thus we have religion and philosophy as closely and naturally wedded as, for the welfare of mankind, they should always be.

The Rig-Veda is incomplete and much is lost. The hymns are addressed to nature-gods. The poets spoke of rain and it was considered that this implied a Rainer. Thus indu (rain) became Indra the Rainer. They spoke of fire and light, and these became a god Agni, whose name we (the far-off cousins of the Aryans) take in vain when we “ignite” anything. They spoke of a Heavenly Father, Dyaus-pitar, whose name we repeat when we say “Jupiter,” its latter half being preserved in our own word “father.” Though in this way there arose many divine agents to be propitiated, the Aryan people perceived them at times as facets of the one truth and manifestations in different activities of one divine spirit. Thus some of the Vedic poets openly stated the belief that enthroned above these many names is One. They said:

The sages called that One in many ways. They called it Agni, Yama, Matarishvan.

That One breathed breathlessly by Itself. Other than It there has been nothing since.

Here we have the germ of a monotheistic religion and a unifying philosophy. Among bygone mythological details, we find in these hymns passages which catch the mind with a quick sense of human interest and presuppose deep reflection.

I do not know what kind of thing I am.

Mysterious, bound, my mind wonders.

In that one sentence may be found the germ of philosophy. For all philosophy begins with wonder.

Thus wondering, they conceived the gods as those who give to men. Their collective name of Deva implies a giver. The sun god is a giver of light and warmth. Its secondary meaning is the Shining One. Allied with this and springing from the same source is our own “divine.”

So even in those early hymns they were feeling after a One Cause, and gradually as wonder increased and speculation strengthened, the higher thought of these Indian thinkers passed into a recognition of monotheism, which they were to transcend later.

“Priests and poets with words make into many the hidden reality which is One,” they said in the Rig-Veda.

As Max Müller writes: “Whatever may be the age when the Rig-Veda collection of hymns was finished, before that age the conviction had been formed that there is but One Being, neither male nor female, raised high above all conditions and limitations of personality and of human nature. In fact the Vedic poets had arrived at a conception of the Godhead which was reached once more by some of the Christian philosophers at Alexandria, but which even yet is beyond the reach of many who call themselves Christians.”

But because the masses cannot comprehend philosophical abstractions this Divine is sometimes called “He” as well as “It.” It was recognized that the Divine can be worshiped in spirit and in truth even under the personal conception of one God, and though there were those who could breathe in a rarer air of wisdom they were the first to realize that the soul must seek the bread for her own nourishing and that what will nourish one will not nourish another who is on a different spiritual plane. An Inquisition has always been inconceivable in India.

Here is a hymn of questions, very marvelous considering its remote antiquity. The translation is Professor Max Müller’s. It is a poem of creation.

  There was then neither what is nor what is not.

There was no sky nor the heaven beyond.

  What covered?

  Where was it and in Whose shelter?

Was the water the deep abyss?

  There was no death, hence there was nothing immortal.

There was no distinction between night and day.

That One breathed by itself without breath.

  Since then there has been nothing other than It.

  Darkness there was in the beginning, a sea without light.

From the germ that lay covered by the husk that One was born by the power of heat.

Love overcame It in the beginning, the seed springing from mind.

  Poets having searched in their heart found by wisdom the seed of what is, in what is not.

  Their ray was stretched across. Was It below or was It above?

  There were seed-bearers, there were Powers; self-power below and Will above.

Who then knows, who has declared from whence was born this creation?

The Gods came later.

  Who then knows whence it arose?

He from whom this creation arose, whether He made or did not make it only the highest seer in the highest heaven knows. Or perhaps he does not know.

That is to say perhaps the gods themselves cannot read the riddle of the universe.

This poem conceives a period when there was no Personal God, or rather he was as yet unmanifested by the Absolute Reality which is beyond all finite reason or words. This Ancient is older than and beyond any state of life or death that we have power to conceive. The depth of this conception is astonishing, and it will be realized that a primitive people who could thus reflect and state their case would certainly go far in the field of metaphysics and philosophy.

Their thought indeed developed swiftly; but before following it I shall say something of the social order it developed and that in reaction developed it, because it is difficult to realize the stories in which, as in parables, much of the wisdom of the Upanishads is conveyed, without setting them in their own background of the life of the people. For this reason I now turn to “The Laws of Manu,” that famous book which holds such a high position in India and gives so perfect a picture of the life of the ancient Aryan communities that it was granted a divine origin by the beliefs of the people.

