al-Biruni Kitab al-Hind
On Religion, Philosophy and Related Subjects
CHAPTER 2
ON THE BELIEF OF THE HINDUS IN GOD (ᴐALLĀH)
[i.27] THE belief of educated and uneducated people differs in every nation; for the former strive to conceive abstract ideas and to define general principles, while the latter do not pass beyond the apprehension of the senses, and are content with derived rules, without caring for details, especially in questions of religion and law, regarding which opinions and interests are divided.
The Hindus believe with regard to God that he is one, eternal, without beginning and end, acting by free-will, almighty, all-wise, living, giving life, ruling, preserving; one who in his sovereignty is unique, beyond all likeness and unlikeness, and that he does not resemble anything nor does anything resemble him. In order to illustrate this we shall produce some extracts from their literature, lest the reader should think that our account is nothing but hearsay.
In the Book of Patañjali the pupil asks:
Who is the worshipped One, by the worship of whom blessing is obtained?
The master says:
It is he who, being Eternal and Unique, does not for his part stand in need of any human action for which he might give as a recompense either a blissful repose, which is hoped and longed for, or a troubled existence, which is feared and dreaded. He is unattainable to thought, being sublime beyond all unlikeness, which is abhorrent, and all likeness, which is sympathetic. He [i.28] by his essence knows from all eternity. Knowledge, in the human sense of the term, has as its object that which was unknown before, while not knowing does not at any time or in any condition apply to God.
Further the pupil speaks:
Do you attribute to him other qualities besides those you have mentioned?
The master says:
He is Height, absolute in the idea, not in space, for he is sublime beyond all existence in any space. He is the Pure Absolute Good, longed for by every created being. He is the Knowledge free from the defilement of forgetfulness and not-knowing.
The pupil speaks:
Do you attribute to him speech or not?
The master says:
As he knows, he no doubt also speaks.
The pupil asks:
If he speaks because he knows, what, then, is the difference between him and the knowing sages who have spoken of their knowing?
The master says:
The difference between them is Time, for they have learned in Time and spoken in Time, after having been not-knowing and not-speaking. By speech they have transferred their knowledge to others. Therefore their speaking and acquiring knowledge take place in Time. And as divine matters have no connection with time, God is knowing, speaking from Eternity. It was he who spoke to Brahman, and to others of the first beings in different ways. On the one he bestowed a book; for the other he opened a door, a means of communicating with him; a third one he inspired so that he obtained by cogitation what God bestowed upon him.
The pupil asks:
Whence has he this knowing?
The master answers:
[i.29] His knowing is the same from all Eternity, forever and ever. As he has never been not-knowing, he is knowing of himself, having never acquired any knowledge that he did not possess before. He speaks in the Veda which he sent down upon Brahman: “Praise and celebrate him who has spoken the Veda, and was before the Veda .”
The pupil asks:
How do you worship him to whom the perception of the Senses cannot attain?
The master says:
His name proves his existence, for where there is a report there must be something to which it refers, and where there is a name there must be something that is named. He is hidden to the Senses and unperceivable by them. However, the Soul perceives him, and Thought comprehends his qualities. This meditation is identical with worshipping him exclusively, and by practicing it uninterruptedly beatitude is obtained.
In this way the Hindus express themselves in this very famous book.
The following passage is taken from the book Gītā, a part of the book Bhārata, from the conversation between Vāsudēva and Arjuna:
I am the Universe, without a beginning by being born, or without an end by dying. I do not aim by whatever I do at any recompense. I do not specially belong to one class of beings to the exclusion of others, as if I were the friend of one and the enemy of others. I have given to each one in my creation what is sufficient for him in all his functions. Therefore whoever knows me in this capacity, and tries to become similar to me by keeping desire apart from his action, his fetters will be loosened, and he will easily be saved and freed.
This passage reminds one of the definition of philo [i.30] sophy as the striving to become as much as possible similar to God.
Further, Vāsudēva speaks in the same book:
It is desire that causes most men to take refuge with God for their wants. But if you examine their case closely, you will find that they are very far from having an accurate knowledge of him; for God is not apparent to every one, so that he might perceive him with his Senses. Therefore they do not know him. Some of them do not pass beyond what their Senses perceive; some pass beyond this, but stop at the knowledge of the Laws of Nature, without learning that above them there is One who did not give birth nor was born, the essence of whose being has not been comprehended by the knowledge of any one, while His knowledge comprehends everything.
The Hindus differ among themselves as to the definition of what isAction. Some who make God the source of Action consider him as the Universal Cause; for as the existence of the Agents derives from him, he is the cause of their Action, and in consequence it is his own Action coming into existence through their intermediation. Others do not derive Action from God, but from other sources, considering them as the particular causes, which in the last instance—according to external observation—produce the Action in question
In the book Sāṁkhya the devotee speaks:
Has there been a difference of opinion about Action and the Agent, or not?”
The sage speaks:
Some people say that the Soul is not alive and the Matter not living; that God, who is self-sufficing, is he who unites them and separates them from each other; that therefore in reality he himself is the Agent. Action proceeds from him in such a way that he causes both the Soul and the Matter to move, like as that which is living and powerful moves that which is dead and weak.
[i.31] Others say that the union of Action and the Agent is effected by Nature, and that such is the usual process in everything that increases and decreases.
Others say the Agent is the Soul, because in the Veda it is said, “Every being comes from Purusha.” According to others, the Agent is Time, for the world is tied to Time as a sheep is tied to a strong cord, so that its motion depends upon whether the cord is drawn tight or slackened. Still others say that Action is nothing but a recompense for something that has been done before.
All these opinions are wrong. The truth is that Action entirely belongs to Matter, for Matter binds the Soul, causes it to wander about in different shapes, and then sets it free. Therefore Matter is the Agent, all that belongs to Matter helps it to accomplish Action. But the Soul is not an Agent, because it is devoid of the different faculties.
This is what educated people believe about God. They call him Īśvara (‘Self-Sufficing,’ ‘Beneficent’), who gives without receiving. They consider the Unity of God as absolute, but that everything beside God that may appear as a Unity is really a plurality of things. The existence of God they consider as a real existence, because everything that exists exists through him. It is not impossible to think that the existing beings are not and that he is, but it is impossible to think that he is not and that they are.
If we now pass from the ideas of the educated people among the Hindus to those of the common people, we must first state that they present a great variety. Some of them are simply abominable, but similar errors also occur in other religions. Nay, even in Islam we must decidedly disapprove (e.g. of the anthropomorphic doctrines, the teachings of the Jabriyya sect, the prohibition of the discussion of religious topics, and such like). Every religious sentence destined for the people at large must [i.32] be carefully worded, as the following example shows. Some Hindu scholar calls God a point, meaning to say thereby that the qualities of bodies do not apply to him. Now some uneducated man reads this and imagines, God is as small as a point, and he does not find out what the word point in this sentence was really intended to express. He will not even stop with this offensive comparison, but will describe God as much larger, and will say, “He is twelve fingers long and ten fingers broad.” Praise be to God, who is far above measure and number! Further, if an uneducated man hears what we have mentioned, that God comprehends the universe so that nothing is concealed from him, he will at once imagine that this comprehending is effected by means of eyesight; that eyesight is only possible by means of an eye, and that two eyes are better than only one; and in consequence he will describe God as having a thousand eyes, meaning to describe his omniscience.
Similar hideous fictions are sometimes met with among the Hindus, especially among those castes who are not allowed to occupy themselves with science, of whom we shall speak hereafter.
CHAPTER 3
ON THE HINDU BELIEF AS TO CREATED THINGS, BOTH INTELLIGIBILIA AND SENSIBILIA
[i.33] ON this subject the ancient Greeks held nearly the same view as the Hindus, at all events in those times before philosophy rose high among them under the care of the seven so-called pillars of wisdom-Solon of Athens, Bias of Priene, Periander of Corinth, Thales of Miletus, Chilon of Lacedaemon, Pittacus of Lesbos, and Cleobulus of Lindos, and their successors. Some of them thought that all things are One, and this one thing is according to some lanthanein (to lanqa/nein, 'The Hidden'), according to others dynamis (to du/namij, 'The Potential'); for example, man has only this prerogative before a stone and the inanimate world, that he is by one degree nearer than they to the First Cause. But for this, he would not be anything better than they.
Others think that only the First Cause has real existence, because it alone is self-sufficing, while everything else absolutely requires it; that a thing which for its existence stands in need of something else has only a dream-life, no real life, and that Reality is only that One and First being (the First Cause).
This is also the theory of the Ṣūfīs, or 'Sages,' for ṣūf means 'wisdom' in Greek (sofi/a, sophia), and therefore a philosopher is called pailāsōpā, i.e. 'wisdom-loving' (filo/sofoj, philosophos). When in Islam persons adopted something like the doctrines of these philosophers, they also adopted their name; but some people did not understand the meaning of the word, and erroneously combined it with [i.34] the Arabic word ṣuffa, as if the Ṣūfī (philosophoi, 'Sages') were identical with the so-called ᴐAhl al-Ṣuffa among the companions of Muhammad. In later times, the word was corrupted by misspelling, so that finally it was taken for a derivation from ṣūf ('goat-wool'). Abū al-Fatḥ al-Bustī made a laudable effort to avoid this mistake when he said:
From olden times people have differed as to the meaning of the wordṣūfī, and have thought it a derivative from ṣūf ('wool'). I, for my part, understand by the word a youth who is ṣāfī ('pure'). This ṣāfī has become ṣūfī, and in this form the name of a class of thinkers, the Ṣūfī.
Further, the same Greeks think that the existing world is only One thing; that the First Cause appears in it under various shapes; that the power of the First Cause is inherent in the parts of the world under different circumstances, which cause a certain difference of the things of the world notwithstanding their original unity.
Others thought that he who turns with his whole being towards the First Cause, striving to become as much as possible similar to it, will become united with it after having passed the intermediate stages, and stripped of all appendages and impediments. Similar views are also held by the Ṣūfī, because of the similarity of the dogma.
As to the Souls and Spirits, the Greeks think that they exist by themselves before they enter Bodies; that they exist in certain numbers and groups, which stand in various relations to each other, knowing each other and not knowing; that they, while staying in Bodies, earn by the actions of their free-will that lot which awaits them after their separation from the Bodies (i.e. the faculty of ruling the world in various ways). Therefore they called them gods, built temples in their names and offered them sacrifices; as Galen says in his book called the Exhortation on the Arts (protreptiko\j ei)j ta\j te/xnaj, Protrepticus):
Excel [i.35] lent men have obtained the honor of being reckoned among the deified beings only for the noble spirit in which they cultivated the arts, not for their prowess in the greatest of honors, because the one taught mankind the science of medicine, the other the art of the cultivation of the vine.
Galen says in his commentary on the Sayings (Apophthegms) of Hippocrates:
As regards the offerings to Asclepius, we have never heard that anybody offered him a goat, because the weaving of goat-hair is not easy, and much goat-meat produces epilepsy, since the humores of the goats are bad. People only offer him a cock, as also Hippocrates has done. For this divine man acquired for mankind the art of medicine, which is much superior to that which Dionysus and Demeter have invented (i.e. the wine and the cereals, whence bread is prepared). Therefore cereals are called by the name of Demeter and the vine is called by the name of Dionysus.
Plato says in his Timaeus:
The theoi, whom the barbarians call 'gods' because of their not dying, are daemones, while they call the god the 'First God.'
Further he says:
God spoke to the gods, "You are not of yourselves exempt from destruction. Only you will not perish by death. You have obtained from my will at the time when I created you, the firmest covenant."
In another passage of the same book he says:
God is in the single number; there are no gods in the plural number.
These quotations prove that the Greeks call in general god everything that is glorious and noble, and the like usage exists among many nations. They go [i.36] even so far as to call gods the mountains, the seas, etc. Secondly, they apply the term god in a special sense to the First Cause, to the angels, and to their Souls. According to a third usage, Plato calls gods the Sekīnāt (Mou=sai, or Muses). But on this subject the terms of the interpreters are not perfectly clear; in consequence of which we only know the name, but not what it means. Johannes Grammaticus says in his Refutation of Proclus ( contra Proclum):
The Greeks gave the name of gods to the visible bodies in Heaven, as many barbarians do. Afterwards, when they came to philosophize on the abstract ideas of the world of thought, they called these by the name of gods.
Hence we must necessarily infer that being deified means something like the state of angels, according to our notions. This Galen says in clear words in the same book:
If it is true that Asclepius was a man in bygone times, and that then God deigned to make him one of the angels, everything else is idle talk.
In another passage of the same book he says:
God spoke to Lycurgus, "I am in doubt concerning you, whether to call you a man or an angel, but I incline to the latter."
There are, however, certain expressions that are offensive according to the notions of one religion, while they are admissible according to those of another, which may pass in one language, while they are rejected by another. To this class belongs the word apotheosis, which has a bad sound in the ears of Muslims. If we consider the use of the word god in the Arabic language, we find that all the names by which the Pure Truth (ᴐAllāh) has been named, may somehow or other be applied to other beings besides him, except the word ᴐAllāh, which only applies to God, and which has been called his Greatest Name.
If we consider the use of the word in Hebrew and [i.37] Syriac, in which two languages the sacred books before the Koran were revealed, we find that in the Torah and the following books of prophets which are reckoned with the Torah as one whole, that word Rabb corresponds to the word ᴐAllāh in Arabic, in so far as it cannot in a genitive construction be applied to anybody besides God, and you cannot say the rabb of the house, the rabb of the property (which in Arabic is allowed). And, secondly, we find that the word ᴐEloah in Hebrew corresponds in its usage there to the word Rabb in Arabic (i.e. that in Hebrew the word hAl&)vv, ᴐEloah, may apply to other beings but God, like the word ARABIC in Arabic). The following passages occur in those books:
"The sons of ᴐElohim came in unto the daughters of men," before the deluge, and cohabited with them (Gen. 6:4)
"Satan entered together with the sons of ᴐElohim into their meeting" (Job 1:6)
In the Torah of Moses, God speaks to him: "I have made thee a god to Pharaoh" (Exod. 7:1)
In the 82nd Psalm of the Psalter of David, the following occurs: "God standeth in the congregation of the gods "-i.e. "of the angels" (Ps. 82:1)
In the Torah the idols are called foreign gods. If the Torah had not forbidden to worship any other being but God, if it had not forbidden people to prostrate themselves before the idols, nay, even to mention them and to think of them, one might infer from this expression ('foreign gods') that the order of the Bible refers only to the abolition offoreign gods, which would meangods that are not Hebrew ones (as if the Hebrews had adored their ethnic gods, in opposition to the gods of their neighbors). The nations round Palestine were idol worshippers like the heathen Greeks, and the Israelites always rebelled against God by worshipping the idol of Baᴄal (Syriac: Baᴄlā) and the idol of Ashtārōth (i.e. Venus).
From all this it is evident that the Hebrews used to [i.38] apply the term being god, grammatically a term like being king, to the angels, to the Souls invested with divine power (i.34); by way of comparison, also, to the images which were made to represent the bodies of those beings; lastly, metaphorically, to kings and to other great men.
Passing from the word God to those of father and son, we must state that Islam is not liberal in the use of them; for in Arabic the word son means nearly always as much as a child in the natural order of things, and from the ideas involved in parentage and birth can never be derived any expression meaning the Eternal Lord of creation. Other languages, however, take much more liberty in this respect; so that if people address a man by father, it is nearly the same as if they addressed him by sir. As is well known, phrases of this kind have become so prevalent among the Christians, that anybody who does not always use the words father and son in addressing people would scarcely be considered as one of them. By the Son they understand most especially Jesus, but apply it also to others besides him. It is Jesus who orders his disciples to say in prayer, "O our Father who art in heaven" (Matt. 6:9); and informing them of his approaching death, he says that he is going to his Father and to their Father (John 20:17). In most of his speeches he explains the word the Son as meaning himself, that he is the Son of Man.
Besides the Christians, the Jews too use similar expressions; for the 2 nd Book of Kings relates that God consoled David for the loss of his son, who had been born to him by the wife of Uriah, and promised him another son from her, whom he would adopt as his own son (I Chron. 22:9-10). If the use of the Hebrew language admits that Salomo (Solomon) is by adoption a son of God, it is admissible that he who adopted was a father-God. [i.39] The Manichaeans stand in a near relationship to the Christians. Mānī expresses himself in a similar way in the book calledKanz al-ᴐIḥyā ( Thesaurus Vivificationis):
The resplendent hosts will be called young women and virgins, fathers and mothers, sons, brothers, and sisters, because such is the custom in the books of the prophets. In the country of joy there is neither male nor female, nor are there organs of generation. All are invested with living bodies. Since they have divine bodies, they do not differ from each other in weakness and force, in length and shortness, in figure and looks; they are like similar lamps, which are lighted by the same lamp, and which are nourished by the same material. The cause of this kind of name giving arises, in the last instance, from the rivalry of the two realms in mixing up with each other. When the low dark realm rose from the abyss of chaos, and was seen by the high resplendent realm as consisting of pairs of male and female beings, the latter gave similar outward forms to its own children, who started to fight that other world, so that it placed in the fight one kind of beings opposite the same kind of the other world.
