Hindu mythology

“ The Hindus are fond of painting the outside of their houses a deep red colour, and of covering 715 the most conspicuous parts with pictures of flowers, men, women, bulls, elephants and gods and goddesses in all the many forms known in Hindu mythology. ”

“ The histories of the gods, like all heathen mythology, consist of tales, some picturesque, some foolish, some dull and childish, some obscene. How far the educated Hindu believes them it is difficult to know. Those that are obviously absurd he will say are allegorical, and in spite of their diversity he will maintain that they are all manifestations of one god. The uneducated rustic, so far as he is familiar with these stories, believes them.
The ascetic life, at any rate as represented by the professional ascetics of India, is not held in admiration by the people of the country. ”

“ They have differed little from Buddhists in their beliefs; for they deny the authority of the Hindu Vedas, disregard sacrifices, cultivate a high morality, believe strongly in transmigration and reverence life in all its forms. And yet, strangely enough, many of the priests of their temples are Brahmans and they place Hindu idols close to their shrines. They differ from the Buddhists chiefly in their objects of worship and in their ritual. They have a mythology of their own—a mythology of saints rather than of gods. ”

“ Religiously, the native Christian is slowly shaking off the clinging brood of superstitions which he inherited from Hinduism. Our most recent converts have often a tenacious belief in the efficacy of some of those childish superstitions and charms which were largely their main stay in their ancestral religion. In most cases these are not a matter of faith so much as of inheritance which have become more than a second nature to them. Idolatry may be abandoned, belief in Hinduism as a saving faith may be thrown to the winds, Hindu ritual may lose its charm ”

“ But when one comes to the modern sects, then he has to deplore not so much the lack of historical data as the grotesque form into which this same over-vivid imagination of the Hindu has builded his gods. As the scientific systems grow more and more fancifully, detailed, and as the liturgy flowers out into the most extraordinary bloom of weird legend, so the images of the gods, to the eye in their temples, to the mind in the descriptions of them, take to themselves the most uncouth details imagined by a curious fancy. ”

“ At first sight, seeing the jumble up of strange gods,—the cow-goddess, the monkey-god, elephant-god, and others,—it seems rather to resemble the religion of the ancient Egyptians, but it is not a real resemblance. The highest idea of the Hindu, as of the Buddhist, is to pass out into a sort of painless existence of nothingness. And to overcome the flesh and to arrive at a placid state, where nothing matters, is attempted here on earth by some. Some of the old men, fakirs as they are called, like the [Pg 245] one we met in Delhi, do astonishing things merely by force of an iron determination. ”

“ He who will write the history if Hindu asceticism, from its first appearance in the Vedic Theology to its most complete development in the Buddhistic philosophy, will earn a title to the gratitude of India. ”

“ And the Christian preacher's or teacher's vivid portrayal of the Christian's heaven too often denotes to the Hindu only one of the many purgatorial heavens of his religion, and rarely suggests to him the supreme test of the value of our faith as contrasted with his own. The glories of our heaven do not appeal to the stolid, weary, transmigration-ridden soul of the Hindu as they do to the youthful, hopeful, buoyant soul of the Christian. ”

“ The exuberant prodigiousness of the Hindu imagination is strikingly manifest in its descriptions of the rewards of virtue in the heavens and of the punishments of sin in the hells. Visions pass before us of beautiful groves full of fragrance and music, abounding in delicious fruits, and birds of gorgeous plumage, crystal streams embedded with pearls, unruffled lakes where the lotus blooms, palaces of gems, crowds of friends and lovers, endless revelations of truth, boundless graspings of power, all that can stir and enchant intellect, will, fancy, and heart. ”

“ The most advanced thought of Hindu philosophy is that all is Maya, illusion, the play, the amusement of the Supreme, who leads us to believe that we are, that we have a separate existence, which we have not; but at last the illusion will come to an end, all will be absorbed in Brahm, as the water in the clouds falls into the sea; there will be no conscious existence in the universe. ”

“ The Hindu calls the soul the "seer" or the "knower," and thinks of it as a great eye in the centre of his being, which, if he concentrates his attention upon it, is able to look outwards and to gaze upon Reality. The soul is capable of this because in essence it is one with Brahman, the universal soul. The apparent separation is an illusion wrought by matter. Hence, to the Hindu, matter is an obstruction and a deception, and the Eastern mystic despises and rejects and subdues all that is material, and bends all his faculties on realising his spiritual consciousness, and dwelling in that. ”

“ Or apply the same test to the literature of Hinduism, even in its earliest and purest stages. The sacred Vedas, which are supposed to have been breathed into the souls of ancient rishis by direct divine effluence, are tainted here and there by debasing human elements, and that not incidentally but as the very soul of the Hindu system. For example, when the Vedic hymns promise as future rewards the lowest sensual indulgences [225] none can doubt the earthly source of their inspiration. ”

“ From the rudest polytheism up to pantheism, and even to an atheistic philosophy, all is within the Hindu pale, like fantastic cloud shapes and vague mist and empty ether, all within the same sky. To the student of Hinduism, then, the first fact that emerges is that there are no distinctive Hindu doctrines. No one doctrine is distinctive of Hinduism. There is no canonical book, nowhere any stated body of doctrine that might be called the Hindu creed. The only common measure of Hindus is that they employ brahmans in their religious ceremonies, and even that does not hold universally. ”

“ No story is too extraordinary to be told of Hindu gods. They are the magicians of the universe who sport with the forces of nature as easily as a conjuror in a bazaar does tricks with a handful of balls. But though the average Hindu would be shocked to hear the Puranas described as idle tales, yet he does not make his creed depend on their accuracy, as many in Europe make Christianity depend on miracles. The value of truth in religion is rated higher in India than in Europe but it is not historical truth. ”