“The Laws of Manu” is a compilation of most venerable laws and customs written in a style that insures popular understanding. It would be impossible to say to what antiquity they may be traced. The compilation is variously dated at from 1200 to 500 b.c. Few books will better repay study by those interested in social questions and especially in those concerning the western problems of democracy. Though named “The Laws of Manu” it should rather be “The Laws of the Manavas.” The word “manu” has its root in the verb “to think”; and the collection is said to be “the quintessence of the Vedas” and therefore of all knowledge. It gives us the dharma of the Indian people to this day.

What is “dharma”—a word occurring so often in Indian philosophy and having no one equivalent in English? I should describe it as the national spirit, which consecrates social custom, tradition, conduct, and religion, and is a uniting force, which in greater or less degree conditions the life and thought of every person born in that nation. But though inside the national circle it is a unifying energy, outside it is a dividing one and the source of much misunderstanding; for every nation has its own dharma, nor is it possible that any should wholly understand that of another or that it should adopt it. One may perhaps call it the national spirit, though that does not give its origin.

What then are the laws and precepts which built up the Indian dharma—so difficult for the West to understand, so easy for it to misjudge through surface judgments?

“The Laws of Manu” saw life steadily and saw it whole, as it applied to young and old, to men and women. They are founded on the Four Orders and the Four Castes. Varna, the Indian word for caste, denotes originally color division. The Four Orders are those of the student, the householder, the forest-dweller, and the ascetic who has renounced the world. These are the Ashramas, and all these are founded upon the householder. Without him there is no cohesion. The Four Castes are the Brahmin or teacher, the warrior, the merchant, and the laborer. Of these the first three are the “twice-born” castes. “And outside these is no fifth class,” say the Laws.

It is interesting to compare this statement with the jungle of castes that has since grown up in India with their bewildering cruelties and fetters. Manu states that all men naturally belong to one of these four divisions, and that all are rooted in the life of the householder because he nourishes and supports the others with food for the body and the mind. “Therefore the householder occupies the position of the eldest.”

But this division means little in India today. Brahmins are now not only priests and teachers but are found in almost every calling, and this is the case also with caste artizans. Indian caste has nothing in common with western social divisions. A servant may be of much higher caste than his master. It is conceivable there that it would be a most terrible mésalliance for the man servant of a house to marry the wealthy daughter of its master. I have known a Brahmin official who would have died sooner than eat with his royal master, so much was his sovereign’s caste lower than his own. Yet even in the present aberrations of caste may be seen the original germs of a dharma not only wise but inevitable where a ruling race had to make good its position among races of different color and lower racial types. The caste system was a vital necessity to the Aryan race and still has certain virtues.

To return to “The Laws of Manu”—the caste divisions made it possible for all to pass through the desirable experiences of all stages of life. In earliest Vedic times caste probably did not exist other than as a color line, but as society became complex, organizations developed which allotted different functions to different groups. At first the priest had no special concern with religious or sacrificial rites. The householder performed his own sacrifices and oblations and there it ended.

This could not last. The Aryans perceived the need of specialization. Therefore the Brahmin gradually assumed that care of education and of spiritual affairs which the people considered the most honorable in the social system. The next caste, the Kshatriya or warrior caste, was made responsible for war, political matters, government and public work. The third caste, the Vaishya, concerned itself with all affairs of trade and industry. The fourth, the Shudra, represented labor. The Shudras were “the feet and pedestal of all.” Some scholars believe that the fourth caste—the Shudra—may have been formed from the aboriginal people; some that when the Aryans came to India they had already a laboring caste of their own. This is not certain.

The Brahmin was the servant of all on the higher planes of thought. The Shudra was the servant of the community on the physical plane because he was not developed into the higher forms of thought.

It will be seen that in the ancient caste-conception each caste is a school for the one above it, rising from lowly and yet preparative labor to the highest form of human consciousness.

Dharma was the constructive and binding force for all the castes. It constituted a brotherhood of differently apportioned but collective and coöperative work.

The Mahabharata states that “the order of wise men who dwell in forests and live on fruits, roots, and air, is prescribed for the three twice-born classes, but the order of householders is prescribed for all.”

