Dinesh Chandra Sen

“ All rules and codes framed for the guidance of men and women in our society, after the downfall of Buddhism have a distinct and unmistakable reference to the metaphysical side of religion. In them a far greater stress is laid on devotion to gods than on principles of morality. The Hindu priests even go so far as to declare, that a man committing the worst of sins, may secure a place in Heaven by uttering the name of God, a single time. ”

“ In India, however, this matter is viewed in a different light. Here, when a saint or great religious teacher dies, he is at once deified. He becomes one of the glorious gods and in popular estimation he occupies a place not far remote from that ascribed to the celestials. On the other hand, thousands of men and women in India, believe in every word of the Purāṅnas. To them Çiva is as real as any historical personage. Buddha, though deified, could not claim the grandeur of the back-ground which sets forth the luminous figure of the great God of the Hindu Trinity. ”

“ The object of such sacrifices may be considered trivial but the qualities of self-denial, of utter disregard for earthly prosperity, and of devotion to a cause which distinguished these Kulīnas are not to be despised. Just think of a man preferring to wear rags, to depend on a single meal a day, and to live in a hut of reeds, while his brother was made the owner of sixty-four villages and a palace, the same offer coming to him but being refused with indignation. Yet by marriage with a fellow caste-man's daughter, of non Kulina rank, he would not be excommunicated from society ”

“ For love, a little out of the way, if sanctioned by religion, offers temptations which the mass can hardly resist; and it is no wonder that taking advantage of a wicked interpretation of the love of Rādhā and Kriṣṅa, this cult of the Buddhist monks found favour in the lower stratum of Vaiṣṅava society, the degeneracy of which was mainly brought about by the immoral latitudes of the Sahajiā Vaiṣṅavas. The great Vaiṣṅava leaders were conscious of this drawback of their society and so condemned the creed. ”

“ Rañjā did not listen to her brother's counsel, but firmly told him, that as Karṅa Sen was now her lord,—young or old, it mattered not to her,—she was bound to follow him wherever he might go. In great anger Māhudya cursed his sister, saying that no child would be born to her. ”

“ This goes to show to what excesses the reactionary movement in regard to marriage rules was carried. The genealogical books also show our keen desire to follow ideals of purity and truth in life, and they record the struggle that Hindu society made to ward off the harm that the overtures of an arbitrary Mahammadan aristocracy, were constantly making upon their quiet life. If any one wants to study the character of the people of this country, and to understand their aims and aspirations instead of summarily dismissing them as mysterious beings, he would do well to study these works carefully. ”

“ The Sahajiā creed started by the Buddhists.When Buddhism declined in India, and Hinduism had not yet risen on her horizon in the fulness of its glorious revival,—when the idea of a higher life inspired by a keen sense of morality and introspection, which was the dominant spirit of Buddhism, declined into scepticism and sensuality, and when devotion and absolute trust in God, which characterised the Paurānik Hinduism, was yet unknown—in the twilight of the transition-period, mystic rituals of Tāntrikism ruled Buddhistic and Hindu communities all over India. ”

“ But the vices to which human nature tends, cannot be checked by codes of law. A high ideal of spiritual life set before the people, keeps them in the right direction in these matters, and our society busied itself only in framing rules for the direction of the details of daily life. These rules hold their sway till now. If a person openly avows Jesus Christ to be the son of God, or Mahomet to be the only prophet of God, Hindu society will not war against him. ”

“ From the time of Vikramāditya it grew to be a fashion with Hindu kings to keep learned companions, and they were generally picked men—finished masters in Sanskrit Poetry, Grammar and Logic, who revelled in the high flown style and in the niceties of rhetoric which abound in the latter-day Sanskrit works, such as Kādamvarī, Daçakumār Charita and Çri Harṣa Charita. The copperplate-inscriptions of the Pāl and Sen Kings of Bengal bear abundant proofs of the learning and poetical powers of some of these gifted men, whose contempt for Bengali was as great as was their scholarship in Sanskrit. ”

