I. THE HERETICS
Sceptics—Nihilists—Sophists—Atheists—Materialists—Religions without a god
THAT there were doubters, even in the days of the Upanishads, appears from the Upanishads themselves. Sometimes the sages ridiculed the priests, as when the Chandogya Upanishad likens the orthodox clergy of the time to a procession of dogs each holding the tail of its predecessor, and saying, piously, “Om, let us eat; Om, let us drink.”1 The Swasanved Upanishad announces that there is no god, no heaven, no hell, no reincarnation, no world; that the Vedas and Upanishads are the work of conceited fools; that ideas are illusions, and all words untrue; that people deluded by flowery speech cling to gods and temples and “holy men,” though in reality there is no difference between Vishnu and a dog.2 And the story is told of Virocana, who lived as a pupil for thirty-two years with the great god Prajapati Himself, received much instruction about “the Self which is free from evil, ageless, deathless, sorrowless, hungerless, thirstless, whose desire is the Real,” and then suddenly returned to earth and preached this highly scandalizing doctrine: “One’s self is to be made happy here on earth. One’s self is to be waited upon. He who makes himself happy here on earth, who waits upon himself, obtains both worlds, this world and the next.”3 Perhaps the good Brahmans who have preserved the history of their country have deceived us a little about the unanimity of Hindu mysticism and piety.
Indeed, as scholarship unearths some of the less respectable figures in Indian philosophy before Buddha, a picture takes form in which, along with saints meditating on Brahman, we find a variety of persons who despised all priests, doubted all gods, and bore without trepidition the name ofNastiks, No-sayers, Nihilists. Sangaya, the agnostic, would neither admit nor deny life after death; he questioned the possibility of knowledge, and limited philosophy to the pursuit of peace. Purana Kashyapa refused to accept moral distinctions, and taught that the soul is a passive slave to chance. Maskarin Gosala held that fate determines everything, regardless of the merits of men. Ajita Kasakambalin reduced man to earth, water, fire and wind, and said: “Fools and wise alike, on the dissolution of the body, are cut off, annihilated, and after death they are not.”4 The author of the Ramayana draws a typical sceptic in Jabali, who ridicules Rama for rejecting a kingdom in order to keep a vow.
Jabali, a learned Brahman and a Sophist skilled in word,
Questioned Faith and Law and Duty, spake to young Ayodhya’s lord:
“Wherefore, Rama, idle maxims cloud thy heart and warp thy mind,
Maxims which mislead the simple and the thoughtless humankind? . . .
Ah, I weep for erring mortals who, on erring duty bent,
Sacrifice this dear enjoyment till their barren life is spent,
Who to Gods and to the Fathers vainly still their offerings make.
Waste of food! for God nor Father doth our pious homage take!
And the food by one partaken, can it nourish other men?
Food bestowed upon a Brahman, can it serve our Fathers then?
Crafty priests have forged these maxims, and with selfish objects say,
“Make thy gifts and do thy penance, leave thy worldly wealth, and pray!”
There is no hereafter, Rama, vain the hope and creed of men;
Seek the pleasures of the present, spurn illusions poor and vain.5
When Buddha grew to manhood he found the halls, the streets, the very woods of northern India ringing with philosophic disputation, mostly of an atheistic and materialistic trend. The later Upanishads and the oldest Buddhist books are full of references to these heretics.6 A large class of traveling Sophists—the Paribbajaka, or Wanderers—spent the better part of every year in passing from locality to locality, seeking pupils, or antagonists, in philosophy. Some of them taught logic as the art of proving anything, and earned for themselves the titles of “Hair-splitters” and “Eelwrigglers”; others demonstrated the non-existence of God, and the inexpediency of virtue. Large audiences gathered to hear such lectures and debates; great halls were built to accommodate them; and sometimes princes offered rewards for those who should emerge victorious from these intellectual jousts.7 It was an age of amazingly free thought, and of a thousand experiments in philosophy.
Not much has come down to us from these sceptics, and their memory has been preserved almost exclusively through the diatribes of their enemies.8 The oldest name among them is Brihaspati, but his nihilistic Sutras have perished, and all that remains of him is a poem denouncing the priests in language free from all metaphysical obscurity:
No heaven exists, no final liberation,
No soul, no other world, no rites of caste. . . .
The triple Veda, triple self-command,
And all the dust and ashes of repentance—
These yield a means of livelihood for men
Devoid of intellect and manliness. . . .
How can this body when reduced to dust
Revisit earth? And if a ghost can pass
To other worlds, why does not strong affection
For those he leaves behind attract him back?
The costly rites enjoined for those who die
Are but a means of livelihood devised
By sacerdotal cunning—nothing more. . . .
While life endures let life be spent in ease
And merriment; let a man borrow money
From all his friends, and feast on melted butter.9
Out of the aphorisms of Brihaspati came a whole school of Hindu materialists, named, after one of them, Charvakas. They laughed at the notion that the Vedas were divinely revealed truth; truth, they argued, can never be known, except through the senses. Even reason is not to be trusted, for every inference depends for its validity not only upon accurate observation and correct reasoning, but also upon the assumption that the future will behave like the past; and of this, as Hume was to say, there can be no certainty.10What is not perceived by the senses, said the Charvakas, does not exist; therefore the soul is a delusion, and Atman is humbug. We do not observe, in experience or history, any interposition of supernatural forces in the world. All phenomena are natural; only simpletons trace them to demons or gods.11 Matter is the one reality; the body is a combination of atoms;12 the mind is merely matter thinking; the body, not the soul, feels, sees, hears, thinks.13 “Who has seen the soul existing in a state separate from the body?” There is no immortality, no rebirth. Religion is an aberration, a disease, or a chicanery; the hypothesis of a god is useless for explaining or understanding the world. Men think religion necessary only because, being accustomed to it, they feel a sense of loss, and an uncomfortable void, when the growth of knowledge destroys this faith.14 Morality, too, is natural; it is a social convention and convenience, not a divine command. Nature is indifferent to good and bad, virtue and vice, and lets the sun shine indiscriminately upon knaves and saints; if nature has any ethical quality at all it is that of transcendent immorality. There is no need to control instinct and passion, for these are the instructions of nature to men. Virtue is a mistake; the purpose of life is living, and the only wisdom is happiness.15
This revolutionary philosophy of the Charvakas put an end to the age of the Vedas and the Upanishads. It weakened the hold of the Brahmans on the mind of India, and left in Hindu society a vacuum which almost compelled the growth of a new religion. But the materialists had done their work so thoroughly that both of the new religions which arose to replace the old Vedic faith were, anomalous though it may sound, atheistic religions, devotions without a god. Both belonged to the Nastika or Nihilistic movement; and both were originated not by the Brahman priests but by members of the Kshatriya warrior caste, in a reaction against sacerdotal ceremonialism and theology. With the coming of Jainism and Buddhism a new epoch began in the history of India.