Thus it was only when all duties to the family and state had been accomplished that any man of the three higher castes could betake himself to the life of contemplation. Unless indeed he had a high and special vocation and in that case even a Shudra was not shut out. “Harmlessness, truthfulness, honesty, cleanliness, self-control: these are declared by man to be the duty of all the four castes.” Distinction between the secular and the religious was not drawn. That with its disastrous consequences was to be a much later development.

Naturally, because upon it all depends, the first concern of “The Laws of Manu” is education. This ideal involves a certain asceticism very foreign to western notions and therefore perhaps the better worth considering. I think there is much to be learned from it.

For different boy-types different ages were set for the beginning. Those who were to do the high work of the Brahmins as storers and dispensers of knowledge must begin early. They must not spend so much time in games. The next, the warrior and governing class, may begin later and for them very pronounced physical development is of more importance. The next caste the Vaishyas, or merchants, whose intelligence is slower for higher aims, may begin a little later than the caste above it.

“The Brahmin should be led up to the teacher and invested with the sacred thread in the eighth year; the Kshatriya boy [governing] in the eleventh, the Vaishya boy [merchant] in the twelfth. But if a boy shows exceptional promise and desire for the qualifications of his vocation, such as the light of wisdom if a Brahmin; physical vitality and might of body if a Kshatriya, commercial enterprise and initiative, if a Vaishya, then he should begin his studies in the fifth, sixth, and eighth years respectively.”

Education must on no account be delayed beyond the sixteenth, twenty-second and twenty-fourth years for the three castes. After that the mind is no longer flexible.

Bhagavan Das (who has written a remarkable book on “The Laws of Manu”) points out that the ancient teacher was spared one serious modern difficulty. He knew exactly to what end his pupil’s faculties were to be directed. Not only so, but he was spared the greatest problem of the modern world. “By one of those paradoxes which Nature has invented to maintain her balance the modern man, while laying all stress on differentiation as the prime factor in human society, aims at making all men equal.” With the Aryan teacher this question of equality did not exist.

The western teacher must treat each pupil as a separate and individual caste, for his place in social rank and work is never fixed. Therefore his main view-point must be the bread-education—the possibility of making as much money as lies within the boy’s powers. The future profession of the pupil, still perhaps quite undecided, will further complicate the problem of education. What will be his choice? Where will he best fit into a crowded market?

These questions were answered in India by the caste system. It offered broad lines, within which there could be specialization to follow later as the boy’s faculties developed into those of the man. And it followed naturally that much more time could be given to education, varying for the different castes but longest for the Brahmin. For him it was considered that the ideal demanded thirty-six years of dwelling with his teachers. Knowledge, which comprised the Vedas, the Trinity of Sciences, the Science of the Trinity, and all the subsidiary sciences, needed thirty-six years! If that were impossible it should be eighteen. The least was nine. But, it was added, it must in any case be until the necessary knowledge was gained. That would vary with different pupils.

“Only after having spent the first quarter of life with the Teacher and undergone the discipline which produces real knowledge and consecrated his soul in the recognized way—only after this preparation should the twice-born man take a wife and become a householder.”

It was held that a man so trained would be trained to cope with life at any point, spiritual, intellectual, and physical. He would understand the reaction of temperaments upon each other. He would have learned the uses of silence and reflection. He would know that the procreation of feeble and diseased thoughts is worse if possible than the procreation of a feeble and diseased family. He would become the mainstay of the wisdom of communities, the counselor of kings. Such men would combine knowledge with spiritual wisdom. They would be the racial patriarchs. In a lesser and differing degree the same system applied to the education of the two lower castes who were also twice-born.

The Kshatriya, greater in physical power, qualified for endurance and the outleap of valor, less concerned with the training of the supernormal powers yet severely trained in spiritual wisdom, was fitted for his great task of government and the leadership of men.

The Vaishya, trader and agriculturalist, trained also in spiritual insight, was fitted, so far as wisdom could fit him for his part in life. Education was, as it were, a fugue—the dominant was the Brahmin, but all harmonized, each constructing and supporting the other, each developing from the one into the full harmony.

But what was the position in education of the fourth caste—the Shudra? Was he wholly neglected as was his lot in Europe until comparatively late years? By no means.

The Shudra was considered the child of the social system. The belief in what may roughly be called reincarnation gave him the status of one who for reasons of a past life was reborn in a sphere where he could scarcely hope to understand the inner and higher wisdom to which I shall come in later chapters. For his lifetime his status would be that of the three twice-born castes before they had received education and discipline.