“ But the Great God has nothing to do with wealth. He lives by begging, sleeps in the burning ground and remains absorbed in contemplation. In this respect also, he was verily like Buddha, who, though a prince, left the palace of Kapilāvastu to embrace the life of a bhikṣu. Çiva's company is sought for by the resplendent gods of heaven, but ghosts and goblins are his companions. Buddha, though a prince, mixed with the poor and the lowly, and thus showed that he scorned none. ”

“ The Sena Kings of Bengal were formerly believed to have belonged to the Vaidya or medical caste. In all the genealogical works written by the Brāhmins, Vaidyas and Kāyasṭhas, they were described as Vaidyas. In fact Rājā Rajendra Lal Mitra, who was the first to dispute the point of their caste, had to admit, "The universal belief in Bengal is that the Senas were of medical caste and families of Vaidyas are not wanting in the present day who trace their lineage from Vallāla Sen." ”

“ When the Hindu revivalists began their task of reformation, they found the original caste-system shattered by the indiscriminate union of men and women. Society was in a thoroughly disorganised state. The origin of the sub-castes.The children born of couples who came from different castes, were not owned by either of the original castes. The new builders of society classified them, and admitted them into the new order, allotting to each a fixed status in society. This accounts for the origin of so many sub-castes in India. They came into existence by the breaking of marriage rules. ”

“ But there are hundreds of petty rules in regard to eating—especially cooked foods the infringement of any one of which will render him liable to be excommunicated from society or make him undergo severe penances. Marriage rules again have been made so severe, that even in the narrow groove of one's own caste, the selection of a bride-groom has grown to be a serious problem with Hindu parents. ”

“ Instances of like nature, where Mahammadan Emperors and Chiefs initiated and patronised translations of Sanskrit and Persian works into Bengali, are numerous, and we are led to believe, that when the powerful Moslem Sovereigns of Bengal granted this recognition to the Vernacular language in their courts, Hindu Rājās naturally followed suit. The Brahmins could not resist the influence of this high patronage; they were therefore compelled to favour the language they had hated so much, and latterly they themselves came forward to write poems and compile works of translation in Bengali. ”

“ The Vāmāchārī Tāntriks perpetrated wanton crimes in the name of religion and the vast literature, they have left us, lays down codes for those initiated in the creed, which totally upset the moral fabric of society.
The Sahajiā-cult owed its origin to the Vāmāchārī Buddhists. Salvation was sought for by a process of rituals in which young and beautiful women were required to be loved and worshipped. In sexual love there is surely a higher side which points to love Divine. ”

“ Says Chaṅdīdās,—the love of the washerwoman is pure gold tested by touch-stone." [18] Chaṅdīdās was himself convinced that sexual love leads to love Divine. He says “Hear me. friends, how salvation may be attained through love for a woman: Reduce your body to a dry log (make it such as to be quite unmoved by passions) . He that pervades the universe, unseen by all, is approachable only by him who knows the secret of pure love." [19]
So sang Chaṅdīdās—the great exponent of the Sahajiā cult in Bengal in the 14th century, more than 3 hundred years after Kāṅu Bhatta had composed his love songs. ”

“ A man may not be very moral, and still his life may be Āchāra-puta, or pure as regards the observance of the rules laid down by the Çastras.
Raghunandan and his great work.The great compiler of these rules in the 16th century in Bengal was Raghunandan Bhattāchāryya and he is up to the present the greatest authority in the country with the orthodox community. To a superficial observer, the Herculean efforts made by Raghunandan in collating a vast body of ancient Sanskrit works, in order to settle very minor points in the every-day life of a Hindu, will appear like lost labour ”

“ Vāra Masī or 'twelve months' a favourite subject.The sky of Bengal, clear and transparent in the early spring, foggy in winter, and full of frowning clouds and angry flashes of lightnings in the rainy months, ever changing its aspects from month to month, cannot fail to strike a keen observer of nature with the clearly defined lines of its varied weather. The various seasons produce different results on the human system, on the paddy-fields, and on the variegated flowers and leaves of trees with which the villages abound. ”

“ If in the month of Māgha a person takes radish, he will be pronounced a non-Hindu. What could be the reason that made people submit to such laws with religious veneration?
Free-thinking and its result on society.To answer this question, we must survey our social condition during the decline of Buddhism. The great vice, which undermined the unity and strength of our society in the last days of Buddhism, was that of free-thinking carried to excess. The Buddhists preached:—
"There is no heaven, no hell, no vice, no virtue. None created the world, none has the power to destroy it. ”

