CHAPTER VII. The Ethical Ideals of India

THE ETHICAL IDEALS OF INDIA

PART I. THE ETHICS OF BRAHMANISM--A CLASS MORALITY

I. HISTORICAL AND SPECULATIVE BASIS OF THE SYSTEM

As in Judea so in India the conception formed of the Supreme Being reacted potently upon morality. Hence in naming the influences under which the moral ideal of Brahmanism was molded we must speak first of the Indian conception of the First Cause.

The Aryan conquerors of India originally held notions of the gods in general like those held by their kinsmen, the early Greeks and Romans. When they entered India they were ancestor worshipers and polytheists. They had earth gods and sky gods. The gods of the celestial phenomena gradually acquired ascendancy. Then, as in Egypt, there came a tendency toward unity. The various gods came to be looked upon by the loftier minds as merely different manifestations of one primal being.

It is right at this point that we find the great antithesis between Indian modes of thought and those of all or almost all other peoples. When the thinkers of Egypt, of the Semitic lands, of Persia, of Greece and Rome, had at last through reflection evolved the lofty conception of a single great First Cause, they endowed this cause with conscious personal life. This mode of thought is our heritage from the past. It is to us almost or quite impossible to conceive of conscious personal life as springing from an unconscious impersonal cause. Hence we place behind the manifold phenomena of the universe a conscious personal being as the origin and source of all things and all life.

It is wholly different with the thinkers of India. They seem to be able to postulate as the beginning of things an impersonal cause, a cause without perception, thought, or consciousness. They affirm that out of unconsciousness consciousness arises. They teach that out of Brahma, the unconscious, impersonal, passionless One, emanate all material worlds and sentient beings, gods as well as men.

How profoundly this conception of the First Cause has reacted on the ethical speculations of the Hindu sages and on the moral life of India will appear a little further on.

But this incomprehensible, unconscious, passionless Brahma is not the Brahma of the popular faith. The masses and even the philosophers themselves must have something more concrete. So this impersonal, neuter Brahma is conceived as giving existence to the personal, masculine God Brahma (Brahman), “the progenitor of all worlds, the first-born among beings.”

It is very necessary for the student of Brahmanic ethics to keep in mind the distinction between the uncreated, unconditioned, impersonal Brahma and the created, conditioned, personal Brahma, since there is here laid the foundation of a double goal for rational moral striving: the goal of the ascetic whose ultimate aim is deliverance from individual existence and absorption into the absolute, unchangeable, impersonal Brahma, which means a state of eternal unconsciousness--dreamless sleep; and the goal of the multitude, whose hope and aim is blissful, though temporary, union with the personal Brahma in the heaven of the mortal, conditioned gods.

The ethical evolution in India was also profoundly influenced by a prehistoric event, namely, the subjection of the original non-Aryan population of the land by an intruding Aryan people. As a result of the long and bitter struggle the two races became separated by a sharp line of race prejudice and hatred. The dark-skinned natives were reduced to a state of servitude or dependence upon their conquerors. Intermarriages between the two races were strictly prohibited, and thus the population of the conquered districts of the peninsula became divided into two sharply defined classes. These constituted a model upon which Indian society was framed. Other classes were formed, and these gradually hardened into castes, that is, into classes between which marriages were prohibited. Four great castes arose: namely, priests or Brahmans, warriors and rulers, peasants and merchants, and sudras. Below these castes were the pariahs, or outcasts, made up of the most degraded of the natives. As time passed, still other divisions were formed, every occupation coming to constitute the basis of a new caste, till society was stratified like a geologic deposit.

Religion came in to consecrate this division of the people into privileged and nonprivileged classes. The sacred scriptures declare that the Brahmans sprang from the mouth of Brahma, the warriors from his arms, the peasants and traders from his thighs, and the sudras from his feet.

No institution known among men ever exercised a more fateful and sinister influence upon morality than this caste system has exercised upon the morality of the peoples of India. The rooted belief and dogma of the natural inequality of men has made Brahmanic ethics a thing of grades and classes, and has thus rendered impossible the evolution of a true morality, which requires for its basis genuine sentiments of equality and brotherhood.

We easily realize the importance for morality of a belief in a life after death. But a belief in preëxistence may exert an even greater influence upon the moral code of a people than a belief in post-existence. Now the morality of the Hindus has been molded by both these doctrines, for according to the teachings of Brahmanism a man has lived through many lives before his “birth,” and may wander through “ten thousand millions of existences” after death has freed him from his present body. The class and the condition into which he is born here on earth is believed to be determined by the sum total of his merits or demerits earned in preceding existences. As a result of sin he may in his next birth be reborn in a lower caste, or may be imprisoned in some animal or vegetable form. He may pass a thousand times through the bodies of spiders, snakes, and lizards, and hundreds of times through the forms of grasses, shrubs, and creepers. And all this experience may come after the soul has passed through dreadful and innumerable hells for vast cycles of years.

