[230] The religion of India as manifested to us in literary history has been a constant process of the extension of the influence of the Brahmanical creed over tribes, whether Aryan or (more often) non-Aryan, who lay outside its first sphere of control. Brahmanism has, on the whole, proved itself the most tolerant and comprehensive of religions and has constantly known how to absorb within its fold lower forms of faith. In doing so it has received great assistance from the pantheistic philosophy which has allowed many of its ablest supporters to look with understanding and sympathy, or at least with tolerance, upon practices which, save to a pantheist, would seem hopelessly out of harmony with the Divine. Thus the doctrine of Devi as the female side of Siva has enabled Brahmanism to accept as part of its creed the wide-spread worship of Mother Earth, which is no real component of the earlier Vedic faith; the Vaisnava can regard as forms of Visnu even such unorthodox persons as the Buddha himself. Of course, in thus incorporating lower religions Brahmanism has done much to transform them and has greatly affected the social practices of the tribes which had become Hinduized, but it is still easy to find among these peoples stages of the earliest forms of primitive religion, much less developed than any type recorded for us in the Vedic texts. In the result the pantheon of Hinduism is a strange and remarkable thing: on the one hand, there are the great gods Visnu and Siva with their attendants and assistants, who are in one aspect regarded as nothing more than forms of the Absolute and subjects of a refined philosophy, but who at the same time [231] are wide enough in character to cover deities of the most primitive savagery. On the other hand, we have innumerable petty deities (deotas), godlings as contrasted with real gods, whose close connexion with nature is obvious and who belong to a very primitive stratum of religion. Many of these minor deities represent the same physical facts as the great Vedic gods, but the mythology of these divinities has perished, and folk-lore makes a poor substitute.
During this period Vaisnavism passes through an important period of deepening of the religious interest as a result of the reforms of Ramanuja in the twelfth century and those of Ramananda in the fourteenth, which emphasized the essence of faith which had been a vital feature of the worship of Visnu, but which now assumed a more marked character, perhaps under Christian influence from the Syrian church in South India (1). The worship of Rama as the perfect hero has been finally established by the Ramcaritmanas of Tulasi Das (1532-1623 A.D.); but, on the other hand, the cult of Krsna on its erotic side has been developed by such sects as the Radha Vallabhis, who have sometimes brought the worship into as little repute as the excesses of the votaries of the saktis of Siva. The worship of these saktis, the personifications of the female aspect of Siva's nature, is the chief development of the Saivite cult, and it forms the subject of the new literary species which comes into prominence after the tenth century of the Christian era, the Tantric text-books, of which the greater part are modern, but which doubtless contain older material. The worship which they seek to treat as philosophy is in itself made up of very primitive rites, much of it seemingly at the best fertility magic, but the philosophic guise into which these books seek to throw it is not proved to be early. While the cult of Siva, as of Visnu, has continued to extend by the process of amalgamating with itself the deities of ruder faiths, that of the sakti has grown to such a degree as to place the god in the inferior position, the Absolute now being conceived in the Tantras as essentially [232] feminine in character, a curious overthrowing of the older Indian religion, which, on the whole, gives very little worship to the female deities. Brahma has of course disappeared more and more from popular worship and at the present day has but two shrines dedicated to him in the whole of India.