The educated among the Hindus abhor anthropomorphisms of this kind, but the crowd and the members of the single sects use them most extensively. They go even beyond all we have hitherto mentioned, so as to speak of wife, son, daughter, of the rendering pregnant and other physical processes, all in connection with God. They are even so little pious, that, when speaking of these things, they do not even abstain from silly and unbecoming language. However, nobody minds these classes and their theories, though they are numerous. The main and most essential point of the Hindu world of thought is that which the Brāhmaṇs think and believe, for they are specially trained for preserving and maintaining their religion. And this it is that we shall explain-the belief of the Brāhmaṇs.
[i.40] Regarding the whole Creation (to o)/n, 'Existence'), they think that it is a Unity, as has already been declared, because Vāsudēva speaks in the book called Gītā:
To speak accurately, we must say that all things are divine; for Vishṇu made himself the earth that the living beings should rest thereupon; he made himself water to nourish them thereby; he made himself fire and wind in order to make them grow; and he made himself the heart of every single being. He presented them with recollection and knowledge and the two opposite qualities, as is mentioned in the Veda.
How much does this resemble the expression of the author of the book of Apollonius, On the Causes of Things (De causis rerum), as if the one had been taken from the other. He says:
There is in all men a divine power, by which all things, both material and immaterial, are apprehended.
Thus in Persian the immaterial Lord is called Khudhā, and in a derivative sense the word is also used to mean a man (i.e. a human lord).
I. Those Hindus who prefer clear and accurate definitions to vague allusions call the Soul Purusha, which means 'Man,' because it is the living element in the existing world. Life is the only attribute that they give to it. They describe it as alternately knowing and not-knowing, as not-knowing in praxis ( e)n pra/cei, 'actually'), and as knowing in dynamis ( e)n duna/mei, 'potentially'), gaining knowledge by acquisition. The not-knowing of Purusha is the cause why Action comes into existence, and its knowing is the cause why Action ceases.
II. Next follows the General Matter, or Hylē (u(/lh), which they call Avyakta ('Shapeless'). It is dead, but has Three Powers potentially, not actually, which are called sattva, rajas , and tamas. I have heard that Buddhodana (sic), in speaking to his adherents the Shamans, calls them buddha, dharma, saṅgha, as it were intelligence, religion, and ignorance (sic). The First Power is rest and goodness, and hence come existing [i.41] and growing. The Second is exertion and fatigue, and hence come firmness and duration. The Third is languor and irresolution, and hence come ruin and perishing. Therefore the First Power is attributed to the Angels, the Second to Men, and the Third to the Animals. The ideas before, afterwards, and thereupon may be predicated of all these things only in the sense of a certain sequence and on account of the inadequacy of language, but not so as to indicate any ordinary notions of Time.
III. Matter proceeding from dynamis into praxis under the various shapes and with the Three Primary Forces is called Vyakta ('Shaped'), while the union of the Abstract Hylē and of the Shaped Matter is called Prakṛiti. This term, however, is of no use to us; we do not want to speak of an abstract Matter, the term Matter alone being sufficient for us, since the one does not exist without the other.
IV. Next comes Nature, which they call Ahaṅkāra. The word is derived from the ideas of overpowering, developing, and self-assertion, because Matter when assuming shape causes things to develop into new forms, and this growing consists in the changing of a foreign element and assimilating it to the growing one. Hence it is as if Nature was trying to overpower those other or foreign elements in this process of changing them, and were subduing that which is changed.
V.-IX. As a matter of course, each compound presupposes simple elements from which it is compounded and into which it is resolved again. The universal existences in the world are the Five Elements (i.e. according to the Hindus: heaven, wind, fire, water, and earth). Combined they are called Mahābhūta ('Having Great Natures'). They do not think, as other people do, that the fire is a hot dry body near the bottom of the aethēr. They understand by fire the common fire on earth that comes from an inflammation of smoke. The Vāyu-Purāṇa says:
In the beginning were earth, water, wind, [i.42] and heaven. Brahman, on seeing sparks under the earth, brought them forward and divided them into three parts: the first, Pārthiva, is the common Fire, which requires wood and is extinguished by water; the second is Divya ('Sun'); the third, Vidyut ('Lightning'). The Sun attracts the water; the Lightning shines through the water. In the animals, also, there is Fire in the midst of moist substances, which serve to nourish the Fire and do not extinguish it.
X.-XIV. As these elements are compound, they presuppose simple ones that are called Pañca Mātáras ('Five Mothers'). They describe them as the functions of the senses. The simple element of heaven isśabda ('that which is heard'); that of the wind issparśa ('that which is touched'); that of the fire isrūpa ('that which is seen'); that of the water israsa ('that which is tasted'); and that of the earth isgandha ('that which is smelled'). With each of these Mahābhūta elements (earth, water, etc.) they connect, firstly, one of the Pañca Mātáras elements, as we have here shown; and, secondly, all those that have been attributed to the Mahābhūta elements previously mentioned. So the earth has all five qualities; the water has them minus the smelling (i.e. four qualities); the fire has them minus the smelling and tasting (i.e. three qualities); the wind has them minus smelling, tasting, and seeing (i.e. two qualities); heaven has them minus smelling, tasting, seeing, and touching (i.e. one quality).
I do not know what the Hindus mean by bringing sound into relation with heaven. Perhaps they mean something similar to what Homer, the poet of the ancient Greeks, said:
Those invested with the seven melodies speak and give answer to each other in a pleasant tone.
Thereby he meant the seven planets; as another poet says:
The spheres endowed with different melodies are seven, moving eternally, praising the Creator, for it is he who holds them and embraces them unto the farthest end of the starless sphere.
[i.43] Porphyry says this in his book on the opinions of the most prominent philosophers (Liber historiarum philosophorum) concerning the Nature of the Sphere:
The heavenly bodies moving about in forms and shapes and with wonderful melodies, which are fixed forever, as Pythagoras and Diogenes have explained, point to their Creator, who is without equal and without shape. People say that Diogenes had such subtle senses that he, and he alone, could hear the sound of the motion of the Sphere.
All these expressions are rather hints than clear speech, but admitting of a correct interpretation on a scientific basis. Some successor of those philosophers, one of those who did not grasp the full truth, says:
Sight is watery, hearing airy, smelling fiery, tasting earthy, and touching is what the Soul bestows upon everybody by uniting itself with it.
I suppose this philosopher connects the sight with the water because he had heard of the moist substances of the eye and of their different classes... lacuna... he refers the smelling to the fire on account of frankincense and smoke; the tasting to the earth because of his nourishment that the earth yields him. As, then, the four elements are finished, he is compelled for the fifth sense, the touching, to have recourse to the Soul.
The result of all these elements that we have enumerated (i.e. a compound of all of them) is the Animal. The Hindus consider the plants as a species of animal, as Plato also thinks that the plants have a sense, because they have the faculty of distinguishing between that which suits them and that which is detrimental to them. The animal is an animal as distinguished from a stone by virtue of its possession of the Senses.
XV.-XIX. The Five Senses, called Indriyāṇi, are the hearing by the ear, the seeing by the eye, the smelling by the nose, the tasting by the tongue, and the touching by the skin.
XX. Next follows the Will, which directs the senses [i.44] in the exercise of their various functions, and which dwells in the heart. Therefore they call it manas.
XXI.-XXV. The animal nature is rendered perfect by Five Necessary Functions, which they call Karmendriyāṇi ('Senses of Action'). The former Senses bring about learning and knowledge, the latter Functions bring about Action and Work. We shall call them the necessaria. They are (1) to produce a sound for any of the different wants and wishes a man may have; (2) to throw the hands with force, in order to draw towards or to put away; (3) to walk with the feet, in order to seek something or to fly from it; (4) and (5) the ejection of the superfluous elements of nourishment by means of the two openings created for the purpose.
The whole of these elements are Twenty-Five, namely:
1. The General Soul
2. The Abstract Matter (Hylē)
3. The Shaped Matter
4. The Overpowering Nature
5-9. The (Five) Simple Mothers
10-14. The (Five) Primary Elements
15-19. The (Five) Senses of Perception
20. The Directing Will
21-25. The (Five) Instrumental Necessaria
The Totality of these elements is called Tattva, and all knowledge is restricted to them. Therefore Vyāsa the son of Parāśara speaks:
Learn the Twenty-Five by distinctions, definitions, and divisions, as you learn a logical syllogism, and something that is a certainty, not merely studying with the tongue. Afterwards adhere to whatever religion you like; your end will be salvation.
CHAPTER 4
FROM WHAT CAUSE ACTION ORIGINATES, AND HOW THE SOUL IS CONNECTED WITH MATTER
[i.45] VOLUNTARY Actions cannot originate in the Body of any animal, unless the Body be living and exist in close contact with that which is living of itself (i.e. the Soul). The Hindus maintain that the Soul is in praxis ('actually'), not in dynamis ('potentially'), ignorant of its own essential Nature and of its material substratum, longing to apprehend what it does not know, and believing that it cannot exist unless by Matter. As, therefore, it longs for the good that is Duration, and wishes to learn that which is hidden from it, it starts off in order to be united with Matter. However, substances which are dense and such as are tenuous, if they have these qualities in the very highest degree, can mix together only by means of intermediary elements which stand in a certain relation to each of the two. Thus the air is the medium between fire and water, which are opposed to each other by these two qualities, for the air is related to the fire in tenuity and to the water in density, and by either of these qualities it renders the one capable of mixing with the other. Now, there is no greater antithesis than that between Body and Not-Body. Therefore the Soul, being what it is, cannot obtain the fulfillment of its wish but by similarmedia, Spirits that derive their existence from the matres simplices ('basic productive causes') in the worlds called Bhūr-loka, Bhuvar-loka, and Svar -loka. The Hindus call them tenuous bodies over which the Soul rises like the [i.46] Sun over the Earth, in order to distinguish them from the dense bodies that derive their existence from the common Five Elements. The Soul, in consequence of this union with the media, uses them as its vehicles. Thus the image of the Sun, though he is only one, is represented in many mirrors that are placed opposite to him, as also in the water of vessels placed opposite. The Sun is seen alike in each mirror and each vessel, and in each of them his warming and light-giving effect is perceived.
When, now, the various Bodies, being from their nature compounds of different things, come into existence, being composed of male elements (bones, veins, and sperm), and of female elements (flesh, blood, and hair), and being thus fully prepared to receive life, then those Spirits unite themselves with them, and the Bodies are to the Spirits what castles or fortresses are to the various affairs of princes. In a farther stage of development Five Winds enter the Bodies. By the First and Second of them the inhaling and exhaling are effected, by the Third the mixture of the victuals in the stomach, by the Fourth the locomotion of the Body from one place to the other, by the Fifth the transferring of the perception of the Senses from one side of the Body to the other.
The Spirits here mentioned do not, according to the notions of the Hindus, differ from each other in substance, but have a precisely identical Nature. However, their individual characters and manners differ in the same measure as the bodies with which they are united differ, on account of the Three Forces which are in them striving with each other for supremacy, and on account of their harmony being disturbed by the passions of envy and wrath.
Such, then, is the supreme Highest Cause of the Soul's starting off into Action.
On the other hand, the Lowest Cause, as proceeding [i.47] from Matter, is this: that Matter for its part seeks for perfection, and always prefers that which is better to that which is less good-proceeding from dynamis into praxis. In consequence of the vainglory and ambition which are its pith and marrow, Matter produces and shows all kinds of possibilities which it contains to its pupil, the Soul, and carries it round through all classes of vegetable and animal beings. Hindus compare the Soul to a dancing-girl who is clever in her art and knows well what effect each motion and pose of hers has. She is in the presence of a sybarite most eager of enjoying what she has learned. Now she begins to produce the various kinds of her art one after the other under the admiring gaze of the host, until her program is finished and the eagerness of the spectator has been satisfied. Then she stops suddenly, since she could not produce anything but a repetition; and as a repetition is not wished for, he dismisses her, and Action ceases. The close of this kind of relation is illustrated by the following simile: A caravan has been attacked in the desert by robbers, and the members of it have fled in all directions except a blind man and a lame man, who remain on the spot in helplessness, despairing of their escape. After they meet and recognize each other, the lame speaks to the blind: "I cannot move, but I can lead the way, while the opposite is the case with you. Therefore put me on your shoulder and carry me, that I may show you the way and that we may escape together from this calamity." This the blind man did. They obtained their purpose by helping each other, and they left each other on coming out of the desert.
Further, the Hindus speak in different ways of the Agent, as we have already mentioned. So the Vishṇu-Purāṇa says:
Matter is the origin of the world. Its Action in the world rises from an innate disposition, as a tree sows its own seed by an innate disposition, not [i.48] intentionally, and the wind cools the water though it only intends blowing. Voluntary Action is only due to Vishṇu.
By the latter expression the author means the living being who is above Matter (God). Through Him, Matter becomes an Agent toiling for Him as a friend toils for a friend without wanting anything for himself.
On this theory Mānī has built the following sentence:
The Apostles asked Jesus about the life of inanimate Nature, whereupon he said, "If that which is inanimate is separated from the living element which is commingled with it, and appears alone by itself, it is again inanimate and is not capable of living, while the living element which has left it, retaining its vital energy unimpaired, never dies."
The book of Sāṁkhya derives Action from Matter, for the difference of forms under which Matter appears depends upon the Three Primary Forces, and upon whether one or two of them gain the supremacy over the remainder. These forces are the Angelic, the Human, and the Animal. The Three Forces belong only to Matter, not to the Soul. The task of the Soul is to learn the Actions of Matter like a spectator, resembling a traveler who sits down in a village to repose. Each villager is busy with his own particular work, but he looks at them and considers their doings, disliking some, liking others, and taking an example from them. In this way he is busy without having himself any share in the business going on, and without being the cause that has brought it about.
The book of Sāṁkhya brings Action into relation with the Soul, though the Soul has nothing to do with Action, only in so far as it resembles a man who happens to get into the company of people whom he does not know. They are robbers returning from a village which they have sacked and destroyed, and he has scarcely marched with them a short distance, when they are overtaken by the avengers. The whole party [i.49] are taken prisoners, and together with them the innocent man is dragged off; and being treated precisely as they are, he receives the same punishment, without having taken part in their Action.
People say the Soul resembles the rainwater that comes down from Heaven, always the same and of the same Nature. However, if it is gathered in vessels placed for the purpose, vessels of different materials, of gold, silver, glass, earthenware, clay, or bitter-salt earth, it begins to differ in appearance, taste, and smell. Thus the Soul does not influence Matter in any way, except in this, that it gives Matter life by being in close contact with it. When, then, Matter begins to act, the result is different, in conformity with the one of the Three Primary Forces that happens to preponderate, and conformably to the mutual assistance that the other two latent forces afford to the former. This assistance may be given in various ways, as the fresh oil, the dry wick, and the smoking fire help each other to produce light. The Soul is in Matter like the rider on a carriage being attended by the Senses, who drive the carriage according to the rider's intentions. But the Soul for its part is guided by the Intelligence with which it is inspired by God. This Intelligence they describe as that by which the reality of things is apprehended, which shows the way to the knowledge of God, and to such Actions as are liked and praised by everybody.
CHAPTER 5
ON THE STATE OF THE SOULS, AND THEIR MIGRATIONS THROUGH THE WORLD IN THE METEMPSYCHOSIS
[i.50] AS the Word of Confession ("There is no god but God, Muhammad is his prophet") is the shibboleth of Islam, the Trinity that of Christianity, and the institute of the Sabbath that of Judaism, so Metempsychosis is the shibboleth of the Hindu religion. Therefore he who does not believe in it does not belong to them, and is not reckoned as one of them. For they hold the following belief-
The Soul, as long as it has not risen to the highest absolute Intelligence, does not comprehend the totality of objects at once, or, as it were, in no Time. Therefore it must explore all particular beings and examine all the possibilities of existence; and as their number is, though not unlimited, still an enormous one, the Soul wants an enormous space of Time in order to finish the contemplation of such a multiplicity of objects. The Soul acquires knowledge only by the contemplation of the individuals and the species, and of their peculiar actions and conditions. It gains experience from each object, and gathers thereby new knowledge.
However, these actions differ in the same measure as the Three Primary Forces differ. Besides, the world is not left without some direction, being led, as it were, by a bridle and directed towards a definite scope. Therefore the imperishable Souls wander about in perishable Bodies conformably to the difference of their actions, as [i.51] they prove to be good or bad. The object of the migration through the World of Reward ('Heaven') is to direct the attention of the Soul to the good, that it should become desirous of acquiring as much of it as possible. The object of its migration through the World of Punishment ('Hell') is to direct its attention to the bad and abominable, that it should strive to keep as far as possible aloof from it.
