New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century, John Morrison [free ebook reader TXT] 📗
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welcome joyfully the revelations of the present day."
—BISHOP COLENSO.
III. The Ārya Samāj or Vedic Theistic Association—In contrast to the Samājes which are leavening the country but themselves are numerically unprogressive, are two other organisations—first, the Ārya Samāj of the United Provinces and the Punjab, and secondly, the Theosophists, who are now most active in Upper India, with Benares the metropolis of Hinduism, as their headquarters. These two have taken hold of educated India as no other movements yet have done. They appeal directly to patriotic pride and the new national feeling, or, more truly, are primarily shaped thereby.
Founded in 1875, the Āryas are the most rapidly increasing of the new Indian sects. In 1901 they numbered 92,419, an increase in the decade of 131 per cent. What ideas have such an attraction for the educated middle class, for to that class the Āryas almost exclusively belong? In certain parts of the United Provinces and the Punjab, it seems as much a matter of course that one who has received a modern education should be an Ārya, as that in certain other provinces he should be a supporter of the Congress.
The prime motive ideas are two. One is the result of modern education and of Christian influence, namely, a consciousness that in certain grosser aspects, such as polytheism, idolatry, animal sacrifices, caste, and the seclusion of women, the present-day Hinduism cannot be defended. Those things the Āryas repudiate,—all honour to them for their protest in behalf of reason, although in respect of caste and the seclusion of women, their theory is said to be considerably ahead of their practice. In the same modern spirit every Ārya member pledges himself to endeavour to diffuse knowledge; and a college and a number of schools are carried on by Āryas in the Punjab. Repudiating all those current customs, of course the Āryas have parted company with the orthodox Hindus. Ārya preachers denounce the corruptions of Hinduism, and in turn, what may be called a Great Council of orthodox Hindus has pronounced condemnation on the Āryas. At an assembly of about four hundred Hindu pandits, held in 1881 in the Senate House of the University in Calcutta, the views of the founder of the Āryas, Dyanand Saraswati, were condemned as heterodox.[53]
The second motive idea is the new national consciousness, the new patriotic feeling of Indians. The patriotic feeling is manifest in the name; the Āryas identify themselves with the Āryans, the Indo-European invaders of India, from whom the higher castes of Hindus claim to be descended. Virtually, we may say, the Āryas claim by their name to be the pure original Hindus.
To the first influence we may assign one of the chief doctrines of the Āryas, namely, their monotheism. Others of their doctrines belong to the theology and philosophy of Hinduism, e.g. the ancient doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and the doctrine of the three eternal entities, God, the Soul, and Matter, the doctrinal significance of which we shall have occasion to consider hereafter. These three uncreated existences constitute one of the doctrines of the Joga system of Hindu philosophy. To the second, or patriotic, influence, we may assign especially the fundamental tenet of the founder of the Āryas, namely, the infallibility of the original Scriptures, the four Vedas, given, as he alleged, to Indian sages at the creation of the world. "Back to the Vedas!" we may say, is the cry of the Āryas. In effect, the cry is tantamount to the plea that the errors of Hinduism are only later accretions; and be it acknowledged that no sanction can be drawn from the Vedas for the prohibition of widow marriages, for the general prevalence of child marriages, for the tyranny of caste, for idolatry and several other objectionable customs.[54] Among the Āryas, therefore, we have the championship of things Indian in its crudest form. Ludicrous are the attempts to rationalise all the statements of the Vedas, and to find in them all modern science and modern ideas, pouring new wine into old wine-skins, in perfect innocence of "the higher criticism." Thus while animal sacrifices are proscribed by the Āryas, they are everywhere assumed in the Vedas, and two of the hymns in the Rigveda are for use at the sacrifice of a horse (a[s']wamedha).[55] According to an Ārya commentator, however, a[s']wamedha is to be translated not "sacrifice of a horse," but destruction of ignorance,—sacrifice of an ass, as one may jestingly say.[56] Offerings for deceased parents, prescribed in detail in the Vedas, are similarly rationalised into kind treatment of parents in old age. The ancient and modern condemnation of eating beef was rationalised by the Āryas as follows: To kill a cow is as bad as to kill many men. For suppose a cow to have a lifetime of fourteen or fifteen years. Her calves, let us say, would be six cow calves and six bull calves. The milk of the cow and her six cow calves during her natural lifetime would give food for a day to an army of 154,440 men, according to the calculation of the founder of the Āryas, while the labour of the other six calves as oxen would give a full meal to an army of 256,000 men. Therefore to kill a cow, etc., Q.E.D. Modern democracy, the Copernican system of astronomy, a knowledge of the American continent, of steamships, and of the telegraph are all discovered by Dyanand in the Vedas, as no doubt wireless telegraphy and radium would have been, had death not cut short, in 1883, the discoveries of the founder of the Āryas.[57]
These specimens of Ārya exposition of the Vedas I have given with no intention of scoffing, although we may be permitted a laugh. I desire to show the conflict of modern ideas and the new patriotic feeling, and how the latter has affected the religious and theological position of the Āryas. It is the prominence of the patriotic feeling in many branches of the Samāj that has led some observers to describe it as less of a religious than a political organisation, anti-British and anti-Mahomedan and anti-Christian. But the opponents of the Samāj are always associated by Āryas with rival religions; keranis, kuranis, and puranis is their echoing list of their opponents,—namely, Christians (kerani being a corruption of Christiani), and believers in the Koran, and believers in the Purans, i.e. the later Hindu books. And that there is much more than political feeling is apparent in their latest developments. The leaven of modern ideas has now led to the rise of a party among the Āryas which is prepared to stand by reason out and out, and repudiate the founder's bondage to the Vedas and his à priori expositions. Popularly, the new party is known as the "flesh-eaters." At present the Samāj is about equally divided, but the more rationalistic section comprises most of the new-educated members. Should the Ārya Samāj retain, as their chief doctrinal positions, the perfection of pure original Hinduism and opposition to every other ism, no great foresight or historical knowledge is required to predict for the Āryas, despite their vigour, a speedy lapse from their reforming zeal into the position simply of a new Hindu caste, reverting gradually to type. Their fate is still in the balance.