Of the celestial deities the sun, Surya or Suraj Narayan, still has votaries and is worshipped at many famous sun temples. The Emperor Akbar endeavoured to introduce a new character into his cult, providing that he should be adored four times a day, at morning, noon, evening, and midnight, but this exotic worship naturally did not establish itself. There is a Saura sect which has its headquarters in Oudh, while the Nimbarak sect worships the sun in a nim-tree (Azidirachta indica) in memory of the condescension of the luminary who, after the time of setting, came down upon such a tree in order to afford light for an ascetic to enjoy the meal to which he had been invited, but which his rule of life forbade him to eat in the night-time. In the villages of North India the villagers refrain from salt on Sundays and bow to the sun as they leave their dwellings in the morning, while the more learned repeat the famous Gayatri in his honour. In comparison with the sun the moon has little worship, and that usually in connexion with the sun. Yet it serves of course to suggest stories to account for the marks on its surface, which are generally explained as a hare and attributed to the punishment inflicted on the moon for some sin; its different phases are used to guide operations of agriculture; and there are many superstitions regarding lucky and unlucky days. The demon Rahu, whose function it is to eclipse the sun and moon, and Ketu, representing his tail, once turned into constellations, have fallen on evil days: the latter is a demon of disease, and the former is the divinity of two menial tribes in the eastern districts of the North-Western Provinces, whose worship consists in a fire-offering at which the priest walks through the fire, this ceremony being clearly a device to secure abundance of sunlight and prosperity [233] for the crops. A further degradation reduces Rahu to the ghost of a leader of the Dusadh tribe; while the Ghasiyas of Mirzapur hold that the sun and moon once borrowed money from a Dom but did not pay back, whence a Dom occasionally devours these two heavenly bodies. Eclipses are, as everywhere, of bad omen and are counteracted by various ceremonials, including the beating of brass pans by women to drive Rahu from his prey.
Of the minor luminaries of the sky popular religion knows for purposes of worship practically only the Navagrahas ("the Nine Seizers"): the sun and moon, Rahu and Ketu, regarded as the ascending and descending nodes, and the five planets. The other signs of the zodiac and the Naksatras have some astrological interest, but are not objects of worship, though in Upper India it is still the popular view that the stars are shepherded as kine by the moon. The bright and picturesque figures of Usas and the Asvins have passed away without leaving a trace.
Indra still exists, but has ceased to be anything but a name, a god who lives in a heaven of his own, surrounded by his Apsarases as of old; no real worship is accorded to him. As a rain-god he is replaced in Benares by Dalbhyesvara, who must be carefully arrayed to prevent disturbance of the seasons. Prayer is no longer addressed to Indra to procure rain, which is now obtained by many magic rites or by offerings made to the sun or to Devi, although here and there we find traces of the old place of Indra as the god of rain par excellence. The whirlwind and the hail once associated with the gods are now produced by demons who are to be propitiated. Aerolites, however, are still divine, and one which fell in 1880 at Sitamarhi in Bengal is worshipped as Adbhut Nath ("Marvellous Lord").
Though the fire is no longer the great deity that it was in the early Vedic period, it is still produced in the old-fashioned way from the fire-sticks by certain Brahmans, and Agnihotri Brahmans are exceedingly careful to preserve the sacred flame. In [234] imitation of the Hindu fire-cult the Muhammadans of Gorakhpur have maintained for over a century a sacred fire unquenched, and its ashes are, like those of the fire of Indian Yogis, believed to have magic qualities. Volcanic fire is also revered, but the lightning is now attributed to demoniac agency. The earth, however, has a fuller share of worship than in the earlier faith: she is essentially "the Mother who Supports " (Dharti Mai), and her sanctity is so great that the dying are laid upon her, as are women at child-birth. The dust of the earth has powerful curative properties. Hindu cooking-vessels are regularly cleansed in this way, and in the crisis of the engagement the Hindu troopers at the battle of Kampti took dust from their grooms and cast it over their heads, thus doubtless gaining courage from close contact with Mother Earth. Among many tribes dust is also flung upon the dead. The worship of the earth is very marked among the Dravidian tribes and is beyond question most primitive in character.
Of the rivers the most holy is Ganga Mai ("Mother Ganges"), to whom temples have been raised all along the bank of the stream. Her water is holy and is in great demand as a viaticum, as pure for use in sacrifice, and as valuable for stringent oaths. The full efficacy of the stream is, however, best obtained by bathing in it during the full moon or at eclipses, and on these occasions the ashes of the dead are brought from afar and cast into the river. The Jumna is also sacred, but since, according to modern legend, she is unmarried, she is not of the highest sanctity, and so the water is heavy and indigestible. The union of the two sacred streams is especially holy at the modern Allahabad. The great rival of the Ganges is the Narmada, which tore through the marble rocks at Jabalpur in anger at the perfidy of her lover, the Son, who was beguiled by another stream, the Johila. In the opinion of her supporters the Narmada is superior to the Ganges, for both its banks are equally efficacious for bathing, and not--as in the case of her rival--only the northern shore.
