the Week of Proper 20 / Ordinary 25
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Bible Encyclopedias
Brahmava
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or compulsory, levied by the priesthood on the wealthy laity.
When the householder is advanced in years, " when he perceives his skin become wrinkled and his hair grey, when he sees the son of his son," the time is said to have come for him to enter the third stage of life. He should now disengage himself from all family ties - except that his wife may accompany him, if she chooses - and repair to a lonely wood, taking with him his sacred fires and the implements required for the daily and periodical offerings. Clad in a deer's skin, in a single piece of cloth, or in a bark garment, with his hair and nails uncut, the hermit is to subsist exclusively on food growing wild in the forest, such as roots, green herbs, and wild rice and grain. He must not accept gifts from any one, except of what may be absolutely necessary to maintain him; but with his own little hoard he should, on the contrary, honour, to the best of his ability, those who visit his hermitage. His time must be spent in reading the metaphysical treatises of the Veda, in making oblations, and in undergoing various kinds of privation and austerities, with a view to mortifying his passions and producing in his mind an entire indifference to worldly objects. Having by these means succeeded in overcoming all sensual affections and desires, and in acquiring perfect equanimity towards everything around him, the hermit has fitted himself for the final and most exalted order, that of devotee or religious mendicant. As such he has no further need of either mortifications or religious observances; but " with the sacrificial fires reposited in his mind," he may devote the remainder of his days to meditating on the divinity. Taking up his abode at the foot of a tree in total solitude, " with no companion but his own soul," clad in a coarse garment, he should carefully avoid injuring any creature or giving offence to any human being that may happen to come near him. Once a day, in the evening, " when the charcoal fire is extinguished and the smoke no longer issues from the fire-places, when the pestle is at rest, when the people have taken their meals and the dishes are removed," he should go near the habitations of men, in order to beg what little food may suffice to sustain his feeble frame. Ever pure of mind he should thus bide his time, " as a servant expects his wages," wishing neither for death nor for life, until at last his soul is freed from its fetters and absorbed in the eternal spirit, the impersonal self-existent Brahma.
The tendency towards a comprehension of the unity of the divine essence had resulted in some minds, as has been remarked before, in a kind of monotheistic notion of the origin of the universe. In the literature of the Brahmana period we meet with this conception as a common element of speculation; and so far from its being considered incompatible with the existence of a universal spirit, Prajapati, the personal creator of the world, is generally allowed a prominent place in the pantheistic theories. Yet the state of theological speculation, reflected in these writings, is one of transition. The general drift of thought is essentially pantheistic, but it is far from being reduced to a regular system, and the ancient form of belief still enters largely into it. The attributes of Prajapati, in the same way, have in them elements of a purely polytheistic nature, and some of the attempts at reconciling this new-fangled deity with the traditional belief are somewhat awkward. An ancient classification of the gods represented them as being thirty-three in number, eleven in each of the three worlds or regions of nature. These regions being associated each with the name of one principal deity, this division gave rise at a later time to the notion of a kind of triple divine government, consisting of Agni (fire), Indra (sky) or Vdyu (wind), and Surya (sun), as presiding respectively over the gods on earth, in the atmosphere, and in the sky. Of this Vedic triad mention is frequently made in the Brahmana writings. On the other hand the term prajapati (lord of creatures), which in the Rigveda occurs as an epithet of the sun, is also once in the Atharvaveda applied jointly to Indra and Agni. In the Brahmanas Prajapati is several times mentioned as the thirty-fourth god; whilst in one passage he is called the fourth god, and made to rule over the three worlds. More frequently, however, the writings of this period represent him as the maker of the world and the father or creator of the gods. It is clear from this discordance of opinion on so important a point of doctrine, that at this time no authoritative system of belief had been agreed upon by the theologians. Yet there are unmistakable signs of a strong tendency towards constructing one, and it is possible that in yielding to it the Brahmans may have been partly prompted by political considerations. The definite settlement of the caste system and the Brahmanical supremacy must probably be assigned to somewhere about the close of the Brahmana period. Division in their own ranks was hardly favourable to the aspirations of the priests at such a time; and the want of a distinct formula of belief adapted to the general drift of theological speculation, to which they could all rally, was probably felt the more acutely, the more determined a resistance the military class was likely to oppose to their claims. Side by side with the conception of the Brahma., the universal spiritual principle, with which speculative thought had already become deeply imbued, the notion of a supreme personal being, the author of the material creation, had come to be considered by many as a necessary complement of the pantheistic doctrine. But, owing perhaps to his polytheistic associations and the attributive nature of his name, the person of Prajapati seems to have been thought but insufficiently adapted to represent this abstract idea. The expedient resorted to for solving the difficulty was as ingenious as it was characteristic of the Brahmanical aspirations. In the same way as the abstract denomination of sacerdotalism, the neuter brahma, had come to express the divine essence, so the old designation of the individual priest, the masculine term brahma, was raised to denote the supreme personal deity which was to take the place and attributes of the Prajapati of the Brahmanas and Upanishads (see Brahman).
