Part 16

Who was the first anchorite? Perhaps in very early states of society a few individuals got lost in the mountain or forest, where they lived on fruits and nuts, and then, after a long time, some of them were re-discovered, and, because they seemed so strange and mysterious after their long seclusion, they were credited with supernatural gifts. Animals do not go away alone except in the rare case of being seized with mania, or in the universal case of feeling the approach of death. The origin of hermits cannot, therefore, be explained by analogy with animals.

One can conceive that a hermit’s life may have great attractions, but scarcely that of a Jaina hermit, who is expected to employ his leisure in the most painful mortification of the flesh. Though other-worldly advantages form the great object which spurs men to choose such a lot we must not forget that this sort of life is held to confer powers which are, by no means, other-worldly. By it the Brahman becomes superior to caste, being incapable of pollution: if he wished he could drink after the most miserable Western had touched the cup.

The theory of asceticism is very much alike everywhere, and the extraordinary faculties claimed by the Jainas for their holy men are the portion, more or less, of the Indian holy man in general. These faculties may be briefly described as an abnormal development of the subliminal self, but that is not an adequate account of the vastness of their range. One feels often inclined to ask—without granting revelation or, indeed, the existence of an omniscient being who could give it—how does the Buddhist or Jaina acquire perfect certainty that he knows all about his own and man’s destiny? The question of authority is of primary importance in all religions: in what way does Buddhist or Jaina solve it? It is evident that scepticism based on this very ground does sometimes harass the soul of the Jaina novice: “The weak,” we are told, “when bitten by a snarling dog or annoyed by flies and gnats, will begin to say: ‘I have not seen the next world, all may end with death.’” It startles one to hear from the mouth of the devil’s advocate in an ancient Eastern homily a cry so modern, so Western:—

“Death means heaven, he longs to receive it, But what shall I do if I don’t believe it?”

Footnote 5:

“Verses written in India,” p. 13.

Sir Alfred Lyall’s questioner found none to answer him, but the Jaina has an answer which, if accepted, must prove entirely satisfactory. The superlatively virtuous individual possesses an effortless certainty about the secrets of life. In a state superinduced by means which, though arduous, are at the disposal of all, the soul can view itself, read its history, past, present and to come, know the souls of others, remember what happened in former births, understand the heavenly bodies and the universe. Here is nothing miraculous: a veil is lifted, and hidden things become plain. It is as if a man who had cataract in both eyes underwent a successful operation—after which he sees.

The supersensual perception of Jaina, or Joghi, or Guru is much akin to the “infused knowledge” ascribed to the saints of the Thebaid. He knows—because he knows. By the devout, information derived from these persons is accepted as readily as we should accept information about radium from a qualified scientific man. The most confident of all that the information is true is he who gives it: fraud must be dismissed finally as the key to any such phenomena.

The Indian mind has grasped a great idea in referring what we call spirit to fixed laws no less than what we call matter. But in spirit it sees a force infinitely exceeding the force of matter. “The holy monk,” say the Jaina scriptures, “might reduce millions to ashes by the fire of his wrath.” Besides such tremendous powers as these he has all the minor accomplishments of the spiritualist or hypnotist: thought-reading, levitation, clairvoyance, &c., and he can always tame wild beasts. He is under strict obligations to use his powers with discretion. It is not right to make profit out of them: that man is anathema who lives by divination from dreams, diagrams, sticks, bodily changes, the cries of animals. The Jainas denounce magic not less strongly than the other religious teachers of the East. This is interesting because the reasons are lacking which are commonly held to explain the world-wide prejudice against magic: the Jainas do not attribute it to the agency of evil spirits, nor can their dislike of it be attributed to the professional jealousy of priests in regard to rival thaumaturgists. For the Jaina the power of magic-working lies in every one, and those who have developed their other spiritual powers have also this one at their command, but to avail themselves of it is an enormous sin. There is a weird story showing what infamies a magic-working “ascetic” may perpetrate. A monk carried off, by magical arts, all the women he met, till the king of that country trapped him in a hollow tree and had him put to death. The women were set free and returned to their husbands, except one, who refused to go back because she had fallen desperately in love with her seducer. A very wise man suggested that the monk’s bones should be pounded and mixed with milk, and then given to the woman to drink: this was done and she was cured of her passion.

