Hindu philosophy

“ It must, of course, be admitted, that Hindu mythology is a subject of universal interest on account of its real or supposed affinity to the primitive beliefs of all the Aryan races, while Hindu Philosophy has no higher claim than that which arises from its being exclusively Indian. To us, indeed, who are the children of the soil, Hindu Philosophy is a far more important study than Hindu mythology. To us the nearer and more local is of greater interest than that which is the common property of all nations, and the real significance of which is lost in the dim shades of remote antiquity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have not, however, by any means shown any readiness to recognise Hindu Philosophy as an important branch of study. It is, indeed, still taught with reverence, and learnt with awe, in the secluded tols of Nadiya and other seats of ancient learning, but the philosophy of the tols is the most barren and unprofitable study in which the human intellect can engage itself. Philosophy as taught by the pandits, is simply a storehouse of verbal quibbles, and high proficiency in it is considered synonymous with high proficiency in the art of profitless wrangling. ”

“ Hindu philosophy is in many respects as good a discipline as Plato or Aristotle, and, Christian though he was, he was familiar with the boldest conceptions of the world, as found in the six systems of Hindu philosophy, and he could argue with great subtlety and accuracy on any of the old problems of the human mind. ”

“ Here, too, has the study of Hindu Philosophy been barren of results. Natives who have fitted themselves for the work by that wider culture which a complete acquaintance with European science alone can impart, are in a position peculiarly suited for giving to Hindu Philosophy its proper position in the history of human achievements. ”

“ Equally striking is the contrast between Christianity and Hinduism as to the attributes of God. According to the former, he is omnipresent; omnipotent; possessed of every excellence—holiness, justice, goodness, truth. According to the chief Hindu philosophy, the Supreme is devoid of attributes—devoid of consciousness. According to the popular conception, when the Supreme becomes conscious he is developed into three gods, who possess respectively the qualities of truth, passion, and darkness.
[Pg 61] "God is a Spirit." "God is light." "God is Conception of God.love." ”

“ A careful perusal of the Hindu stories impressed upon the young in the course of an Anglo-Saxon Mother’s many trials will produce in most minds trained in philosophic thought a profound conviction that neither Hindu philosophy nor Hindu morality is suitable for inculcation in this country. ”

“ The Supreme Being is one, sole existent, secondless, entire, without parts, sempiternal, infinite, ineffable, invariable, ruler of all, universal soul, truth, wisdom, intelligence, happiness." Such are the six systems of philosophy which were developed in India in the Philosophic Period; such are the answers which Hindu philosophers have given to the questions which were started in the Upanishads, to questions which rise in the mind of every reflective man, but which it is not given to him to answer completely—What is God, and what is man? ”

“ 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. ”

“ An American writer truly says: "The first principle underlying the whole business of Hindu wonder-working is that of a strong will; and the first necessary condition of producing a magical effect is an increase in the power of thought. The Hindus, owing to that intense love for solitary meditation, which has been one of the most pronounced characteristics from time immemorial, have acquired mental faculties of which we of the Western and younger civilization are totally ignorant. The Hindu has attained a past master's degree in speculative philosophy. ”

“ Everywhere the philosopher labours under an overwhelming sense of human misery and directs all his efforts against it. The vast field over which these two leading notions, the notion of sin and the notion of suffering, have spread, giving rise to asceticism, to fatalism, to apathy in politics and to sensuality in poetry, is one of the most interesting subjects of study with which the Hindu can occupy himself. ”

“ It has been claimed that it has made the Hindus the most devotional people in the world. Like Christianity, Hinduism appeals to man's intellectual nature, and it is inwrought with profound philosophy. It does not, however, like some modern systems, teach that divine truth has been revealed to man by natural processes; rather it regards the early revelation as having suffered obscuration. [65] It also has its trinity, its incarnations, and its predictions of a Messiah who shall restore the truth and establish righteousness. The Hindu traditions maintain that mankind descended from a single pair ”

“ Whatever one may say about Hindu thought and philosophy as a basis of conduct, that people have been living for many centuries in the dense fog of ignorance, superstition and ceremonialism; and their life has been unworthy and debased because it rested upon nothing. ”

“ Upon the whole, whatever may be the true antiquity of this nation, whether their mythology be a corruption of the pure deism we find in their books, or their deism a refinement from gross idolatry; whether their religious and moral precepts have been engrafted on the elegant philosophy of the Nyâya and Mimânsâ, or this philosophy been refined on the plainer text of the Veda; the Hindu is the most ancient nation of which we have valuable remains, and has been surpassed by none in refinement and civilization ”

