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AMONG all the great religions of the world there is none more catholic, more assimilative than the mass of beliefs which go to make up what is popularly known as Hinduism. To what was probably its original form-a nature worship in a large degree introduced by the Aryan missionaries—has been added an enormous amount of demonolatry, fetishism and kindred forms of primitive religion, much of which has been adopted from races which it is convenient to describe as aboriginal or autochthonous.

The same was the case in Western lands. As the Romans extended their Empire they brought with them and included in the national pantheon the deities of the conquered peoples. Greece and Syria, Egypt, Gallia and Germania were thus successively laid under contribution. This power of assimilation in the domain of religion had its

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advantages as well as its dangers. While on the one hand it tended to promote the unity of the empire, it degraded, on the other hand, the national character by the introduction of the impure cults which flourished along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.'

But, besides these forms of religion which were directly imported from foreign lands, there remained a stratum of local beliefs which even after twenty centuries of Christianity still flourish, discredited though they may be by priests and placed under the ban of the official creed. Thus in Greece, while the high gods of the divine race of Achilles and Agamemnon are forgotten, the Nereids, the Cyclopes and the Lamia still live in the faith of the peasants of Thessaly. So in modern Tuscany there is actually as much heathenism as catholicism, and they still believe in La Vecchia Religione—" the old religion; "—and while on great occasions they have recourse to the priests, they use magic and witchcraft for all ordinary purposes.

It is part of the object of the following pages to show that in India the history of religious belief has been developed on similar lines. Everywhere we find that the great primal gods of Hinduism have suffered grievous degradation. Throughout the length and breadth of the Indian peninsula Brahma, the Creator, has hardly more than a couple of shrines specially dedicated to him. Indra has, as we shall see, become a vague weather deity, who rules the choirs of fairies in his heaven Indra-loka: Varuna, as Barun, has also be. come a degraded weather godling, and sailors worship their boat as his fetish when they commence a voyage. The worship of Agni survives in the fire sacrifice which has been specialized by the Agnihotri Brâhmans. Of Pushan and Ushas, Vâyu and the Maruts, hardly even the names survive, except among the small philosophical class of reformers who

On the assimilation by Rome of Celtic faiths, see Rhys, "Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom," 2 sq. 2 Lang, "Custom and Myth," 178.

3 Leland, "Etruscan Remains," 9.

* At Pushkar and Idar. Monier Williams, " Brâhmanism and Hinduism," 566 sqq.

aim at restoring Vedism, a faith which is as dead as Jupiter or Aphrodite.

THE DEVA.

The general term for these great gods of Hinduism is Deva, or "the shining ones." Of these even the survivors have in the course of the development of the religious belief of the people suffered serious change. Modern Vaishnavism has little left of the original conception of the solar deity who in the Rig Veda strides in three steps through the seven regions of the universe, and envelops all things in the dust of his beams. To his cult has, in modern times, been added the erotic cycle of myths which centre round Krishna and Râdhâ and Rukminî. The successive Avatâras or incarnations mark the progressive development of the cultus which has absorbed in succession the totemistic or fetish worship of the tortoise, the boar, the fish and the man-lion. In the same way Rudra-Siva has annexed various faiths, many of which are probably of local origin, such as the worship of the bull and the linga. Durgâ-Devî, again, most likely is indebted to the same sources for the blood sacrifices which she loves in her forms of Kâlî, Bhawânî, Chandikâ or Bhairavî. A still later development is that of the foul mysteries of the Tantra and the Sâktis.

THE DEOTÂ.

But in the present survey of the popular, as contrasted with the official faith, we have little concern with these supremely powerful deities. They are the gods of the richer or higher classes, and to the ordinary peasant of Northern India are now little more than a name. He will, it is true, occasionally bow at their shrines; he will pour some water or lay some flowers on the images or fetish stones which are the special resting-places of these divinities or represent the productive powers of nature. But from time immemorial, when Brâhmanism had as yet not succeeded in occupying the land, his allegiance was bestowed on a class of deities

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