The migration begins from low stages, and rises to higher and better ones, not the contrary, as we state on purpose, since the one is a priori as possible as the other. The difference of these lower and higher stages depends upon the difference of the Actions, and this again results from the quantitative and qualitative diversity of the temperaments and the various degrees of combinations in which they appear.
This migration lasts until the object aimed at has been completely attained both for the Soul and Matter; the lower aim being the disappearance of the shape of Matter, except any such new formation as may appear desirable; the higher aim being the ceasing of the desire of the Soul to learn what it did not know before, the insight of the Soul into the nobility of its own being and its independent existence, its knowing that it can dispense with Matter after it has become acquainted with the mean Nature of Matter and the instability of its shapes, with all that which Matter offers to the Senses, and with the truth of the tales about its delights. Then the Soul turns away from Matter; the connecting links are broken, the union is dissolved. Separation and dissolution take place, and the Soul returns to its home, carrying with itself as much of the bliss of knowledge as sesame develops grains and blossoms, afterwards never separating from its oil. The intelligent being, intelligence and its object, are united and become One.
It is now our duty to produce from their literature [i.52] some clear testimonies as to this subject and connate theories of other nations.
Vāsudēva speaks to Arjuna instigating him to the battle, while they stand between the two lines:
If you believe in predestination, you must know that neither they nor we are mortal, and do not go away without a return, for the Souls are immortal and unchangeable. They migrate through the Bodies, while man changes from childhood into youth, into manhood and infirm age, the end of which is the death of the Body. Thereafter the Soul proceeds on its return.
Further he says:
How can a man think of death and being killed who knows that the Soul is eternal, not having been born and not perishing; that the Soul is something stable and constant; that no sword can cut it, no fire burn it, no water extinguish it, and no wind wither it? The Soul migrates from its Body, after it has become old, into another, a different one, as the Body, when its dress has become old, is clad in another. What then is your sorrow about a Soul that does not perish? If it were perishable, it would be more becoming that you should not sorrow about a thing which may be dispensed with, which does not exist, and does not return into existence. But if you look more to your Body than to your Soul, and are in anxiety about its perishing, you must know that all that which is born dies, and that all that which dies returns into another existence. However, both life and death are not your concern. They are in the hands of God, from whom all things come and to whom they return.
In the further course of conversation Arjuna speaks to Vāsudēva:
How did you dare thus to fight Brahman, Brahman who was before the world was and before man was, while you are living among us as a being, whose birth and age are known?
Thereupon Vāsudēva answered:
Eternity ('pre-existence') is common to both of us and to him. How often [i.53] have we lived together, when I knew the times of our life and death, while they were concealed from you! When I desire to appear in order to do some good, I array myself in a Body, since one cannot be with man except in a human shape.
People tell a tale of a king, whose name I have forgotten, who ordered his people after his death to bury his Body on a spot where never before had a dead person been buried. Now they sought for such a spot, but could not find it; finally, on finding a rock projecting out of the Ocean, they thought they had found what they wanted. But then Vāsudēva spoke unto them, "This king has been burned on this identical rock already many times. But now do as you like; for the king only wanted to give you a lesson, and this aim of his has now been attained."
Vāsudēva says:
He who hopes for salvation and strives to free himself from the world, but whose heart is not obedient to his wish, will be rewarded for his action in the worlds of those who receive a good reward; but he does not attain his last object on account of his deficiency, therefore he will return to this world, and will be found worthy of entering a new shape of a kind of beings whose special occupation is devotion. Divine inspiration helps him to raise himself in this new shape by degrees to that which he already wished for in the first shape. His heart begins to comply with his wish; he is more and more purified in the different shapes, until he at last obtains salvation in an uninterrupted series of new births.
Further, Vāsudēva says:
If the Soul is free from Matter, it is knowing; but as long as it is clad in Matter, the Soul is not-knowing, on account of the turbid nature of Matter. It thinks that it is an Agent, and that the Actions of the world are prepared for its sake. Therefore it clings to them, and it is stamped with the impressions of the Senses. When, then, the Soul leaves [i.54] the Body, the traces of the impressions of the Senses remain in it, and are not completely eradicated, as it longs for the World of Sense and returns towards it. And since it in these stages undergoes changes entirely opposed to each other, it is thereby subject to the influences of the Three Primary Forces. What, therefore, can the Soul do, its wing being cut, if it is not sufficiently trained and prepared?
Vāsudēva says:
The best of men is the perfectly wise one, for he loves God and God loves him. How many times has he died and been born again! During his whole life he perseveringly seeks for perfection until he obtains it.
In the Vishṇu-Dharma, Mārkaṇḍeya, speaking of the spiritual beings, says:
Brahman, Kārttikeya, son of Mahādēva, Lakshmī, who produced the amṛita, Daksha, who was beaten by Mahādēva, Umādevī, the wife of Mahādēva, each of them has been in the middle of this kalpa, and they have been the same already many times.
Varāhamihira speaks of the influences of the comets, and of the calamities that befall men when they appear. These calamities compel them to emigrate from their homes, lean from exhaustion, moaning over their mishap, leading their children by the hand along the road, and speaking to each other in low tones, "We are punished for the sins of our kings"; whereupon others answer, "Not so. This is the retribution for what we have done in the former life, before we entered these bodies."
When Mānī was banished from Irānshahr (Iran), he went to India, learned metempsychosis from the Hindus, and transferred it into his own system. He says in the Book of Mysteries:
Since the Apostles knew that the Souls are immortal, and that in their migrations they array themselves in every form, that they are shaped in every animal, and are cast in the mould of every figure, they [i.55] asked Messiah what would be the end of those Souls which did not receive the truth nor learn the origin of their existence. Whereupon he said, "Any weak Soul which has not received all that belongs to her of Truth perishes without any rest or bliss."
By perishing Mānī means her being punished, not her total disappearance. For in another place he says:
The partisans of Bardesanes think that the living Soul rises and is purified in the carcass, not knowing that the latter is the enemy of the Soul, that the carcass prevents the Soul from rising, that it is a prison, and a painful punishment to the Soul. If this human figure were a real existence, its creator would not let it wear out and suffer injury, and would not have compelled it to reproduce itself by the sperm in the uterus.
The following passage is taken from the Book of Patañjali :
The Soul, being on all sides tied to ignorance, which is the cause of its being fettered, is like rice in its cover. As long as it is there, it is capable of growing and ripening in the transition stages between being born and giving birth itself. But if the cover is taken off the rice, it ceases to develop in this way, and becomes stationary. The retribution of the Soul depends on the various kinds of creatures through which it wanders, upon the extent of life, whether it be long or short, and upon the particular kind of its happiness, be it scanty or ample.
The pupil asks:
What is the condition of the spirit when it has a claim to a recompense or has committed a crime, and is then entangled in a kind of new birth either in order to receive bliss or to be punished?
The master says:
It migrates according to what it has previously done, fluctuating between happiness and misfortune, and alternately experiencing pain or pleasure.
The pupil asks:
If a man commits something which [i.56] necessitates a retribution for him in a different shape from that in which he has committed the thing, and if between both stages there is a great interval of time and the matter is forgotten, what then?
The master answers:
It is the nature of Action to adhere to the Spirit, for Action is its product, while the Body is only an instrument for it. Forgetting does not apply to spiritual matters, for they lie outside of Time, with the Nature of which the notions of long and short duration are necessarily connected. Action, by adhering to the Spirit, frames its Nature and Character into a condition similar to that one into which the Soul will enter on its next migration. The Soul in its purity knows this, thinks of it, and does not forget it; but the Light of the Soul is covered by the turbid Nature of the Body as long as it is connected with the Body. Then the Soul is like a man who remembers a thing that he once knew, but then forgot in consequence of insanity or an illness or some intoxication that overpowered his mind. Do you not observe that little children are in high spirits when people wish them a long life, and are sorry when people imprecate upon them a speedy death? And what would the one thing or the other signify to them, if they had not tasted the sweetness of life and experienced the bitterness of death in former generations through which they had been migrating to undergo the due course of retribution?
The ancient Greeks agreed with the Hindus in this belief. Socrates says in the book Phaedo:
We are reminded in the tales of the ancients that the souls go from here to Hades, and then come from Hades to here; that the living originates from the dead, and that altogether things originate from their contraries. Therefore those who have died are among the living. Our souls lead an existence of their own in Hades. The Soul of each man is glad or sorry at something, and contemplates this thing. This impressionable nature [i.57] ties the Soul to the Body, nails it down in the Body, and gives it, as it were, a bodily figure. The Soul that is not pure cannot go to Hades. It quits the Body still filled with its Nature, and then migrates hastily into another Body, in which it is, as it were, deposited and made fast. Therefore, it has no share in the living of the company of the unique, pure, Divine Essence.
Further he says:
If the Soul is an independent being, our learning is nothing but remembering that which we had learned previously, because our souls were in some place before they appeared in this human figure. When people see a thing to the use of which they were accustomed in childhood, they are under the influence of this impressionability, and a cymbal, for instance, reminds them of the boy who used to beat it, a boy whom they, however, had forgotten. Forgetting is the vanishing of knowledge, and knowing is the Soul's remembrance of that which it had learned before it entered the Body.
Proclus says:
Remembering and forgetting are peculiar to the Soul endowed with Reason. It is evident that the Soul has always existed. Hence it follows that it has always been both knowing and forgetting, knowing when it is separated from the Body, forgetting when it is in connection with the Body. For, being separated from the Body, it belongs to the realm of the Spirit, and therefore it is knowing; but being connected with the Body, it descends from the realm of the Spirit, and is exposed to forgetting because of some forcible influence prevailing over it.
The same doctrine is professed by those Ṣūfī who teach that this world is a Sleeping Soul and yonder world a Soul Awake, and who at the same time admit that God is immanent in certain places-e.g. in Heaven-in the seat and the throne of God (mentioned in the Koran). But then there are others who admit that [i.58] God is immanent in the whole world, in animals, trees, and the inanimate world, which they call his Universal Appearance. To those who hold this view, the entering of the souls into various beings in the course of metempsychosis is of no consequence.
CHAPTER 6
ON THE DIFFERENT WORLDS, AND ON THE PLACES OF RETRIBUTION IN PARADISE AND HELL
[i.59] THE Hindus call the World Loka. Its primary division consists of the Upper, the Low, and the Middle. The Upper is called Svar -loka ('Paradise'); the Low, Nāga-loka ('World of the Serpents'), which is Hell; besides this they call it Nara -loka, and sometimes also Pātāla ('Lowest World'). The Middle World, that one in which we live, is called Madhya -loka and Manushya-loka ('World of Men'). In the latter, man has to earn; in the Upper, to receive his reward; in the Low, to receive punishment. A man who deserves to come to Svar -loka or Nāga-loka receives there the full recompense of his deeds during a certain length of time corresponding to the duration of his deeds, but in either of them there is only the Soul, the Soul free from the Body.
For those who do not deserve to rise to Heaven and to sink as low as Hell there is another world called Tiryag-loka, the Irrational World of plants and animals, through the individuals of which the Soul has to wander in the metempsychosis until it reaches the human being, rising by degrees from the lowest kinds of the vegetable world to the highest classes of the sensitive world. The stay of the Soul in this world has one of the following causes: either the award which is due to the Soul is not sufficient to raise it into Heaven or to sink it into Hell, or the Soul is in its wanderings on the way back from Hell-for they believe that a Soul returning to the human [i.60] world from Heaven at once adopts a human Body, while that one which returns there from Hell has first to wander about in plants and animals before it reaches the degree of living in a human Body.
The Hindus speak in their traditions of a large number of hells, of their qualities and their names, and for each kind of sin they have a special Hell. The number of hells is 88,000 according to the Vishṇu-Purāṇa. We shall quote what this book says on the subject:
The man who makes a false claim and who bears false witness, he who helps these two and he who ridicules people, come into the Raurava Hell.
He who sheds innocent blood, who robs others of their rights and plunders them, and who kills cows, comes into Rodha. Those who strangle people also come here.
Whoso kills a Brāhmaṇ, and he who steals gold, and their companions, the princes who do not look after their subjects, he who commits adultery with the family of his teacher, or who lies down with his mother-in-law, come into Taptakumbha.
Whoso connives at the shame of his wife for greediness, commits adultery with his sister or the wife of his son, sells his child, is stingy towards himself with his property in order to save it, comes into Mahājwāla.
Whoso is disrespectful to his teacher and is not pleased with him, despises men, commits incest with animals, contemns the Veda and Purāṇas, or tries to make a gain by means of them in the markets, comes into Śavala.
A man who steals and commits tricks, who opposes the straight line of conduct of men, who hates his father, who does not like God and men, who does not honor the gems which God has made glorious, and who considers them to be like other stones, comes into Kṛimīśa.
Whoso does not honor the rights of parents and [i.61] grandparents, whoso does not do his duty towards the angels, the maker of arrows and spear-points, come to Lālābhaksha.
The maker of swords and knives comes to Viśasana.
He who conceals his property, being greedy for the presents of the rulers, and the Brāhmaṇ who sells meat or oil or butter or sauce or wine, come to Adhomukha.
He who rears cocks and cats, small cattle, pigs, and birds, comes to Rudhirāndha.
Public performers and singers in the markets, those who dig wells for drawing water, a man who cohabits with his wife on holy days, who throws fire into the houses of men, who betrays his companion and then receives him, being greedy for his property, come to Rudhira.
He who takes the honey out of the beehive comes to Vaitaraṇī.
Whoso takes away by force the property and women of others in the intoxication of youth comes to Kṛishṇa.
Whoso cuts down the trees comes to Asipatravana.
The hunter, and the maker of snares and traps, come to Vahnijwāla.
He who neglects the customs and rules, and he who violates the laws-and he is the worst of all-come to Sandaṁśaka.
We have given this enumeration only in order to show what kinds of deeds the Hindus abhor as sins. Some Hindus believe that the Middle World, that one for earning, is the human world, and that a man wanders about in it because he has received a reward that does not lead him into Heaven but, at the same time, saves him from Hell. They consider Heaven as a higher stage, where a man lives in a state of bliss that must be of a certain duration on account of the good deeds he has done. On the contrary, they consider the wandering about in plants and animals as a lower stage, [i.62] where a man dwells for punishment for a certain length of time, which is thought to correspond to the wretched deeds he has done. People who hold this view do not know of another Hell but this kind of degradation, below the degree of living as a human being.
All these degrees of retribution are necessary for this reason, that the seeking for salvation from the fetters of Matter frequently does not proceed on the straight line which leads to absolute knowledge, but on lines chosen by guessing or chosen because others had chosen them. Not one Action of man shall be lost, not even the last of all; it shall be brought to his account after his good and bad Actions have been balanced against each other. The retribution, however, is not according to the deed, but according to the intention which a man had in doing it; and a man will receive his reward either in the form in which he lives on Earth, or in that form into which his Soul will migrate, or in a kind of intermediary state after he has left his shape and has not yet entered a new one.
Here now the Hindus quit the path of philosophical speculation and turn aside to traditional fables as regards the two places where reward or punishment is given-e.g. that man exists there as an incorporeal being, and that after having received the reward of his actions he again returns to a bodily appearance and human shape, in order to be prepared for his further destiny.
Therefore the author of the book Sāṁkhya does not consider the reward of Paradise a special gain, because it has an end and is not eternal, and because this kind of life resembles the life of this our world; for it is not free from ambition and envy, having in itself various degrees and classes of existence, while cupidity and desire do not cease save where there is perfect equality.
The Ṣūfī, too, do not consider the stay in Paradise a special gain for another reason, because there the Soul delights in other things but the Truth (i.e. God) and its [i.63] thoughts are diverted from the Absolute Good by things which are not the Absolute Good.
We have already said that, according to the belief of the Hindus, the Soul exists in these two places without a Body. But this is only the view of the educated among them, who understand by the Soul an independent being. However, the lower classes, and those who cannot imagine the existence of the Soul without a Body, hold very different views about this subject. One is this, that the cause of the agony of death is the Soul's waiting for a shape which is to be prepared. It does not quit the Body before there has originated a cognate being of similar functions, one of those which nature prepares either as an embryo in a mother's womb or as a seed in the bosom of the Earth. Then the Soul quits the Body in which it has been staying.
Others hold the more traditional view that the Soul does not wait for such a thing, that it quits its shape on account of its weakness while another Body has been prepared for it out of the elements. This Body is called Ativāhika ('Grows-in-Haste'), because it does not come into existence by being born. The Soul stays in this Body a complete year in the greatest agony, no matter whether it has deserved to be rewarded or to be punished. This is like the Barzakh of the Persians, an intermediary stage between the periods of acting and earning and that of receiving award. For this reason the heir of the deceased must, according to Hindu use, fulfill the rites of the year for the deceased, duties which end with the end of the year, for then the Soul goes to that place which is prepared for it.