“ Kāṅu Bhatta—a Buddhist scholar, who lived in the latter part of the 10th century. was the first apostle of love-songs of the Sahajiā-cult in Bengali. This love is not a legitimate affair sanctioned by society; with one's own wife it could not, according to this creed, reach a high stage of perfection. ”

“ The monasteries were filled with men and women of alien race, and when standards of morality sank low in Buddhistic society in course of time, a population, consisting of children disowned by the communities of both their parents came into existence, and the purity of the four original castes of the Hindus was lost. On an examination of skulls, the Mongolian type has been discovered in high-caste Hindus of various places in India. The Buddhists had no strict code of marriage-laws. ”

“ We frequently come across such lines in old Bengali works, as—"Naturally Bengali poems are faulty" [11] (Vijay gupta) "Not fit to he discussed in a vernacular poem" [12] (Kavīndra) —implying, that Bengali was quite an unfit medium for conveying any serious or high thought.
How could Bengali obtain favour in the Hindu Courts?The question is: how could the poor Vernacular of Bengal find recognition in the courts of the kings, inspite of this opposition of the Brahmins? Every Hindu Court gloried in keeping a number of Sanskrit scholars attached to it. ”

“ The Hindu community had to be guarded against adopting the ways of such alien peoples, and as the Muhammoden conquerers could not be expected to take any interest in these matters, touching the well being of the people, the leaders of society became their natural guardians and dictated their actions. Raghunandan compiled a treatise which was much needed in an age of vice, resulting from unrestrained conduct. ”

“ Inspite of all these traditions, we are inclined to believe, that these sayings contain the accumulated wisdom of the Bengal peasantry,—they are the heritage of an agricultural race to which the unassuming rural folk of Bengal have unconsciously contributed through ages, and that no particular person or persons should be credited with their authorship. ”

“ The Pāthān Emperors and Chiefs could not have the great patience of the Hindu Kings who were inspired by a religious zeal to hear the Brahmin scholars recite Sanskrit texts and their learned annotations, step by step, requiring the listeners many long years to complete a course of lectures on the Rāmāyaṅa or the Mahābhārata. They appointed scholars to translate the works into Bengali which they now spoke and understood. ”

“ Progress of the Vernacular retarded.With the decadence of the power of the Buddhist priests, who in their zeal to popularize their creed, had not considered the Vernacular of Bengal as an unworthy medium for propagating their religious views, Bengali lost the patronage which it had secured of the lettered men of the country ”

“ Hence when her son was actually born, and prince Lāu Sen grew to be a handsome young hero with courage and spirit for any enterprise, a deep seated rage rankled in his uncle's bosom. There are hundreds of incidents in the poems, describing the plots to assassinate Lāu Sen formed by Māhudya and last though not least was a command issued by the Emperor of Gauḍa at the instigation of the prime minister, calling upon Lāu-Sen to go to Hākanda and fulfil certain extraordinary conditions for the propitiation of the god Dharma. ”

“ Early Bengali works by the Buddhists.The Çunya Purāṅa by Rāmāi Pandit, Chāryāchāryaviniçchay by Kānu Bhatta, the poems known as Dharma-mangal, and ballads and songs in honour of some of the Pāl Kings of Bengal bear distinct stamps of Buddhism on them. The ballads of the Pāl Kings, who were great patrons of Buddhism, indicate the marvellous power wielded by Gorakṣanāth and Hāḍisiddha, the great Buddhistic saints. ”

“ The writer of the sketch very forcibly states that the Dom Pandits do not belong to the Doma caste. His very enthusiasm in establishing this point betrays the weakness of his position; for the people of Bengal know Domas and Dom Pandits to belong to the same caste. The word দ্বিজ (twice-born) which occasionally occurs in the Bhanitā of Rāmāi Pandit, is a later interpolation and the Çunya Purāṅa, in its present shape, bears traces of many subsequent hands, as Nagendra Babu has himself admitted.
His descendants.Rāmāi Pandit was eighty years old when he married. ”