The origin and development of the moral ideas

The performance of rites in honour of the manes causes the souls to ascend from a lower to a higher state; indeed, if no such offerings are made they do not go to heaven at all.89 Another source of happiness for the dead is their own pious conduct during their lifetime; for in the abode of bliss they are united with what they have sacrificed and given, especially reaping the reward of their gifts to priests.90 Unworthy souls, on the other hand, are kept out of this abode by Yama’s dogs, which guard the road to his kingdom.91 As to the destiny in store for those who are not admitted to heaven, the hymns have little to tell. Zimmer and others erroneously argue that a race who believe in future rewards for the good must logically believe in future punishments for the wicked.92 So far as I can see, all the traces of such a belief which are to be found in the Vedic literature are requests made to gods, or simply curses, to the effect that evil-doers may be thrown into deep and dismal pits under the earth.93 They do not imply that gods of their own accord punish wicked people after death.

In post-Vedic times ritualism grew more important still. Sometimes the gods are represented as beings indifferent to every moral distinction, and the most indelicate stories are unscrupulously related of them.94 In the Taittirîya Samhitâ of the Yajur Veda we are told that if anybody wishes to injure another, he need only say to Sûrya, one of the most important among the solar deities,95 “Smite such a one, and I will give you an offering,” and Sûrya, to get the offering, will smite him.96 Çiva, who is connected with the Vedic god Rudra, is in the Mahabharata clothed in terrible “forms,” being armed with the trident and wearing a necklace of skulls; he exacts a bloody cultus, and is the chief of the mischievous spirits and vampires that frequent places of execution and burial grounds.97 Vishnu, the other great god of Hinduism, though less fierce than Çiva, is nevertheless, on one side of his character, an inexorable god;98 and Krishna, as accepted by Vishnuism, is a crafty hero of a singularly doubtful moral character.99 In Brahmanism religion is largely replaced by magic, the rites themselves are raised to the rank of divinities, the priests become the gods of gods.100 And the point of view from which these man-gods look upon human conduct is expressed in the Satapatha Brâhmana, where it is said that fees paid to priests are like sacrifices offered to other gods—those who gratify them are placed in a state of bliss.101 Ritual observances are essential for a man’s wellbeing both in this life and in the life to come, where paradise, hell, or transmigration awaits the dead.

In the Brâhmanas immortality, or at least longevity, is promised to those who rightly understand and practise the rites of sacrifice, whilst those who are deficient in this respect depart before their natural term of life to the next world, where they are weighed in a balance and receive good or evil according to their deeds.102 To repeat sacred texts a certain number of times is also laid down as a condition of salvation,103 and the doctrine is gradually developed that a single invocation of the divine name cancels a whole life of iniquity and crime. Hence the importance attached—as early as the Bhagavad Gîtâ—to the last thought before death, and the idea of attaining complete possession of this thought by an act of suicide.104 According to the Purânas it is sufficient even in the case of the vilest criminal, when at the point of death, to pronounce by chance some syllables of the names Vishnu or Çiva in order to obtain salvation;105 and in the preface to the Prem Sâgar, which displays the religion of the Hindus at the present day, it is said that those who even ignorantly sing the praises of the greatness of Krishn Chand are rewarded with final beatitude, just as a person would acquire eternal life by partaking of the drink of immortality though he did not know what he was drinking.106 On the other hand, “according to the Hindu Scriptures, whatever a man’s life may have been, if he do not die near some holy stream, if his body is not burned on its banks, or at any rate near some water as a representative of the stream; or where this is impracticable, if some portion of

his body be not thrown into it—his spirit must wander in misery, unable to obtain the bliss for which he has done and suffered so much in life.”107 At the same time we also find a great variety of social duties inculcated in the sacred books of India—humanity even to enemies108 and slaves,109 filial piety,110 charity,111 hospitality,112 veracity;113 and in the Sûtras the doctrine appears that in order to obtain the chief fruit of sacrifice it is necessary to practise the moral virtues in addition to the rite.114 But this doctrine is singularly free from any reference to the justice of gods. In the Upanishads and Buddhistic books it is distinctly formulated in the idea of karma, according to which each act of the soul, good or bad, inevitably and naturally works out its full effect to the sweet or bitter end without the intervention of any deity to apportion the reward or punishment.115