The Laws say: “Everyone is born a Shudra and remains such until he receives the sacrament of the Veda and is thereby born a second time.”

The Shudra’s education was therefore necessarily comprised in obedience to the higher castes and to the training of a householder’s life. But there was one important exception. Special explanations of the Vedas had been prepared by the Rishis (sages) for the understanding of simple folk. These are known as the Puranas, and in them the truths of the Vedas are presented by tales and parables suited to less evolved mentalities. Their object was to interest the masses in the higher metaphysic, and this object was completely achieved though not without the consequence that the parable and analogy were often received as final truth. At these popular lectures men, women and children who escaped the net of the higher caste education assembled as eager hearers. All the necessary knowledge of the Vedas is in the Puranas and therefore none were compelled to go ignorant of what was then considered necessary education. The position of the Shudra in ancient India may be compared, judging from “The Laws of Manu,” with that of a valued house-servant of the present day. And in case of exceptional development he could study further, though still under certain restrictions.

Now comes a very curious and very interesting point. Life was to impose its hardest burden upon the higher castes. Noblesse oblige. Where the Shudra could go scot-free was no escape for them.

“The Shudra cannot commit a sin which degrades in the same sense as can the twice-born person. This is his advantage. His disadvantage is that he cannot be given the secret mantras [the hymns and sacred formulas]. He has no compulsory religious duty to perform but if he does it there is no prohibition. Indeed the Shudras who wish to gather dharma and learn its ordinances, and follow the way of the good among the twice-born, and perform the five daily sacrifices, etc. (but without the secret mantras) do not infringe law but rather gain the approval of the good and receive honor.”

But what of the education of women in such a society?

There was no question of the equality of the sexes, for in a society so divided into separated duties such a thought never could arise. Women were plainly differentiated by nature for different duties, and their training must follow those lines. It is true that all the sacraments were prescribed for the girls also. But they, like the Shudras, were debarred from use of the secret hymns and formulas, not because of inferiority but because of the differences which prevented right use of them. But the marriage ceremony which united man and woman was performed with the mantras, and the theory was that the girl, now a part of her husband and living with him, was in the position of the disciple with the master. Otherwise, generally speaking, the girl should be nurtured and educated in the same way and as diligently as the boy. No prohibition exists in “The Laws of Manu” against the education of girls on the same lines as their brothers, but their education must follow the general lines laid down for caste, though they were so differentiated for girls as to give more training in the fine arts.

The Brahmin girl must have a more intellectual education. The Kshatriya girl more physical activity, the Vaishya girl more training in economic matters. But it was never supposed that she could give the same time to these subjects. Nature called her imperatively and at a much earlier age to a quite distinct employment. Even there, however, the different trainings tended to blend. The wives of the Rishis (sages) are often represented as women of learning in the great knowledge to be described later in the philosophies. And the women of the Kshatriyas could take part with their husbands in very different enjoyments. Here is a classical passage from the Mahabharata, the ancient epic of India, describing the elopement of the Lady Subhadra with the all-beautiful, all-valorous Prince Arjuna. They fled in his chariot and were pursued.

“Then the sweet-voiced lady Subhadra was highly delighted to see that force of excited elephants, rushing cars, and horses. In great glee she said to Arjuna:

“‘For a long while I had a mind to drive your chariot in the midst of the battle with you fighting beside me . . . you who have a great soul and strength of limb! Let me now be your charioteer, O son of Pritha, for I have been well instructed in the art.’”

And so it was. He fought. She, like a well-taught girl of the warrior caste, hurled the chariot against the foe, and they were victorious. Great and powerful and wise are the women of the Mahabharata! I possess the monumental book and can truly say that, on the subject of her heroines of old, India can well afford to speak with her enemies in the gate. They are not surpassed in any literature or history.

Chapter 3. The Ancient System Of Education

WHAT was the method of education for the three great castes? The first care was to form character. Intellectual education took a second place, but with certain knowledge of the caste and destination of the pupil intellectual education was a direct progress on a charted road, and it was unnecessary to fill the mind with wagonloads of indigestible knowledge shoveled in in case they might come in useful later. All effort could be directed to a clearly seen end.

“Having taken up the pupil that he may lead him to the Highest, the teacher shall impart the ways of cleanliness, purity and chastity of body, with good manners and morals. And he shall teach him how to tend the fires sacrificial and culinary and, more important than all, how to perform his daily devotions.”