Over the whole East, the report that some one was working miracles, even the most beneficent, raised both suspicion and jealousy. This was why secrecy was recommended about all such acts.

How far the belief in the extraordinary gifts of the ascetic rests on hallucination, and how far men in an artificially created abnormal condition can do things of which hypnotic manifestations are but the outer edge, it is not my purpose to inquire. The Jaina monks are said sometimes to fast for four days, and no doubt the stimulus of starvation (especially when the brain has not been weakened by long disease), produces an ecstatic state which men have everywhere supposed to indicate religious perfection. This may be observed even in birds, which from some difficulty in swallowing, die of starvation: I had a canary that sang for days before it died a sweet incessant song, the like of which I never heard: it seemed not earthly.

The best side in Eastern religions is not their thaumaturgy but the steady ethical tendency which pushes itself up out of the jungle of extravagance and self-delusion. Though we may not have much sympathy with the profession of a “houseless” saint, it is impossible to deny the moral elevation of such a picture of him as is drawn in the Jaina conversion story of “The True Sacrifice.” A holy man, born in the highest Brahmanical caste, but who had found wisdom in Jaina vows, went on a long journey and walked and walked till he came to Benares, where he found a very learned Brahman who was deeply versed in astronomy and in the Vedas. When the “Houseless” arrived, the priest was about to offer up sacrifice, and perhaps because he did not wish to be disturbed at such a moment, he told him rudely to go away—he would have no beggars there. The holy man was not angry; he had not come to extort food or water, but from the pure desire to save souls. He quietly told the priest that he was ignorant of the essence of the Vedas, of the true meaning of sacrifice, of the government of the heavenly bodies. There must have been a peculiar effluence of sanctity flowing from the “Houseless” as the priest took his rebukes with meekness, and merely asked for enlightenment. Then the seer delivered his message. It is not the tonsure that makes the priest or repetition of the sacred syllable om that makes the saint. It is not by dwelling in woods or by wearing clothes of bark or grass that salvation may be reached. Equanimity, chastity, knowledge, and penance are the ways to holiness. His actions alone colour a man’s soul: as his works are, so is he. Persuaded of the truth, the priest addressed the “Houseless” as the truest of sacrificers, the most learned of all who know the Vedas, the inspired exponent of Brahmanhood, and begged him to accept his alms. But the mendicant refused: he only conjured the priest out of pity for his own soul to join the order of the “Houseless.” After having been rightly schooled in Jaina precepts, the Brahman followed his advice, and in due time he became a very great saint like his instructor.