This transmigration theory was framed by the thinkers of India to explain among other things the seemingly unjust inequalities of human life. It afforded an explanation why one man should be born a Brahman and another a sudra, one born in a hovel and another in a palace, by conceiving the place of every person born into the world as being determined by the manner of his life in former existences.

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the profound influence which this doctrine of transmigration, or round of births, has exerted upon the moral life of India. The tendency of this theory, as soon as elaborated, was to render still more intolerable the position of the lower castes, particularly that of the sudras, since it made their low place and hard lot to be the merited punishment of crimes and misdoings in previous lives; while at the same time it fed the pride and enhanced the arrogance of the Brahmans, since their superior lot was, according to the theory, attributable to merit acquired in other existences. Thus did the theory tend to give a more sinister aspect to the baneful caste system, to make it appear a part of the unchangeable order of things, and to render impossible the growth of any other than a class morality.

Hardly less important than the doctrine of transmigration for Hindu morality is the Indian conception of life--of all individual, conscious existence whether here on earth or in other worlds--as inseparable from misery, pain, decay, and death.

The Aryan immigrants into India seem to have been, like their kinsmen the Greeks, a light-hearted folk, filled with a strong joy in life. But as in their journeyings they pressed southward into the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges and came under the influences of the hot, depressing climate, and of an oppressive social and political system, they appeared to have lost their buoyant spirits. The skies seemed less bright and life less worth living, and, weary of it all, they at last came to regard eternal death, annihilation, as the greatest of boons.

This pessimistic view of the world and of life, as we shall see a little further on, forms the basis of large sections of Indian ethics, since it makes the ultimate goal of rational or moral effort to be the getting rid of conscious existence.

Another conception which has exerted a profound influence upon the religious ethics of Brahmanism is that respecting sacrifice. This conception is that the gods need sustenance, and can only exist through the gifts and offerings made to them by men. “The gods live by sacrifice” say the sacred scriptures; “the sun would not rise if the priests did not make sacrifice.”

To understand this teaching we must connect it with the belief of primitive man that the spirits of the dead have absolute need of meat and drink offerings at the hands of the living, and remember that in India there is no sharp distinction drawn between the gods and the souls of men. The gods, like the spirits of the dead, are dependent for life and strength upon the offerings laid on their altars. Without these gifts they would die or pine away, and all the movements of the universe controlled by them would cease.

From this conception of the gods came the emphasis laid by Brahmanism upon sacrifice, and the prominence given the religious duty of bringing rich gifts to the priests and keeping the altars of the gods heaped with food.

II. THE VARIOUS MORAL STANDARDS

The fundamental fact of Brahmanic morality is that as a result of the caste system it is a class morality; that is, there is a different moral standard or code for each of the different castes.

In the account given in the Laws of Manu of the origin of the four chief castes, the occupation and the duties of each class are carefully prescribed. To the Brahman was assigned teaching and offering sacrifice; to the warriors and rulers the protection of the people; to the peasants and merchants the tilling of the ground and trading; and to the sudras--“One occupation only,” reads the sacred law, “is prescribed to the sudra, to serve meekly the other three castes.”

The Brahman is by right the lord of the whole creation. His name must express something auspicious, but the first part of the sudra’s name must express something contemptible, and the second part must be a word denoting service.

For a man of a lower caste to affect equality with a person of a higher caste is a crime: “If a man of an inferior caste, proudly affecting an equality with a man of superior caste, should travel by his side on the road, or sit or sleep upon the same carpet with him, the magistrate shall take a fine from the man of inferior caste to the extent of his ability.”

For a Brahman to explain to a sudra the sacred Vedas is a sin: “Let him [the Brahman] not give to a sudra advice nor the remnants of his meal ...; nor let him explain the sacred law to such a man; ... for he who explains the sacred law to such ... will sink together with that man into hell.”

In the matter of punishments for crimes the laws are grossly unequal, the punishment of a person of inferior caste being always more severe than that of a person of a superior caste for the same offense. Thus for a crime punishable with death if committed by a person of an inferior caste, tonsure only is ordained if committed by a Brahman; for a Brahman must never be slain, “though he have committed all horrible crimes.” There is no crime in all the world as great as that of slaying a Brahman.

A knowledge of the inequality of these sacred laws of the Brahmans and the burdensomeness of this caste morality as it pressed upon the lower classes is necessary to an understanding of the rise and rapid spread of Buddhism, and the fervor with which its teachings of equality and brotherhood were embraced by the masses of Brahmanic India.