However the new dogma may have answered the purposes of speculative minds, it was not one in which the people generally were likely to have been much concerned; an abstract, colourless deity like Brahma could awake no sympathies in the hearts of those accustomed to worship gods of flesh and blood. Indeed, ever since the primitive symbolical worship of nature had undergone a process of disintegration under the influence of metaphysical speculation, the real belief of the great body of the people had probably become more and more distinct from that of the priesthood. In different localities the principal share of their affection may have been bestowed on one or another of the old gods who was thereby raised to the dignity of chief deity; or new forms and objects of belief may have sprung up with the intellectual growth of the people. In some cases even the worship of the indigenous population could hardly have remained without exercising some influence in modifying the belief of the Aryan race. In this way a number of local deities would grow up, more or less distinct in name and characteristics from the gods of the Vedic pantheon. There is, indeed, sufficient evidence to show that, at a time when, after centuries of theological speculations, some little insight into the life and thought of the people is afforded by the literature handed down to us, such a diversity of worship did exist. Under these circumstances the policy which seems to have suggested itself to the priesthood, anxious to retain a firm hold on the minds of the people, was to recognize and incorporate into their system some of the most prominent objects of popular devotion, and thereby to establish a kind of catholic creed for the whole community subject to the Brahmanical law. At the time of the original composition of the great epics two such deities, Siva or Mahadeva (" the great god ") and Vishnu, seem to have been already admitted into the Brahmanical system, where they have ever since retained their place; and from the manner in which they are represented in those works, it would, indeed, appear that both, and especially the former, enjoyed an extensive worship. As several synonyms are attributed to each of them, it is not improbable that in some of these we have to recognize special names under which the people in different localities worshipped these gods, or deities of a similar nature which, by the agency of popular poetry, or in some other way, came to be combined with them. The places assigned to them in the pantheistic system were coordinate with that of Brahma; the three deities, Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, were to represent a triple impersonation of the divinity, as manifesting itself respectively in the creation, preservation and destruction of the universe. Siva does not occur in the Vedic hymns as the name of a god, but only as an adjective in the sense of " kind, auspicious." One of his synonyms, however, is the name of a Vedic deity, the attributes and nature of which show a good deal of similarity to the post-Vedic god. This is Rudra, the god of the roaring storm, usually portrayed, in accordance with the element he represents, as a fierce, destructive deity, " terrible as a wild beast," whose fearful arrows cause death and disease to men and cattle. He is also called kapardin (" wearing his hair spirally braided like a shell"), a word which in later times became one of the synonyms of Siva. The Atharvaveda mentions several other names of the same god, some of which appear even placed together, as in one passage Bhava, Sarva, Rudra and Pasupati. Possibly some of them were the names under which one and the same deity was already worshipped in different parts of northern India. This was certainly the case in later times, since it is expressly stated in one of the later works of the Brahmana period, that Sarva was used by the Eastern people and Bhava by a Western tribe. It is also worthy of note that in the same work (the Satapathabrahmana), composed at a time when the Vedic triad of Agni, Indra-Vayu and Surya was still recognized, attempts are made to identify this god of many names with