Part 15

Ardâ Vîrâf tells a story which belongs to the cycle of “Sultan Murad,” immortalised by Victor Hugo. A certain lazy man named Davânôs, who never did any other thing of good during all the years when he governed many provinces, once cast a bundle of grass with his right foot to within the reach of a ploughing-ox. Hence his right foot is exempted from torment while the rest of his body is gnawed by noxious creatures.

It is easy to imagine that the realistic picture of heaven and hell by a poet of no little power produced the deepest effect on the minds of people, who for the most part took it to be literally true. No Oriental work ever became more popular or was more widely read and translated. People still living can remember the time when it was the habit of the Parsis at Bombay to have public readings of Ardâ Vîrâf, on which occasions the audience, especially the feminine part of it, broke into violent sobbing from the excitement caused by the description of the punishment of the wicked. The Parsis have abandoned now the theory that the book is other than a work of imagination, but it may be hoped that they will not cease to regard it as a cherished legacy from their fathers and a precious bequest to their children.

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VIII

A RELIGION OF RUTH

AN Englishman who went to see a Hindu saint was deterred from entering the cave where the holy man lived by the spectacle of numerous rats. The hermit, observing his hesitation, inquired what was the matter? “Don’t you see them?” answered his visitor. “Yes,” was the brief reply. “Why don’t you kill them?” asked the Englishman. “Why should I kill them?” said the native of the land. Finding the whole onus of the discussion thrown on his shoulders, the English traveller felt that it would be difficult with his limited knowledge of the language to express a European’s ideas about rats. He thought to sum up the case in one sentence: “We people kill them.” To which the saint answered: “We people don’t kill them.”

In another country, but still among a race which has inherited the habit of looking at questions between man and animals not exclusively from the man’s point of view, a learned professor proposed to an old gardener at Yezd that they should dig up an ant-hill to ascertain if the local prejudice were true which insisted that inside each ant-hill there lodged two scorpions. The old Persian declined to be a party to any such proceeding. “As long as the scorpions stay inside,” he said with decision, “we have no right to molest them and to do so would bring ill-luck.”

These anecdotes show, amusingly and convincingly, the wall of demarcation between Eastern and Western thought by which the son of the West is apt to find his passage barred. They serve my purpose in quoting them the better because they are not connected with the religious sect whose precepts I am going to sketch. They illustrate what I believe to be true, namely, that this sect and Buddhism itself would not have made their way in so wonderful a manner, seemingly almost without effort, had they not found the ground prepared by a racial tendency to fly to the doctrine of Ahimsa, or “non-killing,” which forms part of their systems.

No religion prevails unless it appeals to some chord, if not of the human heart everywhere, at least of the particular human hearts to which it is directed. In the West a religion based on Vegetarianism would not have a chance. Not that there exists no trace of the life-preserving instinct among Western peoples—far from that. All nice children have it and all saints of the type of him of Assisi. Other people have it who are neither children, nor saints, nor yet lunatics (“though by your smiling you seem to say so”). I know an old hero of the Siege of Delhi who to this day would stoop to lift a worm from his path. But the sentiment, which in the West is rather a secret thing, forming a sort of freemasonry among those who feel it, asserts its sway in the East in the broad light of day. No one there would mind giving the fullest publicity to his opinion that the scorpion has as good a right to live undisturbed in his domestic ant-hill as you have in your suburban villa.

Long before the Jainas made Ahimsa a gateway to perfection, innumerable Asiatics practised and even preached the very same rule. It was the bond of union between all the religious teachers and ascetics who constituted a well-defined feature in Indian life from remote if not from the earliest antiquity. The founders of Jainism and of Buddhism, too, were Gurus like the rest, only they possessed an intensified magnetic influence and, at least in Buddha’s case, an unique genius. Every Eastern religion has been taught by a Guru, not excepting the most divine of them all.

Footnote 4:

“It is stated of the Divine Founder of the Christian religion that without a parable spoke He not to the people. Christ, in fact, acted and taught as an Oriental Guru, a character which none of the European writers of Christ’s life has invested Him with” (Rev. J. Long: v. “Oriental Proverbs” in the Report of the Proceedings of the Second Congress of Orientalists).