Of the different standards of morality of the several castes that of the Brahman is of course the highest. The study of the sacred books is for him the chief duty. “Let him,” says the sacred law, “without tiring daily mutter the Veda at the proper time; for that is one’s highest duty; all other observances are secondary duties.” Knowledge of the Veda destroys guilt as fire consumes fuel. Among the secondary duties are observance of the rules of purification, the practice of austerities, and doing no injury to created beings.

By austerities, that is, by ascetic practices, by hideous self-torture, the Brahman may atone for all sins of whatsoever kind and may become so holy that at death, having conquered all desires, save only the desire for union with the Universal One, he may hope to fall away into unawakening unconsciousness and be absorbed into the absolute, impersonal Brahma, and thus escape forever from the weary round of births. This way of full salvation, and it is the only one, is open only to Brahmans and to the chosen few from other castes who, having gone forth “from home into homelessness,” as mendicants or forest hermits, follow this life of complete renunciation of all that is earthly.

The duties, the faithful performance of which avail most for persons of inferior castes, are those that have to do with religion, and chiefly with sacrifice. These duties are the bringing of gifts and offerings for the sacrifices and the giving of generous fees to the priests. Through the faithful performance of his assigned duties the man of inferior caste can make sure of salvation--not the full and perfect salvation attained by the Brahman through his austerities, but a qualified salvation. He may hope for rebirth in some higher caste or in some better state either on earth or in some other world.

Duty to animals seems to have formed no part of the moral code of the early Indian Aryans. But chiefly through the influence of the doctrine of transmigration respect for every living thing became a high moral requirement. To take life wantonly became a crime. To kill a kine, a horse, a camel, a deer, an elephant, a goat, a sheep, a fish, a snake, a buffalo, insects, or birds is an offense which must be expiated by penances.

In order that he may not harm any living creature, the ascetic is enjoined “always by day and by night, even with pain to his body, to walk carefully, scanning the ground.” Should he unintentionally injure any creature he must expiate its death by penitent austerities.

Animals may, however, be slain for food and for sacrifices, since they were created for these special purposes. And then there is compensation for the victims of the altars: “Herbs, trees, cattle, birds, and all animals that have been destroyed for sacrifices receive, being reborn, higher existences.”

The killing of animals for sport is an inexpiable sin: “He who injures innoxious beings from a wish to (give) himself pleasure never finds happiness, neither living nor dead.”

Under the influence of Buddhism we shall see this consideration for animal life deepening into a genuine tenderness for every living creature, and duties toward the inferior animals becoming one of the most beautiful and characteristic features of the ethical ideal.

In Brahmanic as in Confucian ethics the military virtues are assigned a low place. Brahmanism, however, concedes the legitimacy of war and permits the employment of force by the king in augmenting his possessions, even enjoining upon him to be ever ready to strike; for “of him who is always ready to strike, the whole world stands in awe.”

But the genuine spirit of Brahmanism is opposed to the fierce war spirit of the Aryan conquerors of India, and the sacred law attempts to ameliorate the cruelties and atrocities of primeval warfare, instilling in the warrior a spirit of magnanimity and chivalry. Thus the “blameless law for the warrior” forbids to him the use of barbed or poisoned weapons; he must spare the suppliant for mercy; he must not strike an enemy who has lost his armor or whose weapons are broken, or who has received a wound, or who has turned in flight. He must do no harm to the onlooker. The king must conduct war without guile or treachery.

At the heart of Brahmanism, as at the heart of every other great religion of the world, there is a core of lofty spiritual teachings and true morality. The sacred scriptures of the Brahmans declare, “The soul itself is the witness of the soul, and the soul is the refuge of the soul; despise not thy own soul, the supreme witness of men.”

The sacred law teaches that he is pure who is pure in thought and in deed: “Among all modes of purification, purity in (the acquisition of) wealth is declared to be the best; for he is pure who gains wealth with clean hands, not he who purifies himself with earth and water.”

Repentance and resolutions of amendment free the soul from its transgressions: “He who has committed a sin and has repented, is freed from that sin, but he is purified only by the resolution of ceasing to sin and thinking I will do so no more.”

Brahmanism teaches the duty of forgiving injuries and of returning blessings for curses: “Against an angry man let him [the ascetic] not in return show anger; let him bless when he is cursed.” “A king must always forgive litigants, infants, aged and sick men, who inveigh against him.” “He who, being abused by men in pain, pardons them, will in reward of that act be exalted in heaven.”

Here is a morality as pure and lofty as any taught by Hebrew prophets. But as in Judaism, so in Brahmanism, such was the stress laid by the priests upon sacrifice, upon the observance of the rites and ceremonies of the temple, and upon the performance of a thousand and one morally indifferent acts, that as time passed there resulted an almost complete overshadowing of natural by ritual morality. It was such a triumph of ritualism as marked the postexilic period in the history of Israel. As there came a protest and reaction in Judea issuing in Christianity, so did there come a protest and reaction in Brahmanic India issuing in Buddhism.