The earth-deity of the aborigines is Bhumiya, who is gradually being incorporated into the Hindu pantheon. The shrine is of interest as showing the humble character of the temples of the primitive godlings, who are frequently represented merely by rough stones and do not enjoy the honour of any shrines whatever. After Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Plate facing i, 105.
Wells are sacred if any special feature marks them, such as is the case with hotsprings, and waterfalls are naturally regarded as holy, a famous cataract being where the Chandraprabha descends from the plateau of the Vindhya to the Gangetic valley. Lakes are at once more common and more renowned.
At Pokhar in Rajputana, where Brahma's shrine and temple stand, there is a very sacred lake, which, according to tradition, was once inhabited by a dragon. Still more famous is Manasarovara, which, formed from the mind of Brahma, is the [236] abode not only of him, but of Mahadeva and the gods, and from which flow the Sutlej and the Sarju. The Nairn Tal Lake is sacred to Devi. In Lake Taroba in the Chanda district of the Central Provinces all necessary vessels used to rise out of the water at the call of pilgrims, but since a greedy man took them home, this boon has ceased to be granted. Other objects of reverence are the tanks at certain sacred places, as at Amritsar. Some tanks have healing power, and others contain buried treasure.
Mountains are likewise the object of worship both by the Aryanized and the Dravidian tribes. The Himalayan peak Nanda Devi is identified with Parvati, the wife of Siva, and the goddess of the Vindhya is worshipped under the style of Maharani Vindhyesvari and was once the patron divinity of the Thags. The Kaimur and the Vindhya ranges are fabled to be an offshoot from the Himalaya: they were composed of rocks let fall by Rama's followers when they were returning from the Himalaya with stones for the bridging of the way to Lanka; but before they had reached their destination Rama had succeeded in his aim and he therefore bade them drop their burdens. Another famous hill is Govardhana, the peak upraised by Krsna for seven days to protect the herdsmen from the storm of rain sent by Indra to punish them for withholding his meed of sacrifice.
In addition to these deities, and more important than they for popular religion, must be reckoned the village deities. Of these a notable figure is Hanuman, whose rude image is to be found in most Hindu villages of the respectable class. He is adored by women in the hope of obtaining offspring and he is the favourite deity of wrestlers. He is a very popular divinity among the semi-Hinduized Dravidian races of the Vindhya range and he bears his old name of "Son of the Wind." This, coupled with the fact that in the Panjab appeal is made to him to stop the whirlwind, suggests that the theory that he is connected with the monsoon has a good deal of probability. What [237] is most extraordinary is that the apes in India are regarded as sacred, and weddings of apes are still occasionally performed at great cost as a religious service. Bhimasen, who has a certain amount of popularity in the Central Provinces, has apparently borrowed his name mainly from the Bhima of the epic, but the Bhisma of the epic has a real worship as a guardian deity.
Another divinity of the village is Bhumiya, who is either masculine or feminine, in the latter case having the name Bhumiya Rani. This is clearly the earth god or goddess in a local form, and the nature of the worship is shown by the fact that reverence is especially paid when a village site is consecrated, when a marriage takes place or a child is born, or at the harvest. In the Hills he is a deity of benevolent character and modest pretensions, being quite satisfied with simple cereal offerings; but in Patna he is being elevated into a form of Visnu, in the hills he is becoming identified with the aspect of Svayambhuva worshipped in Nepal, and in the plains a Mahadeva Bhumisvara and his consort are being created, so that the figure of the earth god or goddess is being taken up into the bosom of the Vaisnava and Saiva systems.
Similarly the local god Bhairon is metamorphosed into Bhairava, a form of Siva, but his epithet Svasva ("Whose Horse is a Dog ") indicates his real character, for in Upper India the favourite way of appeasing this deity is to feed a black dog until surfeit. In Benares he figures as Bhaironnath ("Lord Bhairon") or Bhut Bhairon ("Ghost Bhairon") and serves as guardian to the temples of Siva. In Bombay he is Bhairoba or Kala Bhairava, in which aspect he is terrible. Elsewhere, however, he is called "Child Bhairon" and Nanda Bhairon, names which suggest a connexion with the Krsna cycle of legends.