The Ārya Samāj in Bombay does not repudiate caste. One of their principles is that no member is expected to violate any of his own special caste rules. Why, one cannot help asking, this invertebrate character of the new Indian religious associations in Western India? It is patent that what the Prārthanā Samājes of Western India are to the Brāhma Samāj of Bengal, the Ārya Samāj in Bombay is to that in the Punjab and the United Provinces—only feeble echoes. Bombay Indians lead their countrymen in commercial enterprise, and in political questions they take as keen an interest as any of the Indian races. With hesitation and with apologies to Parsee friends, we ask whether it is the numerous Parsees in Bombay who have made their fellow-westerns only worldly-wise. For to great commercial enterprise, the Parsees add a stubborn conservatism in religion.
IV. The Theosophists are the only other new religious organisation whom we can notice.—Them too the new patriotic feeling has very largely shaped. Founded in America in 1875, the very year in which the Ārya Samāj was established in Bombay, the Theosophical Society professed to be "the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity," representing and excluding no religious creed and interfering with no man's caste. On the other hand, somewhat inconsistently, it professed to be a society to promote the study of Āryan and other Eastern literature, religion, and sciences, and to vindicate their importance; and it appealed for support, amongst others, "to all who loved India and would see a revival of her ancient glories, intellectual and spiritual." At the same time the society professed "to investigate the hidden mysteries of nature and the psychical powers latent in man." The society naturally gravitated towards India, and by 1884 had 87 branches in India and Ceylon, against 12 in all the rest of the world. Its career might easily have been predicted. Inevitably, when transplanted to India, about the year 1878, such a society came under the spell of the new national consciousness already referred to. For a time Theosophy shared with the political Congress the first place in the interest of New India, and crowds of educated Indians still assemble whenever Mrs. Besant, now the leading Theosophist, is to speak. One of the rules of the society, however, saved it from the descent into politics that has overtaken the Ārya Samāj and tainted it as a religious movement. Rule XVI (1884) forbids members, as such, to interfere in politics, and declares expulsion to be the penalty for violation of the rule.
Consistently enough, when the society was transplanted to India, it entered into partnership with the Ārya Samāj; for two years, indeed, Madame Blavatsky, the first leader of the Theosophists, had been corresponding from America with the founder of the Āryas. The Ārya tenet of the infallibility of the original Hindu Scriptures needed no reconciliation with the Theosophist declaration of the ancient spiritual glories of India. But the Āryas are also religious reformers, while, as enlightened Hindus now complain, the Theosophists are more Hindu than the Hindus. After three years, in 1881, difference arose on the question of the personality of God. The Āryas, we have seen, are monotheist; the Theosophical Society, we shall see, is identified with brahmanical pantheism.[58]
The Buddhist period of the Theosophical Society, which came next, is best known to general readers, but is only an episode in its history. In the early "eighties," we find the society pro-Buddhist, and apparently identifying Buddhism with "the ancient glories of India, spiritual and intellectual," that the society was professedly desirous to revive. We associate the period with the publication of Esoteric Buddhism, by Mr. A.P. Sinnett, one of the society's leaders, and with Madame Blavatsky's claim to be in spiritual communication with Mahatmas [great spirits] in Thibet, the Buddhist land, now robbed of its mystery by the British expedition of 1904. Madame Blavatsky claimed to be receiving letters carried straight from Thibet by some air-borne Ariel. The discovery in
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