“ The oldest of these religions is Animism (q.v.) , which represents the beginnings of religion in India, and is still professed by the more primitive tribes, such as Santals, Bhils and Gonds. The transition from this crude form of religion to popular Hinduism (q.v.) is comparatively easy. The most obvious characteristics of the ordinary Hindu are that he worships a plurality of gods, looks upon the cow as a sacred animal, and accepts the Brahmanical supremacy (see Brahmanism) and the caste system ”

“ What is, perhaps, the most striking feature of Hindu religious thought, as a whole, is the steadfastness with which survive, even in the epic and in Buddhism, the forms and formulae of the older faith. At a time when pantheism or nihilism is the avowed creed the ancient gods still exist, weak, indeed, yet infused with a true immortality. ”

“ But that is the ruling feature of the Hindu religion. There is no sweetness or light in its theology--it exists to make people unhappy and wretched, and to bring misery, suffering and crime into the world.
The Hindus fear their gods, but do not love them, with perhaps the exception of Vishnu, the second person in the Hindu trinity, while Brahma is the third. These three are the supreme deities in the pantheon, but Brahma is more of an abstract proposition than an actual god. For purposes of worship the Hindus may be divided into two classes--the followers of Siva and the followers of Vishnu. ”

“ Through the inversion of creed peculiar to Hindu Pantheism, the propitiation of Divine wrath has become the fundamental principle of religion, and pathetic appeals for mercy continually ascend from darkened hearts to those unseen powers vividly present to Hindu thought, which, amid countless errors and degradations, has never ceased to grasp the central fact of Eternity. The impalpable air teems with Divinity. Watchful eyes and clutching hands surround the pilgrim's path, and unseen spirits dog faltering footsteps as they stumble through the snares and pitfalls of earthly life. ”

“ It is impossible for a Westerner to realize how much of the life of the Hindu, in the home and in society, is circumscribed by superstitions and directed by omens only. In the case of a man setting out upon a journey forty-three different things [252] may happen which prognosticate good, and thirty-four which forebode evil. In household matters, the eye of the Hindu man, and very specially of the Hindu woman, is ever open to any one of a thousand indications that may reveal the will of the god or the demon as to conduct on the occasion. ”

“ Hinduism certainly has proved marvellously stimulating to the intellect or—shall we put it the other way?--is the product of profound, acute, and restless minds. It cannot be justly accused of being enervating or melancholy, for many Hindu states were vigorous and warlike [85] and the accounts of early travellers indicate that in pre-mohammedan days the people were humane, civilized and contented. It created an original and spiritual art, for Indian art, more than any other, is the direct product of religion and not merely inspired by it. ”

“ Whenever an educated Hindu defends his faith, in an argument with a Christian, he never quotes as scriptural authority the more recent writings of their faith—the Tantras and Puranas, which are the storehouse of legend and myth, of myriad rites and customs and are the refuge and joy of the orthodox and conservative pandits;—he discards these and falls back upon the most ancient writings, which are the exponents of nature worship and of vedantic philosophy. ”

“ They are the object of the most earnest admonitions from missionaries and moralists, and no doubt are a very bad lot, although they do not look it, and are a recognized and respected profession among the Hindus. They are consecrated to certain gods soon after their birth; they are the brides of the impure and obscene deities of the Hindu pantheon, and are attached to their temples, receiving their support from the collections of the priests or the permanent endowments, often living under the temple roof and almost always within the sacred premises. ”

“ The definition which would cover the Hindu of the modern times is that he should be born of parents not belonging to some recognised religion other than Hinduism, marry within the same limits, believe in God, respect the cow, and cremate the dead. ”

“ There is nothing in the life of a Hindu devotee, whether it be eating, sleeping, bathing or travelling, which is not religiously prescribed both as to time and method. And utterly regardless of the significance of these rites or the appropriateness of them to his life, he deems their observance as essential to his salvation and finds in their daily keeping the highest satisfaction and completest assurance of his spiritual progress.
The Hindu is no rationalist in his religion. ”

“ A new art meant nothing more than a new illustration of Hindu religion. We have seen the craftsmen at work, and the fountain of their inspiration is not far to seek when we are told that the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are told nightly all over India to listening millions. ”

“ Of the minor distinctions between Buddhism and Hinduism one of the sharpest is this cultus. Hindu temples are often erected over natural objects supposed to resemble the footprint or some member of a deity and sometimes tombs receive veneration. [53] But no case appears to be known in which either Hindus or Jains show reverence to the bones or other fragments of a human body. It is hence remarkable that relic-worship should be so wide-spread in Buddhism and appear so early in its history. ”

“ Every thing is referred by Hinduism to God as its immediate cause. A Christian is continually shocked by the Hindus ascribing all sin to God as its source.
The adoration of God as a Being possessed of every The object of worship.glorious excellence is earnestly commanded in the Bible. "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God; and him only shalt thou serve." In India the Supreme is never worshiped; but any one of the multitudinous gods may be so; and, in fact, every thing can be worshiped except God. A maxim in the mouth of every Hindu is the following: "Where there is faith, there is God." ”

“ Sir George Birdwood says: “The intimate absorption of Hindu life in the unseen realities of man’s spiritual consciousness is seldom sufficiently acknowledged by Europeans, and, indeed, cannot be fully comprehended by men whose belief in the supernatural has been destroyed by the prevailing material ideas of modern society. Every thought, wish, and deed of the Hindu belongs to the world of the unseen as well as the seen; and nothing shows this more strikingly than the traditionary works of India. Everything that is made has a direct religious use, or some religious symbolism. ”