As the Jaina scriptures are in effect a manual of discipline for monks, it is natural that they should be severe on womankind. Not that a woman’s soul is worth less than a man’s or, rather, since spirit is sexless, the distinction does not exist. A woman may be as good a saint as a man; a nun may be as meritorious as a monk. The identity of mysticism independent of creed was never more apparent than in the beautiful saying of a Jaina nun: “As a bird dislikes the cage, so do I dislike the world,” which might have been uttered by any of the self-consumed spirits of the Latin Church from St. Teresa downwards. I have never come across an allusion to being born again as a woman as a punishment. But though the fullest potentiality of merit is allowed to woman in the abstract, the Eternal Feminine is looked upon in the concrete as man’s worst snare. “Women are the greatest temptation in the world.” The Jaina books are Counsels of Perfection and not a Decalogue framed for common humanity: they give one the idea of being intended for preternaturally good people, and never more so than in the manner in which they treat the dreadful snares and temptations for which women are answerable: instead of a Venusberg, we are shown—the domestic hearth! The story in question might be called “The Woes of the Model Husband!” A girl who vowed that she would do anything rather than be parted from the dear object of her affections, has no sooner settled the matter once for all by marriage than she begins to scold and trample on the poor man’s head. Her spouse is sent on a thousand errands, not one moment can he call his own. Countless are the lady’s wants and her commands keep pace with them: “Do look for the bodkin; go and get some fruit; bring wood to cook the vegetables; why don’t you come and rub my back instead of standing there doing nothing? Are my clothes all right? Where is the scent-bottle? I want the hair-dresser. Where is my basket to put my things in? And my trinkets? There, I want my shoes and my umbrella. Bring me my comb and the ribbon to tie up my hair. Get the looking-glass and a tooth-brush. I must have a needle and thread. You really ought to look after the stores, the rainy season will be here in no time.” These and many more are the young wife’s behests, the appalling list of which might well intimidate those about to marry, but there is worse to come. When “the joy of their lives, the crown of their wedded bliss” arrives in the shape of a baby, it is the unfortunate husband who is set to mind it: he has to get up in the night to sing lullabies to it “just as if he were a nurserymaid,” and ashamed though he is of such a humiliation, he is actually put to wash the baby-linen! “All this has been done by many men who for the sake of pleasure have stooped so low; they become the equals of slaves, animals, beasts of burden, mere nobodies.” Would not most readers take this for a quotation from one of Ibsen’s plays rather than from a sacred volume which was composed a considerable time before the beginning of our era?

The Indian pessimist is withheld from suicide by the dread of a worse existence beyond the pyre. He is the coward of conscience to a much greater extent than the weary Occidental, because his sense of the unseen is so much stronger. In the Jaina system, however, suicide is permitted under certain circumstances. After twelve years of rigorous penance a man is allowed the supreme favour of “a religious death”—in other words, he may commit suicide by starvation. This is called Itvara. The civilised Indian does not seem to have the power of dying when he pleases without the assistance of starvation which is possessed by some of the higher savage races.

The soul may be re-born in any earthly form from the lowest to the highest, but there are other possibilities before it when it leaves its mortal coil. Those who are very bad, too bad to disgrace the earth again—above all, the cruel—are consigned to an Inferno more awful than Dante’s, though not without points of striking resemblance to it. The very good who abounded in charity and in truth, but who yet lived in the world the life of the world, become gods, glorified beings enjoying a great measure of happiness and power, but not eternal. Far beyond the joys of this heaven, which are still thinkable, is the unthinkable bliss of the Perfect, of the Conquerors, of the Changeless. The human mind could not adjust the idea of evolution more scientifically to the soul’s destiny.

It is unnecessary to say that the number who become even gods is very small. A great deal is achieved if a man is simply born again as a man, for though Jaina and Buddhist thinks that man’s lot is wretched (or, at least that it ought to be when we consider its inherent evils), yet it must be distinctly remembered that he thinks the life of beasts far more wretched. Leopardi’s “Song of the Nomadic Shepherd in Asia,” in which he makes the world-weary shepherd envy the fate of his sheep, is steeped in Western not in Eastern pessimism: only in the last lines, which really contradict the rest, we find the true Eastern note:—

“Perchance in every form That Nature may on everything bestow The day of birth brings everlasting woe.”

The Indian seems never to be struck by what to us seems (perhaps in error, but I hope not) the inconscient joy of creatures, nor yet that of children. He is constantly sure that all creation groaneth and travaileth. Nothing is young in Asia, all is very old. Every one is tired. In our minds thoughtless joy is connected with innocency, and in these Indian creeds there is no innocency as there is no effortless All-Good. Perfection is the result of labour. No other religious teacher spoke of little children as Christ did—Christ, whose incomprehensible followers were one day to consign the larger part of them, as a favour, “to the easiest room in hell.” Ardently as children are desired and lovingly as they are treated in the East, something essential to the charm of childhood eludes the Oriental perception of it.