We shall now give some extracts from their literature to illustrate these ideas. First from the Vishṇu-Purāṇa:
Maitreya asked Parāśara about the purpose of Hell and the punishment in it, whereupon he answered: "It is for distinguishing the good from the bad, knowledge [i.64] from ignorance, and for the manifestation of justice. But not every sinner enters Hell. Some of them escape Hell by previously doing works of repentance and expiation. The greatest expiation is uninterruptedly thinking of Vishṇu in every action. Others wander about in plants, filthy insects and birds, and abominable dirty creeping things like lice and worms, for such a length of time as they desire it."
In the book Sāṁkhya we read:
He who deserves exaltation and reward will become like one of the angels, mixing with the hosts of spiritual beings, not being prevented from moving freely in the heavens and from living in the company of their inhabitants, or like one of the Eight Classes of Spiritual Beings. But he who deserves humiliation as recompense for sins and crimes will become an animal or a plant, and will wander about until he deserves a reward so as to be saved from punishment, or until he offers himself as expiation, flinging away the vehicle of the Body, and thereby attaining salvation.
A theosoph who inclines towards metempsychosis says:
The metempsychosis has four degrees:
1. The transferring (i.e. the procreation as limited to the human species), because it transfers existence from one individual to another
2. Opposite of this is the transforming, which concerns men in particular, since they are transformed into monkeys, pigs, and elephants.
3. The stable condition of existence, like the condition of the plants, is worse than transferring because it is a stable condition of life, remains as it is through all time, and lasts as long as the mountains.
4. The dispersing, the opposite of number 3, which applies to the plants that are plucked and to animals immolated as sacrifice, because they vanish without leaving posterity.
Abū Yaᴄḳūb of Sijistān maintains in his book, called The Disclosing of That Which is Veiled, that the species [i.65] are preserved; that metempsychosis always proceeds in one and the same species, never crossing its limits and passing into another species.
This was also the opinion of the ancient Greeks; for Johannes Grammaticus relates as the view of Plato that the Rational Souls will be clad in the bodies of animals, and that in this regard he followed the fables of Pythagoras.
Socrates says in the book Phaedo:
The Body is earthy, ponderous, heavy, and the Soul, which loves it, wanders about and is attracted towards the place, to which it looks from fear of the Shapeless and of Hades, the Gathering-Place of the Souls. They are soiled, and circle round the graves and cemeteries, where Souls have been seen appearing in shadowy forms. This phantasmagoria only occurs to such Souls as have not been entirely separated, in which there is still a part of that towards which the look is directed.
Further he says:
It appears that these are not the Souls of the good, but the Souls of the wicked, which wander about in these things to make an expiation for the badness of their former kind of rearing. Thus they remain until they are again bound in a Body on account of the desire for the bodily shape that has followed them. They will dwell in Bodies the character of which is like the character which they had in the world-e.g. whoever only cares for eating and drinking will enter the various kinds of asses and wild animals; and he who preferred wrong and oppression will enter the various kinds of wolves, and falcons, and hawks.
Further he says about the Gathering-Places of the Souls after death:
If I did not think that I am going first to gods who are wise, ruling, and good, then afterwards to men, deceased ones, better than those here, I should be wrong not to be in sorrow about death.
Further, Plato says about the two places of reward and [i.66] of punishment:
When a man dies, a daemon leads him to the tribunal of judgment, and a guide whose special office it is brings him, together with those assembled there, to Hades, and there he remains the necessary number of many and long cycles of Time. Telephos says, "The road of Hades is an even one." I, however, say, "If the road were even or only a single one, a guide could be dispensed with." Now that Soul which longs for the Body, or whose deeds were evil and not just, which resembles souls that have committed murder, flies from there and encloses itself in every species of being until certain times pass by. Thereupon it is brought by necessity to that place which is suitable to it. But the pure Soul finds companions and guides, gods, and dwells in the places that are suitable to it.
Further he says:
Those of the dead who led a middle sort of life travel on a vessel prepared for them over Acheron. After they have received punishment and have been purified from crime, they wash and receive honor for the good deeds that they did according to merit. Those, however, who had committed great sins (e.g. the stealing from the sacrifices of the gods, robberies on a great scale, unjust killing, repeatedly and consciously violating the laws) are thrown into Tartarus, whence they will never be able to escape.
Further:
Those who repented of their sins already during their lifetime, and whose crimes were of a somewhat lower degree, who, for example, committed some act of violence against their parents or committed a murder by mistake, are thrown into Tartarus, being punished there for a whole year; but then the wave throws them out to a place whence they cry to their antagonists, asking them to abstain from further retaliation, that they may be saved from the horrors of punishment. If those now agree, they are saved; if not, they are sent back into [i.67] Tartarus. And this, their punishment, goes on until their antagonists agree to their demands for being relieved. Those whose mode of life was virtuous are liberated from these places on this Earth. They feel as though released from prison, and they will inhabit the pure Earth.
Tartarus is a huge deep ravine or gap into which the rivers flow. All people understand by the punishment of Hell the most dreadful things that are known to them, and the Western countries, like Greece, have sometimes to suffer deluges and floods. But the description of Plato indicates a place where there are glaring flames, and it seems that he means the sea or some part of the Ocean, in which there is a whirlpool ( durdūr, a pun upon Tartarus). No doubt these descriptions represent the belief of the men of those ages.
CHAPTER 7
ON THE NATURE OF LIBERATION FROM THE WORLD, AND ON THE PATH LEADING THERETO
[i.68] IF the Soul is bound up with the world, and its being bound up has a certain cause, it cannot be liberated from this bond save by the opposite of this identical cause. Now according to the Hindus, as we have already explained (i.55), the reason of the bond isignorance, and therefore it can only be liberated by knowledge, by comprehending all things in such a way as to define them both in general and in particular, rendering superfluous any kind of deduction and removing all doubts. For the Soul distinguishing between things (ta\\ o)/nta, 'that which exists') by means of definitions, recognizes its own self, and recognizes at the same time that it is its noble lot to last forever, and that it is the vulgar lot of Matter to change and to perish in all kinds of shapes. Then it dispenses with Matter, and perceives that that which it held to be good and delightful is in reality bad and painful. In this manner it attains real knowledge and turns away from being arrayed in Matter. Thereby Action ceases, and both Matter and Soul become free by separating from each other.
The author of the Book of Patañjali says:
The concentration of thought on the unity of God induces man to notice something besides that with which he is occupied. He who wants God, wants the good for the whole creation without a single exception for any reason whatever; but he who occupies himself exclusively with [i.69] his own self, will for its benefit neither inhale, breathe, nor exhale it (śvāsa and praśvāsa). When a man attains to this degree, his spiritual power prevails over his bodily power, and then he is gifted with the faculty of doing eight different things by which Detachment is realized; for a man can only dispense with that which he is able to do, not with that which is outside his grasp. The Eight things are:
1. The faculty in man of making his body so thin that it becomes invisible to the eyes
2. The faculty of making the body so light that it is indifferent to him whether he treads on thorns or mud or sand
3. The faculty of making his body so big that it appears in a terrifying miraculous shape
4. The faculty of realizing every wish
5. The faculty of knowing whatever he wishes
6. The faculty of becoming the ruler of whatever religious community he desires
7. That those over whom he rules are humble and obedient to him
8. That all distances between a man and any faraway place vanish
The terms of the Ṣūfī as to the knowing being and his attaining the stage of knowledge come to the same effect, for they maintain that he has two souls-an eternal Soul, not exposed to change and alteration, by which he knows that which is hidden, the transcendental world, and performs wonders; and another, a human Soul, which is liable to being changed and being born. From these and similar views the doctrines of the Christians do not much differ.
The Hindus say:
If a man has the faculty to perform these things, he can dispense with them, and will reach the goal by degrees, passing through several stages:
1. The knowledge of things as to their names and [i.70] qualities and distinctions, which, however, does not yet afford the knowledge of definitions
2. Such a knowledge of things as proceeds as far as the definitions by which particulars are classed under the category of universals, but regarding which a man must still practice distinction
3. This distinction (viveka) disappears, and man comprehends things at once as a whole, but within Time
4. This kind of knowledge is raised above Time, and he who has it can dispense with names and epithets, which are only instruments of human imperfection; in this stage the intellectus ('knowing sentient being') and the intelligens ('attaining of knowledge') unite with the intellectum ('object of knowledge'), so as to be one and the same thing.
This is what Patañjali says about the knowledge that liberates the Soul. In Sanskrit they call its LiberationMoksha ('The End'). By the same term they call the last contact of the eclipsed and eclipsing bodies, or their separation in both lunar and solar eclipses, because it is the end of the eclipse, the moment when the two luminaries that were in contact with each other separate.
According to the Hindus, the organs of the Senses have been made for acquiring knowledge, and the pleasure which they afford has been created to stimulate people to research and investigation, as the pleasure which eating and drinking afford to the taste has been created to preserve the individual by means of nourishment. So the pleasure of coitus serves to preserve the species by giving birth to new individuals. If there were not special pleasure in these two functions, man and animals would not practice them for these purposes.
In the book Gītā we read:
Man is created for the purpose of knowing; and because knowing is always the same, man has been gifted with the same organs. [i.71] If man were created for the purpose ofacting, his organs would be different, as actions are different in consequence of the difference of the Three Primary Forces. However, bodily Nature is bent uponacting on account of its essential opposition toknowing. Besides, it wishes to invest Action with pleasures that in reality are pains. But knowledge is such as to leave this Nature behind itself prostrated on the earth like an opponent, and removes all darkness from the Soul as an eclipse or clouds are removed from the Sun.
This resembles the opinion of Socrates, who thinks that the Soul,
being with the Body, and wishing to inquire into something, then is deceived by the Body. But by cogitations something of its desires becomes clear to it. Therefore, its cogitation takes place in that time when it is not disturbed by anything like hearing, seeing, or by any pain or pleasure, when it is quite by itself, and has as much as possible quitted the Body and its companionship. In particular, the Soul of the philosopher scorns the Body, and wishes to be separate from it.
If we in this our life did not make use of the Body, nor had anything in common with it except in cases of necessity, if we were not inoculated with its nature, but were perfectly free from it, we should come near knowledge by getting rest from the ignorance of the Body, and we should become pure by knowing ourselves as far as God would permit us. And it is only right to acknowledge that this is the truth.
Now we return and continue our quotation from the book Gītā.
Likewise the other organs of the Senses serve for acquiring knowledge. The knowing person rejoices in turning them to and fro on the field of knowledge, so that they are his spies. The apprehension of the Senses is different according to Time. The Senses that serve the Heart perceive only that which is present. The [i.72] Heart reflects over that which is present and remembers also the past. The Nature takes hold of the present, claims it for itself in the past, and prepares to wrestle with it in future. The Reason understands the Nature of a thing, no regard being had of time or date, since past and future are the same for it. Its nearest helpers are Reflection and Nature; the most distant are the Five Senses. When the Senses bring before Reflection some particular object of knowledge, Reflection cleans it from the errors of the functions of the Senses, and hands it over to Reason. Thereupon Reason makes universal what was before particular, and communicates it to the Soul. Thus the Soul comes to know it.
Further, the Hindus think that a man becomes knowing in one of three ways:
1. By being inspired, not in a certain course of time but at once, at birth and in the cradle (e.g. the sage Kapila, born knowing and wise)
2. By being inspired, after a certain time, like the children of Brāhmaṇ, for they were inspired when they came of age
3. By learning, and after a certain course of time, like all men who learn when their mind ripens
Liberation through knowledge can only be obtained by abstaining from evil. The branches of evil are many, but we may classify them as cupidity, wrath, and ignorance. If the roots are cut the branches will wither. And here we have first to consider the rule of the Two Forces of cupidity and wrath, which are the greatest and most pernicious enemies of man, deluding him by the pleasure of eating and the delight of revenge, while in reality they are much more likely to lead him into pains and crimes. They make a man similar to the wild beasts and the cattle, nay, even to the demons and devils.
Next we have to consider that man must prefer the reasoning force of mind, by which he becomes similar [i.73] to the highest angels, to the forces of cupidity and wrath; and, lastly, that he must turn away from the Actions of the world. He cannot, however, give up these Actions unless he does away with their Causes, which are his lust and ambition. Thereby the second of the Three Primary Forces is cut away. However, the abstaining from Action takes place in two different ways:
1. By laziness, procrastination, and ignorance according to the Third Force-this mode is not desirable, for it will lead to a blamable end.
2. By judicious selection and by preferring that which is better to that which is good, which way leads to a laudable end.
The abstaining from Actions is rendered perfect in this way, that a man quits anything that might occupy him and shuts himself up against it. Thereby he will be enabled to restrain his Senses from extraneous objects to such a degree that he does not any more know that there exists anything besides himself, and be enabled to stop all motions, and even the breathing. It is evident that a greedy man strains to effect his object, the man who strains becomes tired, and the tired man pants; so the panting is the result of greediness. If this greediness is removed, the breathing becomes like the breathing of a being living at the bottom of the sea, that does not want breath; and then the heart quietly rests on one thing, namely the search for Liberation and for arriving at the Absolute Unity.
In the book Gītā we read:
How is a man to obtain Liberation who disperses his heart and does not concentrate it alone upon God, who does not exclusively direct his action towards him? But if a man turns away his cogitation from all other things and concentrates it upon the One, the light of his heart will be steady like the light of a lamp filled with clean oil, standing in a grainer where no wind makes it flicker, and he will be occupied in such a degree as not to [i.74] perceive anything that gives pain, like heat or cold, knowing that everything besides the One, the Truth, is a vain phantom.
In the same book we read:
Pain and pleasure have no effect on the real world, just as the continuous flow of the streams to the Ocean does not affect its water. How could anybody ascend this mountain pass save him who has conquered cupidity and wrath and rendered them inert?
On account of what we have explained it is necessary that cogitation should be continuous, not in any way to be defined by number; for a number always denotes repeated times, and repeated times presuppose a break in the cogitation occurring between two consecutive times. This would interrupt the continuity, and would prevent cogitation becoming united with the object of cogitation. And this is not the object kept in view, which is, on the contrary, thecontinuity of cogitation. This goal is attained either in a single shape (i.e. a single stage of metempsychosis) or in several shapes, in this way, that a man perpetually practices virtuous behavior and accustoms the Soul thereto, so that this virtuous behavior becomes to it a Nature and an essential quality. Virtuous behavior is that which is described by the religious law. Its principal laws, from which they derive many secondary ones, may be summed up in the following Nine Rules:
1. A man shall not kill
2. Nor lie
3. Nor steal
4. Nor whore
5. Nor hoard up treasures
6. He is perpetually to practice holiness and purity
7. He is to perform the prescribed fasting without an interruption and to dress poorly
[i.75] 8. He is to hold fast to the adoration of God with praise and thanks
9. He is always to have in mind the word ōm, the Word of Creation, without pronouncing it
The injunction to abstain from killing as regards animals (no.1) is only a special part of the general order to abstain from doing anything hurtful. Under this head falls also the robbing of another man's goods (no.3), and the telling lies (no.2), not to mention the foulness and baseness of so doing. The abstaining from hoarding up (no.5) means that a man is to give up toil and fatigue; that he who seeks the bounty of God feels sure that he is provided for; and that, starting from the base slavery of material life, we may, by the noble liberty of cogitation, attain eternal bliss.
Practicing purity (no.6) implies that a man knows the Filth of the Body, and that he feels called upon to hate it, and to love Cleanness of Soul. Tormenting oneself by poor dress (no.7) means that a man should reduce the Body, allay its feverish desires, and sharpen its Senses. Pythagoras once said to a man who took great care to keep his Body in a flourishing condition and to allow it everything it desired, "Thou art not lazy in building thy prison and making thy fetter as strong as possible."
The holding fast to meditation on God and the angels ( dēva) means a kind of familiar intercourse with them. The book Sāṁkhya says:
Man cannot go beyond anything in the wake of which he marches, it being a scope to him (i.e. thus engrossing his thoughts and detaining him from meditation on God).
The book Gītā says:
All that which is the object of a man's continuous meditating and bearing in mind is stamped upon him, so that he even unconsciously is guided by it. Since, now, the Time of Heath is the time of remembering what we love, the Soul on leaving the Body is united with that object which we love, and is changed into it.
[i.76] However, the reader must not believe that it is only the union of the Soul with any forms of life that perish and return into existence that is Perfect Liberation, for the same book, Gītā, says:
He who knows when dying that God is everything, and that from him everything proceeds, is Liberated, though his degree be lower than that of the saints.
The same book says:
Seek deliverance from this world by abstaining from any connection with its follies, by having sincere intentions in all actions and when making offerings by fire to God, without any desire for reward and recompense; further, by keeping aloof from mankind.
The real meaning of all this is that you should not prefer one because he is your friend to another because he is your enemy, and that you should beware of negligence in sleeping when others are awake, and in waking when others are asleep; for this, too, is a kind of being absent from them, though outwardly you are present with them. Further:
Seek deliverance by guarding Soul from Soul, for the Soul is an enemy if it be addicted to lusts; but what an excellent friend it is when it is chaste!