Agni; and that in one passage in the Mahabharata it is stated that the Brahmans said that Agni was Siva. Although such attempts at an identification of the two gods remained isolated, they would at least seem to point to the fact that, in adapting their speculations to the actual state of popular worship, the Brahmans kept the older triad distinctly in view, and by means of it endeavoured to bring their new structure into harmony with the ancient Vedic belief. It is in his character as destroyer that Siva holds his place in the triad, and that he must, no doubt, be identified with the Vedic Rudra. Another very important function appears, however, to have been early assigned to him, on which much more stress is laid in his modern worship - that of destroyer being more especially exhibited in his consort - viz. the character of a generative power, symbolized in the phallic emblem (linga) and in the sacred bull (Nandi), the favourite attendant of the god. This feature being entirely alien from the nature of the Vedic god, it has been conjectured with some plausibility, that the linga-worship was originally prevalent among the nonAryan population, and was thence introduced into the worship of Siva. On the other hand, there can, we think, be little doubt that Siva, in his generative faculty, is the representative of another Vedic god whose nature and attributes go. far to account for this particular feature of the modern deity, viz. Pushan. This god, originally, no doubt, a solar deity, is frequently invoked, as the lord of nourishment, to bestow food, wealth and other blessings. He is once, jointly with Soma, called the progenitor of heaven and earth, and is connected with the marriage ceremony, where he is asked to lead the bride to the bridegroom and make her prosperous (Sivatama). Moreover, he has the epithet kapardin (spirally braided), as have Rudra and the later Siva, and is called Pasupa, or guardian of cattle, whence the latter derives his name Pasupati. But he is also a Iv. 13 strong, powerful, and even fierce and destructive god, who, with his goad or golden spear, smites the foes of his worshipper, and thus in this respect offers at least some points of similarity to Rudra, which may have favoured the fusion of the two gods. As regards Vishnu, this god occupies already a place in the Vedic mythology, though by no means one of such prominence as would entitle him to that degree of exaltation implied in his character as one of the three hypostases of the divinity. Moreover, although in his general nature, as a benevolent, genial being, the Vedic god corresponds on the whole to the later Vishnu, the preserver of the world, the latter exhibits many important features for which we look in vain in his prototype, and which most likely resulted from sectarian worship or from an amalgamation with local deities. In one or two of them, such as his names Vasudeva and Vaikuntha, an attempt may again be traced to identify Vishnu with Indra, who, as we have seen, was one of the Vedic triad of gods. The characteristic feature of the elder Vishnu is his measuring the world with his three strides, which are explained as denoting either the three stations of the sun at the time of rising, culminating and setting, or the triple manifestation of the luminous element, as the fire on earth, the lightning in the atmosphere and the sun in the heavens.
The male nature of the triad was supposed to require to be supplemented by each of the three gods being associated with a female energy (Sakti). Thus Vach or Sarasvati, the goddess of speech and learning, came to be regarded as the Sakti, or consort of Brahma; Sri or Lakshmi, " beauty, fortune," as that of Vishnu; and Uma or Parvati, the daughter of Himavat, the god of the Himalaya mountain, as that of Siva. On the other hand, it is not improbable that Parvati - who has a variety of other names, such as Kali (" the black one "), Durga (" the inaccessible, terrible one "), Maha-devi (" the great goddess ") - enjoyed already a somewhat extensive worship of her own, and that there may thus have been good reason for assigning to her a prominent place in the Brahmanical system.