In the sacred books of those Indian communities which concern themselves most about animals, they are very rarely shown in an attractive light. The horse, almost alone, is spoken of with genuine admiration; for instance, there is this simile: “As the trained Kambôga steed whom no noise frightens, exceeds all other horses in speed, so a very learned monk is superior to all others.” An elephant is extolled for having knelt down before a holy recluse though only newly tamed, and we hear that Mahavira’s words were understood by all animals. Folk-lore tells much that scriptures do not tell, and if we had a collection of Jaina folk-lore we should find, no doubt, records of charming friendships between beasts and saints, but in the Jaina sacred books pity, not love, is the feeling shown towards animals.

BUDDHA PACIFYING AN INTOXICATED ELEPHANT. India Museum.]

As a rule, Indian philosophical writers shirk the question of how far the soul which was and may be again a man’s retains its consciousness during its residence in lower forms. Probably the answer, were it given, would be: “Not very far,” but the higher animals are credited with a fuller share of reflection than in the West. Hence it is preferable to assume the shape of one of the higher than of one of the lower organisms, but still it is far better to be re-born as the lowest of men than as the highest of animals.

If it is something to be re-born as a man at all, it is a great deal to be re-born as a fortunate man, healthy, wealthy, and surrounded by troops of friends: at least, to the simple-minded such a prospect must appear to hold out a very splendid hope. It is remarkable what good care the framers of the intensely ascetic Jaina faith took of people who could not pretend to walk in the path of the elect. The mere “householder” (so called to distinguish him from the more admirable “Houseless”) has the promise of an ample recompense if he is only truthful, and humane, and liberal in alms-giving and temple-building. He may win very great promotion on earth or even a place in the Jaina heaven, the abode of light, where happy beings live long and enjoy great power and energy, and never grow old. Such a state agrees with the logical evolution of a virtuous but still this-worldly man. Could he aspire sincerely to a more spiritual state, and can the soul outsoar its own aspirations? The Jaina heaven is not eternal, but does every one wish for eternity? Most people wish for ten or fifteen years of tolerable freedom from care on this side of the grave. If they knew for certain that they were going to enjoy one thousand years of heaven, they would not think much of what would happen at the end of that time.

There remain the pure and separated spirits who in this present life have climbed beyond the plane of mortality. They are in the world, not of it, and they, indeed, “have a glimpse of incomprehensibles and thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch.” For these, the Jaina, like the Buddhist, keeps Nirvana.

The extreme reticence of Buddha and even of Buddhist commentators on the inner significance of this word—meaning literally “liberation”—is not observed by the Jainas, though it must not be inferred that there was any doctrinal difference of it in the view taken by the two sects. The Jainas show a great anxiety to tell what Nirvana is; if they fail it is because it baffles all description. They repudiate the idea that it signified annihilation, but admit that the subject oversteps the bounds of the thinkable. “The liberated soul perceives and knows, but there is no analogy by which to describe it—without body, re-birth, sex, dimensions.” We think of the wonderful lines in the Helena of Euripides:—

“... the mind Of the dead lives not, but immortal sense When to immortal ether gone, possesses;”

lines which, like not a few others in Euripides, seem to reflect a light not cast from Grecian skies.

Like every stage in the history of the life-soul (giva) Nirvana is governed by an immutable law of evolution. When all the dross is eliminated only pure spirit is left: a distilled essence not only indestructible, for spirit is always indestructible, but also changeless. All the rest dies, which means that it changes, that it is re-born: this part can die no more, and hence can be born no more. It has gained the liberty of which the soul goes seeking in the Dantesque sense. It has gained safety, rest, peace.

How familiar the words sound! Here am I in Asia, and I could dream myself back under the roof of the village church where generations of simple folk had sought a rest-cure for their minds: where I, too, first listened to those words safety, rest, peace, with the strange home-sickness they awaken in young children or in the very old who have preserved their childhood’s faith. There are words that, by collecting round them inarticulate longings and indefinite associations, finally leave the order of language and enter that of music; they evoke an emotion, not an idea. The emotions which sway the human heart are few, and they are very much alike. The self-same word-music transports the English child to the happy land, far, far away, and the Indian mystic to Nirvana.