In the occurrence of a new religious evolution much depends on the individual, but much also on the fulness of time. When Buddhism and Jainism arose, the psychological moment was come for a change or modification in the current faith. To some degree, both were a revolt against Sacerdotalism. Men were told that they could work out their salvation without priestly aid or intervention. The new teachers, though each springing from the class of the feudal nobility, won to their side the surging wave of the only kind of democratic yearning which, till now, Asia has known—the yearning for religious equality. Professor Hermann Jacobi (the foremost authority on Jainism, to whom all who study the subject owe an unbounded debt) suggests that there was a certain friction between the highly meritorious of the noble and the priestly castes because the priests were inclined to look down on the layman saint. To this category belonged Sakya Muni, who was the younger son of a prince, or, as we should say, a feudal lord, and who renounced rank and riches to become a recluse. The same family history is told of Mahavira, whom the Jainas claim to be their founder. For a long time Europeans believed the two religions to have but one source, and Jainism was dismissed as a Buddhist sect. The Jainas, however, always strongly held that they had a founder of their own, namely, Mahavira, and they even declared that Buddha was not his master but his disciple. After much research, Professor Jacobi decided the case in their favour by assigning to them a separate origin. Both Sakya Muni and Mahavira are generally believed to have flourished in the sixth century B.C.

The confusion of the Jainas with the Buddhists and even with the Brahmans has made it difficult to reckon their present numbers: in the census of 1901 they are estimated at 1,334,138, chiefly living in the Bombay Presidency, but this does not tell us their real number. Jainas are to be found almost everywhere in Upper India, in the West and South and along the Ganges. They inhabit the towns more than the country. In treating ancient Indian religions the living document is always round the corner, ready to be called into the witness-box, and the Jainas of to-day can give a good account of themselves. Every one has a good word for them; a friend of mine, than whom few know India better, describes them thus: “A tall, fair, handsome, good and humble lot they are and terribly bullied they are by their more bellicose fellow-countrymen, who all look on Jainas as made for them to pilfer, but the Jainas never turn on their persecutors.” In spite of their meekness, they are good men of business, which is proved by their remarkable success in commerce. Perhaps it is not such bad policy to be peaceful, and helpful, and honest as a cynical century supposes.

The Jainas say of Mahavira that he was one of a long line of holy ascetics twenty-four of whom are venerated in their temples under the name of Tirthakaras or Jinas, “Conquerors” in the sense of having conquered the flesh. Needless to point out that the founders of great religious systems invariably accept this principle of evolution: they complete what others began, and in due time a new manifestation will arrive either in the form of a more perfect revelation of themselves or in that of a fore-destined successor. The Buddhists now await Matreya, or “the Buddha of kindness.” The Jainas have not added to their twenty-four glorified beings, but there is nothing to prevent them from doing so. To these specimens of perfected humanity they have raised some of the most glorious temples ever lifted by the hand of man towards heaven. Tier on tier mount the exquisitely beautiful towers of the Jaina cathedrals in the most lonely part of the Muklagerri hills. They seem like the Parsifal music turned into stone: an allegory of the ascent of the soul from corruption to incorruption, from change to permanency. The desire to worship something finds a vent in the reverence paid to the Tirthakaras, but the Jaina religion admits neither relics nor the iteration of prayers. The building of splendid shrines and of refuges for man and beast are the particular means of grace open to the Jaina who cannot comply in all respects with the exacting demands of his scriptures, which, were they literally fulfilled, would leave no one on the world but ascetics. The wealthy Jaina is only too glad to avail himself of the chance of acquiring some merit, however far it must fall short of the highest. Besides this, in moments of religious fervour temple-building becomes a frenzy: whole races are swept along by the blind impulse to incarnate their spiritual cravings in spires or pagodas or minarets pointing to the sky—the eternal symbol. The greatest of Jaina temples mark the epoch of some such wave of spiritual emotion.

