Part 6

In a letter, dated from Heidelberg, February 26th, 1855, Bunsen writes: “I wish you would take advantage of my communication to put yourself into correspondence with Benfey. He is well disposed towards you, and has openly spoken of you as the ‘apostle of German science in England.’ And then he stands infinitely higher than the present learned men of his department.” The desire to please Bunsen would account for Max Müller’s faint praise of Benfey’s theory, but its adoption would have seemed nothing less than the negation of all that he had so long striven to teach. (Cf. “Chips from a German Workshop,” Vol. III., page 469.) Of Omalius d’Halloy, Latham and the rest, Max Müller seems to take no heed. At any rate, I do not find them mentioned either in the “Chips” or in the lectures on the Science of Language.

I, for my part, should as soon accept the doctrine, in which I saw the other day that there is still here and there a believer, that the world is a flat surface, justifying the terrors of the sailors of Columbus lest, when they reached the extreme west, they should topple over, ship and all, into space or Hades, by whatever name you choose to call it.

To some men disputation and contradiction are an intellectual necessity—witness the beliefs that Bacon wrote _Romeo and Juliet_, and that Homer was an unlimited liability company of prehistoric ballad-mongers. According to the ethnological faith in which I have lived for the last sixty years, there existed in times so remote that they go back beyond the birth of chronology a white folk of shepherds and husbandmen who fed their flocks and tilled the soil in the valleys of the Highlands of Central Asia. There they increased and multiplied until the land of their birth could no longer hold them, and their pastures became insufficient for their flocks and herds. Then began their many wanderings. Toughened by a climate in which they had to live under most trying conditions of burning heat and extreme cold, they were a hardy race, having little to fear from the opposition of the weaker tribes who might seek to bar their way.

There is one point in regard to the theory that the Aryas were originally a European race, which, so far as I know, has not been taken into consideration. The Aryas were obviously a superior people. That they proved wherever they went. In every migration they came, conquered and remained. Has there ever been known a case where a superior race—not a handful of men, like the crew of the _Mayflower_, but a whole nation—has migrated, taking all the risks and uncertainties incident to travel and climate, and leaving the inferior race to enjoy the old well-proved home undisturbed?

Yet that is what the Aryas must have done if they left Europe for the terrors and privations of the Highlands of Asia, remaining to face the hardships of that inhospitable region for long centuries, until its insufficiencies drove them to seek the kindlier soil and climate which their forbears had deserted. But whether the Aryas left Europe for Asia and thence again descended upon Europe, or whether they were originally an Asiatic race of dominant nobility, that is a question over which we may leave the doctors to break their learned heads, in the confident assurance that never can they arrive at any certainty. Theory without a backing of facts, without documentary evidence, must remain valueless.

Only one thing in regard to the European migration or migrations is certain, and that is the fact that all the European languages, barring those of the Huns, their cousins the Finns, the Basques and the Turks (if we may call them Europeans, which let us hope will soon no longer be the case), can be traced back to the speech of the old tribe which perhaps three or four thousand years ago flitted south, east and west from the storm-vexed valleys of the Pamirs, conquering and civilizing, driving the aborigines before it like chaff before the wind.

When I was a lad we used to be taught by such pedagogues as were sufficiently advanced to have heard of Sanskrit, that this and that Greek or Latin or other European word was “derived from the Sanskrit.” That is all changed, and no teacher would nowadays dare to preach such nonsense. We know now that Sanskrit, which must have been more or less a dead language in Buddha’s time, only known at any rate by the more learned among the priests, was the descendant, like Greek, Latin, Russian, English, the Celtic tongues and others, from a much older language which was spoken by our forefathers in the Highlands of Central Asia. But Sanskrit, albeit not our parent speech, but rather a distant cousin of our own European tongues, dead and buried though it has been for some two thousand years, has been the key by which the learned have unlocked the door of the most secret muniment-room of ethnological lore.