It was a part of character-building that the home of the teacher was the university. The pupil became part of the family—a family naturally of high standing because of the honor attached by caste and public feeling to the position of the Brahmin. A filial tenderness traditionally subsisted between pupil and tutor. All this was no small thing. It was the pupil’s duty to earn his food and sometimes his teacher’s by the mendicancy that from remote antiquity has been a sacred part of Indian life.

There was nothing humiliating in this, and the gift of food was the part that citizens took in the duties of education. To give was and is considered a boon; for that reason the mendicant monks in Burma (who all teach the boys) return no thanks for what is given. They have conferred an obligation. To the student, however rich his family, this was a training in the wealth of that Lady Poverty whom St. Francis of Assisi adored. There were rules, however:

“He should at first beg from his own mother or sister or his mother’s sister, from whom he may not feel shame or shyness in taking. Later, he should not beg among the family and relations of his preceptor but from the houses in the neighboring town and the good householders in whose homes the sacrifices enjoined by the Vedas are kept alive. And having secured the needed food and no more, he should present it to his preceptor and then, with his permission, should eat, facing east, after the customary mouth-rinsing and purification.”

Much stress was laid on manners, and who can sufficiently regret the cruel and disastrous loss of this education in modern life? Those taught in India had not the formalities of China and Japan, but seem to contain the root of the matter: the selflessness of the gentleman; the obedience which is the training for authority.

“Tell the truth, but pleasantly and gently. Do not tell it rudely, for truth-telling that hurts and repels does not carry conviction, but is only a display of aggressive egotism. Yet never tell a pleasing falsehood. Such is the ancient law.”

“Affluence, good birth and breeding, high deeds with much experience, knowledge—these are the five titles to honor. Each succeeding one is higher than the preceding.”

The code of manners included reverence to elders, tenderness to the young, and affection to equals. A good deal of friction, in both daily life and business was thus spared, and boys were fitted to hold every position with dignity. Health was also made an important branch of training. The science of Yoga was devised to control health and vitality. It included certain forms of asceticism—a training the modern world begins very slowly and painfully to recognize as necessary. Perfect continence was insisted upon during student life. And it is suggested that the total physical life will be four times as long as the period of continence observed before the duties of the householder as regards procreation and family life are taken up. Manu puts this point strongly:

“Because of the neglect of Veda-knowledge and permitting the right knowledge to decay, because of abandoning the right way, because of mistakes in food and because of careless failure in continence, does death prevail over the knowers.”

Thus hunger and desire, two primal human motives, were to receive the strictest training, and knowledge on these points was to be a part of the education of the young. Full directions were given as to the quality of foods and for the disciplining of reproductive energy.

Here I must quote the interpretation by Bhagavan Das of the Laws of Manu (though I shall return to the subject in consideration of the system of Yoga), which gives a strong reason for continence during pupilage.

“If any subdivisional part or cell ceases to subdivide further and remains undivided [through continence] it may continue to do so for an indefinitely long time and become comparatively immortal. Such is the promise of teaching, walking in the path of Brahma, storing up and perfecting the germ and source of life and all vitality and power, the potency and principle of infinite reproduction and multiplication, and also storing up and perfecting the seed of knowledge, which again is power and has also the potency within it of infinite expansion.”

It will be seen that it is not this teaching which has led to the early marriages of India and the resulting misery and deterioration. Neither the unwholesome and too early devoured fruit of the body nor that of the mind had any place in the system of Manu. The duties of the householder were enjoined when he was in his prime, not otherwise. For those who had another vocation a way of escape was provided to what was thought to be an even higher sphere of duty, and the ascetic became the power-station of the race; from him men would derive light and strength. He would be the master of supernormal powers. It was taught that after a certain stage of this knowledge the energy latent in food would function on a plane more subtle than the physical and be transmuted into finer, more intellectual and spiritual energies. I shall return to this most interesting subject later.

It is impossible to give details of study here. It included the classics of the race and education as to man’s position in relation to the universe. Nearly all this was conveyed in the form of carefully planned aphorisms easily remembered. Much attention was given to acoustics and phonetics, and in teaching grammar, philology, and physiology in a condensed form much was necessarily included. Rhetoric, logic, and reasoning were important. Manu says, agreeing curiously with the views of Confucius:

“All meanings, ideas, intentions, desires, emotions, items of knowledge are embodied in speech, are rooted in it and branch out of it. He who misappropriates, misapplies, and mismanages speech, mismanages everything.” A profound truth.