Socrates, caring little for his impending death and being glad at the prospect of coming to his Lord, said:
My degree must not be considered by any one of you lower than that of the swan, of which people say that it is the bird of Apollo, the Sun, and that it therefore knows what is hidden; that is, when feeling that it will soon die, sings more and more melodies from joy at the prospect of coming to its Lord.
At least my joy at my prospect of coming to the object of my adoration must not be less than the joy of this bird.
For similar reasons the Ṣūfī define love as being engrossed by the creature to the exclusion of God. In the Book of Patañjali we read:
We divide the Path of Liberation into three parts:
I.
The Practical Part (kriyā-yoga), a process of habitu[i.77]ating the Senses in a gentle way todetach themselves from the external world, and to concentrate themselves upon the internal one, so that they exclusively occupy themselves with God. This is in general the path of him who does not desire anything save what is sufficient to sustain life.
In the book Vishṇu-Dharma we read:
The king Parīksha, of the family of Bhṛigu, asked Śatānīka, the head of an Assembly of Sages, who stayed with him, for the explanation of some notion regarding the deity, and by way of answer the sage communicated what he had heard from Śaunaka, Śaunaka from Uśanas, and Uśanas from Brahman, as follows: "God is without first and without last; he has not been born from anything, and he has not borne anything save that of which it is impossible to say that it is He, and just as impossible to say that it is Not-he. How should I be able to ponder on the absolute good which is an outflow of his benevolence, and of the absolute bad which is a product of his wrath; and how could I know him so as to worship him as is his due, save by turning away from the world in general and by occupying myself exclusively with him, by perpetually cogitating on him?
It was objected to him: "Man is weak and his life is a trifling matter. He can hardly bring himself to abstain from the necessities of life, and this prevents him from walking on the Path of Liberation. If we were living in the First Age of Mankind, when life extended to thousands of years, and when the world was good because of the non-existence of evil, we might hope that that which is necessary on this path should be done. But since we live in the Last Age, what, according to your opinion, is there in this revolving world that might protect him against the floods of the Ocean and save him from drowning?" Thereupon Brahman spoke: "Man wants nourishment, shelter, and clothing. Therefore in them there [i.78] is no harm to him. But happiness is only to be found in abstaining from things besides them, from superfluous and fatiguing actions. Worship God, him alone, and venerate him; approach him in the place of worship with presents like perfumes and flowers; praise him and attach your heart to him so that it never leaves him. Give alms to the Brāhmaṇs and to others, and vow to God vows-special ones, like the abstaining from meat; general ones, like fasting. Vow to him animals which you must not hold to be something different from yourselves, so as to feel entitled to kill them. Know that he is everything. Therefore, whatever you do, let it be for his sake; and if you enjoy anything of the vanities of the world, do not forget him in your intentions. If you aim at the fear of God and the faculty of worshipping him, thereby you will obtain Liberation, not by anything else.
The book Gītā says:
He who mortifies his lust does not go beyond the necessary wants; and he who is content with that which is sufficient for the sustaining of life will not be ashamed nor be despised.
The same book says:
If man is not without wants as regards the demands of human Nature, if he wants nourishment to appease thereby the heat of hunger and exhaustion, sleep in order to meet the injurious influences of fatiguing motions and a couch to rest upon, let the latter be clean and smooth, everywhere equally high above the ground and sufficiently large that he may stretch out his Body upon it. Let him have a place of temperate climate, not hurtful by cold nor by heat, and where he is safe against the approach of reptiles. All this helps him to sharpen the functions of his heart, that he may without any interruption concentrate his cogitation on the unity. For all things besides the necessities of life in the way of eating and clothing are pleasures of a kind which, in reality, are disguised pains. To acquiesce in them is impossible, [i.79] and would end in the gravest inconvenience. There is pleasure only to him who kills the two intolerable enemies, lust and wrath, already during his life and not when he dies, who derives his rest and bliss from within, not from without; and who, in the final result, is able altogether to dispense with his Senses.
Vāsudēva spoke to Arjuna:
If you want the absolute good, take care of the Nine Doors of thy Body, and know what is going in and out through them. Constrain thy Heart from dispersing its thoughts, and quiet thy Soul by thinking of the upper membrane of the child's brain, which is first soft, and then is closed and becomes strong, so that it would seem that there were no more need of it. Do not take perception of the Senses for anything but the Nature immanent in their organs, and therefore beware of following it.
II.
The Second Part of the Path of Liberation is Renunciation (the via omissionis), based on the knowledge of the evil that exists in the changing things of creation and their vanishing shapes. In consequence the heart shuns them, the longing for them ceases, and a man is raised above the Three Primary Forces that are the cause of Actions and of their diversity. For he who accurately understands the affairs of the world knows that the good ones among them are evil in reality, and that the bliss that they afford changes in the course of recompense into pains. Therefore he avoids everything which might aggravate his condition of being entangled in the world, and which might result in making him stay in the world for a still longer period.
The book Gītā says:
Men err in what is ordered and what is forbidden. They do not know how to distinguish between good and evil in actions. Therefore, giving up acting altogether and keeping aloof from it, this is the Action.
The same book says:
The purity of knowledge is high above the purity of all other things, for by know[i.80]ledge ignorance is rooted out and certainty is gained in exchange for doubt, which is a means of torture, for there is no rest for him who doubts.
It is evident from this that the First Part of the Path of Liberation is instrumental to the Second Part.
III.
The Third Part of the Path of Liberation which is to be considered as instrumental to the preceding two is Worship, for this purpose, that God should help a man to obtain Liberation, and deign to consider him worthy of such a shape of existence in the metempsychosis in which he may effect his progress towards beatitude.
The author of the book Gītā distributes the duties of worship among the Body, the Voice, and the Heart.
What the Body has to do is fasting, prayer, the fulfillment of the Law, the service towards the Angels and the Sages among the Brāhmaṇs, keeping clean the Body, keeping aloof from killing under all circumstances, and never looking at another man's wife and other property.
What the Voice has to do is the reciting of the holy texts, praising God, always to speak the Truth, to address people mildly, to guide them, and to order them to do good.
What the Heart has to do is to have straight, honest intentions, to avoid haughtiness, always to be patient, to keep your Senses under control, and to have a cheerful mind.
The author (Patañjali) adds to the Three Parts of the Path of Liberation a Fourth, one of an illusory nature, called Rasāyana and consisting of alchemistic tricks with various drugs, intended to realize things that by nature are impossible. We shall speak of these things afterwards (ch.18). They have no other relation to the theory of Moksha but this, that also in the tricks of Rasāyana everything depends upon the intention, the well-understood determination to carry them out, this determination resting on the firm belief in them, and resulting in the endeavor to realize them.
[i.81] According to the Hindus, Liberation is Union with God; for they describe God as a being who can dispense with hoping for a recompense or with fearing opposition, unattainable to thought, because he issublime beyond all unlikeness which is abhorrent and beyond all likeness which is sympathetic, knowing himself not by a knowledge which comes to him like an accident, regarding something which had not in every phase before been known to him. And this same description the Hindus apply to the Liberated One, for he is equal to God in all these things except in the matter of beginning, since he has not existed from all eternity, and except this, that before Liberation he existed in the World of Entanglement, knowing the objects of knowledge only by a phantasmagoric kind of knowing which he had acquired by absolute exertion, while the object of his knowing is still covered, as it were, by a veil. On the contrary, in the World of Liberation all veils are lifted, all covers taken off, and obstacles removed. There the being is absolutely knowing, not desirous of learning anything unknown, separated from the soiled perceptions of the Senses, united with the everlasting ideas. Therefore in the end of the Book of Patañjali, after the pupil has asked about the Nature of Liberation, the master says:
If you wish, say, Liberation is the cessation of the functions of the Three Forces, and their returning to that home whence they had come. Or if you wish, say, It is the return of the Soul as a knowing being into its own Nature.
The two men, pupil and master, disagree regarding him who has arrived at the Stage of Liberation. The anchorite asks in the book of Sāṁkhya,
Why does not death take place when Action ceases?
The sage replies,
Because the cause of the Separation is a certain condition of the Soul while the Spirit is still in the Body. Soul and Body are separated by a natural condition that severs their union. Frequently when [i.82] the cause of an effect has already ceased or disappeared, the effect itself still goes on for a certain time, slackening, and by and by decreasing, until in the end it ceases totally-e.g. the silk-weaver drives round his wheel with his mallet until it whirls round rapidly, then he leaves it; however, it does not stand still, though the mallet that drove it round has been removed; the motion of the wheel decreases by little and little, and finally it ceases. It is the same case with the Body. After the Action of the Body has ceased, its effect is still lasting until it arrives, through the various stages of motion and of rest, at the cessation of physical force and of the effect that had originated from preceding causes. Thus Liberation is finished when the Body has been completely prostrated.
In the Book of Patañjali there is a passage that expresses similar ideas. Speaking of a man who restrains his Senses and organs of perception, as the turtle draws in its limbs when it is afraid, he says that
he is not fettered, because the fetter has been loosened, and he is not Liberated, because his Body is still with him.
There is, however, another passage in the same book that does not agree with the Theory of Liberation as expounded above. He says:
The Bodies are the snares of the Souls for the purpose of acquiring recompense. He who arrives at the stage of Liberation has acquired, in his actual form of existence, the recompense for all the doings of the past. Then he ceases to labor to acquire a title to a recompense in the future. He frees himself from the snare; he can dispense with the particular form of his existence, and moves in it quite freely without being ensnared by it. He has even the faculty of moving wherever he likes, and if he like, he might rise above the face of death. For the thick, cohesive Bodies cannot oppose an obstacle to his form of existence (e.g. as a mountain could not prevent him from [i.83] passing through). How, then, could his Body oppose an obstacle to his Soul?
Similar views are also met with among the Ṣūfī. Some Ṣūfī author relates the following story:
A company of Ṣūfī came down unto us, and sat down at some distance from us. Then one of them rose, prayed, and on having finished his prayer, turned towards me and spoke: "O master, do you know here a place fit for us to die on?" Now I thought he meant sleeping, and so I pointed out to him a place. The man went there, threw himself on the back of his head, and remained motionless. Now I rose, went to him and shook him, but lo, he was already cold!
The Ṣūfī explains the Koranic verse, "We have made room for him on Earth" (Sūra 18:83), in this way:
If he wishes, the earth rolls itself up for him; if he wishes, he can walk on the water and in the air, which offer him sufficient resistance so as to enable him to walk, while the mountains do not offer him any resistance when he wants to pass through them.
We next speak of those who, notwithstanding their greatest exertions, do not reach the Stage of Liberation. There are several classes of them. The book Sāmkhya says:
He who enters upon the world with a virtuous character, who is liberal with what he possesses of the goods of the world, is recompensed in it in this way, that he obtains the fulfillment of his wishes and desires, that he moves about in the world in happiness, happy in Body and Soul and in all other conditions of life. For in reality good fortune is a recompense for former deeds, done either in the same shape or in some preceding shape. Whoso lives in this world piously but without knowledge will be raised and be rewarded, but not be liberated, because the means of attaining it are wanting in his case. Whoso is content and acquiesces in possessing the faculty of practicing the above-men [i.84]tioned Eight Commandments (sic, see i.74), whoso glories in them, is successful by means of them, and believes that they are Liberation, will remain in the same stage.
The following is a parable characterizing those who vie with each other in the progress through the various stages of knowledge
A man is traveling together with his pupils for some business or other towards the end of the night. Then there appears something standing erect before them on the road, the nature of which it is impossible to recognize on account of the darkness of night. The man turns towards his pupils, and asks them, one after the other, what it is. The first says: "I do not know what it is." The second says: "I do not know, and I have no means of learning what it is." The third says: "It is useless to examine what it is, for the rising of the day will reveal it. If it is something terrible, it will disappear at daybreak; if it is something else, the nature of the thing will anyhow be clear to us." Now, none of them had attained to knowledge, the first, because he was ignorant; the second, because he was incapable, and had no means of knowing; the third, because he was indolent and acquiesced in his ignorance.
The fourth pupil, however, did not give an answer. He stood still, and then he went on in the direction of the object. On coming near, he found that it was pumpkins on which there lay a tangled mass of something. Now he knew that a living man, endowed with Free Will, does not stand still in his place until such a tangled mass is formed on his head, and he recognized at once that it was a lifeless object standing erect. Further, he could not be sure if it was not a hidden place for some dunghill. So he went quite close to it, struck against it with his foot until it fell to the ground. Thus all doubt having been removed, he returned to his master and gave him the exact account. In such a [i.85] way the master obtained the knowledge through the intermediation of his pupils.
With regard to similar views of the ancient Greeks we can quote Ammonius, who relates the following as a sentence of Pythagoras:
Let your desire and exertion in this world be directed towards the union with the First Cause, which is the cause of the cause of your existence that you may endure forever. You will be saved from destruction and from being wiped out; you will go to the world of the True Sense, of the True Joy, of the True Glory, in everlasting joy and pleasures.
Further, Pythagoras says:
How can you hope for the state of Detachment as long as you are clad in bodies? And how will you obtain Liberation as long as you are incarcerated in them?
Ammonius relates:
Empedocles and his successors as far as Heracles (sic) think that the soiled souls always remain commingled with the world until they ask the Universal Soul for help. The Universal Soul intercedes for it with the Intelligence, the latter with the Creator. The Creator affords something of his light to Intelligence; Intelligence affords something of it to the Universal Soul, which is immanent in this world. Now the Soul wishes to be enlightened by Intelligence, until at last the individual Soul recognizes the Universal Soul, unites with it, and is attached to its world. But this is a process over which many ages must pass. Then the Soul comes to a region where there is neither place nor time, nor anything of that which is in the world, like transient fatigue or joy.
Socrates says:
The Soul on leaving space wanders to the Holiness (to\ kaqaro/n, catharum) that lives forever and exists eternally, being related to it. It becomes like Holiness in duration, because it is by means of something like contact able to receive impressions from Holiness. This, its susceptibility to impressions, is called Intelligence.
[i.86] Further, Socrates says:
The Soul is very similar to the Divine Substance that does not die nor dissolve, and is the only intelligible which lasts forever; the Body is the contrary of it. When Soul and Body unite, Nature orders Body to serve, the Soul to rule; but when they separate, the Soul goes to another place than that to which the Body goes. There it is happy with things that are suitable to it; it reposes from being circumscribed in space, rests from folly, impatience, love, fear, and other human evils, on this condition, that it had always been pure and hated the Body. If, however, it has sullied itself by connivance with the Body, by serving and loving it so that the Body was subservient to its lusts and desires, in this case it does not experience anything more real than the species of bodily things (to\ swmatoeide/j, sōmatoeides) and the contact with them.
Proclus says:
The Body in which the Rational Soul dwells has received the figure of a globe, like the aethēr and its individual beings. The Body in which both the Rational and the Irrational Souls dwell has received an erect figure like Man. The Body in which only the Irrational Soul dwells has received a figure erect and curved at the same time, like that of the irrational Animals. The Body in which there is neither the one nor the other, in which there is nothing but the nourishing power, has received an erect figure, but it is at the same time curved and turned upside down, so that the head is planted in the earth, as is the case with the Plants. The latter direction being the contrary to that of Man, for Man is a heavenly tree, the root of which is directed towards its home (Heaven), while the root of vegetables is directed towards their home (Earth).
The Hindus hold similar views about nature. Arhajuna asks,
What is Brahman like in the world?
Whereupon Vāsudēva answers,
Imagine him like an aśvattha tree.
This is a huge precious tree, well [i.87] known among them, standing upside down, the roots being above, the branches below. If it has ample nourishment, it becomes quite enormous; the branches spread far, cling to the soil, and creep into it. Roots and branches above and below resemble each other to such a degree that it is difficult to say which is which.
Brahman is the upper roots of this tree, its trunk is the Veda , its branches are the different doctrines and schools, its leaves are the different modes of interpretation; its nourishment comes from the Three Forces; the tree becomes strong and compact through the Senses. The intelligent being has no other keen desire but that of felling this tree (i.e. abstaining from the world and its vanities). When he has succeeded in felling it, he wishes to settle in the place where it has grown, a place in which there is no returning in a further stage of metempsychosis. When he obtains this, he leaves behind himself all the pains of heat and cold, and coming from the light of Sun and Moon and common fires, he attains to the divine lights.
The doctrine of Patañjali is akin to that of the Ṣūfī regarding being occupied in meditation on the Truth (i.e. God), for they say,
As long as you point to something, you are not a monist; but when the Truth seizes upon the object of your pointing and annihilates it, then there is no longer an indicating person nor an object indicated.
There are some passages in their system which show that they believe in the pantheistic union-e.g. one of them, being asked what is the Truth (God), gave the following answer:
How should I not know the being which is I in essence and Not-I in space? If I return once more into existence, thereby I am separated from Him; and if I am neglected (i.e. not born anew and sent into the world), thereby I become light and become accustomed to the Union (sic).