It is not possible to realize all that the Buddha achieved in the world unless we have some conception of the religious and social condition of Asia at the time of his great renunciation. That condition was the result of the two great inroads of the Aryas, the one of the south into Persia, the other to the south and east overrunning India. The one was that of the fire-worshippers and Zarathustra (Zoroaster), whose sacred canon was the Zend Avesta; the other that of the Brahmans, whose inspired message was the Rig Veda. From the former are descended the modern Parsees and Guebres, and there is some justification for believing that the separation of these two streams of invasion may have been due to religious dissent; for to the Parsee—the believer in Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), the one God, Creator of the Universe—the gods of the Brahmans are an abomination, and no book is to a pious Parsee so much to be abhorred as the Rig Veda. In the Veda the Gods are called Deva. This word in Sanskrit means bright, brightness or light being one of the most general attributes shared by the various manifestations of the Deity, invoked in the Veda as Sun, or Sky, or Fire, or Dawn, or Storm.... In the Zend Avesta the same word Deva means evil spirit. Like the Buddha, Zarathustra was a heretic and a dissenter, and his sacred book, the Zend Avesta, was an attempt to replace the worship of the forces of nature by a religion—purer and more spiritual—under one Divine Creator, Ahura Mazda, the wise spirit.

It is much to be regretted that, like our Lord, the Buddha should have left no written word of his own. It would have been interesting to know whether he held the Brahmanic gods in the same contempt as did Zarathustra and his followers. Inasmuch as he denied the inspiration of the Veda, he obviously must have repudiated them, and in his teaching, as it has been recorded, they play no part. But Max Müller certainly underestimates the respect assigned to them in the later Buddhism of the monks when he says: “In Buddhism we find these ancient Devas, Indra and the rest, as merely legendary beings carried about at shows, as servants of Buddha, as goblins or fabulous heroes; but no longer worshipped or even feared by those with whom the name of Deva had lost every trace of its original meaning.”

Now it is impossible to deny that all over the East, wherever there is a Buddhist temple, there the images of the old Devas, grim and repellent, are devoutly worshipped and propitiated by prayer, even by people who have no inkling of their significance. Moreover, it has been for many centuries the policy of Buddhist missionaries to claim the native saints in countries which they seek to convert as reincarnations of the Buddha, and therefore to be worshipped. For instance, in Japan, Hachiman, the indigenous God of War, is adored in Buddhist temples, and there are many such cases, where there is no question of “goblins or fabulous heroes.” In modern times the Jesuits adopted the same policy in China, in regard to so-called Worship of Ancestors and of Tien—Heaven; thereby bringing down upon themselves the wrath of the meddling and muddling Dominicans and Franciscans and the interference of the Pope, between whom and the Emperor-King Hsi there arose a controversy, in which the former was worsted and the cause of Christianity in China was set back for centuries.

I have spoken of the Aryas as of “a people of whom we know so little,” and yet, in truth, the wonder is that we should know so much with the almost mathematical certainty afforded by the study of language and of the Rig Veda, those beautiful hymns for which the Brahmans claim Sruti—divine inspiration—and which are by far the oldest document of the whole Aryan race. That there should exist any writing of the age to which they belong is a physical impossibility; the heat and damp of the Indian climate are swift and ruthless in their work of destruction. Even in the Buddha’s time the very language of the Vedas was dead and understood only by the priests. But we know from the journals of the Chinese pilgrim, Hsüan Chwang—as Max Müller points out—with what painful care the hymns were preserved orally by the Brahmans in the seventh century A.D. We have also, as he further points out, the analogy of Hebrew, the MSS. of the Old Testament, none of which is older than the tenth century, but of which the truth is tested by comparison with the Septuagint. We know that “every hymn, every verse, every word and syllable in the Veda were accurately counted by native scholars about five or six hundred years before Christ.” It is supposed that the collection of hymns was finished some eleven or twelve hundred years B.C. But some of the hymns were then ancient, some modern, “so that we cannot well assign a date more recent than 1200 to 1500 before our era for the original composition of those simple hymns which up to the present day are regarded by the Brahmans with the same feelings with which a Mohammedan regards the Koran, a Jew the Old Testament, a Christian his Gospel.”[7]

Some of the hymns appear to me to contain passages of almost sublime beauty, though Max Müller says: “The historical importance of the Veda can hardly be exaggerated, but its intrinsic merit, and particularly the beauty or elevation of its sentiments, have by many been rated far too high. Large numbers of the Vedic hymns are childish in the extreme: tedious, low, commonplace.” And then he goes on to show how the Gods are invoked to grant long life, food, large flocks, large families, for which they are to be rewarded with sacrifices, etc. Here I cannot but think that the great professor, for whom I entertain such sincere respect, is a little unfair. Is not the idea of looking to their God as the Giver of all good things common to all primeval peoples?