The study of the Vedic books was interspersed with these secular subjects, but separate days were given to each so that the pupil’s mind might not be hurried from one subject to another. For posture, he must stand upright, hands folded on the chest. Since there were no books, memory and vocal power were highly developed and eyesight spared. The holidays were short and frequent, and many depended on atmospheric and magnetic conditions, which were closely studied and given special importance in connection with special studies.

We learn from the Puranas that martial exercises, wrestling, fencing, archery, mock fights, foot and horse races, the management of horses, camels, bulls, and elephants, were all part of the training according to the type of student. Manu taught that rhythmic and considered movement is good. “Let him not move his hands and feet and eyes restlessly and crookedly. Let him not think of always outracing others and injuring them.”

It is strange to consider that all athletics were considered to be a part of the lower division of divine knowledge. And this belief is not wholly dead in Asia. The ju-jutsu of Japan, for instance, has a very singular occult side that is not known to all the Japanese who practice it. I have had interesting talks on this, in Japan.

But we must leave the schools for adult life. It will be easily realized what emphasis must be laid in such communities on the perfection of family life, and it is interesting to compare it with the later and lower Greek ideals.

“The whole duty of husband and wife to each other is that they do not anger each other nor wander apart in thought, word, or deed until death. And the promise is that those who righteously fulfil this duty are not parted by the death of the body, but shall be together beyond death.”

“Let the widow follow the Brahmin teaching, improving soul and body by study and the service of the elders. Let her triumph over her body and walk in the ways of purity. . . .”

“And if the wife be noble of soul and the husband ignoble, and still she wills to die a widow for his sake, then shall her giant love and sacrifice grip his soul and drag it from the depths of sin and darkness to the kingdoms of light. . . .”

“The mother exceeds a thousand fathers in the right to reverence and in the function of education. Good women should be honored and worshiped like the gods. By the favors and powers of true women are the three worlds upheld.”

So must the husband and wife be souls like twin flames illumining all about them. It was not a question of equality between them but of identity. And here is the ideal marriage, from which noble children were to be expected. The description is drawn from the Vishnu Purana and the Vishnu Bhâgavata. It is great poetry as well as great truth.

“She is Language; he is Thought. She is Prudence; he is Law. He is Reason; she is Sense. She is Duty; he is Right. He is Author; she is Work. He is Patience; she is Peace. He is Will; she is Wish. He is Pity; she is Gift. He is Song; she is the Note. She is Fuel; he is Fire. She is Glory; he is Sun. She is Motion; he is Wind. He is Owner; she is Wealth. He is Battle; she is Might. He is Lamp; she is Light. He is Day; she is Night. He is Justice; she is Pity. He is Channel; she is River. She is Beauty; he is Strength. She is Body; he is Soul.”

This is a passage of extraordinary beauty and insight in its recognition of the primitive nature of women as contrasted, not to dishonor but to honor, with that of man.

In a singular passage the Law of the Manavas declares the right of primogeniture on the ground that the eldest son is the child of dharma, i.e. of duty and necessity. The children born after him are those of earthly desire. He is therefore, in the absence of his father, father of all the younger ones.

The elasticity of the caste system under the Laws of Manu as opposed to its modern rigidity is very noticeable. The three castes interchange food and fire, dwell in the house of the teacher together, beg food together and mostly from Vaishya homes, for to the Vaishya (merchant) caste (the third) fell the special duty of providing food for guests and the community. The Brahmin vowed to poverty could exert himself thus for none but those in real distress. But a rule was compelled to be laid down as regards the Shudra, the lowest caste, and this naturally; for the Shudras were exempt from much of the strict discipline forced upon the three upper castes. Yet even here the liberality of the teaching will astonish those who know modern India.

“One’s own plowman, an old friend of the family, one’s own cowherd, one’s own servant, one’s own barber, and whosoever else may come for refuge and offer service; from the hands of all such Shudras may food be taken.”

These could be trusted for good-will and cleanliness, therefore from them nourishment could be accepted. One is reminded of Ramakrishna, the saint of modern India who died some thirty or forty years since. He knew by instinct the spiritual purity or impurity of the hands from which his food had come, and rejected or accepted it accordingly.

“This comes from a good man. I can eat it,” he would say.