A compromise was thus effected between the esoteric doctrine of the metaphysician and some of the most prevalent forms of popular worship, resulting in what was henceforth to constitute the orthodox system of belief of the Brahmanical community. Yet the Vedic pantheon .could not be altogether discarded, forming part and parcel, as it did, of that sacred revelation (Sruti), which was looked upon as the divine source of all religious and social law (smriti, " tradition "), and being, moreover, the foundation of the sacrificial ceremonial on which the priestly authority so largely depended. The existence of the old gods is, therefore, likewise recognized, but recognized in a very different way from that of the triple divinity. For while the triad represents the immediate manifestation of the eternal, infinite soul - while it constitutes, in fact, the Brahma itself in its active relation to mundane and seemingly material occurrences, the old traditional gods are of this world, are individual spirits or portions of the Brahma like men and other creatures, only higher in degree. To them an intermediate sphere, the heaven of Indra (the svarloka or svarga), is assigned to which man may raise himself by fulfilling the holy ordinances; but they are subject to the same laws of being; they, like men, are liable to be born again in some lower state, and, therefore, like them, yearn for emancipation from the necessity of future individual existence. It is a sacred duty of man to worship these superior beings by invocations and sacrificial observances, as it is to honour the pitris (" the fathers "), the spirits of the departed ancestors. The spirits of the dead, on being judged by Yama, the Pluto of Hindu mythology, are supposed to be either passing through a term of enjoyment in a region midway between the earth and the heaven of the gods, or undergoing their measure of punishment in the nether world, situated somewhere in the southern region, before they return to the earth to animate new bodies. In Vedic mythology Yama was considered to have been the first mortal who died, and " espied the way to " the celestial abodes, and in virtue of precedence to have become the ruler of the departed; in some passages, however, he is already regarded as the god of death. Although the pantheistic system allowed only a subordinate rank to the old gods, and the actual religious belief of the people was probably but little affected by their existence, they continued to occupy an important place in the affections of the poet, and were still represented as exercising considerable influence on the destinies of man. The most prominent of them were regarded as the appointed Lokapalas, or guardians of the world; and as such they were made to preside over the four cardinal and (according to some authorities) the intermediate points of the compass. Thus Indra, the chief of the gods, was regarded as the regent of the east; Agni, the fire (ignis), was in the same way associated with the south-east; Yama with the south; Surya, the sun (" HAtos), with the south-west; Varuna, originally the representative of the all-embracing heaven (Obpavos) or atmosphere, now the god of the ocean, with the west; Vayu (or Pavana), the wind, with the north-west; Kubera, the god of wealth, with the north; and Soma (or Chandra) with the northeast. In the institutes of Manu the Lokapalas are represented as standing in close relation to the ruling king, who is said to be composed of particles of these his tutelary deities. The retinue of Indra consists chiefly of the Gandharvas (probably etym. connected with KEvrcwpos), a class of genii, considered in the epics as the celestial musicians; and their wives, the Apsaras, lovely nymphs, who are frequently employed by the gods to make the pious devotee desist from carrying his austere practices to an extent that might render him dangerous to their power. Ndrada, an ancient sage (probably a personification of the cloud, the " water-giver "), is considered as the messenger between the gods and men, and as having sprung from the forehead of Brahma. The interesting office of the god of love is held by Kamadeva, also called Ananga, the bodyless, because, as the myth relates, having once tried by the power of his mischievous arrow to make Siva fall in love with Parvati, whilst he was engaged in devotional practices, the urchin was reduced to ashes by a glance of the angry god. Two other mythological figures of some importance are considered as sons of Siva and Parvati, viz. Karttikeya or Skanda, the leader of the heavenly armies, who was supposed to have been fostered by the six Krittikas or Pleiades; and Ganesa (" lord of troops "), the elephant-headed god of wisdom, and at the same time the leader of the dii minorum gentium. Orthodox Brahmanical scholasticism makes the attainment of final emancipation (mukti, moksha) dependent on perfect knowledge of the divine essence. This knowledge can only be obtained by complete abstraction of the mind from external objects and intense meditation on the divinity, which again presupposes the total extinction of all sensual instincts by means of austere practices (tapas). The chosen few who succeed in gaining complete mastery over their senses and a full knowledge of the divine nature become absorbed into the universal soul immediately on the dissolution of the body. Those devotees, on the other hand, who have still a residuum, however slight, of ignorance and worldliness left in them at the time of their death, pass to the world of Brahma, where their souls, invested with subtile corporeal frames, await their reunion with the Eternal Being.