The Jews, for instance, though they were full of wise words about the vanity of riches, still looked to Jehovah to enable them to “eat the riches of the Gentiles,” and to lead them to “a land of wheat and barley and fig trees and pomegranates: a land of oil olive, and honey,” and of mineral wealth. Again Solomon says: “My son, forget not my law, but let thine heart keep my commandments; for length of days, and long life, and peace shall they add to thee.” Prayers for material prosperity to God, under whatsoever name He may be worshipped, are common to all religions, and it is hardly just to brand the hymns of the Veda as “tedious, low, commonplace,” because the ancient herdsmen of the Pamirs were no more disinterested in their prayers than the rest of mankind, but addressed their material petitions to God just as King David and King Solomon did.

It was natural enough that these men, abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks and herds by day and by night, under the eternal ice and snow of the heaven-reaching mountains, should worship the light—all that was Deva (light) was to them sacred and symbolical of the Godhead—and so the Deus of the Latins was originally Light, and when we talk of “divine,” “divinity,” we are looking back to the worship of our ancestors when they prayed to the Sun, the Fire, the Sky, the Dawn, which were the givers of all good things. Sometimes they are invoked under the names of Varuna, Mitra, Indra. “In one hymn Agni (fire) is called the ruler of the universe, the lord of men, the wise king, the father, the brother, the son, the friend of men.... In another hymn, Indra is said to be greater than all; the Gods, it is said, do not reach Thee, Indra, nor men; Thou overcomest all creatures in strength. Another God, Soma, is called the King of the World, the King of Heaven and Earth, the Conqueror of all. And what more could human language achieve in trying to express the idea of a divine and supreme power, than what another poet says of another God, Varuna: ‘Thou art Lord of all, of Heaven and earth; thou art the King of all, of those who are Gods and of those who are men?’”

How beautiful is the following litany:

“In the beginning there arose the golden child. He was the one born Lord of all that is. He established the earth and this sky; who is the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

“He who gives life, He who gives strength, Whose command all the bright Gods revere; Whose shadow is immortality; Whose shadow is death; Who is the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

“He who through His power is the one King of the breathing and awakening world; He who governs all, man and beast; who is the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

“He Whose greatness these snowy mountains, Whose greatness the seas proclaim with the distant river; He Whose regions are, as it were, His two arms; who is the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

“He through Whom the sky is bright and the earth firm—He through Whom the heaven was ’stablished, nay, the highest heaven—He who measured out the light in the air; who is the God to Whom we shall offer sacrifice?

“He to Whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will, look up trembling inwardly—He over Whom the rising sun shines forth; who is the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

“Wherever the mighty waterclouds went, where they placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the sole life of the bright Gods; who is the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

“He who by His might looked even over the waterclouds, the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice, He who alone is God above all Gods; who is the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

“May He not destroy us—He, the creator of the earth; or He, the righteous, who created the Heaven—He also created the bright and mighty waters; who is the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?”

Well might Max Müller, who has unearthed them, redeem his dispraise of the hymns by saying: “Hidden in this rubbish there are precious stones!” Right well do the hymns, or, at any rate, those which he admits to be “precious stones,” deserve their title Rig Veda, the knowledge of Praise. Nothing can be finer, more masculine, than a propitiatory hymn to the Maruts, the Storm Gods, of which he gives us a translation: “They make the rocks to tremble, they tear asunder the kings of the forest. Come on, Maruts, like madmen, ye Gods, with your whole tribe.” No wonder men, whose lives had to face the terrors of the icy wilderness, sought the favour of the unruly forces whose rage meant death to them and to their herds and flocks. A hymn to Agni (fire), “the son of strength, the conqueror of horses, the highborn,” is less striking, but the zenith of the Vedic poetry is reached, as it seems to me, in a prayer addressed to Ushas, the Dawn. What a picture it suggests of the old herdsman in those frozen solitudes, falling on his knees when the stars grow pale before the first glimmer of light that stretches along the eastern horizon, thankfully to worship the radiant Goddess who puts to flight the dark shadows of the night and its unseen dangers. Listen to his song of praise:

“She shines upon us, like a young wife, rousing every living being to go to his work. When the fire had to be kindled by men, she made the light by striking down darkness.”

“She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving everywhere. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. The mother of the cows (the mornings), the leader of the days, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to behold.”