“ In regard to India, therefore, you must not look only into her condition today, but travel back in imagination thousand of years, and see what she was in ancient times of primitive Hindu simplicity and purity. Even in the earliest books of the Hindus, the Vedas, which must be regarded as the earliest record of Aryan faith – even in them you find glimpses of high moral and religious truths which are unmistakable – not duly formed and organised religious thought, but the crude instincts and aspirations of the human mind in the state of religious infancy, seeking the Deity. ”

“ It is strange that a man whose pantheon is so crowded as that of the Hindu, and who believes in such constant divine guidance and interference, should, also, at the same time, maintain a theory of life which practically dispenses with all divine action and makes human life the product of a blind and grinding fate. Nothing is more marked as a characteristic of Hindu thought today than a possession by the people of these mutually conflicting and contradictory views of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Although it may be accepted as a true statement that the typical Hindu mind, which ranges over such a vast area of speculation, will never be induced by missionary zeal to confine itself within the apparently limited formulæ of Christian doctrine, it must not be overlooked that even the symbolism of Christianity represents and covers a shoreless ocean in which thought can disport itself without ever coming into contact with the limitations of the concrete. The Hindu mind binds itself, as it has been said of Art, to no creeds, no articles of faith, no schemes of salvation, no confessions. ”

“ In nothing are Christianity and Hinduism more antipodal than in the ideals which they exalt, respectively, before their followers; and this conflict of ideals is the most stubborn, as it is the most pervasive, that Christianity has to face in India. The vision of God and of man, of human life and attainment, which we present before an orthodox Hindu, does not impress him as it should, simply because it does not fit into his thinking. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But the point is that, although Hinduism has its scale of values, and its doctrine of development, it has no rational foundation for these, and though it has the idea of higher and lower, yet, because this is without foundation, it lets it slip, it never grips the idea, and so easily slides into the view that all is equally divine. The thought that all is God, and the thought that there are higher and lower beings, are, on the surface, opposed and inconsistent theories. Yet both are necessary, and it is the business of philosophy to find a reconciliation. ”

“ It will be a pleasure to such as love India and her peoples to read the work of a highly educated, intelligent and travelled author, in which the destruction of all Hindu individuality is not considered per se as a merit, but in which on the contrary it is regarded as wrong in fact, in art, and in imagination to impair the ancient self- sufficient and highly complex civilization, to the task of providing a substitute for which Europeans and new Hindus are alike wholly unequal. ”

“ About theoretical or philosophical Hinduism there is admittedly a certain measure of moral beauty, but to get even this from Hindu literature one must wade through cesspools of filth and obscenity and must shut his eyes to pitiably low ideals of Deity, while in its practical manifestations modern Hinduism is the most sickening combination of superstition, idolatry, and {199} vice that now disgraces the name of religion in any considerable portion of the earth. ”

“ It is enough to remember that the western conception of Christianity, which the missionary has inherited and which he is eagerly presenting, and can hardly avoid presenting, to the people of this land, is far removed from what the Hindu has always been taught to believe that a religion should bring into a man's life and possession.
It is easy enough to prove to the man of ordinary intelligence the debasing influence of idolatry, the accursed slavery of the caste system, the gross immorality of the Hindu pantheon, and the dwarfing and degrading character of the ceremonialism of modern Hinduism. ”

“ He sets before the Hindu an infinite social peace; he calls into play the moral will that for ages has been allowed to slumber. The goal is high social harmony; the path to it is the intelligent will in faithful, inspired, victorious obedience. The need of the Hindu is not less but more and better existence. The way out of his despair is through fulness of life. His misery is but the dumb prayer for eternal life, that is, for existence supreme in its character and in its volume.
Thus Christianity is everywhere the interpreter of religion. Everywhere it carries the world's faith to its best. ”

“ So, to the ordinary Hindu, especially to him to whom the way of meditation in the wilderness seems impossible, ceremonialism becomes a matter of supreme concern. No other religion has furnished to its followers a more elaborate and pervasive system of observances than this. These rites exercise their influence upon the mind and are wielding today a most potent influence upon Hindu character. A man may think nothing of, nor have any ambition to attain unto, the spiritual aspect of his faith ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many features of Hinduism, its steady though slow conquest of India, its extraordinary vitality and tenacity in resisting the attacks of Mohammedanism, and its small power of expansion beyond the seas are explained by the fact that it is a mode of life as much as a faith. To be a Hindu it is not sufficient to hold the doctrine of the Upanishads or any other scriptures: it is necessary to be a member of a Hindu caste and observe its regulations. ”

“ Thus as we look at the Hindu from the various standpoints of life and character we see how strange a compound he is, and how unlike the man of the West at nearly all points in our examination. He is preëminently weak where we are strong, and he manifests strength where we seem to need it most. His religion has developed within him traits and tendencies which, through these many centuries, have wonderfully wrought in his life and character, and have largely made him what he is today. ”