Abū Bekr al-Shiblī says:
Cast off all, and you [i.88] will attain to us completely. Then you will exist; but you will not report about us to others as long as your doing is like ours.
Abū Yazīd al-Bistāmī once being asked how he had attained his stage in Ṣufism, answered:
I cast off my own self as a serpent casts off its skin. Then I considered my own self, and found that I was He (i.e. God).
The Ṣūfī explain the Koranic passage (Sūra 2:68), "Then we spoke: Beat him with a part of her," in the following manner:
The order to kill that which is dead in order to give life to it indicates that the Heart does not become alive by the lights of knowledge unless the Body be killed by ascetic practice to such a degree that it does not any more exist as a reality, but only in a formal way, while your Heart is a reality on which no object of the formal world has any influence.
Further they say:
Between man and God there are a thousand stages of light and darkness. Men exert themselves to pass through darkness to light, and when they have attained to the stations of light, there is no return for them.
Chapter 8
ON THE DIFFERENT CLASSES OF CREATED BEINGS, AND ON THEIR NAMES
[i.89] THE subject of this chapter is very difficult to study and understand accurately, since we Muslims look at it from without, and the Hindus themselves do not work it out, to scientific perfection. As we, however, want it for the further progress of this treatise, we shall communicate all we have heard of it until the date of the present book. And first we give an extract from the book Sāṁkhya.
The anchorite spoke: "How many classes and species are there of living bodies?"
The sage replied: "There are Three Classes of them-the Spiritual ones in the height, Men in the middle, and Animals in the depth. Their species are fourteen in number, eight of which belong to the spiritual beings: Brahman, Indra, Prajāpati, Saumya, Gandharva, Yaksha, Rākshasa, and Piśāca. Five species are those of the Animals-cattle, wild beasts, birds, creeping things, and growing things (i.e. the trees). And, lastly, one species is represented by Man."
The author of the same book has in another part of it given the following enumeration with different names:
Brahman, Indra, Prajāpati, Gandharva, Yaksha, Rākshasa, Pitaras, Piśāca.
The Hindus are people who rarely preserve one and the same order of things, and in their enumeration of things there is much that is arbitrary. They use or [i.90] invent numbers of names, and who is to hinder or to control them?
In the book Gītā, Vāsudēva says:
When the First of the Three Primary Forces prevails, it particularly applies itself to developing the intellect, purifying the senses, and producing Action for the dēva ('angels'). Blissful rest is one of the consequences of this force, and Liberation one of its results.
When the Second Force prevails, it particularly applies itself to developing cupidity. It will lead to fatigue, and induce to actions for the yaksha and rākshasa ('demons'). In this case the recompense will be according to the Action.
If the Third Force prevails, it particularly applies itself to developing ignorance, and making people easily beguiled by their own wishes. Finally, it produces wakefulness, carelessness, laziness, procrastination in fulfilling duties, and sleeping too long. If man acts, he acts for the classes of the bhūta and piśāca ('devils'), for the preta who carry the spirits in the air-not in Paradise and not in Hell. Lastly, this force will lead to punishment; man will be lowered from the stage of humanity, and will be changed into animals and plants.
In another place the same author says:
Belief and virtue are in the 'angels' among the Spiritual Beings ( dēva). Therefore that man who resembles them believes in God, clings to him, and longs for him. Unbelief and vice are in the 'demons' (asura and ṛākshasa). That man who resembles them does not believe in God nor attend to his commandments. He tries to make the world godless, and is occupied with things that are harmful in this world and in the world beyond, and are of no use.
If we now combine these statements with each other, it will be evident that there is some, confusion both in the names and in their order. According to the most [i.91] popular view of the majority of the Hindus, there are the following Eight Classes of Spiritual Beings:
1. Dēva ('angels') to whom the North belongs; they especially belong to the Hindus; people say that Zoroaster made enemies of the Shamaniyya, or Buddhists, by calling the devils by the name of the class of angels that they consider the highest (i.e. dēva); and this usage has been transmitted from Magian times down to the Persian language of our days
2. Daitya, or dānava ('demons') who live in the South; to them everybody belongs who opposes the religion of the Hindus and persecutes the cows; notwithstanding the near relationship that exists between them and the dēva, there is, as Hindus maintain, no end of quarrelling and fighting among them
3. Gandharva ('musicians' and 'singers') who make music before the dēva; their harlots are called apsaras
4. Yaksha ('treasurers'), guardians of the dēva
5. Rākshasa, demons of ugly and deformed shapes
6. Kinnara, having human shapes but horses' heads, being the contrary of the centaurs of the Greek, of whom the lower half has the shape of a horse, the upper half that of a man; the latter figure is that of the Zodiacal sign of Arcitenens (Sagittarius)
7. Nāga, beings in the shape of serpents
8. Vidyādhara ('demon-sorcerers') who exercise a certain witchcraft, but not such a one as to produce permanent results
If we consider this series of beings, we find the angelic power at the upper end and the demoniac at the lower, and between them there is much interblending. The qualities of these beings are different, inasmuch as they have attained this stage of life in the course of metempsychosis by Action, and Actions are different on account of the Three Primary Forces. They live very long, since they have entirely stripped off the bodies, [i.92] since they are free from all exertion, and are able to do things that are impossible for man. They serve man in whatever he desires, and are near him in cases of need.
However, we can learn from the extract from Sāṁkhya that this view is not correct. For Brahman, Indra, and Prajāpati are not names of species, but of individuals. Brahman and Prajāpati very nearly mean the same, but they bear different names on account of some quality or other. Indra is the Ruler of the Worlds. Besides, Vāsudeva enumerates the yaksha and rākshasa together in one and the same class of demons, while the Purāṇas represent the yaksha as guardian-angels, and the servants of guardian-angels.
After all this, we declare that the Spiritual Beings, whom we have mentioned, are one category that have attained their present stage of existence by Action during the time when they were human beings. They have left their bodies behind them, for bodies are weights that impair the power and shorten the duration of life. Their qualities and conditions are different, in the same measure as one or other of the Three Primary Forces prevails over them. The First Force is peculiar to the dēva, or 'angels' who live in quietness and bliss. The predominant faculty of their mind is the comprehending of an idea without Matter, as it is the predominant faculty of the mind of man to comprehend the idea in Matter.
The Third Force is peculiar to the piśāca and bhūta, while the Second Force is peculiar to the classes between them. The Hindus say that the number of dēva is thirty-three koṭi or crore, of which eleven belong to Mahādeva. Therefore this number is one of his surnames, and his name itself (Mahādeva) points in this direction. The sum of the number of angels just mentioned would be 330,000,000.
Further, they represent the dēva as eating and drinking, cohabiting, living and dying, since they exist [i.93] within Matter, though in the most subtle and most simple kind of it, and since they have attained this by Action, not by knowledge. The Book of Patañjali relates that Nandikeśvara offered many sacrifices to Mahādēva, and was in consequence transferred into paradise in his human shape; that Indra, the Ruler, had intercourse with the wife of Nahusha the Brahmin, and therefore was changed into a serpent by way of punishment.
After the dēva comes the class of the pitaras ('Fathers'), deceased ancestors, and after them the bhūta , human beings who have attached themselves to the spiritual beings ( dēva), and stand in the middle between them and mankind. He who holds this degree, but without being free from the Body, is called either ṛishi or siddha or muni, and these differ among themselves according to their qualities. Siddha is he who has attained by his Action the faculty to do in the world whatever he likes, but who does not aspire further, and does not exert himself on the path leading to Liberation. He may ascend to the degree of a ṛishi. If a Brahmin attains this degree, he is called brahmarshi; if the Kshatriya attains it, he is called rājarshi. It is not possible for the lower classes to attain this degree. Ṛishis are the sages who, though they are only human beings, excel the angels (dēva ) on account of their knowledge. Therefore the angels learn from them, and above them there is none but Brahman.
After the brahmarshi and rājarshi come those classes of the populace that exist also among us-the 'castes,' to whom we shall devote a separate chapter.
All these latter beings are ranged under Matter. Now, as regards the notion of that which is above Matter, we say that the Hylē (u(/lh) is the middle between Matter and the Spiritual (divine ideas that are above Matter), and that the Three Primary Forces exist in the Hylē dynamically ( in dynamis). So the Hylē, with all that is comprehended in it, is a bridge from above to below. [i.94] Any life that circulates in the Hylē under the exclusive influence of the First Force (or 'Cause') is called Brahman, Prajāpati, and by many other names which occur in their religious law and tradition. It is identical with Nature in so far as it is active, for all bringing into existence, the creation of the world also, is attributed by them to Brahman.
Any life that circulates in the Hylē under the influence of the Second Force is called Nārāyaṇa in the tradition of the Hindus, which means Nature in so far as it has reached the end of its action, and is now striving to preserve that which has been produced. Thus Nārāyaṇa strives so to arrange the world that it should endure.
Any life that circulates in the Hylē under the influence of the Third Force is called Mahādēva and Śaṁkara, but his best-known name is Rudra. His work is destruction and annihilation, like Nature in the last stages of activity, when its power slackens.
These three beings bear different names, as they circulate through the various degrees to above and below, and accordingly their actions are different.
But prior to all these beings there is One Source whence everything is derived, and in this Unity they comprehend all three things, no more separating one from the other. This Unity they call Vishṇu, a name that more properly designates the Middle Force; but sometimes they do not even make a distinction between this Middle Force and the First Cause (i.e. they make Nārāyaṇa the causa causarum, 'cause of causes').
Here there is an analogy between Hindus and Christians, as the latter distinguish between the Three Persons and give them separate names-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost-but unite them into one substance.
This is what clearly results from a careful examination of the Hindu doctrines. Of their traditional accounts, which are full of silly notions, we shall speak [i.95] hereafter in the course of our explanation. You must not wonder if the Hindus, in their stories about the class of the dēva, whom we have explained as 'angels,' allow them all sorts of things, unreasonable in themselves, some perhaps not objectionable, others decidedly objectionable, both of which the theologians of Islam would declare to be incompatible with the dignity and nature of angels.
If you compare these traditions with those of the Greeks regarding their own religion, you will cease to find the Hindu system strange. We have already mentioned that they called the angels 'gods' (i.36). Now consider their stories about Zeus, and you will understand the truth of our remark. As for anthropomorphisms and traits of animal life that they attribute to him, we give the following tradition:
When he was born, his father wanted to devour him; but his mother took a stone, wrapped rags round it, and gave him the stone to swallow, whereupon he went away.
This is also mentioned by Galen in his Book of Speeches, where he relates that Philo had in an enigmatical way described the preparation of love potions (filw/neion fa/rmakon) in a poem of his by the following words:
Take red hair, diffusing sweet odor, the offering to the gods. And of man's blood weigh weights of the number of the mental faculties.
The poet means five pounds of saffron, because the senses are five. The weights of the other ingredients of the mixture he describes in similar enigmatic terms, of which Galen gives a commentary. In the same poem occurs the following verse:
And of the pseudonymous root which has grown in the district in which Zeus was born.
To which Galen adds:
This is Andropogon Nardus, which bears a false name, because it is called an 'ear' of wheat, although it is not an ear, but a root. The poet [i.96] prescribes that it should be Cretan, because the mythologists relate that Zeus was born on the mountain Dictaeum in Crete, where his mother concealed him from his father Cronus, that he should not devour him as he had devoured others.
Besides, well-known story-books tell that he married certain women one after the other, cohabited with others, doing violence to them and not marrying them; among them Europa, the daughter of Phœnix, who was taken from him by Asterius, king of Crete. Afterwards she gave birth to two children from him, Minos and Rhadamanthus. This happened long before the Israelites left the desert and entered Palestine.
Another tradition is that he died in Crete, and was buried there at the time of Samson the Israelite, being 780 years of age; that he was called Zeus when he had become old, after he had formerly been called Dios; and that the first who gave him this name was Cecrops, the first king of Athens. It was common to all of them to indulge in their lusts without any restraint, and to favor the business of the pander; and so far they were not unlike Zoroaster and King Gushtāsp when they desired to consolidate the realm and the rule ( sic).
Chroniclers maintain that Cecrops and his successors are the source of all the vices among the Athenians, meaning thereby such things as occur in the story of Alexander, namely that Nectanebus, king of Egypt, after having fled before Artaxerxes the Black and hiding in the capital of Macedonia, occupied himself with astrology and soothsaying; that he beguiled Olympias, the wife of King Philip, who was absent. He cunningly contrived to cohabit with her, showing himself to her in the figure of the god Ammon, as a serpent with two heads like rams' heads. So she became pregnant with Alexander. Philip, on returning, was about to disclaim the paternity, but then he dreamt that it was the child of the god Ammon. Thereupon he recognized the child [i.97] as his, and spoke, "Man cannot oppose the gods." The combination of the stars had shown to Nectanebus that he would die at the hands of his son. When then he died at the hands of Alexander from a wound in the neck, he recognized that he was his (Alexander's) father.
The tradition of the Greeks is full of similar things. We shall relate similar subjects when speaking of the marriages of the Hindus.
Now we return to our subject. Regarding that part of the nature of Zeus which has no connection with humanity, the Greeks say that he is Jupiter, the son of Saturn; for Saturn alone is eternal, not having been born, according to the philosophers of the Academy, as Galen says in the Book of Deduction. This is sufficiently proved by the book of Atatus on the Phaenomena, for he begins with the praise of Zeus:
We, mankind, do not leave him, nor can we do without him;
Of him the roads are full,
And the meeting-places of men.
He is mild towards them;
He produces for them what they wish, and incites them to work.
Reminding them of the necessities of life,
He indicates to them the times favorable
For digging and plowing for a good growth,
Who has raised the signs and stars in heaven.
Therefore we humiliate ourselves before him first and last
And then he praises the Spiritual Beings (the Muses). If you compare Greek theology with that of the Hindus, you will find that Brahman is described in the same way as Zeus by Aratus.
The author of the commentary on the Phaenomena of Aratus maintains that he deviated from the custom of the poets of his time in beginning with the gods; that it was his intention to speak of the celestial sphere. Further, he makes reflections on the origin of Asclepius like Galen, and says:
We should like to know [i.98] which Zeus Aratus meant, the mystical or the physical one. For the poet Crates called the celestial sphere Zeus, and likewise Homer says, "As pieces of snow are cut off from Zeus."
Aratus calls the ether and the air Zeus in the passage:
The roads and the meeting-places are full of him, and we all must inhale him.
Therefore the philosophers of the Stoa maintain that Zeus is the spirit that is dispersed in the Hylē, and similar to our Souls (i.e. the Nature which rules every natural body). The author supposes that he is mild, since he is the cause of the good; therefore he is right in maintaining that he has not only created men, but also the gods.
Chapter 9
ON THE CASTES, CALLED VARṆA ('COLORS'), AND ON THE CLASSES BELOW THEM
[i.99] IF a new order of things in political or social life is created by a man naturally ambitious of ruling, who by his character and capacity really deserves to be a ruler, a man of firm convictions and unshaken determination, who even in times of reverses is supported by good luck, in so far as people then side with him in recognition of former merits of his, such an order is likely to become consolidated among those for whom it was created, and to continue as firm as the deeply rooted mountains. It will remain among them as a generally recognized rule in all generations through the course of time and the flight of ages. If, then, this new form of state or society rests in some degree on religion, these twins, state and religion, are in perfect harmony, and their union represents the highest development of human society, all that men can possibly desire.
The kings of antiquity, who were industriously devoted to the duties of their office, spent most of their care on the division of their subjects into different classes and orders, which they tried to preserve from intermixture and disorder. Therefore they forbade people of different classes to have intercourse with each other, and laid upon each class a particular kind of work or art and handicraft. They did not allow anybody to transgress the limits of his class, and even [i.100] punished those who would not be content with their class.
All this is well illustrated by the history of the ancient Chosroes (Khusrau), for they had created great institutions of this kind, which could not be broken through by the special merits of any individual nor by bribery. When Ardashīr ben Bābak restored the Persian Empire, he also restored the classes or castes of the population in the following way:
The first class were the knights and princes.
The second class the monks, the fire-priests, and the lawyers.
The third class the physicians, astronomers, and other men of science.
The fourth class the husbandmen and artisans.
And within these classes there were subdivisions, distinct from each other, like the species within a genus. All institutions of this kind are like a pedigree, as long as their origin is remembered; but when once their origin has been forgotten, they become, as it were, the stable property of the whole nation, nobody any more questioning its origin. And forgetting is the necessary result of any long period of time, of a long succession of centuries and generations.
Among the Hindus institutions of this kind abound. We Muslims, of course, stand entirely on the other side of the question, considering all men as equal, except in piety; and this is the greatest obstacle that prevents any approach or understanding between Hindus and Muslims.
The Hindus call their castes varṇa ('colors'), and from a genealogical point of view they call them jātaka ('births'). These castes are from the very beginning only four.