The pantheistic doctrine which thus forms the foundation of the Brahmanical system of belief found its most complete exposition in one of the six orthodox darsanas, or philosophical systems, the Vedanta philosophy. These systems are considered as orthodox inasmuch as they recognize the Veda as the revealed source of religious belief, and never fail to claim the authority of the ancient seers for their own teachings, even though - as in the case of Kapila, the founder of the materialistic Sankhya system - they involve the denial of so essential a dogmatic point as the existence of a personal creator of the world. So much, indeed, had freedom of speculative thought become a matter of established habit and intellectual necessity, that no attempt seems ever to have been made by the leading theological party to put down such heretical doctrines, so long as the sacred character of the privileges of their caste was not openly called in question. Yet internal dissensions on such cardinal points of belief could not but weaken the authority of the hierarchial body; and as they spread beyond the narrow bounds of the Brahmanical schools, it wanted but a man of moral and intellectual powers, and untrammelled by class prejudices, to render them fatal to priestly pretensions. Such a man arose in the person of a Sakya prince of Kapilavastu, Gotama, the founder of Buddhism (about the 6th century B.C.). Had it only been for the philosophical tenets of Buddha, they need scarcely have caused, and probably did not cause, any great uneasiness to the orthodox theologians. He did, indeed, go one step beyond Kapila, by altogether denying the existence of the soul as a substance, and admitting only certain intellectual faculties as attributes of the body, perishable with it. Yet the conception which Buddha substituted for the transmigratory soul, viz. that of karma (" work "), as the sum total of the individual's good and bad actions, being the determinative element of the form of his future existence, might have been treated like any other speculative theory, but for the practical conclusions he drew from it. Buddha recognized the institution of caste, and accounted for the social inequalities attendant thereon as being the effects of karma in former existences. But, on the other hand, he altogether denied the revealed character of the Veda and the efficacy of the Brahmanical ceremonies deduced from it, and rejected the claims of the sacerdotal class to be the repositaries and divinely appointed teachers of sacred knowledge. That Buddha never questioned the truth of the Brahmanical theory of transmigration shows that this early product of speculative thought had become firmly rooted in the Hindumind as a tenet of belief amounting to moral conviction. To the Hindi" philosopher this doctrine seemed alone to account satisfactorily for the apparent essential similarity of the vital element in all animate beings, no less than for what elsewhere has led honest and logical thinkers to the stern dogma of predestination. The belief in eternal bliss or punishment, as the just recompense of man's actions during this brief term of human life, which their less reflective forefathers had at one time held, appeared to them to involve a moral impossibility. The equality of all men, which Buddha preached with regard to the final goal, the nirvana, or extinction of karma and thereby of all future existence and pain, and that goal to be reached, not by the performance of penance and sacrificial worship, but by practising virtue, could not fail to be acceptable to many people. It would be out of place here to dwell on the rapid progress and internal development of the new doctrine. Suffice it to say that, owing no doubt greatly to the sympathizing patronage of ruling princes, Buddhism appears to have been the state religion in most parts of India during the early centuries of our era. To what extent it became the actual creed of the body of the people it will probably be impossible ever to ascertain. One of the chief effects it produced on the worship of the old gods was the rapid decline of the authority of the orthodox Brahmanical dogma, and a considerable development of sectarianism. (See HINDUISM.) See H. H. Wilson, Essays on the Religion of the-Hindus; J. Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts; M. Muller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature; C. Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde; Elphinstone, History of India , ed. by E. B. Cowell. (J. E.)
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Brahmava'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/b/brahmava.html. 1910.