In close fellowship with Siva stands Ganesa, who is often depicted in Saivite shrines, and whose elephant head continues to be the subject of conjecture and suggestion, while his association with the rat seems to imply some humble origin [238] for this deity. The "Mothers," who appear as early as the epic in company with Skanda, have a steadily increasing worship. Their number ranges from seven to sixteen, and their names vary, but in Gujarat the total exceeds one hundred and forty. Some of these "Mothers" are no more than disease-demons, and some are angry spirits of the dead, whereas others appear to have a more exalted origin. Thus Poru Mai of Nadiya seems clearly to be the goddess of the jungle, and in the North-Western Provinces the title Vanaspati Mai declares her to be "the Mother of the Forest." Mata Januvi (or Janami) is a goddess of birth, as her name implies, while Bhukhi Mata ("the Hunger Mother") is a personification of famine. The Rajputs have a supreme "Mother Deity," Mama Devi, the mother of the gods, who is presumably a representation of Mother Earth. In the plains Maya, the mother of the Buddha, is often accepted as a village deity, and even the famous Buddhist poet Asvaghosa has thus received adoration; while in similar fashion the Gond deity Gansam Deo has been metamorphosed, according to one theory, into Ghanasyama ("Black Like the Rain-Cloud "), an epithet of Krsna.
The belief in the tree-spirit which is found in the Rgveda is prominent throughout the popular religion. The Maghs of Bengal would fell trees only at the instigation of Europeans and in their presence: on cutting down any large tree one of the party used to place a sprig in the centre of the stump when the tree fell as a propitiation to the spirit which had been displaced, pleading at the same time the orders of the strangers for the work. Another example of the same belief in the life of the tree is the constant practice of the performance of marriage ceremonies with trees for the most various purposes, either, as often, to enable a man to marry a third wife without incurring ill luck or to prevent a daughter from remaining unwed beyond the normal time of marriage. In many places people object to the collection of toddy from the palm-trees because it necessitates cutting their necks. Folk-lore is full of
Originally a village godling of the aborigines, Bhairon has become identified with Bhairava ("the Fearful"), one of the dread forms of Siva. His animal is the dog. He is essentially a deity whose function is to keep guard and thus to give protection. Accordingly he is usually represented as armed with club or sword, while his terrible aspect appears in the bowl of blood which he carries. After Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Plate facing ii, 218.
As in the Rgveda also, there is much worship of the work of human hands. The pickaxe fetish of the Thags was wrought with great care, consecrated, and tested on a coco-nut: if it failed to split it at one blow, it was recognized that Devi was unpropitious. Warriors revere their weapons, tanners their hair-scrapers, carpenters their yard-measures, barbers their razors, scribes their writing materials. So, in accordance with Krsna's advice to the herdsmen, in the Panjab farmers worship their oxen in August and their plough at the Dasahra festival, and shepherds do reverence to their sheep at the full moon of July. Among other implements the corn sieve or winnowing [240] basket, the broom used to sweep up the grain on the threshing-floor or in cleaning the house, the plough, and the rice pounder are all marked by distinct powers, as in many other lands.
Stones too are often worshipped, whether for their own sake or for their connexion with some spirit or deity. The most famous is the curiously perforated salagram, or ammonite, found in the Gandak River and said to be Visnu's form as a golden bee, for the god, when wandering in this shape, attracted such a host of gods in the guise of bees that he assumed the form of a rock, whereupon the gods made each a dwelling in the stone. Visnu's footsteps are also revered at Gaya, and those of his disciple, Ramanand, at Benares. A fetish stone in each village represents the abode of the village deities; legends are told of the stone statues of older gods and spirits found in the great shrines, or of uncanny or weird-looking natural rocks; while here and there even the tombs of modern English dead receive some degree of worship.
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