I. The highest caste are the Brāhmaṇa, of whom the books of the Hindus tell that they were created from the head of Brahman; and as Brahman is only another [i.101] name for the force called Nature, and the head is the highest part of the animal body, the Brāhmaṇa are the choice part of the whole genus; therefore the Hindus consider them as the very best of mankind.
II. The next caste are the Kshatriya, who were created, as they say, from the shoulders and hands of Brahman; their degree is not much below that of the Brāhmaṇa
III. After them follow the Vaiśya, who were created from the thigh of Brahman
IV. The Śūdra, who were created from his feet
Between the latter two classes there is no very great distance. Much, however, as these classes differ from each other, they live together in the same towns and villages, mixed together in the same houses and lodgings.
After the Śūdra follow the people called Antyaja, who render various kinds of services, who are not reckoned among any caste, but only as members of a certain craft or profession. There are eight classes of them, who freely intermarry with each other, except the fuller, shoemaker, and weaver, for no others would condescend to have anything to do with them. These eight guilds are the fuller, shoemaker, juggler, the basket and shield maker, the sailor, fisherman, the hunter of wild animals and of birds, and the weaver. The four castes do not live together with them in one and the same place. These guilds live near the villages and towns of the four castes, but outside them.
The people called Hāḍī, Ḍoma (Ḍomba), Caṇḍāla, and Badhatau (sic) are not reckoned among any caste or guild. They are occupied with dirty work, like the cleansing of the villages and other services. They are considered as one sole class, and distinguished only by their occupations. In fact, they are considered like illegitimate children; for according to general opinion they descend from a Śūdra father and a Brāhmaṇī [i.102] mother as the children of fornication; therefore they are degraded outcasts.
The Hindus give to every single man of the four castes characteristic names, according to their occupations and modes of life-e.g. the Brāhmaṇa is in general called by this name as long as he does his work staying at home. When he is busy with the service of one fire, he is called Ishṭin; if he serves three fires, he is called Agnihōtrin; if he besides offers an offering to the fire, he is called Dīkshita. And as it is with the Brāhmaṇa, so is it also with the other castes. Of the classes beneath the castes, the Hāḍī are the best spoken of, because they keep themselves free from everything unclean. Next follow the Ḍoma, who play on the lute and sing. The still lower classes practice as a trade killing and the inflicting of judicial punishments. The worst of all are the Badhatau, who not only devour the flesh of dead animals, but even of dogs and other beasts.
Each of the four castes, when eating together, must form a group for themselves, one group not being allowed to comprise two men of different castes. If, further, in the group of the Brāhmaṇa there are two men who live at enmity with each other, and the seat of the one is by the side of the other, they make a barrier between the two seats by placing a board between them, or by spreading a piece of dress, or in some other way; and if there is only a line drawn between them, they are considered as separated. Since it is forbidden to eat the remains of a meal, every single man must have his own food for himself; for if any one of the party who are eating should take of the food from one and the same plate, that which remains in the plate becomes, after the first eater has taken part, to him who wants to take as the second, the remains of the meal, and such is forbidden.
Such is the condition of the four castes. Arjuna [i.103] asked about the nature of the four castes and what must be their moral qualities, whereupon Vāsudēva answered:
The Brāhmaṇa must have an ample intellect, a quiet heart, truthful speech, much patience; he must be master of his senses, a lover of justice, of evident purity, always directed upon worship, entirely bent upon religion.
The Kshatriya must fill the hearts with terror, must be brave and high-minded, and must have ready speech and a liberal hand, not minding dangers, only intent upon carrying the great tasks of his calling to a happy end.
The Vaiśya is to occupy himself with agriculture, with the acquisition of cattle, and with trade.
The Śūdra is to endeavor to render services and attention to each of the preceding classes, in order to make himself liked by them.
If each member of these castes adheres to his customs and usages, he will obtain the happiness he wishes for, supposing that he is not negligent in the worship of God, not forgetting to remember him in his most important avocations. But if anybody wants to quit the works and duties of his caste and adopt those of another caste, even if it would bring a certain honor to the latter, it is a sin, because it is a transgression of the rule.
Further, Vāsudēva speaks, inspiring him with courage to fight the enemy:
Dost thou not know, O man with the long arm, that thou art a Kshatriya; that thy race has been created brave, to rush boldly to the charge, to care little for the vicissitudes of time, never to give way whenever their soul has a foreboding of coming misfortune? For only thereby is the reward to be obtained. If he conquers, he obtains power and good fortune. If he perishes, he obtains paradise and bliss. Besides, thou showest weakness in the presence of the enemy, and seemest melancholy at the prospect of [i.104] killing this host; but it will be infinitely worse if thy name will spread as that of a timid, cowardly man, that thy reputation among the heroes and the experienced warriors will be gone, that thou wilt be out of their sight, and thy name no longer be remembered among them. I do not know a worse punishment than such a state. Death is better than to expose thyself to the consequences of ignominy. If, therefore, God has ordered thee to fight, if he has deigned to confer upon thy caste the task of fighting and has created thee for it, carry out his order and perform his will with a determination which is free from any desire, so that thy action be exclusively devoted to him.
Hindus differ among themselves as to which of these castes is capable of attaining to Liberation; for, according to some, only the Brāhmaṇa and Kshatriya are capable of it, since the others cannot learn the Veda, while according to the Hindu philosophers, Liberation is common to all castes and to the whole human race, if their intention of obtaining it is perfect. This view is based on the saying of Vyāsa:
Learn to know the Twenty-Five things thoroughly. Then you may follow whatever religion you like; you will no doubt be liberated.
This view is also based on the fact that Vāsudēva was a descendant of a Śūdra family, and also on the following saying of his, which he addressed to Arjuna:
God distributes recompense without injustice and without partiality. He reckons the good as bad if people in doing good forget him; he reckons the bad as good if people in doing bad remember him and do not forget him, whether those people be Vaiśya or Śūdra or women. How much more will this be the case when they are Brāhmaṇa or Kshatriya.
Chapter 10
ON THE SOURCE OF THEIR RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL LAW, ON PROPHETS, AND ON THE QUESTION WHETHER SINGLE LAWS CAN BE ABROGATED OR NOT
[i.105] THE ancient Greeks received their religious and civil laws from sages among them who were called to the work, and of whom their countrymen believed that they received divine help, like Solon, Draco, Pythagoras, Minos, and others. Also their kings did the same; for Mianos (sic), when ruling over the islands of the sea and over the Cretans about two hundred years after Moses, gave them laws, pretending to have received them from Zeus. About the same time also Minos (sic) gave his laws.
At the time of Darius I, the successor of Cyrus, the Romans sent messengers to the Athenians, and received from them the laws in twelve books, under which they lived until the rule of Pompilius (Numa). This king gave them new laws; he assigned to the year twelve months, while up to that time it had only had ten months. It appears that he introduced his innovations against the will of the Romans, for he ordered them to use as instruments of barter in commerce pieces of pottery and hides instead of silver, which seems on his part to betray a certain anger against rebellious subjects. In the first chapter of the Book of Laws of Plato, the Athenian stranger says:
Who do you think was the [i.106] first who gave laws to you? Was he an angel or a man?
The man of Cnossus said:
He was an angel. In truth, with us it was Zeus, but with the Lacedaemonians, as they maintain, the legislator was Apollo.
Further, he says in the same chapter:
It is the duty of the legislator, if he comes from God, to make the acquisition of the greatest virtues and of the highest justice the object of his legislation.
He describes the laws of the Cretans as rendering perfect the happiness of those who make the proper use of them, because by them they acquire all the human good which is dependent upon the divine good.
The Athenian says in the second chapter of the same book:
The gods, pitying mankind as born for trouble, instituted for them feasts to the gods, the Muses, Apollo the ruler of the Muses, and to Dionysus, who gave men wine as a remedy against the bitterness of old age, that old men should again be young by forgetting sadness, and by bringing back the character of the soul from the state of affliction to the state of soundness.
Further he says:
They have given to men by inspiration the arrangements for dancing, and the equally weighed rhythm as a reward for fatigues, and that they may become accustomed to live together with them in feasts and joy. Therefore they call one kind of their music praises, with an implied allusion to the prayers to the gods.
Such was the case with the Greeks, and it is precisely the same with the Hindus. For they believe that their religious law and its single precepts derive their origin from ṛishis (their sages, the pillars of their religion), and not from the prophet (i.e. Nārāyaṇa) who, when coming into this world, appears in some human figure. But he only comes in order to cut away some evil matter which threatens the world, or to set the world right again when anything has gone wrong. Further, no [i.107] law can be exchanged or replaced by another, for they use the laws simply as they find them. Therefore they can dispense with prophets, as far as law and worship are concerned, though in other affairs of the creation they sometimes want them.
As for the question of the abrogation of laws, it seems that this is not impossible with the Hindus, for they say that many things which are now forbidden were allowed before the coming of Vāsudēva (e.g. the flesh of cows). Such changes are necessitated by the change of the nature of man, and by their being too feeble to bear the whole burden of their duties. To these changes also belong the changes of the matrimonial system and of the theory of descent. For in former times there were three modes of determining descent or relationship:
1. The child born to a man by his legitimate wife is the child of the father, as is the custom with us and with the Hindus.
2. If a man marries a woman and has a child by her; if, further, the marriage-contract stipulates that the children of the woman will belong to her father, the child is considered as the child of its grandfather who made that stipulation, and not as the child of its father who engendered it.
3. If a stranger has a child by a married woman, the child belongs to her husband, since the wife being, as it were, the soil in which the child has grown, is the property of the husband, always presupposing that the sowing ('cohabitation') takes place with his consent.
According to this principle, Pāṇḍu was considered as the son of Śāntanu; for this king had been cursed by an anchorite, and in consequence was unable to cohabit with his wives, which was the more provoking to him as he had not yet any children. Now he asked Vyāsa, the son of Parāśara, to procreate for him children from [i.108] his wives in his place. Pāṇḍu sent him one, but she was afraid of him when he cohabited with her, and trembled, in consequence of which she conceived a sickly child of yellow hue. Then the king sent him a second woman; she, too, felt much reverence for him, and wrapped herself up in her veil, and in consequence she gave birth to Dhṛitarāshṭra, who was blind and unhealthy. Lastly, he sent him a third woman, whom he enjoined to put aside all fear and reverence with regard to the saint. Laughing and in high spirits, she went in to him, and conceived from him a child of Moon-like beauty, who excelled all men in boldness and cunning.
The four sons of Pāṇḍu had one wife in common, who stayed one month with each of them alternately. In the books of the Hindus it is told that Parāśara, the hermit, one day traveled in a boat in which there was also a daughter of the boatman. He fell in love with her, tried to seduce her, and finally she yielded; but there was nothing on the bank of the river to hide them from the looks of the people. However, instantaneously there grew a tamarisk-tree to facilitate their purpose. Now he cohabited with her behind the tamarisk, and made her conceive, whereupon she became pregnant with this his excellent son Vyāsa.
All these customs have now been abolished and abrogated, and therefore we may infer from their tradition that in principle the abrogation of a law is allowable.
As regards unnatural kinds of marriage, we must state that such exist still in our time, as they also existed in the times of Arab heathendom; for the people inhabiting the mountains stretching from the region of Panchīr into the neighborhood of Kashmīr live under the rule that several brothers have one wife in common. Among the heathen Arabs, too, marriage was of different kinds:
1. An Arab ordered his wife to be sent to a certain [i.109] man to demand sexual intercourse with him; then he abstained from her during the whole time of her pregnancy, since he wished to have from her a generous offspring. This is identical with the third kind of marriage among the Hindus.
2. A second kind was this, that the one Arab said to the other, "Cede me your wife, and I will cede you mine," and thus they exchanged their wives.
3. A third kind was this, that several men cohabited with one wife. When, then, she gave birth to a child, she declared who was the father; and if she did not know it, the fortune-tellers had to know it.
4. The Niḳāḥ-elmakt ( matrimonium exosum, 'hateful marriage') was when a man married the widow of his father or of his son, the child of such a marriage was called ḍaizan. This is nearly the same as a certain Jewish marriage, for the Jews have the law that a man must marry the widow of his brother, if the latter has not left children, and create a line of descent for his deceased brother; and the offspring is considered as that of the deceased man, not as that of the real father. Thereby they want to prevent his memory dying out in the world. In Hebrew they call a man who is married in this way Yābhām.
There was a similar institution among the Magians. In the book of Tausar, the great Herbadh, addressed Padashvār-girshāh, as an answer to his attacks on Ardashīr the son of Bābak, we find a description of the institution of a man's being married as the substitute for another man, which existed among the Persians.
If a man dies without leaving male offspring, people are to examine the case. If he leaves a wife, they marry her to his nearest relative. If he does not leave a wife, they marry his daughter or the nearest related woman to the nearest related male of the family. If there is no woman of his family left, they woo by means of the money of the deceased a woman for his [i.110] family, and marry her to some male relative. The child of such a marriage is considered as the offspring of the deceased.
Whoever neglects this duty and does not fulfill it, kills innumerable souls, since he cuts off the progeny and the name of the deceased to all eternity.
We have here given an account of these things in. order that the reader may learn by the comparative treatment of the subject how much superior the institutions of Islam are, and how much more plainly this contrast brings out all customs and usages, differing from those of Islam, in their essential foulness.
the case when they are Brāhmaṇa or Kshatriya.Chapter 11
ABOUT THE BEGINNING OF IDOL-WORSHIP, AND A DESCRIPTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL IDOLS
[i.111] IT is well known that the popular mind leans towards the sensible world, and has an aversion to the world or in the abstract thought which is only understood by highly educated people, of whom in every time and every place there are only few. And as common people will only acquiesce in pictorial representations, many of the leaders of religious communities have so far deviated from the right path as to give such imagery in their books and houses of worship, like the Jews and Christians, and, more than all, the Manichaeans. These words of mine would at once receive a sufficient illustration if, for example, a picture of the Prophet were made, or of Mekka and the Kaᴄba, and were shown to an uneducated man or woman. Their joy in looking at the thing would bring them to kiss the picture, to rub their cheeks against it, and to roll themselves in the dust before it, as if they were seeing not the picture, but the original, and were in this way, as if they were present in the holy places, performing the rites of pilgrimage, the great and the small ones.
This is the cause which leads to the manufacture of idols, monuments in honor of certain much venerated persons, prophets, sages, angels, destined to keep alive their memory when they are absent or dead, to create for them a lasting place of grateful veneration in the hearts of men when they die. But when much time [i.112] passes by after the setting up of the monument, generations and centuries, its origin is forgotten, it becomes a matter of custom, and its veneration a rule for general practice. This being deeply rooted in the nature of man, the legislators of antiquity tried to influence them from this weak point of theirs. Therefore they made the veneration of pictures and similar monuments obligatory on them, as is recounted in historic records, both for the times before and after the Deluge. Some people even pretend to know that all mankind, before God sent them his prophets, were one large idolatrous body.
The followers of the Torah fix the beginning of idolatry in the days of Serūgh, the great-grandfather of Abraham. The Romans have, regarding this question, the following tradition:
Romulus and Romanus (sic), the two brothers from the country of the Franks, on having ascended the throne, built the city of Rome. Then Romulus killed his brother, and the consequence was a long succession of intestine troubles and wars. Finally, Romulus humiliated himself, and then he dreamt that there would only be peace on condition that he placed his brother on the throne. Now he got a golden image made of him, placed it at his side, and henceforward he used to say, "We (not I) have ordered thus and thus," which since has become the general use of kings. Thereupon the troubles subsided. He founded a feast and a play to amuse and to gain over those who bore him ill-will on account of the murder of his brother. Besides, he erected a monument to the Sun, consisting of four images on four horses, the green one for the earth, the blue for the water, the red for the fire, and the white for the air. This monument is still in Rome in our days.
Since, however, here we have to explain the system and the theories of the Hindus on the subject, we shall now mention their ludicrous views: but we declare at once [i.113] that they are held only by the common uneducated people. For those who march on the Path to Liberation, or those who study philosophy and theology, and who desire abstract Truth which they call Sāra, are entirely free from worshipping anything but God alone, and would never dream of worshipping an image manufactured to represent him. A tradition illustrative of this is that which Śaunaka told the king Parīksha in these words:
There was once a king called Ambarīsha, who had story of obtained an empire as large as he had wished for. But afterwards he came to like it no longer; he retired from the world, and exclusively occupied himself with worshipping and praising God for a long time. Finally, God appeared to him in the shape of Indra, the prince of the angels, riding on an elephant. He spoke to the king: "Demand whatever you like, and I will give it you."
The king answered: "I rejoice in seeing thee, and I am thankful for the good fortune and help thou hast given; but I do not demand anything from thee, but only from him who created thee."
Indra said: "The object of worship is to receive a noble reward. Realize, therefore, your object, and accept the reward from him from whom hitherto you have obtained your wishes, and do not pick and choose, saying, 'Not from thee, but from another.'"
