Veda.

κλύω.

A Brahman, when speaking of his own religion, might use the word Veda. Veda means originally knowledge, but it has been restricted so as to signify exclusively what a Brahman considers as sacred and revealed knowledge. Instead of Veda we find in Sanskrit another curious word for revelation, namely, Sruti, which means hearing, from sru, to hear, the Greek Kλúw. It is most carefully defined by Hindu theologians, so as to exclude all secular knowledge, and so as to comprehend such knowledge only as is received by direct inspiration from a divine source. Even the Laws of Manu, though invested with a sacred character, are not Sruti, but only Smriti, which means remembering or tradition, not revelation; so that whenever there should be a conflict between Smriti and Sruti, Smriti is at once overruled by Sruti. All these expressions, however, refer clearly to objective religion only, to a body of doctrines placed before us for acceptance or rejection. They do not render what we mean by subjective or inward religion, an idea that seemed quite strange, and proved therefore untranslatable, to my Hindu translators.

Bhakti.

There is, however, in later Sanskrit one expression which comes very near to what we mean by subjective religion, namely bhakti, devotion and faith.

The verb bhag, bhagati, from which bhakti is derived, means first of all to divide, to distribute, to give. We read in the Rig-veda of the gods distributing gifts to men, and also of rich people giving presents to their friends and followers. The same

verb, however, particularly if used in the Âtmanepada or the middle, takes also the meaning of giving something to oneself, that is, choosing it for oneself, holding it, loving it. From meaning to choose, to love, bhag took the more special meaning of loving, venerating, and worshipping a deity. Bhakta, the participle, thus came to mean a devoted worshipper, and bhakti faith, devotion, and love.

Bhakti, in the sense of loving devotion directed towards a certain deity, does not occur in the Vedic literature, except in some of the Upanishads. It gains more and more ground, however, in the Bhagavadgîtâ, where it means the loving worship paid to Krishna, and it then comes so near to the Christian conception of faith and love that several Sanskrit scholars as well as missionaries have expressed their conviction that the idea of bhakti must have been borrowed by the Brahmans from Christianity1. It is strange that these scholars should not see that what is natural in one country is natural in another also. If fear, reverence, and worship of the Supreme God could become devotion and love with Semitic people, why not in India also? Besides, we can see in India the same development of thought as in Palestine. No doubt the gods are feared and reverenced in India, but they are also addressed as friends, and sentiments such as thou art like a father to a son,' are by no means unfrequent in the earliest portions of the Rigveda. We read in the very first hymn of the Rigveda, 'Be easy of access to us, as a father to his son.' In the Upanishads, when the different gods of the

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1 See Die Bhagavadgîtâ, übersetzt und erläutert von Dr. F. Lorinser, 1869.

H

Veda have been superseded by the Supreme Lord, the Isvara, the feelings of love and devotion are transferred to him. And at a still later time, when Krishna was worshipped as the manifestation of the Supreme Spirit, we see in the Bhagavadgîtâ every expression that human love is capable of, lavished on him.

I shall read you first an extract from the Svetâsvatara Upanishad 1:

1. Some wise men, being deluded, speak of Nature, and others of Time (as the cause of everything); but it is the greatness of God by which this Brahma-wheel (the world) is made to turn.

7. Let us know that highest great Lord of lords, the highest deity of deities, the master of masters, the highest above, as God, the Lord of the world, the adorable.

10. That only God who spontaneously covered himself, like a spider, with threads drawn from nature (pradhâna, the chief cause), may he grant us entrance into Brahman.

11. He is the one God, hidden in all things, pervading all,—the Self within all beings, watching over all works, dwelling in all beings, the witness, the perceiver, the only one, free from all qualities.

12. He is the one ruler of many who are above their acts2; he who makes the one seed manifold. The wise who perceive him within their self, to them belongs eternal happiness, not to others.

20. When man shall roll up the sky like a hide, then only will there be an end of misery, unless that God has first been known.

1 Upanishads, translated by M. M., in Sacred Books of the East, xv. 260. 2 Nishkriya, without acts, i. e. not really active, but passive; merely looking on while the organs perform their acts.

23. If these truths have been told to a highminded man, who feels the highest devotion (bhakti) for God 1, and as for God so for his Guru, then they will shine forth, then they will shine forth indeed.'

Here then we have in the Upanishads the idea of bhakti or devotion clearly pronounced, and as no one has as yet ventured to put the date of the Svetâsvatara Upanishad later than the beginning of our era, it is clearly impossible to admit here the idea of early Christian influences.

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The date of the Bhagavadgîtâ, in which Krishna is represented as the Supreme Spirit, and loving devotion for him is demanded as the only means of salvation, is more doubtful 3. Still, even if, chronologically, Christian influences were possible at the time when that poem was finished, there is no necessity for admitting them. I do not wonder at readers, unaccustomed to Oriental literature, being startled when they read in the Bhagavadgîtâ IX. 29 : 'They who worship me (bhaganti) with devotion or love (bhaktyâ), they are in me and I in them (mayi te, teshu kâpy aham) 4.'

But such coincidences between the thoughts of the New Testament and the thoughts of Eastern sages, will meet us again and again, because human

1 Sândilya (Sûtra 18) explains deva as a god, not as Îsvara, the

Lord.

2 Professor Weber in one of his earliest treatises (Indische Studien, i. 421 seq.) has indeed discovered in the name Svetâsvatara, i. e. white mule, something that may remind us of a Syro-Christian Mission, but I doubt whether he would still like to be held responsible for such an opinion. With the same right Krishna might remind us of an Ethiopian missionary.

3 See the Bhagavadgîtâ, translated by K. T. Telang, Sacred Books of the East, viii. 34, 1882.

St. John vi. 57; xvii. 23.

nature is after all the same in all countries and at all times.

A whole system of religious philosophy has been built up in later times, founded on the principle of bhakti or love, namely the Sûtras of Sândilya 1, who in his second Sûtra explains bhakti as affection fixed on God.

And at the present moment no system is more popular in Bengal than that of Kaitanya. Kaitanya was born in 1486, and he did much to popularize and humanize the old Brahmanic doctrines 2. With him bhakti or love became the foundation of everything, and different steps are laid down through which a worshipper may reach the highest perfection. The exoteric steps consist in discipline, (1) social discipline (svadharmâkarana); (2) discipline of the intellect and a surrender of all to Krishna (Krishnakarmârpana); (3) mendicity (svadharmatyâga); (4) philosophic culture (gñânamisrâ bhakti); (5) simplicity of the heart (gñânasûnyabhakti); and (6) dispassion (sântabhâva).

Then follow the higher or esoteric steps, viz. loving devotion (premabhakti), consisting in humility (dâsya), friendship (sâkhya), and tenderness (vâtsalya); and, as the crowning step, sweetness and love (madhurabhâva, kântabhâva), represented by the highest and purest love between husband and wife.

Bhakti, therefore, may be used as an equivalent of religion in the sense of devotion and love, but it is, comparatively speaking, a modern word in Sanskrit.

1 Edited by Ballantyne in the Bibliotheca Indica, 1861, and translated by Prof. Cowell in the same collection, No. 409.

2 See Yogendra Chandra Ghosh, Chaitanya's Ethics, Calcutta, 1884; A. de Gubernatis, Giornale della Società Asiat. Italiana, 1888, p. 116; and Kaitanya-kandrodaya, ed. Rajendralal Mitra, Bibl. Indica.