“She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the Gods, who leads the white and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn, was seen revealed by her rays, with brilliant treasures, following every one.

“Thou who art a blessing where thou art near, drive far away the unfriendly; make the pasture wide, give us safety! Scatter the enemy, bring riches! Raise up wealth to the worshipper, thou mighty Dawn.”

“Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou who lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest us food, who givest us wealth in cows, horses and chariots.”

“Thou daughter of the sky, thou highborn Dawn, whom the Vasishthas magnify with songs, give us riches high and wide; all ye Gods protect us always with your blessings.”[8]

So the old shepherd prays, and the Goddess, answering to his call, spreads her rosy mantle over the sky, and tinges the snowy peaks and ridges of the ice-bound mountains: the sun rises in his glory, and the peace of a new day is born to the world.

The piety of the old Aryans admits of no doubt. We are told that the consciousness of sin is a prominent feature in their religion. The poet of the Veda searches eagerly for his sin, and finds it not in his will but in his condition, which even in his dreams holds up evil before his eyes, and at last he turns to his God, the God of Grace who enlightens the simple. He believes in the power of the gods to take away from man the heavy burden of his sins. “Varuna is merciful to him who has committed.”

One more point should be noticed in any attempt, however slight, to give a sketch of the religion of the Veda. Max Müller tells us that it knows of no idols. This is the more remarkable when we think of the innumerable idols of savage and revengeful Gods by which Indian, Chinese and Japanese temples are degraded; all the nightmares of later monks who knew nothing of the pure and clean-minded Aryans, whose Gods, as Oldenberg tells us, in contrast to others, were bright and friendly beings without malice, cruelty and deceit.

It has been well said that the highest value of the sacred poems of the Aryans is historic, and that value has been revealed by the comparatively recent study of Sanskrit. That is in the school in which we learn who the Aryans were, what was the manner of their lives, their religion and their thoughts; and we can, in a measure, trace much of what, after many centuries, led to the development of a Hindu school of metaphysics, in comparison with which the much vaunted Pythagoreans and Greek thinkers were as babes and sucklings. The very name Arya tells us that this ancient people was a race of husbandmen and tillers of the soil, the root _ar_ from which the word is derived being found again in the Latin _arare_, to plough, _aratrum_, a plough, and in the Greek ἄροτρον; and when we talk of our “daughters,” it is well that we should remember that our ancestors on the Steppes, many thousand years ago, themselves invented the word “duhitar,” the milk-maid, the very word with which we Europeans, in one shape or another, caress our women-children. The hymns and prayers of the Vedas abound in allusions to the herds and flocks of these old farmers, whose best friends—and therefore the objects of their adoration—were the sun, the stars, the rains of heaven; just as their enemies—therefore to be propitiated—were the storms, the snow and the cruel winds: these were—the life-givers and death-givers. The life of the lonely watcher of the Steppes was of its essence one of contemplation, reflection and introspection.

Let me give one pregnant quotation from Max Müller’s “History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature”: “At the first dawn of traditional history we see these Aryan tribes migrating across the snow of the Himalaya southward toward the Seven Rivers (the Indus, the five rivers of the Punjab and the Sarasvati), and ever since India has been called their home. That before that time they had been living in more northern regions, within the same precincts, with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians, Germans, the Celts, is a fact as firmly established as that the Normans of William the Conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia. The evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods. It would have been impossible to discover any traces of relationship between the swarthy natives of India and their conquerors, whether Alexander or Clive, but for the testimony borne by language.” (“Sanskrit Literature,” pp. 12, 13.)

To the learned Jew—a Semite, to the Hungarian, the Finn, or the Basque, who are Turanian settlers in Europe, the history of the Aryans is an interesting study, linguistic or racial. To us true Europeans, to us true Aryans, it has a far greater significance. It has all the charm of an inquiry into a piece of remote family history—all the glamour of a pedigree, not to be measured by a few puny centuries, but reaching far away into the clouds of incalculable æons.

Talking idly in a garden, we can do no more than touch the mere fringe of a mighty problem, even though it should be suggested by the great silent Buddha. For instance, we have summoned as witness the one word “daughter,” when there are so many others that we use a dozen times a day which are equally strong links in the long chain of evidence by which we prove our descent. But no matter—we have started the clue: let who will pick it up. It will reward him.

THE COMMUNE