The king answered: "The earth has fallen to my lot, but I do not care for all that is in it. The object of my worship is to see the Lord, and that thou canst not give me. Why, therefore, should I demand the fulfillment of my desire from thee?"
Indra said: "The whole world and whoever is upon it are obedient to me. Who are you that you dare to oppose me?"
The king answered: "I, too, hear and obey, but I worship Him from whom thou hast received this power, [i.114] who is the Lord of the Universe, who has protected thee against the attacks of the two kings, Bali and Hiraṇyāksha. Therefore let me do as I like, and turn away from me with my farewell greeting."
Indra said: "If you will absolutely oppose me, I will kill you and annihilate you."
The king answered: "People say that happiness is envied, but not so misfortune. He who retires from the world is envied by the angels, and therefore they will try to lead him astray. I am one of those who have retired from the world and entirely devoted themselves to worship, and I shall not give it up as long as I live. I do not know myself to be guilty of a crime for which I should deserve to be killed by thee. If thou killest me without any offence on my part, it is thy concern. What dost thou want from me? If my thoughts are entirely devoted to God, and nothing else is blended with them, thou art not able to do me any harm. Sufficient for me is the worship with which I am occupied, and now I return to it."
As the king now went on worshipping, the Lord appeared to him in the shape of a man of the grey lotus color, riding on a bird called Garuḍa, holding in one of the four hands the śaṅkha (a sea-shell which people blow when riding on elephants); in the second hand the cakra (a round, cutting, orbicular weapon, which cuts everything it hits right through); in the third an amulet, and in the fourth padma (the red lotus). When the king saw him, he shuddered from reverence, prostrated himself and uttered many praises. The Lord quieted his terrified mind and promised him that he should obtain everything he wished for. The king spoke: "I had obtained an empire which nobody disputed with me; I was in conditions of life not troubled by sorrow or sickness. It was as if the whole world belonged to me. But then I turned away from it, after I had understood that the good of the [i.115] world is really bad in the end. I do not wish for anything except what I now have. The only thing I now wish for is to be Liberated from this fetter."
The Lord spoke: "That you will obtain by keeping aloof from the world, by being alone, by uninterrupted meditation, and by restraining your Senses to yourself."
The king spoke: "Supposing that I am able to do so through that sanctity which the Lord has deigned to bestow upon me, how should any other man be able to do so? For man wants eating and clothing, which connects him with the world. How is he to think of anything else?"
The Lord spoke: "Occupy yourself with your empire in as straightforward and prudent a way as possible: turn your thoughts upon me when you are engaged in civilizing the world and protecting its inhabitants, in giving alms, and in everything you do. And if you are overpowered by human forgetfulness, make to yourself an image like that in which you see me; offer to it perfumes and flowers, and make it a memorial of me, so that you may not forget me. If you are in sorrow, think of me; if you speak, speak in my name; if you act, act for me."
The king spoke: "Now I know what I have to do in general, but honor me further by instructing me in the details."
The Lord spoke: "That I have done already. I have inspired your judge Vasishṭha with all that is required. Therefore rely upon him in all questions."
Then the figure disappeared from his sight. The king returned into his residence and did as he had been ordered.
From that time, the Hindus say, people make idols, some with four hands like the appearance we have described, others with two hands, as the story and description require, and conformably to the being which is to be represented.
[i.116] Another story of theirs is the following:
Brahman had a son called Narada, who had no other desire but that of seeing the Lord. It was his custom, when he walked about, to hold a stick. If he threw it down, it became a serpent, and he was able to do miracles with it. He never went without it. One day being engrossed in meditation on the object of his hopes, he saw a fire from afar. He went towards it, and then a voice spoke to him out of the fire: "What you demand and wish is impossible. You cannot see me save thus." When he looked in that direction, he saw a fiery appearance in something like human shape. Henceforward it has been the custom to erect idols of certain shapes.
A famous idol of theirs was that of Multān, dedicated to the Sun, and therefore called Āditya. It was of wood and covered with red Cordovan leather; in its two eyes were two red rubies. It is said to have been made in the last Kṛita-yuga. Suppose that it was made in the very end of Kṛita-yuga, the time that has since elapsed amounts to 216,432 years. When Muhammad Ibn al-Ḳāsim Ibn al-Munabbih ZZZ conquered Multān, he inquired how the town had become so very flourishing and so many treasures had there been accumulated, and then he found out that this idol was the cause, for there came pilgrims from all sides to visit it. Therefore he thought it best to have the idol where it was, but he hung a piece of cow's-flesh on its neck by way of mockery. On the same place a mosque was built. When then the Ḳarmatians occupied Multān, Jalam Ibn Shaibān, the usurper, broke the idol into pieces and killed its priests. He made his mansion, which was a castle built of brick on an elevated place, the mosque instead of the old mosque, which he ordered to be shut from hatred against anything that had been done under the dynasty of the kaliphs of the house of ᴐUmayya (ᴐUmayyids). When afterwards the blessed Prince Maḥ[i.117]mūd swept away their rule from those countries, he made again the old mosque the place of the Friday worship, and the second one was left to decay. At present it is only a barn-floor, where bunches of ḥinnā ( Lawsonia inermis) are bound together.
If we now subtract from the above-mentioned number of years the hundreds, tens, and units (432 years), as a kind of arbitrary equivalent for the sum of about 100 years, by which the rise of the Ḳarmatians preceded our time, we get as the remainder 216,000 years for the time of the end of the Ḳrita-yuga, and about the epoch of the Era of the Hijra. How, then, could wood have lasted such a length of time, and particularly in a place where the air and the soil are rather wet? God knows best!
The city of Tāneshar is highly venerated by the Hindus. The idol of that place is called Cakrasvāmin ('Owner of the Cakra,' a weapon which we have already described, i.114). It is of bronze, and is nearly the size of a man. It is now lying in the hippodrome in Ghazna, together with the Lord of Somanāth, which is a representation of the penis of Mahādēva, called Liṅga. Of Somanāth we shall hereafter speak in the proper place. This Cakrasvāmin is said to have been made in the time of Bhārata as a memorial of wars connected with this name.
In Inner Kashmīr, about two or three days' journey from the capital in the direction towards the mountains of Bolor, there is a wooden idol called Śārada, which is much venerated and frequented by pilgrims.
We shall now communicate a whole chapter from the book Saṁhitā relating to the construction of idols, which will help the student thoroughly to comprehend the present subject.
Varāhamihira says:
If the figure is made to represent Rāma the son of Daśaratha, or Bali the son of Virocana, give it the height of 120 digits.
That is idol [i.118] digits, which must be reduced by one-tenth to become common digits (in this case 108).
To the idol of Vishṇu give eight hands, or four, or two, and on the left side under the breast give him the figure of the woman Śrī. If you give him eight hands, place in the right hands a sword, a club of gold or iron, an arrow, and make the fourth hand as if it were drawing water; in the left hands give him a shield, a bow, a cakra, and a conch.
If you give him four hands, omit the bow and the arrow, the sword and shield.
If you give him two hands, let the right hand be drawing water, the left holding a conch.
If the figure is to represent Bala-dēva, the brother of Nārāyaṇa, put earrings into his ears, and give him eyes of a drunken man.
If you make both figures, Nārāyaṇa and Bala -dēva, join with them their sister Bhagavatī (Durgā = Ekānanśā), her left hand resting on her hip a little away from the side, and her right hand holding a lotus.
If you make her four-handed, place in the right hands a rosary and a hand drawing water; in the left hands, a book and a lotus.
If you make her eight-handed, place in the left hands the kamaṇḍalu (i.e. a pot), a lotus, a bow and a book; in the right hands, a rosary, a mirror, an arrow, and a water-drawing hand.
If the figure is to represent Sāmba, the son of Vishṇu, put only a club in his right hand. If it is to represent Pradyumna, the son of Vishṇu, place in his right hand an arrow, in his left hand a bow. And if you make their two wives, place in their right hand a sword, in the left a buckler.
The idol of Brahman has four faces towards the four sides, and is seated on a lotus. The idol of Skanda, the son of Mahādēva, is a boy riding on a peacock, his hand holding a śakti, a weapon [i.119] like a double-edged sword, which has in the middle a pestle like that of a mortar. The idol Indra holds in its hand a weapon called vajra, of diamond. It has a similar handle to the śakti, but on each side it has two swords that join at the handle. On his front place a third eye, and make him ride on a white elephant with four tusks.
Likewise make on the front of the idol of Mahādēva a third eye right above, on his head a crescent, in his hand a weapon called śūla, similar to the club but with three branches, and a sword; and let his left hand hold his wife Gaurī, the daughter of Himavant, whom he presses to his bosom from the side.
To the idol Jina (i.e. Buddha) give a face and limbs as beautiful as possible, make the lines in the palms of his hands and feet like a lotus, and represent him seated on a lotus; give him grey hair, and represent him with a placid expression, as if he were the father of creation.
If you make Arhant, the figure of another body of Buddha, represent him as a naked youth with a fine face, beautiful, whose hands reach down to the knees, with the figure of Śrī, his wife, under the left breast.
The idol of Revanta, the son of the Sun, rides on a horse like a huntsman.
The idol of Yima, the Angel of Death, rides on a buffalo, and holds a club in his hand.
The idol of Kubera, the Treasurer, wears a crown, has a big stomach and wide hips, and is riding on a man.
The idol of the Sun has a red face like the pith of the red lotus, beams like a diamond, has protruding limbs, rings in the ears, the neck adorned with pearls which hang down over the breast, wears a crown of several compartments, holds in his hands two lotuses, and is clad in the dress of the Northerners which reaches down to the ankle.
If you represent the Seven Mothers, represent several of them together in one figure-Brahmānī with four faces [i.120] towards the four directions; Kaumārī with six faces; Vaishṇavī with four hands; Vārāhī with a hog's head on a human body; Indrāṇī with many eyes and a club in her hand; Bhagavatī (Durgā) sitting as people generally sit; and Cāmuṇḍā ugly, with protruding teeth and a slim waist. Further join with them the sons of Mahādēva-Kshetrapāla with bristling hair, a sour face, and an ugly figure, but Vināyaka with an elephant's head on a human body, with four hands, as we have heretofore described.
The worshippers of these idols kill sheep and buffaloes with kuṭāra ('axes'), that they may nourish themselves with their blood. All idols are constructed according to certain measures determined by idol-fingers for every single limb, but sometimes they differ regarding the measure of a limb. If the artist keeps the right measure and does not make anything too large nor too small, he is free from sin, and is sure that the being that he represented will not visit him with any mishap.
If he makes the idol one cubit high and together with the throne two cubits, he will obtain health and wealth. If he makes it higher still, he will be praised.
But he must know that making the idol too large, especially that of the Sun, will hurt the ruler, and making it too small will hurt the artist. If he gives it a thin belly, this helps and furthers the famine in the country; if he gives it a lean belly, this ruins property.
If the hand of the artist slips so as to produce something like a wound, he will have a wound in his own body that will kill him.
If it is not completely even on both sides, so that the one shoulder is higher than the other, his wife will perish.
If he turns the eye upward, he will be blind for lifetime; if he turns it downward, he will have many troubles and sorrows.
[i.121] If the statue is made of some precious stone, it is better than if it were made of wood, and wood is better than clay.
The benefits of a statue of precious stone will be common to all the men and women of the empire. A golden statue will bring power to him who erected it, a statue of silver will bring him renown, one of bronze will bring him an increase of his rule, and one of stone the acquisition of landed property.
The Hindus honor their idols on account of those who erected them, not on account of the material of which they are made. We have already mentioned that the idol of Multān was of wood. For example, the liṅga that Rāma erected when he had finished the War with the Demons was of sand, which he had heaped up with his own hand. But then it became petrified all at once, since the astrologically correct moment for the erecting of the monument fell before the moment when the workmen had finished the cutting of the stone monument that Rāma originally had ordered. Regarding the building of the temple and its peristyle, the cutting of the trees of four different kinds, the astrological determination of the favorable moment for the erection, the celebration of the rites due on such an occasion, regarding all this Rāma gave very long and tedious instructions. Further, he ordered that servants and priests to minister to the idols should be nominated from different classes of the people.
To the idol of Vishnu are devoted the class called Bhāgavata; to the idol of the Sun, the Maga ('the Magians'); to the idol of Mahādēva, a class of saints, anchorites with long hair, who cover their skin with ashes, hang on their persons the bones of dead people, and swim in the pools. The Brāhmaṇa are devoted to the Eight Mothers, the Shamans to Buddha, to Arhant the class called Nagna. On the whole, to each idol certain people are devoted who constructed it, for those know best how to serve it.
[i.122] Our object in mentioning all this mad raving was to teach the reader the accurate description or an idol, if he happens to see one, and to illustrate what we have said before, that such idols are erected only for uneducated low-class people of little understanding; that the Hindus never made an idol of any supernatural being, much less of God; and, lastly, to show how the crowd is kept in thrall by all kinds of priestly tricks and deceits. Therefore the book Gītā says:
Many people try to approach me in their aspirations through something which is different from me; they try to insinuate themselves into my favor by giving alms, praise, and prayer to something besides me. I, however, confirm and help them in all these doings of theirs, and make them attain the object of their wishes, because I am able to dispense with them.
In the same book Vāsudēva speaks to Arjuna:
Do you not see that most of those who wish for something address themselves in offering and worshipping to the several classes of spiritual beings, and to the Sun, Moon, and other celestial bodies? If now God does not disappoint their hopes, though he in no way stands in need of their worship, if he even gives them more than they asked for, and if he gives them their wishes in such a way as though they were receiving them from that to which they had addressed their prayers-namely the idol-they will proceed to worship those whom they address, because they have not learned to know him, while he, by admitting this kind of intermediation, carries their affairs to the desired end. But that which is obtained by desires and intermediation is not lasting, since it is only as much as is deserved for any particular merit. Only that is lasting which is obtained from God alone, when people are disgusted with old age, death, and birth (and desire to be delivered therefrom by Mokska)
This is what Vāsudēva says. When the ignorant crowd [i.123] get a piece of good luck by accident or something at which they had aimed, and when with this some of the preconcerted tricks of the priests are brought into connection, the Darkness in which they live increases vastly, not their Intelligence. They will rush to those figures of idols, maltreating their own figures before them by shedding their own blood and mutilating their own bodies.
The ancient Greeks, also, considered the idols as mediators between themselves and the First Cause, and worshipped them under the names of the stars and the highest substances. For they described the First Cause, not with positive, but only with negative predicates, since they considered it too high to be described by human qualities, and since they wanted to describe it as free from any imperfection. Therefore they could not address it in worship.
When the heathen Arabs had imported into their country idols from Syria, they also worshipped them, hoping that they would intercede for them with God.
Plato says in the fourth chapter of the Book of Laws:
It is necessary to any one who gives perfect honors (to the gods) that he should take trouble with the mystery of the gods and Muses (Sakīnāt, sic), and that he should not make special idols masters over the ancestral gods. Further, it is the greatest duty to give honors as much as possible to the parents while they live.
By mystery Plato means a special kind of devotion. The word is much used among the Ṣābians of Ḥarrān, the dualistic Manichaeans, and the theologians of the Hindus.
Galen says in the book De indole animae:
At the time of the Emperor Commodus, between 500-510 years after Alexander, two men went to an idol-merchant and bargained with him for an idol of Hermes. The one wanted to erect it in a temple as a memorial of Hermes, the other wanted to erect it on a tomb as a [i.124] memorial of the deceased. However, they could not settle the business with the merchant, and so they postponed it until the following day. The idol-merchant dreamt the following night that the idol addressed him and spoke to him: "O excellent man! I am thy work. I have received through the work of thy hands a figure that is thought to be the figure of a star. Now I am no longer a stone, as people called me heretofore; I am now known as Mercury. At present it stands in thy hands to make me either a memorial of something imperishable or of something that has perished already.
There is a treatise of Aristotle in which he answers certain questions of the Brahmins that Alexander had sent him. There he says:
If you maintain that some Greeks have fabled that the idols speak, that the people offer to them and think them to be spiritual beings, of all this we have no knowledge, and we cannot give a sentence on a subject we do not know.
In these words he rises high above the class of fools and uneducated people, and he indicates by them that he does not occupy himself with such things. It is evident that the first cause of idolatry was the desire of commemorating the dead and of consoling the living; but on this basis it has developed, and has finally become a foul and pernicious abuse.
The former view, that idols are only memorials, was also held by the Caliph Muᴄāwiya regarding the idols of Sicily. When, in the summer of A.H. 53, ZZZ Sicily was conquered, and the conquerors sent him golden idols adorned with crowns and diamonds which had been captured there, he ordered them to be sent to Sindh, that they should be sold there to the princes of the country; for he thought it best to sell them as objects costing sums of so-and-so many denars, not having the slightest scruple on account of their being objects of abominable idolatry, but simply considering the matter from a political, not from a religious point of view.
Old World Encounters Interdisciplinary Humanities Howard University
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