The Jaina scriptures, which were first collected from aural report and written down by a learned man in the sixth century A.D., are really a Rule of Discipline for monks, and not a guide for the mass of mankind. If we could imagine the only Christian Scripture being the immortal book of Thomas à Kempis, we should form the idea of a very similar state of things. It is surprising not how little but how much of this rigid rule is followed by every Jaina to this day, be he monk or layman. The vegetarian principle involved in Ahimsa is observed rigorously by all—clearly with no bad effect on health after a trial of about twenty-four centuries, for the Jainas’ physique is excellent, and they are less subject to disease than the other communities. They strain and boil water before drinking, and whatever may be said of the motive, the practice must be highly commended. They are also often to be seen wearing a mouth-cloth to prevent them from swallowing flies, and they carry little brooms with which they sweep insects out of their path. The hospitals for sick animals begin to be better managed than formerly, when they incurred much censure as mere conglomerations of hopeless suffering to relieve which practical means were not taken. A folly adopted by the more fanatical Jainas at the time of their origin was that of going “sky-clad,” which makes it probable that they were the gymnosophists known to the Greeks. They saw well later to limit this practice to certain times and occasions or to abandon it for the far more pleasant one of wearing white garments. Buddha warned his followers against the “sky-clad” aberration. He disagreed with the Jainas on a more vital point in the view he took of penance and self-inflicted torture. It shows the high intellectuality of the man that towards the end of his life he pronounced penance, though he had gone through much of it himself, to be vanity of vanities. The Jainas took the opposite view: “Subdue the body just as fire consumes old wood.” They hold that merit is bound up with a certain definite and tangible thing: the Buddhist, more philosophically, makes it consist in intention. This is the chief doctrinal difference between Jaina and Buddhist, and though each is bound to charity and the Jaina is particularly enjoined by his scriptures not to turn other people’s religion into ridicule, it has to be confessed that in their frequent disputes they spare no pains and neglect no arts of Socratic reasoning to reduce each other’s theories to an absurdity. Irony is a weapon always used in Indian religious discussion.

Mahavira himself “fulfilled the law” by allowing gnats, flies, and other things to bite him and crawl over him for four months without ever once losing his equanimity. It is told that he met all sorts of pleasant or unpleasant events with an even mind whether they arose from divine powers, men, or animals. The Jainas did not deny that there were divine powers: there might be any number of them, and the influence they wielded for good or for ill (I think especially for ill) was not inconsiderable. Only they were not morally admirable like a man victorious through suffering. The greater willingness of the Jainas to admit gods into the wheel of being, and even to allow some homage to be paid to them, was one reason why they clashed less with the Brahmans. After the subsidence of Buddhism the Jainas managed to go on existing, somewhat despised and annoyed, but tolerated.

While both Buddhists and Jainas place the prohibition to take life at the head of their law, its application is infinitely more thoroughgoing among the Jainas, who also attach to it ideas which have no place in Buddhist metaphysics. From the Jaina position, it seems to imply a tendency to primitive animism, though it is hard to say whether this comes from a real process of retrogression or simply from the Indo-Aryan desire for a synthesis—the more easily attained the more you assume. It is startling to hear that in the last census over eight millions were returned as animists—it proves that the old credences die hard. The Jainas took into their soul-world fire, water, wind, shooting plants and germinating seeds. The disciplinary results must have been inconvenient, but a religion was never less popular because it put its devotees to inconvenience. Those who still clung to animistic beliefs were already prepared to see a soul in the flickering fire, the rushing water, the growing blade. We all have odds and ends of animism; did not Coventry Patmore say: “There is something human in a tree?” With more detail the Jaina observes that trees and plants are born and grow old; they distinguish the seasons, they turn towards the sun, the seeds grow up: how, then, shall we deny all knowledge to them? “The asoka buds and blossoms when touched by a fair girl’s feet.” Can we help recalling the familiar lines in the “Sensitive Plant?”—

“I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet; I doubt not they felt the spirit that came From her glowing fingers thro’ all their frame.”

Now, Science, which is on the way to becoming very kind to man’s early beliefs, comes forward in the person of Mr. Francis Darwin to tell us that plants have “mind” and “intelligence,” especially the hop and the bryony. All fairy-tales will come true if we wait long enough.

Once, and once only, in Jaina writings I have noticed it given as a distinct reason for sparing plants and trees, that they may contain the transmigrated soul of a man. Even in the case of animals the doctrine of transmigration is rarely adduced as the reason for not killing them, though it is fully accepted by Jainas in common with all the Indian sects sprung from Brahmanism by which it was started. Coming to the Indian views of animals from those which antiquity represented as the preaching of Pythagoras, we expect to see this argument put forward at every turn, but it is not. In Jaina writings the incentive is humanity: to do to others as we would be done by. It is true that as an aid to this incentive, the cruel are threatened with the most awful punishments. In Indian sacred writings one is wearied by the nice balance constantly drawn between every deed and its consequences to the doer for a subsequent millennium. In mediæval monkish legends we find exactly the same device for keeping the adept in the paths of virtue, but wherever we find it, we sigh for the spontaneous emotion of pity of the Good Samaritan who never reflected “If I do not get off my ass and go to help that Jew, how very bad it will be for my Karman!”

