Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 1. Charles Eliot
sexual things cannot be safely permitted in the temple. This remark would indeed be superfluous were it not that many millions of our Hindu fellow-citizens are of a contrary opinion.
Such practices prevail chiefly among the Śâktas in Bengal and Assam but similar licence is permitted (though the theoretical justification and theological setting are different) in some Vishnuite sects. Both are reprobated by the majority of respectable Hindus, but both find educated and able apologists. And though it may be admitted that worship of the linga may exist without bad effects, moral or intellectual, yet I think that these effects make themselves felt so soon as a sect becomes distinctly erotic. Anyone who visits two such different localities as Kamakhya in Assam and Gokul near Muttra must be struck with the total absence in the shrines of anything that can be called beautiful, solemn or even terrible. The general impression is of something diseased, unclean and undignified. The figure of the Great Goddess of life and death might have fired81 the invention of artists but as a matter of fact her worship has paralyzed their hands and brains.
Nor can I give much praise to the Tantras as literature82. It is true that, as some authors point out, they contain fine sayings about God and the soul. But in India such things form part of the common literary stock and do not entitle the author to the praise which he would win elsewhere, unless his language or thoughts show originality. Such originality I have not found in those Tantras which are accessible. The magical and erotic parts may have the melancholy distinction of being unlike other works but the philosophical and theological sections could have been produced by any Hindu who had studied these branches of Indian literature.
23. Hinduism in Practice
After reviewing the characteristics of a religion it is natural to ask what is its effect on those who profess it. Buddhism, Christianity and Islam offer materials for answering such a question, since they are not racial religions. In historical times they have been accepted by peoples who did not profess them previously and we can estimate the consequences of such changes. But Hinduism has racial or geographical limits. It proselytizes, but hardly outside the Indian area: it is difficult to distinguish it from Indian custom, as the gospel is distinguished from the practice of Europe: it is superfluous to enquire what would be its effect on other countries, since it shows no desire to impose itself on them and they none to accept it. It is, like Shinto in Japan, not a religion which has moulded the national character but the national character finding expression in religion. Shinto and Hinduism are also alike in perpetuating ancient beliefs and practices which seem anachronisms but otherwise they are very different, for many races and languages have contributed their thoughts and hopes to the ocean of Hinduism and they all had an interest in speculation and mysticism unknown to the Japanese.
The fact that Hinduism is something larger and more comprehensive than what we call a religion is one reason why it contains much of dubious moral value. It is analogous not to Christianity but to European civilization which produces side by side philanthropy and the horrors of war, or to science which has given us the blessings of surgery and the curse of explosives. There is a deep-rooted idea in India that a man's daily life must be accompanied by religious observances and regulated by a religious code, by no means of universal application but still suitable to his particular class. An immoral occupation need not be irreligious: it simply requires gods of a special character. Hence we find Thugs killing and robbing their victims in the name of Kali. But though the Hindu is not at ease unless his customs are sanctioned by his religion, yet religion in the wider sense is not bound by custom, for the founders of many sects have declared that before God there is no caste. A Hindu may devote himself to religion and abandon the world with all its conventions, but if like most men he prefers to live in the world, it is his duty to follow the customs and usages sanctioned for his class and occupation. Thus as Sister Nivedita has shown in her beautiful writings, cooking, washing and all the humble round of domestic life become one long ritual of purification and prayer in which the entertainment of a guest stands out as a great sacrifice. But though religion may thus give beauty and holiness to common things, yet inasmuch as it sanctifies what it finds rather than prescribes what should be, it must bear the blame for foolish and even injurious customs. Child marriages have nothing to do with the creed of Hinduism, yet many Hindus, especially Hindu women, would feel it irreligious, as well as a social disgrace, to let a daughter become adult without being married.
A comparison of Indian Mohammedans and Hindus suggests that the former are more warlike and robust, the latter more intellectual and ingenious. The fact that some Mohammedans belong to hardy tribes of invaders must be taken into account but Islam deserves the credit of having introduced a simple and fairly healthy rule of life which does not allow every caste to make its own observances into a divine law. Yet it would seem that the medical and sanitary rules of Hinduism deserve less abuse than they generally receive. Col. King, Sanitary Commissioner of the Madras Presidency, is quoted as saying in a lecture83: "The Institutes of Vishnu and the Laws of Manu fit in excellently with the bacteriology, parasitology and applied hygiene of the West. The hygiene of food and water, private and public conservancy, disease suppression and prevention, are all carefully dealt with."
Hinduism certainly has proved marvellously stimulating to the intellect or—shall we put it the other way?–is the product of profound, acute, and restless minds. It cannot be justly accused of being enervating or melancholy, for many Hindu states were vigorous and warlike84 and the accounts of early travellers indicate that in pre-mohammedan days the people were humane, civilized and contented. It created an original and spiritual art, for Indian art, more than any other, is the direct product of religion and not merely inspired by it. In ages when original talent is rare this close relation has disadvantages for it tends to make all art symbolic and conventional. An artist must not represent a deity in the way that he thinks most effective: the proportions, attitude and ornaments are all prescribed, not because they suit a picture or statue but because they mean something.
Indian literature is also directly related to religion. Its extent is well-nigh immeasurable. I will not alarm the reader with statistics of the theological and metaphysical treatises which it contains. A little of such goes a long way even when they are first-rate, but India may at least boast of having more theological works which, if considered as intellectual productions, must be placed in the first class than Europe. Nor are religious writings of a more human type absent—the language of heart to heart and of the heart to God. The Ramayana of Tulsi Das and the Tiruvwçagam are extolled by Groâse, Grierson and Pope (all of them Christians, I believe) as not only masterpieces of literature but as noble expressions of pure devotion, and the poems of Kabir and Tukaram, if less considerable as literary efforts, show the same spiritual quality. Indian poetry, even when nominally secular, is perhaps too much under religious influence to suit our taste and the long didactic and philosophic harangues which interrupt the action of the Mahabharata seem to us inartistic, yet to those who take the pains to familiarize themselves with what at first is strange, the Mahabharata is, I think, a greater poem than the Iliad. It should not be regarded as an epic distended and interrupted by interpolated sermons but as the scripture of the warrior caste, which sees in the soldier's life a form of religion.
I have touched in several places on the defects of Hinduism. They are due partly to its sanction of customs which have no necessary connection with it and partly to its extravagance, which in the service of the gods sees no barriers of morality or humanity. But suttee, human sacrifices and orgies strike the imagination and assume an importance which they have not and never had for Hinduism as a whole. If Hinduism were really bad, so many great thoughts, so many good lives could not have grown up in its atmosphere. More than any other religion it is a quest of truth and not a creed, which must necessarily become antiquated: it admits the possibility of new scriptures, new incarnations, new institutions. It has no quarrel with knowledge or speculation: perhaps it excludes materialists, because they have no common ground with religion, but it tolerates even the Sânkhya philosophy which has nothing to say about God or worship. It is truly dynamic and in the past whenever it has seemed in danger of withering it has never failed to bud with new life and put forth new flowers.
More than other religions, Hinduism appeals to the soul's immediate knowledge
It does not seem to me to have given much inspiration to Rossetti in his
But in justice to the Tantras it should be mentioned that the Mahâ-nirvâṇa Tantra, x. 79, prohibits the burning of widows.
See