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the public and private interests of life. The servants of the deities became the rulers of the worshippers. Their authority, whether equal or unequal among themselves, was one they claimed as their unalienable right; and the government they established was founded on the impotency and the despair of the inferior races of their fellow-beings.

2

The terror arising from a want of knowledge, and increased by a want of vigor amongst mankind, was the foundation of the hierocracy in India,' or more particularly in the plain of the Ganges. It happened there, as in many other places, that the characteristics of nature affected to a great degree the development of man. Bound in by mountain ranges and composed of vast proportions, the land was shaped out for impressions of wonder, magnitude, and repose. A bright and ardent climate, however, while it enervated the hardier qualities, excited the imagination towards infinity, and filled the mind with yearnings to know the powers by which the world was created, and the wills by which it was ruled. The earliest generations were content to hunt through the forest, or drive their herds from field to field; but their descendants were soon inspired by the glowing colors on the ground, the murmuring winds among the trees, or the lofty forms of the mountains, to break through chaotic barbarism.

1 Thus Fr. Schlegel says we may seek the origin of all paganism in India. Philos. of Hist., Lect. V. 2 "The holy land of Menu and the Puranas," says Professor Wil

son, in his Preface to the Vishnu Purana (p. lxvii.), "lies between the Drishadwati and Saraswati rivers, the Caggar and Sarsooty of our barbarous maps."

These longings after a different manner of life were far from being universal; they stole into a few hearts only, and when these were made hopeful, there remained a larger number of the untouched and the hopeless. It was natural that the first to feel the influence should be the first to rule the men around them; though the habits of either class continued to be unformed and their capacities unexercised. It was scarcely necessary to build more than a hut beneath such summer heavens, or cultivate more than a patch of soil upon such fertile lands as belonged to the people of the Ganges. None of the graver cares for sustenance or shelter hindered their reveries in the world of speculation, to which they seemed to transfer the duties of the world wherein they indolently breathed. During this progress, however, from sensibility to contemplation and abstraction, the changes in the history of India may be said to have all occurred. Under the first impulses, the priests3 rose up, and led the rest to conquests, after which the first rude laws were framed. Under the last, the meditations and the visions of the same priests, repeated continually, and continually enlarged, became the histories, the legal codes, and the books of faith, on which the past, the present, and

3 And here one word of caution becomes necessary, lest the reader be disposed to compare the ancient priesthoods, so often to be mentioned in this history, with those of modern times. The Priest of Antiquity will be understood by remembering the

Priest of the Middle Ages. He was not merely the minister of the idol or the deity, but a philosopher, a lawgiver, a prophet, besides being often the business or the professional man, and the soldier.

the future of their race alike depended. The Hindoo writings, themselves, confessed that "the universe was in obscurity, like a stream unseen."4 Herein, nevertheless, flowed forth the gathering waters of civilization; and though the Brahmins would have opened channels to their own lands and to their own. fountains alone, many a rivulet would trickle, unperceived, to freshen the earth and its inhabitants, at least through India.

The progress from the earlier and more barbarous period to an improved and settled system was so rapid, that both its origin and its course are undistinguishable. India was a very distant country, as Strabo wrote, even from his own land; and we cannot now clearly discover any relations between it and other countries until the time of the Persian empire.

4" L'état d'enveloppement de toutes les parties de la nature humaine, tel est le caractère de l'Orient." This is one of Cousin's sweeping conclusions; but a true one. Hist. Phil., Leç. II. It is singular how human nature was so well wrapped up in India, that it has been kept in much the same state for thousands of years. The English Oriental scholars study ancient and modern India together, because the two are so nearly identical.

5 'Atwτáτw éσtí. And, as the old geographer adds, Kaì où Toλλoi Tŵv ἡμέτερων κατώπτευσαν αὐτήν, "And not many of our people have ever seen it." XV. 1. § 2.

6 Herodotus, whose account is the earliest of any stranger's, is sup3

VOL. I.

posed to have derived his information from an expedition of Darius Hystaspes, about A. C. 509. Later reports resulted from the invasion of the great Alexander, which was, however, "a matter of very trifling interest" to the people of India. Prof. Wilson's note to Mill's Hist. of India, Vol. I. p. 169.

Herodotus, whose name will often appear in these pages, was born A. C. 484, and died about 76-80 years afterwards. He wrote the History of the Persian War; but introduced a variety of the most instructive and entertaining episodes concerning the other nations with whom his countrymen had any intercourse, or of whom they had any knowledge.

The people, certainly very numerous, were probably of several different races, which had joined one another at various periods, in a common career of migration and conquest. At the time when their peculiar institutions seem to have been completely established, the country was divided into many small states, each nominally governed by its own prince, though all were, in fact, united in subjection to the priests of their common religion. Vague traditions speak of long wars and great empires, as if the civilization, afterwards formed, had struggled through force so violent and evil so real, that we may rejoice to know no more about them than we do. Further accounts of desperate strife among the higher classes of the people, as they were finally divided, bear witness that the power of the priests was not confirmed until they had destroyed the strength of the race they were determined to rule. There is really very little to add to this simple sketch of ancient Indian history; neither dates nor names being of any avail,

7 Herodotus, Hist., III. 94.

8 It is not here necessary to enter upon the troubled inquiry concerning the Communities, the municipal institutions of India. Whatever their origin may have been, the superintendents, as they were styled, of every large town or city, as well as the lords and officers of more extensive districts, were all appointed by the king, undoubtedly with the advice and consent of his Brahmin counsellors. (See p. 25.) Menu, Ordinances, translated by Sir William Jones, and published with his

Works, Ch. VII. 114 et seq., 121. See Elphinstone's India, Book II. ch. 2; Schlosser's Univ. Hist. of Antiquity, Ch. II. § 2; Heeren's Researches, etc., upon India, Sect. II.; and Mill's Hist., Book II. ch. 3. 9 The early heroes of India, canonized, as it were, in the poetry and mythology of the Brahmins, are all represented as having defended the priests against the warriors in the early wars. See the Vishnu Purana, translated by Prof. Wilson, Book IV.

when they stand uncertain and alone. But the materials for describing the laws and the institutions of India are so abundant, that the only difficulty in the present chapter will be to use them sparingly.

A legend concerning the creation of mankind informed the people of India how the god Brahma received from the Supreme Being the power to create the universe and its inhabitants, and how from his head he formed the Brahmins, from his arms the Chatriyas, from his thighs the Vaisyas, and from his feet the Sudras.10 A longer story was, that the Brahmin was made to study, in utter solitude, the Vedas, or books of divine wisdom, already composed for his instruction. But as he found himself in need of defence against the violence of the wild beasts with which the world was overrun, the Chatriya was created to defend the Brahmin's retirement. Both, now, were in want of food, and the Vaisya was added to the company, that the earth might be made to yield the fruits which the others had no time to seek for themselves. Another laborer, still, being required to serve the three in more menial occupations, the Sudra was then formed out of Brahma's foot, in order that he might be fit to bear the toil and the degradation of servitude." No mere theory 12 would be

10 Menu, I. 31. The names of the castes are very variously writ

ten.

11 Creuzer, Religions de l'Antiquité, trad. Franç., I. p. 227. Each of these primeval men was furnished with a wife. Cf. the ac

count in the Vishnu Purana, Book I. ch. 6.

12 The common theory traces the castes to the different religious ceremonies and duties which originated amongst families. See Schlegel's Phil. Hist., Lect. IV.

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