We ought not to forget in this connexion that rewards and punishments have not the same meaning to the Indian as to us: they are not extraneous prizes or penalties, but the working out of a mathematical problem which we both set and solve for ourselves. It is utterly impossible to escape from the consequences of our evil acts: they are debts which must be paid, though we may set about performing good acts which will make our future happiness exceed our future misery in time and extent. The highest good comes of itself, automatically, to him who merits it, as is illustrated with great beauty in the Jaina story of the White Lotus. This flower, the symbol of perfection, bloomed in the centre of a pool and was descried by many who made violent efforts to reach it, but they were all set fast in the mud. Then came a holy ascetic who stood motionless on the bank. “O white Lotus, fly up!” he said, and the White Lotus flew to his breast. Even among Indian sects which all abound in this kind of composition the Jainas are remarkable for their wealth of moral tales and apothegms. As is well known, they possess a parable called “The Three Merchants,” closely resembling the parable of the Talents as told by Matthew and Luke, and still more exactly agreeing with the version given in the so-called “Gospel according to the Hebrews.”

The theory of Karman suggests several modern scientific speculations such as the idea that the brain retains an ineffaceable print of every impression received by it, and again, the extreme view of heredity which makes the individual the moral and physical slave of former generations. It is a theory which has the advantage of disposing of many riddles. Different sects have slightly varying opinions about the nature of the Karman: the Jainas see in this receptacle of good and evil deeds a material, though supersensual, reality with a physical basis. Each individual consists of five parts: the visible body, the vital energy thought to consist of fire, or, as we might say, of electricity, the Karman and two subliminal selves which appear to be only latent in most persons, but by which, when called into activity, the individual can transform himself, travel to distances and do other unusual things. That each man is provided with a wraith or double is an old and widely-spread belief; but in Western lore the double does not seem to be commanded by its pair: it rather moves like an unconscious, wandering photograph of him.

The Jainas have the same word for the soul and for life: gîva, and this name they bestow on the whole range of things which they consider as living: the elements, seeds, plants, animals, men, gods. One would think that the sense of personal identity would become vague in the contemplation of voyages over so vast a sea of being, but, on the contrary, this identity is the one thing about which the individual seems perfectly sure. We have frequently such utterances as: “My own self is the doer and the undoer of misery and happiness; my own self is friend and foe.” A sort of void seems spread round the individual which even family affection, very strong though it has always been in India, is powerless to bridge. A lovely testimony to this affection, and at the same time an avowal of its unavailingness, is to be found in the one single exception to the Jaina law that the wholly virtuous man must desire nothing, not even Nirvana must he desire, much less earthly love or friendship. But he may desire to take upon him the painful illness of one of his dear kindred. It is added sadly, however, that never has such a desire been fulfilled, for one man cannot take upon him the pains of another, neither can he feel what another feels.

“Man is born alone, he dies alone, he falls alone, he rises alone. His passions, consciousness, intellect, perceptions and impressions belong to him exclusively. Another cannot save him or help him. He grows old, his hair turns white, even this dear body he must relinquish—none can stay the hour.”

Again it is written:—

“Man! thou art thy own friend, why wishest thou for a friend beyond thyself?”

The isolation of the soul with its paramount importance to its owner (that is to say, to itself) makes it obligatory to pursue its interests even at the expense of the most sacred affections. The Pagan, the Jew, the Moslem could not have been brought to yield assent to this doctrine, but it meets us continually in Catholic hagiology; for instance, St. François de Sales told Madame de Chantal that she ought, if needful, to walk into the cloister over the dead body of her son. So in a Jaina story, father, mother, wife, child, sister, brother try in vain to wrest a holy young man from his resolve to leave them. In vain the old people say: “We will do all the work if you will only come home; come, child! We will pay your debts; you need not stay longer than you like—only come home!” The quite admirable young man (who sets one furiously wishing for a stout birch rod) proceeds on his way unmoved. But it is remarked, “At such appeals the weak break down like old, worn-out oxen going up hill.” We prefer the weak.